We recently commemorated one hundred years since the beginning
of World War I. It is a sobering thought, and it is difficult not to ask oneself: Have we learnt anything? Have we moved any closer towards global understanding and peace? Have things changed?
Below, a passage from The Space in
Between:
...
When the war broke out in August 1914, the Imperial Army became like
a huge whale, sucking into itself thousands upon thousands of
plankton-like conscripts. (He) was one of these conscripts. He
was already twenty, but men were being conscripted from the age of
eighteen. He did not believe in fighting, nor did he believe in a war
that was focused on turning men into plankton to keep Imperial
interests alive. He thought of Russia and Germany and Britain,
thinking how similar they all were; each with an own agenda that had
nothing to do with all the men being issued with uniforms and rifles.
The men killed on the battlefields were no longer men, they were not
even plankton; they were numbers and statistics, and, once they were
de-personalized, they could be subtracted so much more easily. The
faceless people moving the pieces across the chessboard were
completely focused on winning; they were not interested in men who
now were only numbers...
Information about The Space in Between
Information about Room Nineteen