self.

You will be crushed. Either you will go into the charnel house,
destroyed by those who are similar to you, since war is only made by
you, or you will return to your point in the world, diminished or
diseased, retaining only existence without health or joy, a home-exile
after absences too long, impoverished forever by the time you have
squandered. Even if selected by the miracle of chance, if unscathed in
the hour of victory, you also, _you_ will be vanquished. When you
return into the insatiable machine of the work-hours, among your own
people--whose misery the profiteers have meanwhile sucked dry with
their passion for gain--the task will be harder than before, because of
the war that must be paid for, with all its incalculable consequences.
You who peopled the peace-time prisons of your towns and barns, begone
to people the immobility of the battlefields--and if you survive, pay
up! Pay for a glory which is not yours, or for ruins that others have
made with your hands.

Suddenly, in front of me and a few paces from my couch--as if I were in
a bed, in a bedroom, and had all at once woke up--an uncouth shape
rises awry. Even in the darkness I see that it is mangled. I see
about its face something abnormal which dimly shines; and I can see,
too, by his staggering steps, sunk in the black soil, that his shoes
are empty. He cannot speak, but he brings forward the thin arm from
which rags hang down and drip; and his imperfect hand, as torturing to
the mind as discordant chords, points to the place of his heart. I see
that heart, buried in the darkness of the flesh, in the black blood of
the living--for only shed blood is red. I see him profoundly, with my
heart. If he said anything he would say the words that I still hear
falling, drop by drop, as I heard them yonder--"Nothing can be done,
nothing." I try to move, to rid myself of him. But I cannot, I am
pinioned in a sort of nightmare; and if he had not himself faded away I
should have stayed there forever, dazzled in presence of his darkness.
This man said nothing. He appeared like the dead thing he is. He has
departed. Perhaps he has ceased to be, perhaps he has entered into
death, which is not more mysterious to him than life, which he is
leaving--and I have fallen back into myself.

* * * * * *

He has returned, to show his face to me. Ah, now there is a bandage
round his head, and so I recognize him by his