Another plank appeared, with other words:
"The French are fools."
Loyalty to our allies caused the destruction of that board.
A third plank was put up:
"We're all fools. Let's all go home."
That board was also shot to pieces, but the message caused some
laughter, and men repeating it said: "There's a deal of truth in those
words. Why should this go on? What's it all about? Let the old men who
made this war come and fight it out among themselves, at Hooge. The
fighting-men have no real quarrel with one another. We all want to go
home to our wives and our work."
But neither side was prepared to "go home" first. Each side was in a
trap--a devil's trap from which there was no escape. Loyalty to their
own side, discipline, with the death penalty behind it, spell words of
old tradition, obedience to the laws of war or to the caste which
ruled them, all the moral and spiritual propaganda handed out by
pastors, newspapers, generals, staff-officers, old men at home,
exalted women, female furies, a deep and simple love for England and
Germany, pride of manhood, fear of cowardice--a thousand complexities
of thought and sentiment prevented men, on both sides, from breaking
the net of fate in which they were entangled, and revolting against
that mutual, unceasing massacre, by a rising from the trenches with a
shout of, "We're all fools! .
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