I leaned my face on my arm against the parados. Oh, this unutterable tragedy! Had there ever been such a thing before? Why was this thing so terrible? Why did I have this feeling of battering against some relentless power? Death. There were worse things than death. There were sights, such as I had just come from, as terrible in everyday life, in any factory explosion or railway accident. There was nothing new in death. Vaguely my mind felt out for something to express this thing so far more terrible than mere death. And then I saw it. Vividly I saw the secret of war.
What made war so cruel, was the force that compelled you to go on. After a factory explosion you cleared up things and then took every precaution to prevent its recurrence; but in war you did the opposite, you used all your energies to make more explosions. You killed and went on killing; you saw men die around you, and you deliberately went on with the thing that would cause more of your friends to die. You were placed in an arena, and made to fight the beasts; and if you killed one beast, there were more waiting, and more and more. And above the arena, out of it, secure, looked down the glittering eyes of the men who had placed you there; cruel, relentless eyes, that went on glittering while the mouths expressed admiration for your impossible struggles, and pity for your fate!
“Oh God! I shall go mad!” I thought, in the agony of my mind. I saw into that strange empty chamber which is called madness: I knew what it would be like to go mad. And even as I saw, came the thought again of those glittering eyes, and the ruthless answer to my soul’s cry: “The war is utterly indifferent whether you go mad or not.”
Owen was standing waiting for me. I grew calm again, and turned and put my hand on his shoulder. Together we reached the door of the dug-out.
“Oh, Bill,” he said, “have you ever seen anything more awful?”
“Only once. No, not more awful: more beastly. Nothing could be more awful.”
We told the others.
“Not Allan?” said Edwards. He was Lewis-gun officer, and Allan was his best man.
“Not Allan?” he repeated. “Oh, how will they tell his little girl in Morlancourt? What will she say when she learns she will never see him again?”
“Thank God she never saw him as we saw him just now,” I said, “and thank God his mother never saw him.”