"The soldiers who faced one another along the Western Front were drawn from remarkably similar societies. On both sides there were industrial workers and farm labourers. On both sides there were aristocratic senior officers and middle-class junior officers. On both sides there were Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Anyone seeking fundamental differences of national character will look in vain in the records of the trenches. There could be no better illustration of this point than four of the finest novels written about the war by former soldiers - Henri Barbusse's Under Fire, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Frederic Manning's Middle Parts of Fortune and Emilio Lussu's Sardinian Brigade - which depict the experience of service in the ranks in almost interchangeable ways. All the authors, for example, make much more of the differences within their respective armies than the differences between the opposing armies themselves. 'What race are we?' asks Barbusse of his fellow poilus. 'All races. We've come from everywhere.' One man in his company is from Calonne, another from Cette, a third from Brittany, a fourth from Normandy, a fifth from Poitou, and so on."
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Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 118
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Barbusse
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Henri Barbusse
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