[Much] as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year . . . what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is.
I could not help reflecting that the bullet which had struck the chestnut [horse] had certainly passed within a foot of my head. So at any rate I had been 'under fire.' That was something.
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.