of command should fall to shooting each other;

That peasants and artisans, and shopkeepers and students and
schoolmasters, who have no quarrel whatever, who on the whole rather
respect and honour each other, should with explosive bombs deliberately
blow one another to bits so that even their own mothers could not
recognize them;
That human beings should use every devilish invention of science
with the one purpose of maiming, blinding, destroying those against
whom they have no personal grudge or grievance;
All this is sheer madness.

Only a short time ago a private soldier said to me: "Yes, we had
got to be such friends with those Bavarians in the trenches over
against us that if we had returned there again I believe nothing
could have made us fight with each other; but of course that point
was perceived and we were moved to another part of the Line."
What a criticism in a few words on the whole War!
A hundred times this or something similar has happened, and a hundred
and a thousand times these 'enemies' who have madly mutilated each
other have -- a few minutes later -- been only too glad to dress each
other's wounds and share the last contents of their water-bottles.


By all the heart-rending experiences which have now become so common
and familiar to us;

By the fact that to-day there is hardly a family over the greater
part of Europe that is not grieving bitterly over the loss of some
dearest member of its circle;