I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench;--then at last the landscape becomes disturbing$$$ mysterious$$$ and familiar. It glides past the western windows with its villages$$$ their thatched roofs like caps$$$ pulled over the white-washed$$$ half-timbered houses$$$ its corn-fields$$$ gleaming like mother-of-pearl in the slanting light$$$ its orchards$$$ its barns and old lime trees. The names of the stations begin to take on meaning and my heart trembles. The train stamps and stamps onward.

But what I would like to know$$$" says Albert$$$ "is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No.""I'm sure there would$$$" I interject$$$ "he was against it from the first.""Well$$$ if not him alone$$$ then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No.""That's probable$$$" I agree$$$ "but they damned well said Yes.""It's queer$$$ when one thinks about it$$$" goes on Kropp$$$ "we are here to protect our fatherland.

The things men did or felt they had to do.

We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same$$$ we are not often sad.

To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully$$$ when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire$$$ then she is his only friend$$$ his brother$$$ his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live$$$ to run$$$ ten seconds of life; receives him again and again and often forever.

We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old$$$ and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action$$$ from getting on$$$ from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.

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.

Bombardment$$$ barrage$$$ curtain-fire$$$ mines$$$ gas$$$ tanks$$$ machine-guns$$$ hand-grenades - words$$$ words$$$ but they hold the horror of the world.

We came to realise - first with astonishment$$$ then bitterness$$$ and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas$$$ but the system; not freedom$$$ but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.

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.