Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting. The subject is dropped. Then the conversation turns to drill. A picture comes before me. Burning midday in the barrack-yard. The heat hangs over the square. The barracks are deserted. Everything sleeps. All one hears is the drummers practising; they have installed themselves anywhere and practise brokenly, dully, monotonously. What a concord! Midday heat, barrack-square, and drummers beating! The windows of the barracks are empty and dark. From some of them trousers are hanging to dry. The rooms are cool and one looks toward them longingly. O dark, musty platoon huts, with the iron bedsteads, the chequered bedding, the lockers and the stools! Even you can become the object of desire; out here you have a faint resemblance to home; your rooms, full of the smell of stale food, sleep, smoke, and clothes! Katczinsky paints it all in lively colours. What would we not give to be able to go back to it! But we must not pursue that line of thought any further. Those early morning hours of instruction--"What are the parts of the 98 rifle?"--the midday hours of physical training--"Pianist, forward! By the right, quick march. Report to the cook-house for potato-peeling." We indulge in reminiscences. Kropp laughs suddenly and says: "Change at Löhne!" That was our corporal's favourite game. Löhne is a railway junction. In order that our fellows going on leave shouldn't get lost there, Himmelstoss used to practise the change in the barrack-room. We had to learn that at Löhne, to reach the branch-line, we must pass through a subway. The beds represented the subway and each man stood at attention on the left side of his bed. Then came the command: "Change at Löhne!" and like lightning everyone scrambled under the bed to the opposite side. We practised this for a whole hour---- Meanwhile the German aeroplane has been shot down. Like a comet it bursts into a streamer of smoke and falls headlong. Kropp has lost the bottle of beer. Disgruntled he counts out the money from his wallet. "Surely Himmelstoss was a very different fellow as a postman," say I, after Albert's disappointment has subsided. "Then how does it come that he's such a bully as a drill-sergeant?" The question revives Kropp, more particularly as he hears there's no more beer in the canteen. "It's not only Himmelstoss, there are lots of them. As sure as they get a stripe or a star they become different men, just as though they'd swallowed concrete." "That's the uniform," I suggest.