Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans.

In me the tiger sniffs the rose.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

And the wind upon its way whispered the boughs of May, And touched the nodding peony flowers to bid them waken.

The dead...are more real than the living because they are complete.

For it is humanly certain that most of us remember very little of what we have read. To open almost any book a second time is to be reminded that we had forgotten well-nigh everything that the writer told us. Parting from the narrator and his narrative, we retain only a fading impression; and he, as it were, takes the book away from us and tucks it under his arm.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.