Ellen Newbould La Motte, "On the Ebb Tide of War," St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbach Publishing House, 2024

Here, different voices from a different era are heard, but the book has been reissued at the right time. "On the Ebb of War" is a series of notes by American Ellen La Motte, who worked as a volunteer nurse in Roosbrugge, Belgium, during World War I. Her book is a series of mercilessly harsh observations about humanity at war. Her professional medical detachment allows La Motte to create a cunning emotional trap: the author hurts the reader not by savoring the routine of life in a surgical ward, but by reasoning logically. La Motte is certain that war is ugly and senseless, but such is the phase of "human evolution"—now it reveals all that is disgusting and repulsive in man, but it can also give way to another phase. The book's answer to the question of whether this will ever happen brings this text, written over a hundred years ago, to the present day. 

"With skillful surgery and professional care, some of these patients will return home... and become a burden to themselves and to society."