Question

In this excerpt, the author writes about a scene in a war hospital. Read the excerpt and then answer the questions: A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is. Look again at the last sentence of the excerpt. In your own words, explain briefly what you think this sentence means.

Answer 1

I think it means that people think hospitals are scary

Answer 2

The last sentence of the passage is:

"A hospital alone shows what war is."

What the sentence tries to explain is that it is in hospitals where we can truly see the effects of war. Hospitals allow us to see the great destruction and death that the war brings. They also allow us to understand the extent and scale of the war, as thousands of bodies arrive in thousands of hospitals. The author believes that the hospitals make you realize how pointless, cruel and overwhelming war truly is.