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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Erich Maria Remarque: Selections on war
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Erich Maria Remarque
From The Road Back (1930)
Translated by A.W. Wheen
I push on slowly, absorbed in my thoughts. The wood is nearer now. A cat stalks across the pathway. There the railway embankment cuts across the fields and is lost again in the thicket. One could build dugouts there, I think to myself – good deep ones with concrete roofs – then extend the line in the trench to the left, with cover saps and listening posts – and over there a few machine guns – no, two would be enough, the rest in the wood – then practically the whole terrain would be under cross fire. The poplars would have to come down, so as not to give the enemy artillery a point to register on – and behind there, on the hill, a couple of trench mortars – then let them come!
A train whistles and I look up. – What’s this I am doing? I came here to recover the scene of my childhood and I am drawing a system of trenches across it! It has become a habit; I say to myself: We see no countryside now, only terrain, – terrain for attack and defence. The old mill on the top there is no mill, but is strong point; the wood is no wood, it is artillery cover. – Such things will always creep in.
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“Disorder, is it? Then whose fault is that? Yours, I say! You, every one of you, should stand before our tribunal! It is you with your war, who have made us what we are! Lock us away too, with him; that’s the safest thing to do. What did you ever do for us when we came back? Nothing. I tell you! Nothing! You wrangled about ‘Victory!’ You unveiled war memorials! You spouted about heroism! And you denied your responsibility!
“You should have come to our help! – But no, you left us alone in that worst time of all, when we had to find a road back again. You should have proclaimed it from every pulpit; you should have told us so when we were demobilized; again and again you should have said to us: ‘We have all grievously erred! We have all to find the road back again! Have courage! It will be hardest for you, you left nothing behind you that can lead you back again! Have patience! You should have shown us again what life is! You should have taught us to live again! But no, you left us to stew in our juice! You left us to go to the dogs! You should have taught us to believe again in kindliness, in order, in culture, in love! But instead, you started again to falsify, to lie, to stir up more hatred and to enforce your damned laws…”
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Before these crosses the whole fabric of grand abstractions and fine phrases comes crashing down. Here alone the war still exists, no longer as in the minds and distorted memories of those who have come away from it. Here stand the lost years that have not been fulfilled, like a will-o’-the-wisp over the graves; here the unlived life that finds no rest cries out in roaring silence to the sky; here the strength and the will of a generation of youth that died before it could begin to live is poured out in one vast lament upon the night.
Shudders creep over him. At one shrill burst he recognizes the empty jaws where the truth, the valour and the life of a generation disappeared. The thought chokes him, it destroys him.
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