Members of the human race bring destruction on each other: they make murderous instruments that can sever hands and feet and slice limbs from torsos. Most of those not killed by fate are killed by their fellow men, and since nowadays men disdain the old ways of war as inadequate, they are constantly thinking up new techniques and dreaming of ways to increase the damage they cause. It has truly reached the point that in every stretch of countryside and in every town the killing never stops.
“The King and Queen hid in a secret cupboard in their bedroom for two hours, listening to the searchers grow cold, then warm, then cold again, then warm, and at last hot, and burning hot. The weakly King was hard to kill: when they threw him from the balcony they thought him doubly dead from bullet wounds and sword slashes, but the fingers of his right hand clasped the railing and had to be cut off before he fell to the ground, where the fingers of his left hand clutched the grass.”
Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon