Georges Ohnet: Victory to that adversary which most scientifically assures massacre and death

====

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

French writers on war and peace

Georges Ohnet: Selections on war

====

Georges Ohnet
The Woman of Mystery
Translated by Fred Rothwell

“I have seen hundreds of men killed on the field of battle, and thousands of wounded carried off in ambulances. At Gravelotte, I saw the head of the captain of my squadron roll at my feet, and the eyes wink repeatedly in the dust. It had been carried off by the bursting of a shell. In Tonkin I have found soldiers cut in four, their faces still grinning in spite of their torture….”

“Does any one even know why all these people are fighting? Do they even know themselves? They have quarreled, like tipplers on leaving the grog-shop after having absorbed more than is good for them. And now they fly at one another’s throats. What have the Germans done to you to make you want to fight them?”

“Honor consists in paying what one owes, and in meeting one’s bills when they fall due. Outside of that, believe me, everything is false. Patriotic legends have been invented to lead men to butchery and slaughter to the strains of the Marseillaise. They consist merely of sounding words, with which mankind is deceived in the interests of rulers and states. One ought not to let one’s self be the dupe of such tricks and artifices. When it is all over, none of the sly rascals who have persuaded the rest to fight, and carefully kept out of the way themselves, will give you even a single word of pity for your misfortunes….”

====

He saw his neighbours and clients pass along with bowed heads, wondering uneasily, and asking one another –

“What news? Have you heard anything of your son? Where is he? If only all our boys are not dead!”

He at least could reply, “I do not know,” with comparative assurance. But the others? Old Graff especially was an object of pity. He seemed as though he would go mad. One evening he had gone out bareheaded into the streets, when the weather was icy cold, saying to all he met, “If Antoine does not come back, I shall have been his murderer. Why did I send him to the war; he was not even of age? He ought to be here by my side. All this time they have been fighting around Paris. A presentiment comes to me that my son is dead!”

====

With remarkable clearness he explained all that modern chemistry offered in cunning combinations, such as would guarantee victory to that adversary which could most scientifically assure massacre and death.

***

“Governments are not in the habit of remunerating philanthropists who afford them the means of marching triumphantly forward to a universal massacre.”

***

“If this explosive is as dangerous to those against whom it is used as it is to its inventors, there will be fine butcheries the next war.”