War is ugly, really, truly ugly. No amount of glory, no matter a cause, not even a victory can ever make war a thing of beauty! We can play with aesthetics, fancy uniforms and mean-looking guns, yet all war is... In the end, war is just pain. Suffering distilled to its purest of forms. This book is quite an authentically miserable depiction of that. And to remember that this was left on left violence. To think that fascists have won. To realize that throughout history, the failure of leftist politics can be hardly blamed on anyone else but leftists themselves. Hopeless.

"I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on."