"I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, "he has not had a war up till now.
And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous.
You look in your school books."
"And generals too," adds Detering, "they become famous through war."
"Even more famous than emperors," adds Kat.
"There are other people back behind there who profit by the war, that's certain," growls Detering.
"I think it is more of a kind of fever," says Albert.
"No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is.
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 and hang themselves.
They are the real culprits."
Muller gets up.
"Anyway, it is better that the war is here instead of in Germany.
Just you look at the shell-holes."
'True," assents Tjaden, "but no war at all would be better still."
He is quite proud of himself because he has scored for once over us volunteers.
And his opinion is quite typical, here one meets it time and again, and there is nothing with which one can properly counter it, because that is the limit of their comprehension of the factors involved.
The national feeling of the tommy resolves itself into this—here he is.
But that is the end of it; everything else he criticizes from his own practical point of view.
Albert lies down on the grass and growls angrily: "The best thing is not to talk about the rotten business."
"It won't make any difference, that's sure," agrees Kat.
To make matters worse, we have to return almost all the new things and take back our old rags again.
The good ones were merely for the inspection.
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 ploughed 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.
A naked soldier is squatting in the fork of a tree, he still has his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad.
There is only half of him sitting up there, the top half, the legs are missing.
"What can that mean?" I ask.
"He's been blown out of his clothes," mutters Tjaden.
"It's funny," says Kat, "we have seen that several times now.
If a mortar gets you it blows you clean out of your clothes.
It's the concussion that does it."
I search around.
And so it is.
Here hang bits of uniform, and somewhere else is plastered a bloody mess that was once a human limb.
Over there lies a body with nothing but a piece of the underpants on one leg and the collar of the tunic around its neck. Otherwise it is naked and the clothes are hanging up in the tree.
Both arms are missing as though they had been pulled out.
I discover one of them twenty yards off in a shrub.
The dead man lies on his face.
There, where the arm wounds are, the earth is black with blood.
Underfoot the leaves are scratched up as though the man had been kicking.
"That's no joke, Kat," say I.
"No more is a shell splinter in the belly," he replies, shrugging his shoulders.
"But don't get tender-hearted," says Tjaden.
All this can only have happened a little while ago, the blood is still fresh.