All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria
Remarque, 1928, Excerpts
While they continue to write and
talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s
country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.
But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards – they were
very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we
went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from
the true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of
their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it
through.
For us lads of eighteen, they ought
to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work,
of duty, of culture, of progress – to the future. We often made fun of them and
played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority,
which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and
a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had
to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They
surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. The first bombardment showed us
our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in
pieces.
I am young, I am twenty years old;
yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality
cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another,
and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one
another. I see that the keenest brains in the world invent weapons and words to
make it more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there,
throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing
these things with me. What would our fathers do if we suddenly stood up and
came before them and proffered our account? What do they expect of us if a time
ever comes when the war is over? Through the years our business has been
killing; - it was our first calling in life. Our knowledge of life is limited
to death. What will happen afterwards? And what shall come out of this?
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