THE THIEF WAS AWOL  EVEN IN THE HOME GUARD   AND WHEN THE TWIN TOWERS FELL SAT IN A HOLE LIKE HUSSEIN YET HE DOES NOT FLINCH TO SEND THOUSANDS TO THE SLAUGHTER-  NOI



         JOURNEY  TO  THE  END OF  THE  NIGHT           



   What a monster that colonel must be, though. I was sure that,
 like a dog, he had no idea of death. It struck me at the same
 time that there must be lots like him, as gallant as he, m our
 army, and as many again, no doubt, on the opposite side. One
 wondered how many. A million—or two? Several millions in all,
 perhaps. From that moment, my terror became panic. With
 creatures like that about the place, this hellish idiocy might go on
 indefinitely. . . . Why should they stop? Never had I felt the
 way of men and things to be so implacable.
   Could it be that I was the only coward on earth, I wondered.
 The thought was terrifying. Lost in the midst of two million
 madmen, all of them heroes, at large and armed to the teeth!
 With or without helmets, without horses, on motor bicycles,
  screeching, in cars, whistling, sniping, plotting, flying, kneeling,
  digging, taking cover, wheeling, detonating, shut in on earth as
  in an asylum cell; intending to wreck everything in it, Germany,
  France, the whole world, every breathing thing; destroying, more
  ferocious than a pack of mad dogs and adoring their own madness
  (which no dog does), a hundred, a thousand times fiercer than
  a thousand dogs and so infinitely more vicious! What a mess we
  were in! Clearly it seemed to me that I had embarked on a crusade
  that was nothing short of an apocalypse.
    One is as innocent of Horror as one is of sex. How could I
  possibly have guessed this horror when I left the Place Clichy?
  Who could have foreseen, before getting really into the war, what

 was inside the foul and idle, heroic soul of man? There I was,
 caught up into a general rush towards murder for all, towards
 fire. ... It was a thing that had come up from the depths and
 here it was on top of us.
   All this while the colonel never faltered; I watched him receive
 little messages from the general, there on the embankment, where
 he straightway tore them up after reading them without haste,
 amid the bullets. Did none of them contain the order to put an
 immediate stop to this frightfulness? Was he not being told by
 H.Q. that there was some misunderstanding, some ghastly mistake?
 That the cards had been wrongly dealt and something was wrong?
 That we were meant to have engaged on manoeuvres, for fun, and
 not in this business of killing? Not at all.
   "Carry on. Colonel! Go right ahead as you are." That must
 be what General Des Entrayes, our Chief of Division, was telling
 him in these messages which were brought to him every five
 minutes by a runner, who each time looked greener and more
 liverish. He could have been my brother in fear, that boy; but
 there wasn't the time to fraternize, either.
   What, was there nothing wrong then? This shooting at each
other like this without a word, — it was all O.K. It was one of the
things you can do without getting hauled over the coals good
and proper. It was actually accepted, it was probably encouraged
by decent folk, like drawing lots in conscription or getting en¬
gaged or beagling! There was nothing for it. I had suddenly dis¬
covered, all at once, what the war was, the whole war. I'd lost my
innocence. You need to be pretty well alone with it face to face,
as I was then, to see the filthy thing properly, in the round. They'd
touched off the war between us and the other side, and now it
was flaring! Like the current between the two carbons in an arc
lamp. And it wasn't going to be put out soon, either. We would
all be going through it, the colonel along with the rest, for all
his fine airs, and his guts would look the same as mine when the
current from opposite flashed through his middle.
  There are a lot of ways of being condemned to death. What
wouldn't I have given at that moment to be in gaol instead of
where I was! If only, fool that I was, if only I'd gone and stolen
something, looking ahead when it was still so easy, when there
was still time. One thinks of nothing! You come out of gaol alive,
but not out of a war. That's a fact and everything else hot air.
  If only I'd still had the time, but I hadn't it any longer! There
was nothing left to steal. How cosy it would be in a dear little
prison cell, I told myself, where no bullets ever came. No bullets,
ever. I knew of one all ready and warm, facing the sun. In my
mind I could see it, the Saint-Germain it was actually, close to
the woods; I knew it well; I used to pass by it often at one time.
How one changes! I was a kid in those days and the prisoo used
to frighten me. I didn't yet know what men were like. I shall
never again believe what they say or what they think. It is of
men, and of them only, that one should always be frightened.
   How long would the delirium of these monsters need to last
for them to stop in the end, exhausted? How long could a fit
of frenzy like this go on? A few months? A few years? Perhaps
until every one was dead, every one of these madmen. To the
very last of all? Well, since things were taking this desperate
turn, I decided to risk everything at one throw, to try the final,
the supreme move, and on my own, alone, to try and stop the
war! My small section of it, at any rate.