What I was trying to convey there was the kind of waste land that was left after the war. It was a bit like one always thinks of war, you know, stark scenery and no birds, no trees, no leaves, nothing living. And just emptiness.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When there wasn't any money involved, for all intents and purposes, nobody gave a damn. But now the land, supposedly worthless, is seen for what it really is: an incredibly valuable asset.
Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.
I think that Vietnam, many of us who served in Vietnam thought that was very wasteful, and to what end? To what end? What were we really there for? What were we really fighting for?
The lands granted were in the occupancy of savages and situated in a wilderness, of which the government had never taken possession, and of which it could not with its own citizens ever have taken possession.
Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology.
The tract through which we passed is generally very good land, with plenty of water; and there, as well as here, the country is neither rocky nor overrun with brush-wood.
When I was in Marine training I memorised 'The Waste Land,' which was a significant experience in terms of really breaking apart language and thinking about how the different voices in that poem function.
We have to go in places no body would ever think of going into were it not for the necessities of war.
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, the happy highways where I went and cannot come again.
War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.