That was my yokel beside me. Then he, too, relapses into silence, and I feel as if I could read behind their shy eyes, as if all that is going on in these dull brains had suddenly become clear as daylight. They're all drawn from that other world, where Life kissed us and cozened caressingly round our bodies. You have brought us up as human beings. That we have been human no longer counts. Life and love no longer count; flesh and blood no longer count; only gore and corpses count for anything now. How we used to tremble in that other world, when a naked human life was even in danger. How we rushed into the burning house to drive away the death for which some poor old paralyzed woman craved. How we plunged into the wintry river to snatch a starved beggar brat from the quiet waters. We would not even suffer a man to creep away out of Life by stealth while we looked on. We cut down suicides at their last sob, and hustled them back into life. Of our mercy we set up half-rotted wastrels with new bodies; with pills, elixirs and medicines, with herbalists, professors and surgeons, with cauteries, amputations and electrotherapy, we fanned the flickering life and fed the sunken flame with oxygen and radium and all the elements. There was nothing greater, nothing more sacred than Life. Life was everything to us, was for us the most precious possession on earth. And here lies that most precious of possessions--here it is lying wasted and used up--spurned as the dust by the roadside--and we are marching along over it as over dust and stones. CHAPTER VII BLOOD AND IRON The whole of that morning we had been marching in the eye of the sun without coming across a drop of water, for the country was not well watered, and there had been no rain for weeks. Our tongues were parched; our throats were burning. When about midday we passed through a farmyard, where we found a last remaining drop of dirty liquid, it seemed as if the water evaporated on the tongue before it ever reached our throats. Then we had been marched on interminably, so that it was almost with a sense of relief that we heard the first sound of the guns rolling up to meet us. The firing grew hotter, and we soon left the main road and turned down a lane. We were pushed on at a smart pace. Our faces were glowing from thirst and heat. The column was enveloped in a thick cloud of dust. The taste of dust instead of water was on our tongues. The dust was lying thick as a layer of flour on our cheeks.