Waiter, bring a beer as well for our young warrior."
Unfortunately I have accepted the cigar, so I have to remain.
And they are all so dripping with good will that it is impossible to object.
All the same I feel annoyed and smoke like a chimney as hard as I can.
In order to make at least some show of appreciation I toss off the beer in one gulp.
Immediately a second is ordered; people know how much they are indebted to the soldiers.
They argue about what we ought to annex.
The head-master with the steel watch-chain wants to have at least the whole of Belgium, the coal-areas of France, and a slice of Russia.
He produces reasons why we must have them and is quite inflexible until at last the others give in to him.
Then he begins to expound just whereabouts in France the breakthrough must come, and turns to me:
"Now, shove ahead a bit out there with your everlasting trench warfare—Smash through the johnnies and then there will be peace."
I reply that in our opinion a break-through may not be possible. The enemy may have too many reserves.
Besides, the war may be rather different from what people think.
He dismisses the idea loftily and informs me I know nothing about it.
"The details, yes," says he, "but this relates to the whole. And of that you are not able to judge.
You see only your little sector and so cannot have any general survey.
You do your duty, you risk your lives, that deserves the highest honour—every man of you ought to have the Iron Cross—but first of all the enemy line must be broken through in Flanders and then rolled up from the top."
He blows his nose and wipes his beard.
"Completely rolled up they must be, from the top to the bottom.
And then to Paris."
I would like to know just how he pictures it to himself, and pour the third glass of beer into me.
Immediately he orders another.
But I break away. He stuffs a few more cigars into my pocket and sends me off with a friendly slap.
"All of the best!
I hope we will soon hear something worth while from you."
I imagined leave would be different from this.
Indeed, it was different a year ago.
It is I of course that have changed in the interval.
There lies a gulf between that time and to-day.
At that time I still knew nothing about the war, we had only been in quiet sectors.
But now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it.
I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world.
Some of these people ask questions, some ask no questions, but one can see that the latter are proud of themselves for their silence; they often say with a wise air that these things cannot be talked about.
They plume themselves on it.
I prefer to be alone, so that no one troubles me.
For they all come back to the same thing, how badly it goes and how well it goes; one thinks it is this way, another that; and yet they are always absorbed in the things that go to make up their existence.
Formerly I lived in just the same way myself, but now I feel no contact here.
They talk too much for me.
They have worries, aims, desires, that I cannot comprehend.
I often sit with one of them in the little beer garden and try to explain to him that this is really the only thing: just to sit quietly, like this.
They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words, yes, that is it—they feel it, but always with only half of themselves, the rest of their being is taken up with other things, they are so divided in themselves that none feels it with his whole essence; I cannot even say myself exactly what I mean.
When I see them here, in their rooms, in their offices, about their occupations, I feel an irresistible attraction in it, I would like to be here too and forget the war; but also it repels me, it is so narrow, how can that fill a man's life, he ought to smash it to bits; how can they do it, while out at the front the splinters are whining over the shell-holes and the star-shells go up, the wounded are carried back on waterproof sheets and comrades crouch in the trenches.—They are different men here, men I cannot properly understand, whom I envy and despise.
I must think of Kat and Albert and Muller and Tjaden, what will they be doing?
No doubt they are sitting in the canteen, or perhaps swimming—soon they will have to go up to the front-line again.
In my room behind the table stands a brown leather sofa.
I sit down on it.
On the walls are pinned countless pictures that I once used to cut out of the newspapers.
In between are drawings and postcards that have pleased me.
In the corner is a small iron stove.
Against the wall opposite stand the book-shelves with my books.