Ink brush, white gouache. 26 x 37 inches

"Somewhere it is being prepared. Somewhere deep in the heart of Germany the shell is being made. Some German girl is polishing it right now polishing it and cleaning it and fitting the charge into it. It glistens in the factory light and it has a number and the number is mine. I have a date with the shell. We shall meet soon.“

(From: "Johnny got his gun“, Kensington Publishing Corp.) 

How "safe" can a world be? Where shells are not only fired, but where there is so much cleanliness and order that the equipment of war itself is a model of cleanliness, it could hardly ever have been safer.