<Dd> <Dl> <Dd> Those of us who are able to look back from thirty years hence on this tornado of death--will conclude with a dreadful laugh that if it had never come, the state of the world would be very much the same . It is not the intention of these words to deny the desperate importance of this conflict now that it has been joined...</Dd> </Dl> </Dd> <Dl> <Dd> Those of us who are able to look back from thirty years hence on this tornado of death--will conclude with a dreadful laugh that if it had never come, the state of the world would be very much the same . It is not the intention of these words to deny the desperate importance of this conflict now that it has been joined...</Dd> </Dl> <Dd> Those of us who are able to look back from thirty years hence on this tornado of death--will conclude with a dreadful laugh that if it had never come, the state of the world would be very much the same . It is not the intention of these words to deny the desperate importance of this conflict now that it has been joined...</Dd> <P> Remarque's book was partly based on Henri Barbusse's 1916 novel, Under Fire . Barbusse was a French journalist who served as a stretcher - bearer on the front lines and his book was very influential in its own right at the time . By the end of the war it had sold almost 250,000 copies and read by servicemen of many nations . </P>

Impact of world war 1 on british poetry