" After this war, there will be many other wars, and in the intervals there will be peace. So it will alternate for many generations. By examining the things cast up in the backwash, we can gauge the progress of humanity. When clean little lives, when clean little souls boil up in the backwash, they will consolidate, after the final war, into a piece that shall endure. But not till then. "

― Ellen N. La Motte , The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse