X.

For me there now began a period of frightful sufferings.... With frenzied haste, I seized all the possible news from the seat of war; greedily I consulted the reports of great battles lasting for entire weeks; I read of the dreadful storming of Port Arthur. All the horrible details passed plainly before my eyes.

All the frightful tortures of the masses I represented in my imagination. I saw how they stood in battle day after day; how they had lost consciousness in consequence of hunger and thirst and fatigue, and so went on fighting as mere automata. Ultimately they even =forgot= to take nourishment, to drink, and to rest--they actually did not any longer understand that they could free themselves from their torture of hunger and thirst, could save their lives, by eating and drinking--so they went on in a frenzy until they fell.

I was no longer capable of doing anything else than, with a swimming head, with temples pulsating with fever, studying war reports. Day and night these pictures were before me. Oh, if I could only stand with them in this hell!... How I loved them, these people who were capable of such grand actions!... I wished to call out to them: “Be embraced, O millions! Receive the kiss of the whole world!”... Yes, these are the true civilized nations!... To what progress must these horrible sufferings give rise? What a future for mankind! What joys to come!