The War Has Ruined Us For Everything.

We Were Eighteen And Had Begun To Love Life And The World; And We Had To Shoot It To Pieces.

I Did Not Want To Think So Much About Her. I Wanted To Take Her As An Unexpected, Delightful Gift, That Had Come And Would Go Again — Nothing More. I Meant Not To Give Room To The Thought That It Could Ever Be More. I Knew Too Well That All Love Has The Desire For Eternity And That Therein Lies Its Eternal Torment. Nothing Lasts. Nothing.

They Are More To Me Than Life, These Voices, They Are More Than Motherliness And More Than Fear; They Are The Strongest, Most Comforting Thing There Is Anywhere: They Are The Voices Of My Comrades.

The Coffin, It Shall Protect Me, Though Death Himself Lies In It

And Even If These Scenes From Our Youth Were Given Back To Us We Would Hardly Know What To Do. The Tender, Secret Influence That Passed From Them Into Us Could Not Rise Again. We Might Be Amongst Them And Move In Them; We Might Remember And Love Them And Be Stirred By The Sight Of Them. But It Would Be Like Gazing At The Photograph Of A Dead Comrade; Those Are His Features, It Is His Face, And The Days We Spent Together Take On A Mournful Life In The Memory; But The Man Himself It Is Not.