“All the same,” comes the hollow voice of Blaire, who lets no chance slip of airing his pet phrase—­“All the same, they’d like to steal the very skin off us!”

“At the beginning of it,” says Tirette, “I used to think about a heap of things.  I considered and calculated.  Now, I don’t think any more.”

“Nor me either.”

“Nor me.”

“I’ve never tried to.”

“You’re not such a fool as you look, flea-face,” says the shrill and jeering voice of Mesnil Andre.  Obscurely flattered, the other develops his theme—­

“To begin with, you can’t know anything about anything.”

Says Corporal Bertrand, “There’s only one thing you need know, and it’s this; that the Boches are here in front of us, deep dug in, and we’ve got to see that they don’t get through, and we’ve got to put ’em out, one day or another—­as soon as possible.”

“Oui, oui, they’ve got to leg it, and no mistake about it.  What else is there?  Not worth while to worry your head thinking about anything else.  But it’s a long job.”

An explosion of profane assent comes from Fouillade, and he adds, “That’s what it is!”

“I’ve given up grousing,” says Barque.  “At the beginning of it, I played hell with everybody—­with the people at the rear, with the civilians, with the natives, with the shirkers.  Yes, I played hell; but that was at the beginning of the war—­I was young.  Now, I take things better.”

“There’s only one way of taking ’em—­as they come!”

“Of course!  Otherwise, you’d go crazy.  We’re dotty enough already, eh, Firmin?”

Volpatte assents with a nod of profound conviction.  He spits, and then contemplates his missile with a fixed and unseeing eye.

“You were saying?” insists Barque.

“Here, you haven’t got to look too far in front.  You must live from day to day and from hour to hour, as well as you can.”

“Certain sure, monkey-face.  We’ve got to do what they tell us to do, until they tell us to go away.”

“That’s all,” yawns Mesnil Joseph.

Silence follows the recorded opinions that proceed from these dried and tanned faces, inlaid with dust.  This, evidently, is the credo of the men who, a year and a half ago, left all the corners of the land to mass themselves on the frontier:  Give up trying to understand, and give up trying to be yourself.  Hope that you will not die, and fight for life as well as you can.

“Do what you’ve got to do, oui, but get out of your own messes yourself,” says Barque, as he slowly stirs the mud to and fro.

“No choice”—­Tulacque backs him up.  “If you don’t get out of ’em yourself, no one’ll do it for you.”

“He’s not yet quite extinct, the man that bothers about the other fellow.”

“Every man for himself, in war!”

“That’s so, that’s so.”

Silence.  Then from the depth of their destitution, these men summon sweet souvenirs—­“All that,” Barque goes on, “isn’t worth much, compared with the good times we had at Soissons.”