Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

So I was sent to Oxford: to Somerville College which, like the Examination Schools, had been converted into a hospital. It occurred to me here that I had perhaps finished with the war, which would surely not last long now. I both liked and disliked the idea. I disliked being away from the regiment in France, but I liked to believe that I might still be alive when the war ended. Meanwhile, Siegfried had got boarded too and tried to follow me to the Second Battalion; but arrived only to find me gone. I felt that I had somehow let him down. But he wrote that he was unspeakably relieved to think of me safely back home.

We were now wondering whether the war ought to continue. It was said that, in the autumn of 1915, Asquith had been offered peace terms on the basis of status quo ante, which he was willing to consider; but that his colleagues' opposition had brought about the fall of the Liberal Government and its supersession by the 'Win-the-War' Coalition Government of Lloyd George. Siegfried vehemently asserted that the terms should have been accepted; I agreed. We no longer saw the war as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic younger generation to the stupidity and self-protective alarm of the elder. I made a facetious note about this time: