The Wandering Jew laments that he has been unable to find extinction even in this welter of the world war. A dying soldier greets him as a messenger from the Homeland:
Give me your hand--that hand from home. They have not left me to die alone in a strange land. They have sent me greetings.
AHASUERUS: You have it. It is well. The most homeless of men stands before thee--he is as homeless as thou.
SOLDIER: As I! I who die for home--I homeless!
AHASUERUS: Thou art in error. The homeland would not die for _thee_.
The Wandering Jew goes on to speak of apathy among the people, and reminds the soldier that “not only arms win victories to-day. The war of all men against all men has been unloosed. War against the woman and the child. War against fields and forests and farm and house. Peaceful labour turns to battle. The metal of the church bells fights. The seed fights as it falls into the furrow. Money marches in ranks.... But ... men eat and sleep and wax fat. They hear of the death of millions, and say: ‘Yes, yes.’ Gods that descend before their very eyes, and the wonders of a heroism half divine, no longer move their senses--no sacrifice can stir them out of their daily rut. They have but one care to trouble them--it is that you might return greater than when you set forth.”
SOLDIER (emphatically, to the men of the Medical Corps): Away! away! I would die of life and not of death.... Let me lie down beside mine enemy, he that hath endured what I have endured, he, as a comrade that understands me.
AHASUERUS: Come, thou mayst deem thyself blest in that thou diest so that thou mayst not behold a race of lesser men. Ye have grown beyond human compass in the fires of your time, your heads would strike the ceilings in your little chambers.
Ultimately, however, new troops enter, and one of these gives reassurance to the dying man.
SECOND SOLDIER: Property hath converted itself into armies, and the joy of riches means only the capacity to give.... Coffers and chests fly open. Countesses bring their silver, the legacy of famous ancestors, the old maid-servant her hoarded wage. The widow gives up her golden chain, the last love gift of her dead mate; the merchant his gains, and the old peasants the walnut tree in whose shadow they played as children.... The whole land becomes a mighty armoury ... they hammer, hammer, hammer, day and night.