This film tells the story of the fictional Dr Barnay and recounts his experience of the First World War. He works as a doctor in a military hospital and has always been committed to bringing about the end of war. When his wife dies in an air raid, he spends all of his time working on an anti-war invention to distract himself, and in the process neglects his new wife and his child. When the child is killed in an accident because of his machinery, he ends up pushing away his wife and best friend and focusing solely on his invention. In the end he sees the error of his ways, reconciles with his wife and friend and realizes that peace for humanity is something which comes from within.

A young woman doesn't want to get married, but simply live together with the man she loves. This leads to problems when the man dies and she's left with a child.

For Balduin, going out to beer parties with his fellow students and fighting out disputes at the tip of the sword have lost their charms. He wants to find love; but how would he, a penniless student, ever dare looking up to any woman worth of loving? Absorbed in his dreary thoughts and indifferent to the advances of Lyduschka, Balduin is unexpectedly offered a fortune by the mysterious money-lender Scapinelli - but on a strange condition...