When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans. (Chapter 1, p. 17)

Baulked of the minor alleviation, I returned again and again to the major attack; the desire for a more eventful existence and a less restricted horizon had become an obsession, and it never occurred to me to count on marriage as a possible road to freedom. (Chapter 2, p. 53)

"It is impossible," I concluded, "to find any satisfaction in the thought of 25,000 slaughtered Germans, left to mutilation and decay; the destruction of men as though beasts, whether they be English, French, German or anything else, seems a crime to the whole march of civilisation." (Chapter 3, p. 97)

Truly the War had made masochists of us all. (Chapter 4, p. 154)

There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt...