Every Little Bean Must Be Heard As

There Was Only The Broad Square With The Scattered Dim Moons Of The Street Lamps And With The Monumental Stone Arch Which Receded Into The Mist As Though It Would Prop Up The Melancholy Sky And Protect Beneath Itself The Faint Lonely Flame On The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, Which Looked Like The Last Grave Of Mankind In The Midst Of Night And Loneliness.

He Fell In October 1918, On A Day That Was So Quiet And Still On The Whole Front, That The Army Report Confined Itself To The Single Sentence: All Quiet On The Western Front. He Had Fallen Forward And Lay On The Earth As Though Sleeping. Turning Him Over One Saw That He Could Not Have Suffered Long; His Face Had An Expression Of Calm, As Though Almost Glad The End Had Come.

But Probably That's The Way Of The World - When We Have Finally Learned Something We're Too Old To Apply It - And So It Goes, Wave After Wave, Generation After Generation. No One Learns Anything At All From Anyone Else.

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.

The Idea Of Authority, Which They Represented, Was Associated In Our Minds With A Greater Insight And A More Humane Wisdom.