-why haf they killed all our lives--hundreds and thousands and
millions of lives--all for noting? They haf made a bad world--
everybody hating, and looking for the worst everywhere. They haf
made me bad, I know. I believe no more in anything. What is there
to believe in? Is there a God? No! Once I was teaching little
English children their prayers--isn't that funnee? I was reading to
them about Christ and love. I believed all those things. Now I
believe noting at all--no one who is not a fool or a liar can
believe. I would like to work in a 'ospital; I would like to go and
'elp poor boys like you. Because I am a German they would throw me
out a 'undred times, even if I was good. It is the same in Germany,
in France, in Russia, everywhere. But do you think I will believe in
Love and Christ and God and all that--Not I! I think we are animals
--that's all! Oh, yes! you fancy it is because my life has spoiled
me. It is not that at all--that is not the worst thing in life. The
men I take are not ni-ice, like you, but it's their nature; and--they
help me to live, which is something for me, anyway. No, it is the
men who think themselves great and good and make the war with their
talk and their hate, killing us all--killing all the boys like you,
and keeping poor People in prison, and telling us to go on hating;
and all these dreadful cold-blood creatures who write in the papers
--the same in my country--just the same; it is because of all of them
that I think we are only animals.

[The YOUNG OFFICER gets up, acutely miserable.]

[She follows him with her eyes.]

GIRL. Don't mind me talkin', ni-ice boy. I don't know anyone to
talk to. If you don't like it, I can be quiet as a mouse.

YOUNG OFF. Oh, go on! Talk away; I'm not obliged to believe you,
and I don't.

[She, too, is on her feet now, leaning against the wall; her
dark dress and white face just touched by the slanting
moonlight. Her voice comes again, slow and soft and bitter.]

GIRL. Well, look here, ni-ice boy, what sort of world is it, where
millions are being tortured, for no fault of theirs, at all? A
beautiful world, isn't it? 'Umbog! Silly rot, as you boys call it.
You say it is all "Comrades" and braveness out there at the front,
and people don't think of themselves. Well, I don't think of myself
veree much. What does it matter? I am lost now, anyway. But I
think of my people at 'ome; how they suff