The Journal of a Disappointed Man

July 31. This War is so great and terrible that hyperbole is impossible. And yet my gorge rises at those fatuous journalists continually prating about this "Greatest War of all time," this "Great Drama," this "world catastrophe unparalleled in human history," because it is easy to see that they are really more thrilled than shocked by the immensity of the War. They indulge in a vulgar Yankee admiration for the Big Thing. Why call this shameful Filth by high sounding phrases--as if it were a tragedy from Euripides? We ought to hush it up, not brag about it, to mention it with a blush instead of spurting it out brazen-faced. Mr. Garvin, for example, positively gloats over the War each week in the Observer: "Last week was one of those pivotal occasions on which destiny seems to swing"--and so on every week, you can hear him, historical glutton smacking his lips with an offensive relish. For my part, I never seem to be in the same mind about the War twice following. Sometimes I am wonderstruck and make out a list of all the amazing events I have lived to see since August, 1914, and sometimes and more often I am swollen with contempt for its colossal imbecility. And sometimes I am swept away with admiration for all the heroism of the War, or by some particularly noble self-sacrifice, and think it is really all worth while. Then--and more frequently--I remember that this War has let loose on the world not only barbarities, butcheries and crimes, but lies, lies, lies--hypocrisies, deceits, ignoble desires for self-aggrandizement, self-preservation such as no one before ever dreamed existed in embryo in the heart of human beings.