No More Parades!

Harvest of Battle by C.R.W.Nevinson - source

" All these men given into the hands of the most cynically carefree intriguers in long corridors who made plots that harrowed the hearts of the world. All these men toys: all these agonies mere occasions for picturesque phrases to be put into politicians' speeches without heart or even intelligence. Hundreds and thousands of men tossed here and there in that sordid and gigantic mud-brownness of midwinter...By God, exactly as if they were nuts wilfully picked up and thrown over the shoulder by magpies...But men. Not just populations. Men you worried over there. Each man with a backbone, knees, breeches, braces, a rifle, a home, passions, fornications, drunks, pals, some scheme of the universe, corns, inherited diseases, a greengrocer's business, a milk walk, a paper stall, brats, a slut of a wife...The Men: the Other Ranks! And the poor --- little officers. God help them."

From No More Parades - Bk 2 of Parades End by Ford Madox Ford