"War must be killed," said the first speaker, "war must be killed in the belly of Germany!"
"Anyway," said one of those who sat enrooted there like a sort of shrub, "anyway, we're beginning to understand why we've got to march away."
"All the same," grumbled the squatting chasseur in his turn, "there are some that fight with quite another idea than that in their heads. I've seen some of 'em, young men, who said, 'To hell with humanitarian ideas'; what mattered to them was nationality and nothing else, and the war was a question of fatherlands—let every man make a shine about his own. They were fighting, those chaps, and they were fighting well."
"They're young, the lads you're talking about; they're young, and we must excuse 'em."
"You can do a thing well without knowing what you are doing."
"Men are mad, that's true. You'll never say that often enough."
"The Jingoes—they're vermin," growled a shadow.
Several times they repeated, as though feeling their way, "War must be killed; war itself."
"That's all silly talk. What diff does it make whether you think this or that? We've got to be winners, that's all."
But the others had begun to cast about. They wanted to know and to see farther than to-day. They throbbed with the effort to beget in themselves some light of wisdom and of will. Some sparse convictions whirled in their minds, and jumbled scraps of creeds issued from their lips.