If I fear anything, I fear the atmosphere of the war, the power which it gives to all the things I hate — the newspapers, the politicians, the purita… - Christopher Isherwood

That is what War is, I thought: two ships pass each other, and nobody waves his hand.

'All these people,' Bergmann continued, 'will be dead. All of them. . . . No, there is one—' He pointed to a fat, inoffensive man sitting alone in a distant corner. 'He will survive. He is the kind that will do anything, anything to be allowed to live. He will invite the conquerors to his home, force his wife to cook for them and serve the dinner on his bended knees. He will denounce his mother. He will offer his sister to a common soldier. He will act as a spy in prisons. He will spit on the Sacrament. He will hold down his daughter while they rape her. And, as a reward for this, he will be given a job as boot-black in a public lavatory, and he will lick the dirt from people's shoes with his tongue...'

The talk of pale, burning-eyed students, anarchists and utopians all, over tea and cigarettes in a locked room long past midnight, is next morning translated, with the literalness of utter innocence, into the throwing of the bomb, the shouting of the proud slogan, the dragging away of the young dreamer-doer, still smiling, to the dungeon and the firing squad.