We, who still wage his battles, are his thralls, And dying do him homage; yea, and give Daily our living souls to be enticed Into his power. So long as on war's walls We build engines of death that he may live, So long shall we serve Krupp instead of Christ. BY THE EMPRESS CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA (1729-1796) The only way to save our empires from the encroachment of the people is to engage in war, and thus substitute national passions for social aspirations. BY FREDERICK THE GREAT OF PRUSSIA (1712-1786) If my soldiers were to begin to reflect, not one of them would remain in the ranks. Our Father Which Art in Heaven (_From "The Human Slaughter-House"_) BY WILHELM LAMSZUS (A novel by a Hamburg school-teacher, published in 1913. Although banned by the authorities in some places, over 100,000 copies were sold in Germany in a few weeks) We rejoined the Colors on Friday. On Monday we are to move out. Today, being Sunday, is full-dress Church Parade. I slept badly last night, and am feeling uneasy and limp. And now we are sitting close-packed in church. The organ is playing a voluntary. I am leaning back and straining my ears for the sounds in the dim twilight of the building. Childhood's days rise before my eyes again. I am watching a little solemn-faced boy sitting crouched in a corner and listening to the divine service. The priest is standing in front of the altar, and is intoning the Exhortation devoutly. The choir in the gallery is chanting the responses. The organ thunders out and floods through the building majestically. I am rapt in an ecstasy of sweet terror, for the Lord God is coming down upon us. He is standing before me and touching my body, so that I have to close my eyes in a terror of shuddering ecstasy.... That is long, long ago, and is all past and done with, as youth itself is past and done with.... Strange! After all these years of doubt and unbelief, at this moment of lucid consciousness, the atmosphere of devoutness, long since dead, possesses me, and thrills me so passionately that I can hardly resist it. This is the same heavy twilight--these are the same yearning angel voices--the same fearful sense of rapture-- I pull myself together, and sit bolt upright on the hard wooden pew. In the main and the side aisles below, and in the galleries above, nothing but soldiers in uniform, and all, with level faces, turned toward the altar, toward that pale man in his long dignified black gown, toward that sonorous, unctuous mouth, from whose lips flows the name of God.