64-66 Death Decked Out in Motley

In Chapter 64, General Stumm von Bordwehr, "the army officer sent by the War Ministry" to observe the Parallel Campaign, pays Diotima a visit and leaves her with a "shadowy fear" and the sense that "a wolf was prowling around her flocks and that it was high time to exorcise it by the power of the Idea." Diotima has a morbid reaction to army officers and considers them "death decked out in motley."

She also believes that Ulrich "favored the vague menaces emanating from the General" and tries to discuss the situation with Arnheim.  But Arnheim has other things he would prefer to discuss, such as "the connection between business and poetry."

"Of course, I mean business in the largest sense, the world's business, such as I have been fated to conduct by the position to which I was born; it is related to poetry, it has irrational, even mystical aspects. . . . Foolish people imagine it's a pleasure to have money. It is in fact a terrible responsibility. I won't speak of the countless lives dependent on me, for whom I represent a sort of fate. . . . Once a business has expanded to the degree reached only by the very few I speak of, there is hardly anything in life it is not somehow involved with.  It is a little cosmos."

About the General, Arnheim is not particularly troubled:

"But there's no need to turn the General away on principle. Personally he may be a man of goodwill, and you know my principle of not missing any opportunity to bring the life of the spirit into a sphere of mere power." 

When Diotima confronts Ulrich about the General -- "Why did you encourage the General about our campaign?" --- Ulrich denies any involvement: "Do you mean that round little general from the first big meeting? Me? I haven't even seen him since, let alone encouraged him!"

As usual, Ulrich has his own preoccupations:

"For quite obvious reasons, every generation treats the life into which it is born as firmly established, except for a few things it is interested in changing. This is practical, but it's wrong. The world can change in all directions at any moment, or at least in any direction it choose; it's the world's nature. Wouldn't it be more original to try to live, not as a definite person in a definite world . . . but rather to behave from the start as someone born to change by a world created to change, roughly like a drop of water inside a cloud?

Apparently, Arnheim had challenged Ulrich about his approach to life: "He told me that the intellect today is the helpless spectator of real developments because it is dodging the great tasks of life."  But Ulrich insists on his own perspective:

It seems to me our history has been that every time we have fulfilled some small part of an idea, we are so pleased that we leave the much greater remainder unfinished. Magnificent institutions are usually the bungled drafts of their ideas; so, incidentally, are magnificent personalities. 

Diotima declares that Arnheim "wants to be helpful!" But Ulrich is dismissive: "I may be only a little pebble, and he is a splendid, puffed-out glass.  But I have the impression he's afraid of me."

Ulrich's attitude toward Arnheim worries Diotima, but she's beginning to have more confidence in Ulrich.  The chapter ends with her asking Ulrich what should be done about General Strumm's interest in the Parallel Campaign.

Ulrich's response is very decisive: "Keep him off!"