Status Updates From All Quiet on the Western Front

Instead of going to Russia, we go up the line again. On the way we pass through a devastated wood with the tree trunks shattered and the ground plowed up.
At several places there are tremendous craters. “Great guns, something’s hit that,” I say to Kat. “Trench mortars,” he replies, and then points up at one of the trees.
In the branches dead men are hanging.

We didn’t want the war, the others say the same thing—-and yet half the world is in it all the same.”
“But there are more lies told by the other side than by us,” say I; “just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write those lies ought to go out and hang themselves. They are the real culprits.

Then what exactly is the war for?” asks Tjaden.
Kay shrugs his shoulders. “ There must be some people to whom the war is useful.”
“Well, I’m not one of them,” grins Tjaden.
“Not you, nor anybody else here.”
“Who are they then?” persists Tjaden.
“ . . . every full-grown emperor requires at least one wR, otherwise he would not become famous.”
“And generals too,” adds Detering, “they become famous through war.