"Nothing's the matter with me," answered the man. "It's war that's the
matter."
"What do you mean by that?" put in one of the younger doctors.
"The trouble with war," began the man slowly, "isn't that there's danger
and death. They are easy. The trouble with war is this. It's dull,
damned deadly dull. It's the slowest thing in the world. It wears away
at your mind, like water dripping on a rock. The old Indian torture of
letting water fall on your skull, drop by drop, till you went raving
crazy, is nothing to what war does to the mind of millions of men. They
can't think of anything else but war, and they have no thoughts about
that. They can't talk of another blessed thing, and the result is they
have nothing to say at all."
As he talked a flush came into his face. He gathered speed, while he
spoke, till his words came with a rush, as if he were relieving himself
of inner pain.
"Have you ever heard the true inside account of an Arctic expedition?"
he went on. "There's a handful of men locked up inside a little ship for
thirteen or fourteen months. Nothing to look out on but snow and ice,
one color and a horizonful of it. Nothing to dream of but arriving at a
Pole--and that is a theoretical point in infinite space. There's no such
thing. The midnight sun and the frozen stuff get on their nerves--same
old sun in the same old place, same kind of weather.
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