Achmed Abdullah

“ He had entered the crunching maw of the great machine—the greatest, for sheer, cold-blooded, soulless efficiency, the world has yet seen—and it was up to the machine, to the trained engineers who directed its destinies, to turn Tom into the finished product, the stiff, rectangular, disciplined Prussian pattern. ”

“ The machine, the engineers, began by calmly assuming that Tom's human life had commenced the moment he joined the Prussian army. What had gone before, his American blood and birth and training and freedom, was not to be considered. It simply was forgotten. Did not exist. Never had existed.
Tom's was one mind, untrained, against a crushing, overwhelming majority of trained minds. ”

“ Whatever Baron von Götz-Wrede's ulterior reasons for suggesting an army career to the Westerner, whatever the ulterior reasons of Colonel Wedekind, of Prince Ludwig Karl, of the Emperor himself for confirming the Baron's choice and granting the gazetting, now that Tom actually was in the army, the army proceeded—tried to proceed—to Prussianize him, his speech as well as his limbs, his thoughts as well as his unborn thought-germs, his very imagination, his very morality, his very prejudices. ”