War! Some of the invalids break the silence, and say the word again under their breath, reflecting that this is the greatest happening of the age, an… - Henri Barbusse

J’ai rêvé de ce que j’oublie,
Je vis de ce qu’on m’a laissé.

It's with us only that they make battles. It is we who are the material of war. War is made up of the flesh and the souls of common soldiers only. It is we who make the plains of dead and the rivers of blood, all of us, and each of us is invisible and silent because of the immensity of our numbers. The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us together.

We are in a great night of the world. The thing is to know if we shall wake up to-morrow. We have only one succor — we know of what the night is made. But shall we be able to impart our lucid faith, seeing that the heralds of warning are everywhere few, and that the greatest victims hate the only ideal which is not one, and call it utopian?