“The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us together.”

— Henri Barbusse , book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: It's with us only that they make battles. It is we who are the material of war. War is made up of the flesh and the souls of common soldiers only. It is we who make the plains of dead and the rivers of blood, all of us, and each of us is invisible and silent because of the immensity of our numbers. The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us together.

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Henri Barbusse 197

French novelist 1873–1935

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