War
(page 6)
Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, a single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay
And the war would be over and done in a day.
We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
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