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Futile, foolish arguments,
while men were being killed in great numbers, as daily routine,
without result!
Officers of a division billeted nearby came in to dine with us, some
of them generals with elaborate theories on war and a passionate
hatred of Germany, seeing no other evil in the world; some of them
brigadiers with tales of appalling brutality (which caused great
laughter), some of them battalion officers with the point of view of
those who said, "Morituri te saluant!"
There was one whose conversation I remember (having taken notes of it
before I turned in that night). It was a remarkable conversation,
summing up many things of the same kind which I had heard in stray
sentences by other officers, and month by month, years afterward,
heard again, spoken with passion. This officer who had come out to
France in 1914 and had been fighting ever since by a luck which had
spared his life when so many of his comrades had fallen round him, did
not speak with passion. He spoke with a bitter, mocking irony.


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