# Quote — Henri Barbusse, Under Fire

> "They will say to you," growled a kneeling man who stooped with his two bands in the earth and shook his shoulders like a mastiff, 'My friend, you have been a wonderful hero!' I don't want them to say it!
>
> "Heroes? Some sort of extraordinary being? Idols? Rot! We've been murderers. We have respectably followed the trade of hangmen. We shall do it again with all our might, because it's of great importance to follow that trade, so as to punish war and smother it. The act of slaughter is always ignoble; sometimes necessary, but always ignoble. Yes, hard and persistent murderers, that's what we've been. But don't talk to me about military virtue because I've killed Germans."
>
> "Nor to me," cried another in so loud a voice that no one could have replied to him even had he dared; "nor to me, because I've saved the lives of Frenchmen! Why, we might as well set fire to houses for the sake of the excellence of life-saving!"

- Author: [Henri Barbusse](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-barbusse.md)
- Book: [Under Fire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-barbusse/under-fire.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Barbusse#Ch._24_-_The_Dawn) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-barbusse/under-fire/they-will-say

## More from this book

> The man raised himself, fell down, and rose again. The wound that he had under his armor of filth was staining the ground, and when he had spoken, his wide-open eyes looked down at all the blood he had given for the healing of the world.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-barbusse/under-fire/the-man-raised.md)

> While we get ready to rejoin the others and begin war again, the dark and storm-choked sky slowly opens above our heads. Between two masses of gloomy cloud a tranquil gleam emerges; and that line of light, so blackedged and beset, brings even so its proof that the sun is there.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-barbusse/under-fire/while-we-get.md)

> "When all men have made themselves equal, we shall be forced to unite."
>
> "And there'll no longer be appalling things done in the face of heaven by thirty million men who don't wish them."
>
> It is true, and there is nothing to reply to it. What pretended argument or shadow of an answer dare one oppose to it — "There'll no longer be the things done in the face of heaven by thirty millions of men who don't want to do them!"
>
> Such is the logic that I hear and follow of the words, spoken by these pitiful fellows cast upon the field of affliction, the words which spring from their bruises and pains, the words which bleed from them.
>
> Now, the sky is all overcast. Low down it is armored in steely blue by great clouds. Above, in a weakly luminous silvering, it is crossed by enormous sweepings of wet mist. The weather is worsening, and more rain on the way. The end of the tempest and the long trouble is not yet.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henri-barbusse/under-fire/when-all-men.md)