The Moon is Down

by John Steinbeck

These were the men of the staff, each one playing war as children play “Run, Sheep, Run.”

war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.

“But I don’t need a bodyguard. I tell you these aren’t violent people.”

Um something tells me that it will change v soon LOL

“Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn’t last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing.

“So it starts again. We will shoot this man and make twenty new enemies. It’s the only thing we know, the only thing we know.”

“That is a great mystery,” said Doctor Winter. “That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.”

The cold hatred grew with the winter, the silent, sullen hatred, the waiting hatred.

And the hatred was deep in the eyes of the people, beneath the surface.

Fear crept in on the men in their billets and it made them sad, and it crept into the patrols and it made them cruel.

Nothing was cured by the shooting.

“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded.”

A man needs love. A man dies without love.