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I won't let you spoil my war for me. Destroys the weak, does it? Well, what does peace do for'em, huh? War feeds its people better.

Courage delivers these forceful lines at her moment of greatest prosperity. Immediately before in the scene previous, she had cursed the war for its disfigurement of her daughter. Now she celebrates it, prefiguring her ultimately failure to learn from the horrors of war. As noted by a Sergeant in Scene One, war is her breadwinner. In Scene Six, the Chaplain similarly notes cynically that war, though degrading, provides for all the people's needs. Brecht poses war as Courage's good provider to insist that it is not a rupture of "business as usual" but the continuation of business by other means.

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