We Want To Live At Any Price;

He Fell In October 1918, On A Day That Was So Quiet And Still On The Whole Front, That The Army Report Confined Itself To The Single Sentence: All Quiet On The Western Front. He Had Fallen Forward And Lay On The Earth As Though Sleeping. Turning Him Over One Saw That He Could Not Have Suffered Long; His Face Had An Expression Of Calm, As Though Almost Glad The End Had Come.

The Soldier Is On Friendlier Terms Than Other Men With His Stomach And Intestines. Three-quarters Of His Vocabulary Is Derived From These Regions, And They Give An Intimate Flavour To Expressions Of His Greatest Joy As Well As Of His Deepest Indignation. It Is Impossible To Express Oneself In Any Other Way So Clearly And Pithily. Our Families And Our Teachers Will Be Shocked When We Go Home, But Here It Is The Universal Language.

I Am Often On Guard Over The Russians. In The Darkness One Sees Their Forms Move Like Stick Storks, Like Great Birds. They Come Close Up To The Wire Fence And Lean Their Faces Against It. Their Fingers Hook Round The Mesh.

But Probably That's The Way Of The World - When We Have Finally Learned Something We're Too Old To Apply It - And So It Goes, Wave After Wave, Generation After Generation. No One Learns Anything At All From Anyone Else.

The Wisest Were Just The Poor And Simple People. They Knew The War To Be A Misfortune, Whereas Those Who Were Better Off, And Should Have Been Able To See More Clearly What The Consequences Would Be, Were Beside Themselves With Joy.