Roger Martin du Gard: Nothing worse than war and all it involves
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
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Roger Martin du Gard: From Nobel Prize in Literature speech
Roger Martin du Gard: Be loyal to yourselves, reject war
Roger Martin du Gard: How make active war on war?
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Roger Martin du Gard
From Summer 1914 (1936)
Translated by Stuart Gilbert
“I know your theory that war and peace must alternate in the life of nations, like the movement of a pendulum. A monstrous theory! We’ve got to stop that pendulum for good and all. Humanity must somehow be got out of this fatal rhythm and be allowed to devote its energies to building up a better social order. War doesn’t solve a single one of man’s vital problems. It only makes the worker’s plight worse than before. During a war he’s mere cannon fodder, and afterward more cruelly enslaved than ever. That’s all war means for him…It’s quite simple: I see nothing, literally nothing, that could be worse for a nation than a war and all it involves.”
