THE BRIG AD I E R
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nothing of
him
that is really worth knowing and that must be known.
I myself am convinced that victory will be impossible until we gain
this knowledge-and it is precisely to this knowledge that I am
devoting my life.
What do we know? The enemy is darker than we, and shorter
in stature. His language, as I have indicated, has nothing in common
with our own; his religion is an obscenity to all of us who have not
made a specialty of studying it. Well then, as I say, he is shorter and
darker, two positive facts. His language, though it would be too much
trouble to go into it here, is of such and such a kind- a third fact–
and his religion is this, that and the other thing, which gives us still
another fact. So much we know. Still, what is he?
I have gone many times to the camps and hospitals in the rear
to interview the prisoners we have taken. It teaches me nothing, but
I nevertheless make my regular visits, and just the other week I re–
turned from one of our hospitals. There was the usual sight in the
wards; I am hardened to it. (And yet, almost as if to test myself, I
try to recall what I have seen. Am I absolutely hardened? ) There
were the lightly wounded, their personalities not distorted by pain,
and the natural qualities of these men could be observed: their
churlishness, stupidity, sullenness, or good nature. They are much
like our own soldiers, especially in their boredom. I spoke with them,
I took ·my usual sampling- so many boys (as with our own troops,
eleven-year-olds are not uncommon), so many youths, so many of
the middle-aged, so many old men, old. campaigners. The usual ques–
tions, the usual answers-home, parents, occupation, the government,
women, disease, God, the purpose of the war, of life, of history, etc.
There is nothing to be learned here that we don't already know.
Then the wards of the severely wounded- the amputations, the
blinded, the infected. The stench is the same as our own stench (the
hospital orderlies deny this, maintaining that the enemy's is worse! ) .
The ones with fever have fever, though their skins and eyes show it
differently from ours. The delirious rave, the chilled shiver, the pois–
oned vomit and groan. There are outcries, the usual hysteria, weeping,
coughing, and hemorrhage. One lies in a coma; the stump of his leg
is gangrenous, it is too late, he cannot be saved. Another soldier has
nearly every bone in his body broken: he has both his thighs in trac–
tion, a broken back, a broken arm, his skull wound in bandages. Can
he be said to suffer either more or less than one of our own men in
similar circumstances, or in any way differently from him? I attend
