He reread it, in the light of his crystallizing knowledge: "Had I not been afraid of the scorn of my brother officers and the scoffs of my men, I would have fled to the rear," confesses a Wisconsin officer, writing of a battle.
"I see war as a horrible, grasping octopus with hundreds of poisonous, death-dealing tentacle that squeeze out the culture and refinement of a man," writes a veteran.
A regimental sergeant-major: "I considered myself hardboiled, and acted the part with everybody, including my wife.

I scoffed at religion as unworthy of a real man and a mark of the sissy and weakling." Before going over the top for the first time he tried to pray, but had even forgotten the Lord's Prayer.
"If I get out of this, I will never be unhappy again," reflected one of the contestants under shell-fire in the Argonne Forest.

To-day he is "not afraid of dead men any more and is not in the least afraid to die." "I went into the army a conscientious objector, a radical, and a recluse....

I came out of it with the knowledge of men and the philosophy of beauty," says another.
"My moral fiber has been coarsened.

The war has blunted my sensitiveness to human suffering.