Edmond Lepelletier: War is a lottery

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

French writers on war and peace

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Edmond Lepelletier
Madame Sans-Gêne
Translated by J.A.J. Villers

“War is a lottery in which you are sure to get a big prize someday – if you live!”

The pitiless conqueror, who butchered men by the thousands, and laid whole continents waste, always had a tender corner in his heart for children.

“They did not fight, like your husbands and your lovers, to gain promotion and prize-money, to pillage whole provinces and ransack the Treasury….The emperor cannot see that some day, when Fortune has ceased to smile upon him, when there will be no more plunder to get, and when it will perhaps be necessary to defend the very ground on which we now stand, all these fine soldiers will cry out for rest….”