It's All Rot That They Put In

We Are Forlorn Like Children, And Experienced Like Old Men, We Are Crude And Sorrowful And Superficial—i Believe We Are Lost.

One Often Feels As Though Something Had Happened Before, I Remember. It Comes Quite Close To You And Stands There And You Know It Was Just This Way Once Before, Exactly So; For An Instant You Almost Know How It Must Go On, But Then It Disappears As You Try To Lay Hold Of It Like Smoke Or A Dead Memory. "we Could Never Remember, Isabelle," I Say. "it's Like The Rain. That Has Also Become One, Out Of Two Gasses, Oxygen And Hydrogen, Which No Longer Remember They Were Once Gasses. Now They Are Only Rain And Have No Memory Of An Earlier Time.

Little By Little Things Began To Assume A New Aspect. The Sense Of Insecurity Vanished, Words Came Of Themselves, I Was No Longer So Painfully Conscious Of Everything I Said. I Drank On And Felt The Great Soft Wave Approach And Embrace Me; The Dark Hour Began To Fill With Pictures And Stealthily The Noiseless Procession Of Dreams Appeared Again Superimposed On The Dreary, Grey Landscape Of Existence.

It's All Rot That They Put In The War-news About The Good Humour Of The Troops, How They Are Arranging Dances Almost Before They Are Out Of The Front-line. We Don't Act Like That Because We Are In A Good Humour: We Are In A Good Humour Because Otherwise We Should Go To Pieces.

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