All the bodies lying about here, as if bleating up to heaven, have got these glazed eyes, they are lying as if they were outstretched in the abattoir. Well, to be hit and to fall down dead, there's nothing to make a fuss about that! But to be shot through the chest, to be shot through the belly, to burn for hours in the fever of your wounds, to cool your mangled body in the wet grass, and to stare up into the pitiless blue heavens because your accursed eyes go on refusing to glaze over yet---- I turn away from them. I force myself to look past these mocking, grotesque _posés plastiques_ of Death. And I am already spirited far away, and am sitting in my little study at home. My coffee cup is standing snugly to my hand. My book-case is beaming down on me. My well-loved books invite me, and in front of me my book of books, "Faust," lies open. And so I read, and feel the wonderful relaxation that comes after work stealing through my longing blood. The door opens. A little girl, and a boy who has just learned the use of his legs, put their noses in at the door. "Daddy, may we?" I nod consent. Then they spread out their little arms, and rush at me. "Daddy!" They are climbing on to my knees now, and I give them a ride--"this is how we ride to war." But they twine their soft arms round my neck until at length I put them down on the floor: "Now go to Mummy--" And now---- A new picture. How very plainly I see it. We have gone out of a Sunday afternoon beyond the suburbs, gone out with bag and baggage. I see the green fields bright and fair, and see the two kiddies bright and fair. They are rolling about in the grass and chasing the butterflies, and laughing up at me, and crowing with delight as they run after the ball I have thrown down for them to play with. And the sky stretches above us in its Sabbath blue, and so confidently as if it all could never come to an end. And Dora smiles at me with quiet eyes. Then I come back with a start--I feel my knapsack chafing my back--I feel my rifle--I see the dead at my feet again-- My God! how can these things be? How can these two worlds be so terribly close to each other?... And we pass on through this first spring crop of dead bodies. No one says a word. No one has a joke. How surreptitiously the others glance aside when some corpse, all too grotesquely mangled, meets their eyes. I wonder what is passing through their brains? Working men, tradesmen, artisans, and agricultural laborers, that's what they are for the most part. They themselves have as yet never smelled powder, nor ever been under fire. That, I suppose, is the reason why they have suddenly become so dumb. Then a voice beside me says something abruptly, and it seems as if the voice rebounded hollow from the silence. "The stuff is laying about here same as muck."