Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay/And the war would be over and done in a day." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3
Erich Maria RemarqueDo I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more.
Erich Maria RemarqueKropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting
Erich Maria RemarqueWe want to live at any price; so we cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they might be ornamental enough in peace-time, would be out of place here.
Erich Maria RemarqueBut now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony - forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?
Erich Maria RemarqueKat and Kropp get in an argument over the war as they rest from an hourโs worth of drill (occasioned by Tjadenโs not saluting a major properly). Kat believes the war would be over if leaders gave all the participants โthe same grub and the same pay,โ as he says in a rhyme. Kropp believes the leaders of each country should fight each other in an arena to settle the war; the โwrongโ people currently do the fighting.
Erich Maria Remarque