``Brother, terrible silent brother, down there in the dark soil, what have we done to each other? What have we done? I am "alive," you are "dead," but there is some communication between us. I feel you down there; perhaps you can feel me. Oh, brother, why had you to die so young and by so cruel a death? It's too dark to read the name on your cross; it's too dark in me to know you more than dimly, just as a man. Whether you came from the Rhine or Bavaria, from Prussia or distant Silesia or Saxony, whether you were tinker, tailor, rich man, poor man, you were a soldier, undoubtedly a soldier. A German soldier, my enemy, lying dead there.
``Brother, what have we done to each other? Why are you lying there dead so young, and I so young as good as dead crouched on the grave above you? Dear murdered boy, your enemy mourns for you. My throat hurls with grief for you. You, and the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands, the millions of us, who lie like you, soiled earth under a soiled world.
``Brother, I know you're dead, I know, you're nothing. I know you're mere chemicals. But what am I? Mere chemicals. I know no German, you no English, but somehow we speak to each other. Oh, brother, it's driving me mad -- what have we done to each other?
``Yes, yes? I'll be calm. But what can I do? You see, the war is ending, and I shall live, while you for ever are a little bundle of dead bones. Oh, they'll take you back to the Fatherland and they'll exploit you. They'll exploit the deep confused feelings of all us men and women about you. Hereafter when we think of you, and we shall think often of you, there'll be tears in our eyes and a hurt in the throat. And "they," the real enemies, will say you were a hero, they'll say you died for your Fatherland, and that it was sweet and decorous that you should die. They'll bring out your bones as a show. They'll worship you as a sort of god of destruction and death. . .
``Brother, there must be justice somewhere, or the world is an indescribable horror. Perhaps it is, but need it be? We won't ask for vengeance - though what a vengeance we might demand! - we'll ask for justice, we'll ask at least that this shall not happen again.
``There are children now alive who may be tricked and forced into the despair, and misery we have suffered. It shan't be, it shan't be! Brother, I swear it, by your cross, by your agony, by your grave. If ever the rulers of my country declare another Great War, the hand which their predecessors have trained to murder shall murder them. We'll turn the weapon of their crimes against them. A trained man who is prepared to throw away his life can be certain of taking at least one life. That, at least, is promised you.
``But the years will pass, brother, and the survivors will sink one by one into the grave, and there'll be none to remember, none to warn, none to threaten and avert. The living children may not see it, but the children unborn will grow up to it, bred up to murder, as you and I were bred by the men (were they men?) who sent us here. The young will not know; they'll be exploited by the selfish, rather stupid old men and the greedy tradesmen and the venal journalists and the hysterical women. They'll be "heroes" like you and me.
``Brother, is it quite useless? Perhaps it is. But I know you are with me, and I promise you to do my best. I wish I were lying beside you. My life, my real life's as much gone as yours. I'm the shadow, the echo of a man, a husk from which the life has been ruthlessly smashed in this fratricidal hatred. I'll do my best. But they won't heed, they'll go when the plotted time arrives, they'll murder each other with yet more frightful weapons, for the honour of a country, the love of a whore motherland. They'll die all right. Sweet and decorous that they should die, a sacrifice to human stupidity and malevolence.
``Farewell, brother, farewell. I'm a handful of earth and a bucket of water, as you were when the British shell or bullet hit you. I'm just a human animal as you were. But I'll do my best.''