“War! What a damned stupid, idiotic thing it is—and the people who make it! Patriots? Criminals, I call them! Crowned criminals and their mountebank crew conspiring against God and Nature.”
He smites the doorpost with his fist and says:
“But the war is not the worst by a long way.”
“What is, Oskar?”
“This damnable peace that has followed it. People thought when the peace came they could go to sleep and forget. What fools! Think of it! Miserable old men spouting about a table, gambling in the fate of the young and the unborn; forgetting their loss in precious human lives, but wrangling about their reparations, about land, about money, which the little mother rocking her baby’s cradle will have to pay the interest of in blood and tears some day; setting nation against nation; brewing a cauldron of hate which is hardening the hearts and poisoning the souls of men and women all the world over.”
Mona, who has hardly heard what he has said, is still looking up at him helplessly.
“We couldn’t help it, could we, Oskar?”
Oskar, recovering his self-command, pity-struck and ashamed, lifts up her work-stained hands and puts them to his lips.
“Forgive me, Mona.”
“We struggled hard, didn’t we?”