The War Has Ruined Us For Everything.

We Have Lost All Sense Of Other Considerations, Because They Are Artificial. Only The Facts Are Real And Important To Us. And Good Boots Are Hard To Come By." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2

We March Up, Moody Or Good-tempered Soldiers - We Reach The Zone Where The Front Begins And Become On The Instant Human Animals.

Kropp On The Other Hand Is A Thinker. He Proposes That A Declaration Of War Should Be A Kind Of Popular Festival With Entrance-tickets And Bands, Like A Bull Fight. Then In The Arena The Ministers And Generals Of The Two Countries, Dressed In Bathing-drawers And Armed With Clubs, Can Have It Out On Themselves. Whoever Survives The Country Wins. That Would Be Much Simpler And More Than Just This Arrangement, Where The Wrong People Do The Fighting

This Book Is To Be Neither An Accusation Nor A Confession, And Least Of All An Adventure, For Death Is Not An Adventure To Those Who Stand Face To Face With It. It Will Try Simply To Tell Of A Generation Of Men Who, Even Though They May Have Escaped Shells, Were Destroyed By The War.

The Storm Lashes Us, Out Of The Confusion Of Grey And Yellow The Hail Of Splinters Whips Forth The Childlike Cries Of The Wounded, And In The Night Shattered Life Groans Painfully Into Silence. Our Hands Are Earth, Our Bodies Clay And Our Eyes Pools Of Rain. We Do Not Know Whether We Are Still Alive.