Rodriguez felt all this dimly, but no less surely; and went to the other window.

Below the window were those wars that were soon coming to Spain, hooded in mist and invisible.  In the centre of the window swam as profound a blue, dwindling to paler splendour at the edge, the wandering lights were as lovely, as in the other window just to the left; but in the view from the right-hand window how sombre a difference.  A bare yard separated the two.  Through the window to the left was colour, courtesy, splendour; there was Death as least disguising himself, well cloaked, taking mincing steps, bowing, wearing a plume in his hat and a decent mask.  In the right-hand window all the colours were fading, war after war they grew dimmer; and as the colours paled Death’s sole purpose showed clearer.  Through the beautiful left-hand window were killings to be seen, and less mercy than History supposes, yet some of the fighters were merciful, and mercy was sometimes a part of Death’s courtly pose, which went with the cloak and the plume.  But in the other window through that deep, beautiful blue Rodriguez saw Man make a new ally, an ally who was only cruel and strong and had no purpose but killing, who had no pretences or pose, no mask and no manner, but was only the slave of Death and had no care but for his business.  He saw it grow bigger and stronger.  Heart it had none, but he saw its cold steel core scheming methodical plans and dreaming always destruction.  Before it faded men and their fields and their houses.  Rodriguez saw the machine.

Many a proud invention of ours that Rodriguez saw raging on that ruinous plain he might have anticipated, but not for all Spain would he have done so:  it was for the sake of Spain that he was silent about much that he saw through that window.  As he looked from war to war he saw almost the same men fighting, men with always the same attitude to the moment and with similar dim conception of larger, vaguer things; grandson differed imperceptibly from grandfather; he saw them fight sometimes mercifully, sometimes murderously, but in all the wars beyond that twinkling window he saw the machine spare nothing.

Then he looked farther, for the wars that were farthest from him in time were farther away from the window.  He looked farther and saw the ruins of Peronne.  He saw them all alone with their doom at night, all drenched in white moonlight, sheltering huge darkness in their stricken hollows.  Down the white street, past darkness after darkness as he went by the gaping rooms that the moon left mourning alone, Rodriguez saw a captain going back to the wars in that far-future time, who turned his head a moment as he passed, looking Rodriguez in the face, and so went on through the ruins to find a floor on which to lie down for the night.  When he was gone the street was all alone with disaster, and moonlight pouring down, and the black gloom in the houses.

Rodriguez lifted his eyes and glanced from city to city, to Albert, Bapaume, and Arras, his gaze moved over a plain with its harvest of desolation lying forlorn and ungathered, lit by the flashing clouds and the moon and peering rockets.  He turned from the window and wept.