two halves of war continue to lie in
wait for each other afar, to dig their graves at their feet, and I am
helpless. They are separated by frontiers of gulfs, which bristle with
weapons and explosive snares, impassable to life. They are separated
by all that can separate, by dead men and still by dead men, and ever
thrown back, each into its gasping islands, by black rivers and
consecrated fires, by heroism and hatred.

And misery is endlessly begotten of the miserable.

There is no real reason for it all; there is no reason. I do not wish
it. I groan, I fall back.

Then the question, worn, but stubborn and violent as a solid thing,
seizes upon me again. Why? Why? I am like the weeping wind. I seek,
I defend myself, amid the infinite despair of my mind and heart. I
listen. I remember all.

* * * * * *

A booming sound vibrates and increases, like the fitful wing-beats of
some dim, tumultuous archangel, above the heads of the masses that move
in countless dungeons, or wheel round to furnish the front of the lines
with new flesh:--

"Forward! It has to be! You shall _not_ know!"

I remember. I have seen much of it, and I see it clearly. These
multitudes who are set in motion and let loose,--their brains and their
souls and their wills are not in them, but outside them!

* * * * * *

Other people, far away, think and wish for them. Other people wield
their hands and push them and pull them, others, who hold all their
controlling threads; in the distance, the people in the center of the
infernal orbits, in the capital cities, in the palaces. There is a
higher law; up above men there is a machine which is stronger than men.
The multitude is at the same time power and impotence--and I remember,
and I know well that I have seen it with my own eyes. War is the
multitude--and it is not! Why did I not know it since I have seen it?

Soldier of the wide world, you, the man taken haphazard from among men,
remember--there was not a moment when you were yourself. Never did you
cease to be bowed under the harsh and answerless command, "It has to
be, it has to be." In times of peace encircled in the law of incessant
labor, in the mechanical mill or the commercial mill, slave of the
tool, of the pen, of your talent, or of some other thing, you were
tracked without respite from morning to evening by the daily task which
allowed you only j