In this gruesome tale of the realities of war, Andreev has given
shocking physical details of torn and bleeding bodies, but true to the
theme that animates all his books, he has concentrated the main
interest on the Mind. Soldiers suffer in the flesh, but infinitely
more in the mind. War points chiefly not to the grave, nor to the
hospital, but to the madhouse. All forms of insanity are bred by the
horror and fatigue of the marches and battles: many shoot themselves,
many become raging maniacs, many become gibbering idiots. Every man
who has studied warfare knows that the least of all perils is the
bullet of the enemy, for only a small proportion are released by that.
The innumerable and subtle forms of disease, bred by exposure and
privation, constitute the real danger. Andreev is the first to show
that the most common and awful form of disease among Russian soldiers
is the disease of the brain. The camp becomes a vast madhouse, with
the peculiar feature that the madmen are at large. The hero of the
story loses both his legs, and apparently completely recovered in
health otherwise, returns home to his family, and gazes wistfully at
his bicycle. A sudden desire animates him to write out the story of
the Japanese war; in the process he becomes insane and dies. His
brother then attempts to complete the narrative from the scattered,
confused notes, but to his horror, whenever he approaches the desk,
the phantom of the dead man is ever there, busily writing: he can hear
the pen squeak on the paper.
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