"Wells, H G - War And The Future" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

But it has the quality of wholesome instinct struggling under a
nightmare. The world is not really awake. This vague appeal for
explanations to all sorts of people, this desire to exhibit the
business, to get something in the way of elucidation at present
missing, is extraordinarily suggestive of the efforts of the mind
to wake up that will sometimes occur at a deep crisis. My memory
of this tour I have just made is full of puzzled-looking men. I
have seen thousands of /poilus/ sitting about in
cafes, by the roadside, in tents, in trenches, thoughtful.
I have seen Alpini sitting restfully and staring with speculative
eyes across the mountain gulfs towards unseen and unaccountable
enemies. I have seen trainloads of wounded staring out of the
ambulance train windows as we passed. I have seen these dim
intimations of questioning reflection in the strangest
juxtapositions; in Malagasy soldiers resting for a spell among
the big shells they were hoisting into trucks for the front, in a
couple of khaki-clad Maoris sitting upon the step of a horse-van
in Amiens station. It is always the same expression one catches,
rather weary, rather sullen, inturned. The shoulders droop. The
very outline is a note of interrogation. They look up as the
privileged tourist of the front, in the big automobile or the
reserved compartment, with his officer or so in charge, passes--
importantly. One meets a pair of eyes that seems to say:
"Perhaps /you/ understand....

"In which case---...?"

It is a part, I think, of this disposition to investigate what
makes everyone collect "specimens" of the war. Everywhere the
souvenir forces itself upon the attention. The homecoming
permissionaire brings with him invariably a considerable weight
of broken objects, bits of shell, cartridge clips, helmets; it is
a peripatetic museum. It is as if he hoped for a clue. It is
almost impossible, I have found, to escape these pieces in
evidence. I am the least collecting of men, but I have brought
home Italian cartridges, Austrian cartridges, the fuse of an
Austrian shell, a broken Italian bayonet, and a note that is
worth half a franc within the confines of Amiens. But a large
heavy piece of exploded shell that had been thrust very urgently
upon my attention upon the Carso I contrived to lose during the
temporary confusion of our party by the arrival and explosion of
another prospective souvenir in our close proximity. And two
really very large and almost complete specimens of some species
of /Ammonites/ unknown to me, from the hills to the east of
the Adige, partially wrapped in a back number of the /Corriere
della Sera/, that were pressed upon me by a friendly officer,
were unfortunately lost on the line between Verona and Milan
through the gross negligence of a railway porter. But I doubt if
they would have thrown any very conclusive light upon the war.