mud, uplift their human faces whose expression reveals at last a
nascent will. The future is in the hands of these slaves, and it is
plain that the old world will be transformed by the alliance one day to
be made between those whose numbers and whose miseries are infinite."

The concluding chapter, "The Dawn," is a picture of the "flood below,"
of the lowland inundated by the rain, a picture of the crumbling
trenches. The spectacle resembles a scene from the book of Genesis.
Germans and French are fleeing together from the scourge of the
elements, or are sinking pell-mell into a common grave. Some of these
castaways, taking refuge on ridges of mud that stand up amid the waters,
begin to awaken from their passivity, and a striking dialogue ensues
between the sufferers, like the strophe and antistrophe in a Greek
chorus. They are overwhelmed by excess of suffering. Even more are they
overwhelmed, "as if by a yet greater disaster," by the thought that in
days to come the survivors will be able to forget these ills.

"If only people would remember! If they would only remember, there would
be no more wars."

Suddenly, from all sides, rises the cry: "There must never be another
war."

Each in turn heaps insults upon war.

"Two armies fighting each other--that's like one great army committing
suicide."

One suggests, "It's all right if you win." But the others make answer:
"That's no good.--To win settles nothing.--What we need is to kill war."

"Then we shall have to go on fighting after the war?"--"Praps we
shall."--"But praps it won't be foreigners we shall be fighting?"--"May
be so. The peoples are fighting to-day to get rid of their
masters."--"Then one works for the Prussians too?"--"Oh well, we may
hope...."--"But we oughtn't to interfere with other folks'
business."--"Yes, yes, we ought to, for what you call other folks'
business is our own."

"What do people fight for?"--"No one knows what they fight for, but we
know whom they fight for. They fight for the pleasure of the few."

The soldiers reckon up these few: "the fighters, those born to power";
those who say, "the races hate one another"; those who say, "I grow fat
on the war"; those who say, "there always has been war and there always
will be"; those who say, "bow your head, and trust in God"; the
sabre-rattlers, the profiteers, the ghouls who batten on the spoils;
"the slaves of the past, the traditionalists, for whom an abuse has the
force of law be