Either you will go into the charnel house, destroyed by those who are similar to you, since war is only made by you, or you will return to your point in the world, diminished or diseased, retaining only existence without health or joy, a home-exile after absences too long, impoverished forever by the time you have squandered.

Even if selected by the miracle of chance, if unscathed in the hour of victory, you also, _you_ will be vanquished.

When you return into the insatiable machine of the work-hours, among your own people--whose misery the profiteers have meanwhile sucked dry with their passion for gain--the task will be harder than before, because of the war that must be paid for, with all its incalculable consequences.
You who peopled the peace-time prisons of your towns and barns, begone to people the immobility of the battlefields--and if you survive, pay up! Pay for a glory which is not yours, or for ruins that others have made with your hands.
Suddenly, in front of me and a few paces from my couch--as if I were in a bed, in a bedroom, and had all at once woke up--an uncouth shape rises awry.

Even in the darkness I see that it is mangled.

I see about its face something abnormal which dimly shines; and I can see, too, by his staggering steps, sunk in the black soil, that his shoes are empty.