A Hospital Alone Shows What War Is.

For Us Lads Of Eighteen They Ought To Have Been Mediators And Guides To The World Of Maturity, The World Of Work, Of Duty, Of Culture, Of Progress -- To The Future.

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces. The First Bomb, The First Explosion, Burst In Our Hearts. We Are Cut Off From Activity, From Striving, From Progress. We Believe In Such Things No Longer, We Believe In The War." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5

Bombardment, Barrage, Curtain-fire, Mines, Gas, Tanks, Machine-guns, Hand-grenades - Words, Words, But They Hold The Horror Of The World.

I Had The Feeling Of Slipping Down A Smooth Bottomless Pit. It Had Nothing To Do With Breuer And The People. It Had Nothing To Do With Pat Even. It Was The Melancholy Secret That Reality Can Arouse Desires But Never Satisfy Them; That Love Begins With A Human Being But Does Not End In Him; And That Everything Can Be There: A Human Being, Love, Happiness, Life — And That Yet In Some Terrible Way It Is Always Too Little, And Grows Ever Less The More It Seems.

The Music Enchanted The Air. It Was Like The South Wind, Like A Warm Night, Like Swelling Sails Beneath The Stars, Completely And Utterly Unreal... It Made Everything Spacious And Colourful, The Dark Stream Of Life Seemed Pulsing In It; There Were No Burdens Any More, No Limits; There Existed Only Glory And Melody And Love, So That One Simply Could Not Realize That, At The Same Time As This Music Was, Outside There Ruled Poverty And Torment And Despair.