Quote 22
Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out among themselves. Whoever survives, his country wins. That would be much simpler and more just than this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting. (3.42)
Kropp makes us wonder what exactly war is and how it has changed over time. His description of what he believes war should be like reminds us of a Gladiator-like set-up – you know, the citizens watch as brave, Hulk-like people battle it out with tigers and lions. As silly as Kropp's idea is, he makes us think about the idea of fighting for one's country. Could there ever be such a thing as a contained war fought between decision-makers only? At this moment (and in many moments like it), it seems like the author's potential bias against the idea of war surfaces.
Quote 23
"Let a man be whatever you like in peace-time, what occupation is there in which he can behave like that without getting a crack on the nose? He can only do that in the army. It goes to the heads of them all, you see. And the more insignificant a man has been in civil life the worse it takes him." (3.55)
Kat suggests that the context of war lets men get away with behavior that would otherwise get them in major trouble. The hunger for power drives people to do crazy things. As much as we dislike Himmelstoss, we are kind of shocked by the way in which the soldiers beat him up. It seems a bit excessive to us.
Quote 24
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is. (10.209)
Note how the author does not just focus on German suffering, but that of the enemy and the enemy's enemies. He looks at the enormity of suffering and war-wrought waste across the world and over the centuries. Hospitals in our mind are places where people go to get better, but this hospital (and other hospitals of the war) only seem to make its patients feel worse about the state of things. Our narrator finds no relief in the hospital.