“So this,” he said, “is the excitement and glory of war! I’ll never believe a ballad singer again.” — Poul Anderson

A world of life and mystery, a world of splendor and striving and wistful beauty. Yes, it was good to live, and even if he was now to join the sun in an endless night, he was glad of what he had been given.

“Peace,” he added, “is kept by the good will and strength of the peaceful.”

What was right? A man should live justly—but too often it was hard to say which was the road of justice. At any rate, this war was not a struggle of evil against good, black against white; it was a fight between many human beings, none of whom was wholly bad or wholly good.