How we cite our quotes: (Scene, Line numbers)
Quote #7
THE CHAPLAIN: […] There've always been people going round saying "the war can't go on for ever." I tell you there's nothing to stop it going on for ever. […] It can suddenly come to a standstill for some quite unforeseen reason, you can't allow for everything. A slight case of negligence, and it's bogged down up to the axles. And then it's a matter of hauling the war out of the mud again. But emperor and kings and popes will come to its rescue. […] (VI, 63-75)
Picture the war as an enormous machine, and you'll have a pretty good idea what Chap is talking about here. The people fighting wars don't realize they belong to a mechanism run by the ruling elite: "emperor and kings and popes." But does he mean to say the "little folk" have no power at all?
Quote #8
THE CHAPLAIN: I'd say there's peace in war too; it has its peaceful moments. Because war satisfies all requirements, peaceable ones included, they're catered for, and it would simply fizzle out if they weren't. In war you can do a crap like in the depths of peacetime, then between one battle and the next you can have a beer, then even when you're moving up you can lay your head on your arms and have a bit of shuteye in the ditch, it's entirely possible. During a charge you can't play cards maybe, but nor can you in the depths of peacetime when you're ploughing, and after a victory there are various openings. You may get a leg blown off, then you start by making a lot of fuss as though it were serious, but afterwards you calm down or get given a schnapps, and you end up hopping around and the war's no worse off than before. And what's to stop you being fruitful and multiplying in the middle of all the butchery, behind a barn or something, in the long run you can't be held back from it, and then the war will have your progeny and can use them to carry on with. No, the war will always find an outlet, mark my words. Why should it ever stop? (VI, 102-120)
Chap has made quite a turnaround from thinking the war is for God to thinking it's a meaningless machine. Now he's convinced the war can continue forever because the lower classes have no ambitions beyond their everyday needs. So what's really changed?
Quote #9
THE CHAPLAIN: I told you I'm not a woodcutter by trade. I studied to be a pastor of souls. My talent and abilities are being abused in this place, by manual labour. […] (VI, 193-195)
We get it, Chap. We're not so much about the wood chopping, either. But seriously, this line is not just about splitting logs. It tells us a lot about how the chaplain sees himself and those around him. As an educated man, he belongs to a higher class. And, in case you didn't know, he's into the loftier things in life. How much of what the chaplain says about war and the lower classes can we understand based on his own class position? Does he feel entitled to critique the lower classes because of his education?