Journey to the East

H.H. ponders the wisdom of continuing the story and decides not to give in to doubt, despite being “confronted by chaos” (51). His decision to continue gives him peace, and he compares his optimism to the feeling he experienced upon embarking on the Journey, which also had no firm destination: “As far as it is now still possible, I will be mindful of the first principal of our great period, never to rely on and let myself be disconcerted by reason, always to know that faith is stronger than so-called reality” (52). If he cannot tell the entire story accurately, he commits to representing whatever fragments he remembers with total authenticity.

A newspaper editor named Lukas—a childhood friend of H.H.’s—meets with him. H.H. says that the Journey to the East had not been treated well by Lukas’s circle: “This singular episode was mostly called, perhaps disrespectfully, ‘The Children’s Crusade’” (53). H.H. does not believe that his task is to overcome Lukas’s skepticism, but to give him corrected information: “For instance, that our League was in no way an off-shoot of the post-war years, but that it had extended throughout the whole of world history” (54). He tells

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