these are of course the words of wilfred owen, written as it was ongoing. wilfred himself was a junior officer in the british army in the first world war. they are often reprinted words and they tell us something about the brutality of four on the -- of war and the experience of war on the western front. they also show was something polemical. a bit of an argument here, especially in the last part where he talks about men dying for nations. for national causes. the stakes of this one man's death from gas becomes very high indeed in his eyes. this gives us a sense of what nations ask men to do in war. to complicate this, i want to give you a quote from another war writer, a patriotic novelist who, like wilfred owen, was on the western front. his name is ian hague. he was reflecting in the 1930's about war books. he writes -- for the last 10 years we have , been submerged by a flood of so-called war books that depicts the men who fought as brutes and beasts, dissillusioned, drunken, and godless. some of these books are just conceivedull dirt, for that. to wilf