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.
Kropp’s bitter humor is his best weapon. This joke is a description of Remarque’s vision of war, where ordinary people are fighting each other and dying for the sake of vague ideals and benefits of their governments.
While they <the pontificating teachers and politicos> continued to write and talk, we saw the wounded and dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger.
This is an illustration of patriotic speeches vs. reality, one of those themes that Remarque addresses again and again.
But we do not forget. It’s all rot that they put in the war-news about the good humour of the troops, how they are arranging dances almost before they are out of the front-line. We don’t act like that because we are in a good humour: we are in a good humour because otherwise we should go to pieces. If it were not so we could not hold out much longer; our humour becomes more bitter every month.
A visible forgetfulness of soldiers is their psychological protective mechanism, and Paul / Remarque tries to explain this to reader. It is also a good warning against trusting the media information blindly.
The wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas people who were better off were beside themselves with joy, though they should have been much better able to judge what the consequences would be.
Ordinary people are the ones who suffer most of all, and while they cannot avoid this “misfortune”, all they can do is survive and try to go on.
My limbs move supplely, I feel my joints strong, I breathe the air deeply. The night lives, I live. I feel a hunger, greater than comes from the belly alone.
Paul says this after witnessing the death of Kimmerich. In spite of his mourning for a dead friend, he feels very much alive now, and the described hunger is a natural longing of a young man for life and emotions.