I occasionally heard him utter words full of bitterness and doubt – not just about the Austrians – that offended my newly acquired enthusiastic bellicosity. No, it was not my father’s fault, nor any of my other relatives’, that within a few days I became a fanatical jingoist and armchair warrior. You must blame the atmosphere, the general mood, the tug of the masses, which produced unimagined emotions in those who surrendered themselves (even seven-year-old boys), and left those who stayed aloof suffocating in a vacuum of arid emptiness and isolation.
