In this gruesome tale of the realities of war, Andreev has given shocking physical details of torn and bleeding bodies, but true to the theme that animates all his books, he has concentrated the main interest on the Mind. Soldiers suffer in the flesh, but infinitely more in the mind. War points chiefly not to the grave, nor to the hospital, but to the madhouse. All forms of insanity are bred by the horror and fatigue of the marches and battles: many shoot themselves, many become raging maniacs, many become gibbering idiots. Every man who has studied warfare knows that the least of all perils is the bullet of the enemy, for only a small proportion are released by that. The innumerable and subtle forms of disease, bred by exposure and privation, constitute the real danger. Andreev is the first to show that the most common and awful form of disease among Russian soldiers is the disease of the brain. The camp becomes a vast madhouse, with the peculiar feature that the madmen are at large. The hero of the story loses both his legs, and apparently completely recovered in health otherwise, returns home to his family, and gazes wistfully at his bicycle. A sudden desire animates him to write out the story of the Japanese war; in the process he becomes insane and dies. His brother then attempts to complete the narrative from the scattered, confused notes, but to his horror, whenever he approaches the desk, the phantom of the dead man is ever there, busily writing: he can hear the pen squeak on the paper. No more terrible protest against war has ever been written than Andreev's "Red Laugh." It shows not merely the inexpressible horror of the battlefield and the dull, weary wretchedness of the men on the march, but it follows out the farthest ramifications flowing from the central cause: the constant tragedies in the families, the letters received after the telegraph has announced the death of the writer, the insane wretches who return to the homes they left in normal health, the whole accumulation of woe.