The battleships ray out over the North Sea,
keeping their stations accurately apart. At a given signal all the guns are
trained on a target which (the master gunner counts the seconds, watch in
hand--at the sixth he looks up) flames into splinters. With equal nonchalance a
dozen young men in the prime of life descend with composed faces into the
depths of the sea; and there impassively (though with perfect mastery of machinery)
suffocate uncomplainingly together. Like blocks of tin soldiers the army covers
the cornfield, moves up the hillside, stops, reels slightly this way and that,
and falls flat, save that, through field glasses, it can be seen that one or
two pieces still agitate up and down like fragments of broken match-stick.
Jacob’s Room (164)
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