which is to blame, if you don't know much about the beginning. You
HAVE to stand off and watch, and see which fights fair, and all
the rest...BUT WHILE YOU ARE DECIDING, ALL FRANCE IS DYING. It is
time the weight of the defence is taken off France...there won't
be any Frenchmen left alive in France...and here she is with all
these foreigners over-running her! Do you suppose they are going to
leave after the war? Not much. All these Algerians and Senegals
and Anamites--not to speak of the Belgians and English and
Americans...there won't be any Frenchmen left alive, and France will
be populated by foreigners...THAT'S what we have to look forward
to for all the reward of our blood. They keep promising help, but
they don't bring it. WE have to go back and go back! I tell you,
Ma'ame, THREE YEARS IS TOO LONG A TIME! No man can stand three
years of war! It makes you into somebody else... you've died so
many times you're like a walking corpse...isn't that just how you
feel?' he appealed to his companion, who said impassively,

"'No, damn you, that isn't a bit how I feel. I just say to myself,
"IT'S WAR" and "THAT'S THE WAY WAR IS," and I don't TRY to make
anything out of it the way you do. That's silly! You just have to
stick it out. Understanding it hasn't anything to do with it.'

"The first one went off on another tack...still wilder and more
incoherent. 'It's the capitalists...that's what it is...they saw
that the people...the proletariat...that's ME,' with a thump of
his fist on his chest, 'had begun to see too clearly how things
were going and so they stirred up this hornet's nest to blind
everybody...for in war even more than in peace (and that's saying
a good deal)...it's the proletariat that bears the burdens. Who
do you think is in the trenches now...is the bourgeois class? NO!