During the First World War, the crooks Scholef and Krumka sell weapons on the black market. After the collapse of the monarchy they try their hand at speculation on a grand scale.

Funny banter about love, sex, social status, and other ideals, while a new railway employee is trained and sent on his first run as driver.

At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.

To the intolerant and bloody-minded Prague actor Bergner (Milos Kopecký) is the lead in Moliere's Misanthrope which he is studying now as tailor-made. On top of that he is malicious and he advises to the new actress Helenka (Dagmar Havlová) in such a way that she upsets the theatre director. If Bergner accuses somebody of a mischief and he is wrong, he never apologizes. When he almost crashes an older elegant lady by his car on the zebra crossing, instead of an apology he calls her an old ballet dancer... But in Brno's TV he takes part in a discussion on manners and he gives himself as an example of good manners and grace. In the train he meets a magic old man (Ladislav Pesek) who warns him and admonishes him to change his behavior. After he arrives to Prague the old man's threat comes true.

The waitress Gita from the hotel "Bobí vrch" approaches her lover who has not left his wife yet and gives him an ultimatum: if he does not do all according to her wish, she will announce to the police his machinations with foreign currency.