You see I had come to the place where I could understand a German soldier's national and racial point of view, though I doubt his ability ever of understanding mine.

To him, now, old John Burns of Gettysburg, going out in his high, high hat and his long, long coat to fight with the boys would never, could never be the heroic figure which he is in the American imagination; he would have been a meddlesome malefactor deserving of immediate death.

For 1778 write it 1914, and Molly Pitcher serving at the guns would have been in no better case before a German court-martial.

I doubt whether a Prussian Stonewall Jackson would give orders to kill a French Barbara Frietchie, but assuredly he would lock that venturesome old person up in a fortress where she could not hoist her country's flag nor invite anybody to shoot her gray head.

For you must know that the German who ordinarily brims over with that emotion which, lacking a better name for it, we call sentiment, drains all the sentiment out of his soul when he takes his gun in his hand and goes to war.
Among the frowzy turnip tops two big dull gray automobiles were stranded, like large hulks in a small green sea.