The tender, secret influence that passed from them into us could not rise again. They are strong and our desire is strong-but they are unattainable, and we know it.Īnd even if these scenes of our youth were given back to us we would hardly know what to do. They arise no more we are dead and they stand remote on the horizon, they are a mysterious reflection, an apparition, that haunts us, that we fear and love without hope. They appeared in the soldiers' songs which we sang as we marched between the glow of the dawn and the black silhouettes of the forests to drill on the moor, they were a powerful remembrance that was in us and came from us.īut here in the trenches they are completely lost to us. In the barracks they called forth a rebellious, wild craving for their return for then they were still bound to us, we belonged to them and they to us, even though we were already absent from them. They are past, they belong to another world that is gone from us. Once we had such desires-but they return not. “These memories of former times do not awaken desire so much as sorrow-a vast, inapprehensible melancholy. We were all at once terribly alone and alone we must see it through.” And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We loved our country as much as they we went courageously into every action but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see.
#Tags for hope lost and found free
But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards - they were very free with all these expressions. While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. While they continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying.
The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. We often made fun of them and played jokes on them, but in our hearts we trusted them. “For us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity, the world of work, of duty, of culture, of progress - to the future.
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