What are nations? Are not you one of our nation, am not I another? Are not our wives, your wife and mine, part of this same people? Did any of us want war? I stand here armed with a spear, not knowing against whom it is to be turned. Down there in the darkness, unwitting, waits the man for whom it is destined. I know him not, have never seen his face, or the breast I must pierce with death. In the enemy’s camp another perchance warms his hands at the camp fire, the man who is to kill the father of my children. He has never seen me, and I have never done him harm. We are strangers, like trees in the forest. They grow quietly and bear their blossoms. But we rage furiously one against the other with axe and with spear, until our blood runs like resin, and therewith the life oozes forth. What puts death between the nations? What is it which sows hatred when there is room and to spare for life, and when there is abundant scope for love? I cannot understand, I cannot understand!
First Sentry
These things must be God’s will, for they have always happened. I question no further.
Second Sentry
This crime cannot be God’s will. He has given us our lives that we may live them. Everything that men do not understand they describe as God’s will. War does not come from God. Whence comes it then?
First Sentry
How can I tell whence it comes? I know that there is war, and that it is useless to chatter about it. I do my duty; sharpen my spear, not my tongue.
[For a time they are silent once more, gazing out into the white stillness. From a great distance come the words of the challenge “Samson guard us,” scarcely audible at first. Then the sound grows louder, still coming from unseen sentries. At length the words “Samson guard us,” loud and clear from the next post. Our two sentries take up the challenge, and it is heard with diminishing loudness as it passes on round the wall. Again all is still. The two sentries stand silent in the moonlight, their faces shadowed by their helmets]
Second Sentry
Know you aught of the Chaldeans?