Mirrors Are There When We Are And

Kat And Kropp Get In An Argument Over The War As They Rest From An Hour’s Worth Of Drill (occasioned By Tjaden’s Not Saluting A Major Properly). Kat Believes The War Would Be Over If Leaders Gave All The Participants “the Same Grub And The Same Pay,” As He Says In A Rhyme. Kropp Believes The Leaders Of Each Country Should Fight Each Other In An Arena To Settle The War; The “wrong” People Currently Do The Fighting.

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.

It Is Just As Much A Matter Of Chance That I Am Still Alive As That I Might Have Been Hit. In A Bomb-proof Dug-out I May Be Smashed To Atoms And In The Open May Survive Ten Hour's Bombardment Unscratched. No Soldier Outlives A Thousand Chances. But Every Soldier Believes In Chance And Trusts His Luck.

That Is The Remarkable Thing About Drinking: It Brings People Together So Quickly, But Between Night And Morning It Sets An Interval Again Of Years.

Kropp On The Other Hand Is A Thinker. He Proposes That A Declaration Of War Should Be A Kind Of Popular Festival With Entrance-tickets And Bands, Like A Bull Fight. Then In The Arena The Ministers And Generals Of The Two Countries, Dressed In Bathing-drawers And Armed With Clubs, Can Have It Out On Themselves. Whoever Survives The Country Wins. That Would Be Much Simpler And More Than Just This Arrangement, Where The Wrong People Do The Fighting