"One evening, in a high-society salon, people are discussing the war. A veteran recounts in moving terms the death of one of his friends. A lady weeps; she thinks of her husband who fell in the field of honor. "War is a terrible thing, unjustifiable," she sighs. Then, a well-known diplomat from the Quai d'Orsay, who until then had not taken part in the conversation, says with tranquil arrogance: "War? It's not that terrible! The death of one man is, indeed, a terrible thing, but one hundred thousand deaths is a statistic""