to end all wars

Colten 2022-04-19 09:02:11

War is like a wise executioner. It took Paul's ideals first, then Paul's friends, and then Paul's family. When Paul was tormented to death, it took his life when he was trying to find beauty as small as dust, and In the end, with the help of history, he wrote down the phrase "There is no war on the Western Front", erasing and ridiculing a young and fresh life. war! When did war ever change! From Homo sapiens smashing the back of Neanderthal heads with stones, to Mongolian horseshoes swept east and west, to European corpses piling up in front of machine guns and barbed wire, to despair in tanks during the Gulf War The Iraqi soldiers who were burned to the ground, war is like a machine that never rusts. When it starts, it will mercilessly and efficiently destroy the lives involved, until all the good things are gone.

From ancient times to the present, we have prayed countless times to stop the war, but the war has never stopped. Profit-seeking, hatred, prejudice, these dark sides of human beings, after being gathered, instigated and fictionalized, become an incomparably huge force driving the war machine, ignoring the cry of the weak, until people themselves are involved in it. Then, their descendants inherited their ugliness, forgotten their pain, and started a new cycle. Maybe this is the curse of mankind. It is the curse that God casts on mankind after he expelled mankind from the Garden of Eden, causing mankind to suffer and be powerless.

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Extended Reading

All Quiet on the Western Front quotes

  • Hair-peak soldier: And manufacturers. They get rich.

    [murmurs of agreement]

    Albert Kropp: I think it's more a kind of fever. Nobody wants it in particular, and then all at once, there it is. We didn't want it. The English didn't want it. And here we are fighting.

  • Albert Kropp: Ah, the French certainly deserve to be punished for starting this war.

    Detering: Everybody says it's somebody else.

    Tjaden: Well. how do they start a war?

    Albert Kropp: Well, one country offends another.

    Tjaden: How could one country offend another?

    Tjaden: You mean there's a mountain over in Germany gets mad at a field over in France?

    [Everyone laughs]

    Albert Kropp: Well, stupid, one people offends another.

    Tjaden: Oh, well, if that's it, I shouldn't be here at all. I don't feel offended.

    Katczinsky: It don't apply to tramps like you.

    Tjaden: Good. Then I could be goin' home right away.

    Paul Bäumer: Ah, you just try it.

    Katczinsky: Yeah. You wanna get shot?

    Tjaden: The kaiser and me...

    [the others laugh]

    Tjaden: Me and the kaiser felt just alike about this war. We didn't either of us want any war, so I'm going home. He's there already.

    Hair-peak soldier: Somebody must have wanted it. Maybe it was the English. No, I don't want to shoot any Englishman. I never saw one 'til I came up here. And I suppose most of them never saw a German 'til *they* came up here. No, I'm sure *they* weren't asked about it.

    Paul Bäumer: No.

    Detering: Well, it must be doing somebody some good.

    Detering: Not me and the kaiser.

    Hair-peak soldier: I think maybe the kaiser wanted a war.

    Tjaden: You leave us out of this!

    Katczinsky: I don't see that. The kaiser's *got* everything he needs.

    Hair-peak soldier: Well, he never had a war before. Every full-grown emperor needs one war to make him famous. Why, that's history.

    Paul Bäumer: Yeah, generals, too. They need war.