In any case, those alone should speak who wear a sword. We stand guard for all.
[The two sentries are silent for a while, marching to and fro]
The sound is very faint, but the breeze bears it to us. When I was in Joppa, for the first time I heard in the night the distant murmur of the waves. Such a sound rises now from the plain. They are there in their thousands, moving quietly, but the air is stirred by the rolling wheels and the clashing arms. A whole nation must be afoot, falling upon Israel. The noise echoes from our walls like the noise of the sea.
[Obdurately] I refuse to hear anything but my orders. I care not what wheels roll, or noises stir.
Why does God hurl the nations against one another? There is room for all beneath the skies. There is still plenty of land unploughed; many forests still await the axe. Yet men turn their ploughshares into swords, and hew living flesh with their axes. I cannot understand, I cannot understand.
But must it always be so? Why does God wish the nations to fight?
What are nations? Are not you one of our nation, am not I another? Are not our wives, your wife and mine, part of this same people? Did any of us want war? I stand here armed with a spear, not knowing against whom it is to be turned. Down there in the darkness, unwitting, waits the man for whom it is destined. I know him not, have never seen his face, or the breast I must pierce with death. In the enemy's camp another perchance warms his hands at the camp fire, the man who is to kill the father of my children. He has never seen me, and I have never done him harm. We are strangers, like trees in the forest. They grow quietly and bear their blossoms. But we rage furiously one against the other with axe and with spear, until our blood runs like resin, and therewith the life oozes forth. What puts death between the nations? What is it which sows hatred when there is room and to spare for life, and when there is abundant scope for love? I cannot understand, I cannot understand!
These things must be God's will, for they have always happened. I question no further.
This crime cannot be God's will. He has given us our lives that we may live them. Everything that men do not understand they describe as God's will. War does not come from God. Whence comes it then?