I know nothing about my near future... Will we stay in this section? Will there be an offensive? Will we return to a peaceful life in the trenches with a holiday regime? - That is impossible to determine. The most contradictory rumors and the most shameful fables are circulating here continuously. For three days I could not celebrate Mass, and I still do not know when I will be able to start it again. I try to compensate for this by (unfortunately very rarely and carelessly) performing those two basic religious acts of offering and uniting, the innermost realization of which is the Mass. (…)
It seems that the September attack spared the family. Not so my brother Jesuits. Deaths are frequent and gradually decimate the finest bloom of our intelligence. (…) You see, everything is vanity, except for the principle of standing faithfully in your place.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin SJ /1881–1955/, letter from the front, to his cousin, October 15, 1915;
quoted from the book Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Birth of Thought. Letters 1914–1919, 2021)
