"'See here, you know, we've had enough of it...WE CAN'T STAND IT ANY MORE! I'm just back from the Chemin des Dames...you know what that's been for the last month'...then he gave me a terrible description of that battle...'how do you expect men to go back to that...do you know what happens to you when you live for twenty-thirty days like that?...you go mad! Yes, THAT'S what happens to you...that's what's the trouble with me now...I know I sound wild. I am wild...I CAN'T stand any more...it's more than flesh and blood can endure to go back into that! Why don't the Americans GET in it if they are going to? Oh, yes, I know they can't any sooner...but why didn't they get IN, before! Oh, yes, I know why. I know...but when you are mad you can't stop to reason. We look at it this way...When we're not mad, from having been too many days under fire...we say, as we talk it over...There are the English...they've done splendidly...they've taken two years, it is true, to get their army really in shape...but they didn't have anything to begin with...they're fine...all that we could expect. But all the same, during the two years, Frenchmen were dying like flies...just watering the whole North with blood...yes, I've seen a brook run red just like the silly poems that nobody believed. And the Americans...yes...suppose this man and I should get to quarrelling. Of course you can't jump right in and decide which is to blame, if you don't know much about the beginning. You HAVE to stand off and watch, and see which fights fair, and all the rest...BUT WHILE YOU ARE DECIDING, ALL FRANCE IS DYING. It is time the weight of the defence is taken off France...there won't be any Frenchmen left alive in France...and here she is with all these foreigners over-running her! Do you suppose they are going to leave after the war? Not much. All these Algerians and Senegals and Anamites--not to speak of the Belgians and English and Americans...there won't be any Frenchmen left alive, and France will be populated by foreigners...THAT'S what we have to look forward to for all the reward of our blood. They keep promising help, but they don't bring it. WE have to go back and go back! I tell you, Ma'ame, THREE YEARS IS TOO LONG A TIME! No man can stand three years of war! It makes you into somebody else... you've died so many times you're like a walking corpse...isn't that just how you feel?' he appealed to his companion, who said impassively, "'No, damn you, that isn't a bit how I feel. I just say to myself, "IT'S WAR" and "THAT'S THE WAY WAR IS," and I don't TRY to make anything out of it the way you do. That's silly! You just have to stick it out. Understanding it hasn't anything to do with it.'