The District Bonaparte is devising a strategy. He finds an enemy faster than some people can say the word “enemy.” And when there is an enemy, the soldier has it easy. He must defeat him. Kill him, pacify him, force him to retreat.
And thanks to this, we now have a small, district training ground in Bolesławiec. The district office has dug in at its positions. It believes it is being unjustly accused, because it gives the children’s home more than enough and loves the orphans more than itself. And the enemy? The enemy is spreading hostile propaganda. Fire! Burn!
Of course, the war is modern. Virtual. On internet forums, anonymous soldiers argue in support of the district office and attack the enemy. The enemy is greedy. The soldiers multiply and divide the subsidy to prove it.
What is this army fighting for? Its image. The district office’s image has been seriously tarnished. An official speaking matter-of-factly about money that the Elizabethan Sisters are not entitled to came across as rather nasty. District office officials shown on local television against a backdrop of orphans were portrayed as somewhat stingy and heartless.
The District Little Knight will erase this stain on his honor with blood, even if it is the blood of nuns and children. He will defeat the enemy with the enemy’s own weapon. If the director-sister says on local television that the ingredients for the pot at the children’s home cost PLN 2.90, then his generals (members of the board) will suggest that the enemy allocates 80% of the subsidy to her own salary and those of the employees. Hit, sunk. And all this for the noble purpose of saving the official’s face.
The thirty-two thousand additionally requested by the director-sister gets lost in the dust of battle. In the same dust, the meaning of this war also dissipates—a war whose result will be the loss of a partner that had so far performed well under the contract to run the children’s home in Bolesławiec.
The matter is serious enough for the district that the district office should reach an agreement with the Order of the Elizabethan Sisters. Especially since this is the district office’s own responsibility. The District Board should seek peaceful solutions or begin ordinary commercial negotiations. But a soldier is drawn to soldiering: direct confrontation, maneuvers—in the roar of artillery, a soldier can fulfill himself.
Perhaps in such a case it would be better to send Deputy District Governor Chwojnicki on a long vacation to a country where real fighting is taking place (there is no shortage of flashpoints on the world map). Or set up his own private training ground in the vast Lower Silesian Forests. He could even be given a weapon. The area would only need to be properly marked and guarded against peaceable citizens who do not wish for official wars.
Grażyna Hanaf