re, when I go down into
the Valley of the Shadow. One thing, however, I do begin to see is
that there is a divinity in men. Slowly something divine is
revealing itself to me. To give up work, property, friends, sister,
mother, home, sweetheart, to sacrifice all and go out to fight for
country, for honor--that indeed is divine. It is beautiful. It
inspires a man and lifts his head. But, alas! if he is a thinking
man, when he comes in contact with the actual physical preparation
for war, he finds that the divinity was the hour of his sacrifice
and that, to become a good soldier, he must change, forget, grow
hard, strong, merciless, brutal, humorous, and callous, all of which
is to say base. I see boys who are tender-hearted, who love life,
who were born sufferers, who cannot inflict pain! How many silent
cries of protest, of wonder, of agony, must go up in the night over
this camp! The sum of them would be monstrous. The sound of them, if
voiced, would be a clarion blast to the world. It is sacrifice that
is divine, and not the making of an efficient soldier.

I shall write you endlessly. The action of writing relieves me. I
feel less burdened now. Sometimes I cannot bear the burden of all
this unintelligible consciousness. My mind is not large enough.
Sometimes I feel that I am going to be every soldier and every
enemy--each one in his strife or his drifting or his agony or his
death. But despite that feeling I seem alone in a horde. I make no
friends. I have no way to pass my leisure but writing. I can hardly
read at all. When off duty the boys amuse themselves in a hundred
ways--going to town, the theaters, and movies; chasing the girls
(especially that to judge by their talk); play; boxing; games; and I
am sorry to add, many of them gamble and drink. But I cannot do any
of these things. I cannot forget what I am here for. I cannot forget
that I am training to kill men. Never do I forget that soon I will
face death. What a terrible, strange, vague thrill that sends
shivering over me! Amusement and forgetfulness are past for Kurt
Dorn. I am concerned with my soul. I am fighting that black passion
which makes of me a sleepless watcher and thinker.

If this war only lets me live long enough to understand its meaning!
Perhaps that meaning will be the meaning of life, in which case I am