There is something impressive and mystical about the artillery battles... I still do not think differently about the war... It simply seems to me feeble and lifeless to consider it vulgar and dumb. I dream of a new Europe, I.... see in this war the healing, if also gruesome, path to our goals; it will purify Europe, and make it ready... Europe is doing the same things to her body France did to hers during the Revolution.... the war is not turning me into a realist – on the contrary: I feel so strongly the meaning which hovers behind the battles, behind every bullet, so that the realism, the materialism disappears completely. Battles, wounds, motions, all appear so mystical, unreal..