For where there is no fight, there can be no victory.  Resist the armed bands with the quiet obstacle of mental fortitude.  Do not act, but submit.  Submit with a defiant air.  Do not use your weapons, but do not yield them up to the enemy.  Keep your hands on the hilts of your swords, and be quiet.  When they mock and abuse you, be silent; but let them read your defiance in your countenances; when they press upon you with sword and cannon, retire with a proud smile, and do not defend yourselves, and we will see whether they are brutal enough to attack peaceful non-combatants.  Act in this way, and the moral victory is yours, and you then will have conquered the enemy by your moral greatness, even if you are physically subdued.  Against cannon and bayonets a people cannot defend themselves except by passive resistance, by submission, with secret and silent hatred in their hearts.  Use no other weapons than this passive resistance, and posterity will praise you, and say of you, with admiration, that you were no heroes of fight, but heroes of passive resistance.  Your country will be proud of you!”

Mr. Krause paused, and leaned, worn out, on the shoulder of the prophetic linen-weaver.

“You may be in the right,” said the tailor, still rebellious at heart; “all that sounds right and reasonable, but still it don’t suit me, and I don’t see how the country can be proud of us, if we behave like cowards, and let ourselves be bamboozled this way.”

“Do you hush, tailor!” cried the hunchbacked shoemaker.  “The chap thinks because he can manage a sharp needle, he must be able to yield a broadsword; but let me tell you, my brave boy, that a stick with a sword hurts worse than a prick with a needle.  It is not only written, ‘Shoemaker, stick to your last,’ but also, ’Tailor, stick to your needle.’  Are we soldiers, that we must fight?  No, we are respectable citizens, tailors and shoemakers, and the whole concern is no business of ours.  And who is going to pay us for our legs and arms when they have been cut off?”

“Nobody, nobody is going to do it!” cried a voice from the crowd.

“And who is going to take care of our wives and children when we are crippled, and can’t earn bread for them?  Perhaps they are going to put us in the new almshouse, which has just been built outside of the King’s Gate, and which they call the Oxen-head.”

“No, no, we won’t go into the Oxen-head!” screamed the people.  “We won’t fight! let us go home.”

“Yes, go home, go home!” cried Krause and Kretschmer, delighted, and Pfannenstiel repeated after them—­

“Let us go home!”

And indeed the groups began to separate and thin out; and the two editors, who had descended from their bench, mixed with the crowd, and enforced their peaceful arguments with zealous eloquence.