"What does it really mean? What did it mean to us? Men
going out to die. Women at home crying, eating their hearts out with
loneliness, going bad now and then in recklessness, in desperation.
Army contractors getting rich. Ammunition manufacturers getting rich.
Transportation companies paying hundred per cent. dividends. One
nation grabbing for territory here, another there. Talk of saving the
world for democracy and in the same breath throttling liberty of
speech and action in every corner of the world. And now that it's all
over, everything is the same, only worse. The rich are richer and the
poor poorer, and there are some new national boundaries and some
blasted military and political reputations. That's all. What was that
to you and me? Nothing. Less than nothing. Yet it tore our lives up by
the roots. It took away from us something we had that we valued,
something that we might have kept. It doesn't matter that you were
sincere, that you wanted to serve, that you thought it a worthy
service. The big people, the men who run things, they had no such
illusions; they had their eye on the main chance all the time.
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