Anti-Climacus

WELL: The harsh mistress that is probability will be commanding my attention for the remainder of the day, and tomorrow (after my exam) will be spent frantically tryijng to do the reading for my remaining classes, which means, of course, no time to post (in the positive sense; in the normative sense, I ought not to post). But I do remember what tomorrow is, and want to have a few thoughts of other people for anyone who visits to reflect on, the first two being rather obvious choices (though important for those of us who advocate the possible good uses of war to keep in mind), the last, I think, too much unknown for how much one can get out of it:

Siegfried Sassoon, "The General"

"Good morning! Good morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soliders he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
...
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

A bit from Wilfred Owen:

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch his white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

From Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain:

"It may be that our generation will go down in history as the first to understand that not a single man or woman can now live in disregarding isolation from his or her world. I don't know yet what I can do, I concluded, to help all this to happen, but at least I can begin by trying to understand where humanity failed and civilisation went wrong. If only I and a few other people succeed in this, it may be worth while that our lives have been lived; it may even be worth while that the lives of the others have been laid down. Perhaps that's really why, when they died, I was left behind."