John Fowles: War is a psychosis
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
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John Fowles
The Magus
I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death.
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them….It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women – and absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellow-men. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death.
***
The Collector
It’s despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It’s despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It’s despair that so few of us care. It’s despair that there’s so much brutality and callousness in the world….
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For fair use only. Posted only to encourage sentiments of peace.
André Gide: The privates, almost all the privates, were weeping
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Nobel prize in literature recipients on peace and war
French writers on war and peace
André Gide: Transformation of a war supporter
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André Gide
Journal
Translated by Justin O’Brien
August, 1914
The papers announce in veiled terms the French withdrawal at Mulhouse. The day before yesterday it seemed that Mulhouse had been reconquered; it was merely a bold and limited advance, which will doubtless cost the life of many a family in the town.
***
Now a new rubber stamp is being created, a new conventional psychology of the patriot, without which it is impossible to be respectable. The tone used by the journalists to speak of Germany is nauseating. They are all getting on the band-wagon. Each one is afraid of being late, less a “good Frenchman” than the others.
***
Théo went this morning to see Mme Griffith, who was caught by the events in Weimar, where she had gone to see her children; she had just got back to Paris after a most exciting twelve-day trip. Théo finds her still in bed and gets from her an amazing story. No one she saw in Germany would believe in war, and since the railways were cluttered with soldiers, everyone spoke of “army maneuvers.” As she was approaching the Alsatian border, she saw regiments of Bosnians. In general (she insists) the privates, almost all the privates, were weeping….
***
…if the papers are exhausted before the curfew, I have Chuquet (1870), Le Désastre by Margueritte, and Zola’s La Débâcle. Last night, fed up, irritated by this militarization of my mind, I took out of Elizabeth’s library Sesame and Lilies, of which I read almost the whole preface (new edition); I felt as if I was plunging into a lake of clear water in which all the dust and burning of too long a walk on a dry road were being washed off.
***
The day of the 25th was most gloomy. From the height of what mad hope we fell! The papers had done their job so well that everyone began to imagine that our army had only to appear to put the entire German army to rout. And because we had fallen back on those positions which a week ago had seemed so good, already people predicted the imminent siege of Paris. Everyone was seeking a word of encouragement and hope, for they were not completely crushed – more exactly, everyone was awakening from a dream – and people looked almost with stupor at the picture postcards representing “famine in Berlin”: a big Prusco, seated in front of a toilet and fishing up, with a long fork plunged through the seat, suspicious sausages that he swallowed at once; or another German green with fear at the sight of a bayonet; others fleeing – in which, as never before, the silliness, filth and hideousness of vulgar stupidity were revealed in the most compromising and shameful manner.
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
André Maurois: Drilling in jest, dying in earnest
André Maurois: The killing machine started up with pitiless smoothness
André Maurois: Was it possible that such sweetness could serve as the prelude to such horror?
André Maurois: The worst of compromises is better than the best of wars
André Gide: Into what horrors shall we soon have to plunge?
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Nobel prize in literature recipients on peace and war
French writers on war and peace
André Gide: Transformation of a war supporter
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André Gide
Journal
Translated by Justin O’Brien
July, 1914
Since Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia, which yesterday morning’s papers published, everyone is so nervous that when they heard the fire alarm many people took it for the call to arms.
***
…all morning long, I imagined myself having to announce to Juliette the death of her son. Into what horrors shall we soon have to plunge!
***
We are getting ready to enter a long tunnel full of blood and darkness….
In the fields a few fellows all ready to leave were going on with their plowing; on the road I met our farmer, Louis Freger, called up on the third day, and his mother, who is going to see her two children go away. I was unable to do anything but shake their hands without a word.
***
In the place of my heart I feel nothing but a wet rag in my breast; the thought of the war stands like a frightful rod between my eyes, and all my thoughts stumble against it.
***
In the evening after dinner, during which we were unable to speak of anything else, K. comes to smoke a cigarette with T. and me in the office. I tell him that in a few days his father and I are going to have to go, leaving him the only man in the house with his mother, his aunts and the other children; and I speak to him of his role in the house in case of a possible attack – not so much from the enemy as from brigands come from the towns to ravage the countryside.
This child, whom but a short while ago we feared to be indifferent to events, listens attentively to me. His handsome face is in the shadow; he is hiding in his left hand the rolled-up handkerchief with which he occasionally mops his cheeks.
André Maurois: Greatest service writers can render to cause of peace is to hold explosive words under lock and key
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
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André Maurois
From an address to PEN in 1939
Translated by Denver Lindley
If men had a greater consciousness of the dangers that go with the use of certain words, every dictionary in the book shops would be wrapped with a scarlet band on which one could read: “High explosives. Handle with care.” Military experts tell us of incendiary bombs which can set fire to whole towns, but we know of words that have set fire to an entire continent….We have anti-aircraft guns; we need anti-wordcraft batteries….Novelists, biographers, historians, it is our duty to draw of our little world as exact a representation as lies within our power. We have no axes to grind, no theses to prove, no election to win….During this difficult and perilous period, the greatest service we writers can render to the cause of peace is to hold explosive words under lock and key, to maintain a strict control over our emotions, to tell our readers the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help us God….”
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For fair use only. Posted with the sole intent of promoting the cause of peace.
Heinrich Mann: I must have my battle
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Heinrich Mann: Selections on peace and war
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Heinrich Mann
Henry, King of France
Translated by Eric Sutton
“Sire, the luck of war.”
“So we call it. But what is it? While I am watching one gate, Mayenne enters by another. He approached by the bridge; by my orders it was to be cut, but had not been. Such a luck of war. I have a suspicion that matters scarce wear a different aspect when I win.”
***
“I must have my battle,” though Henri, almost before the ambassadors of Venice had departed; indeed he had so determined when they had appeared with such display. That odd premonition of fame had likewise shown him how he stood. A commander of his sort has no money, and if his army is not to melt away, he must take a city as often as he can – to raise pay for his soldiers….in his own mind he thought: “I must have my battle.”
***
The Switzer’s face grew purple and he kept his lips firmly closed or he must have answered the king’s onslaught. Henri watched him as he marched off in his great boots, and reflected that it was too late for the Switzers to desert them. They would have to fight, and would fight all the better, as plunder was the sole hope of their getting paid.
***
Even a conquering army falls into some disarray, all the more when there is much booty to be taken….
Patrick Leigh Fermor: Why a religion of peace was necessary
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Patrick Leigh Fermor: A map covered with the crossed swords denoting battles
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Patrick Leigh Fermor
A Time of Gifts
On these Augsburg choir stalls, highly-polished freestanding scenes of Biblical bloodshed ran riot. For realism and immediacy they left the carvings of Ulm far behind. On the first, Jael, with hanging sleeves and hatted like a margravine, gripped a coal-hammer and steadied an iron spike among the sleeping Sisera’s curls. Judith, likewise dressed in high Plantagenet fashion, held the severed head of Holophernes in one hand while the other buried a sword in thew small of his back. Cain’s axe was splitting Abel’s temple wide open, and David, stooping over the steel-clad figure of Goliath, had all but sawn his head off.
***
The Marchfeld – the moss-land and swamp on the other shore – was another region that history has singled out for slaughter: wars between Romans and the Germanic tribes at first, dim clashes of Ostrogoths, Huns, Avars and Magyars later on, then great medieval pitched-battles between Bohemia and Hungary and the Empire. Archduke Charles, charging flag in hand through the reeds, won the first Allied victory over Napoleon at Aspern, a few miles upstream and the field of Wagram was only just out of sight.
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For fair use only. Post with the sole intent of acquainting readers with additional arguments for peace.
Jaroslav Durych: Somewhere far above there was a clear blue sky
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jaroslav Durych: Battlefield, banquet for the ravens
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Jaroslav Durych
Wandering
Translated by Lynton A. Hudson
On the pavement under the row of houses opposite a few people still stood petrified. Otherwise the street was filled with nothing but a strange, dispersed well-being, on which fell the glare of the growing blaze. The people on the pavement behaved really curiously. Some stood there with legs apart leaning against a post of a doorway. Others were sitting and stretching out long arms in front of them like beggars with lifeless legs for a contemptuously thrown coin or crust. Women knelt with their elbows on the ground, half falling over on one side, or lay on their faces or on their backs. They were all in indecent and uncomfortable positions, but strangely enough not one of them stirred. No one got up, or departed, they were all contented where they were, and slowly, very slowly, there began to spread around them an ever-widening and darkening stain, like wine that has been spilled. Only in the middle of the street were the convulsions of dying animals.
***
Ghosts walked outside; devils of bronze and hundred-year-old cobwebs, copper bats, steel horses and lead mice. The houses wore ghostly faces, they chuckled and grinned like corpses that have been set on fire. All kinds of things were happening. In the distance lay fallow land, and fields; depleted woods and cold black embers; the sails of the windmills still dropped into the unknown, birds swooped in circles, not daring to approach the conflagration, and perched in indecision on the thwarts of the gallows, where the corpses hung with the palms dangling on their thighs, no longer curious of this grandiose spectacle. The smoke crawled over the landscape and melted away. Somewhere far above there was a clear blue sky, somewhere there was a clean cool river. And beyond the distant hills there were men at work, knowing of nothing, and the lark soared out of the green corn.
André Maurois: The worst of compromises is better than the best of wars
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
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André Maurois
Memoirs
Translated by Denver Lindley
…this enchanted silence, this prodigious immobility of nature, seemed to me, as in July 1914, charged with mysterious menace. Each day when we opened the newspaper we expected to see in it the death warrant of our happiness. Poland, Dantzig, the Corridor….When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles had become known, persons of intelligence had believed that from this bizarre map, from these impacted countries, the next war would one day come. After a thousand diverse feints it was on this vulnerable point that Mars once more seemed to fix his gaze.
***
…he talked to me about the immense energy stored in all matter and about the possibility, if one could succeed in splitting the atom, of producing explosions that would destroy entire cities.
“We have made some experiments in southern Algeria,” he told me. “There lies the secret of victory.”
This was true, but we did not have the immense means necessary to wrest the secret from the atom. Nevertheless Langevin’s conversation had opened vast horizons before me. Later, when I arrived in America, I met the great scientist Lawrence who, with a team of scientists, was working on the atom bomb. As we were analyzing the means of winning the war, I innocently mentioned the splitting of the atom. He seemed terrified.
“Who told you that?” he asked anxiously.
I told him about my trip with Langevin; he saw that I was ignorant of the whole great plan and he unobtrusively changed the subject.
***
Joy at seeing Cain again, a great scholar, a great public servant, a pupil of Alain who was deported to Buchenwald. The minister is late in arriving. At this time he is carrying on a difficult negotiation with Ho Chi Minh. “Reach an agreement,” I tell him. “In a distant and mysterious affair of this sort surrounded by dangers, the worst of compromises is better than the best of wars.” He shares this view. “But I am not alone,” he adds.
***
Nothing is more dangerous for a country than to mass its best troops in a distant region. Rome had had experience of this, and more than once a proconsul returning from Africa or Gaul and supported by his legionaries, had dictated his wishes to the Senate.
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For fair use only. Posted with the sole intent of promoting the cause of peace.
Patrick Leigh Fermor: A map covered with the crossed swords denoting battles
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Patrick Leigh Fermor: Why a religion of peace was necessary
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Patrick Leigh Fermor
A Time of Gifts
Again and again, armies of mercenaries, lugging siege-engines and bristling with scaling ladders, crawled all over this map. The Thirty Years’ War, the worst of them all, was becoming an obsession with me: a lurid, ruinous, doomed conflict of beliefs and dynasties, helpless and hopeless, with principles shifting the whole time and a constant shuffle and re-deal of the actors. For, apart from the events – defenestrations and pitched battles and historic sieges, the slaughter and famine and plague – astrological portents and the rumour of cannibalism and witchcraft flitted about the shadows….If the landscape were really a map, it would be dotted with those little crossed swords that indicate battles. The village of Blenheim was only a day’s march along the same shore, and Napoleon defeated the Austrian army on the bank just beyond the barbican. The cannon sank into the flooded fields while the limbers and gun-teams and gunners were carried away by the current. Looking down, I could see a scarlet banner with the swastika on its white disc fluttering in one of the lanes, hinting that there was still trouble ahead. Seeing it, someone skilled in prophecy and the meaning of symbols could have foretold that three-quarters of the old city below would go up in explosion and flame a few years later…..
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Shared for fair use only. The sole purpose of doing so is to encourage sentiments of peace.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Such a war is won by him who rots last
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Selections on war
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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Wind, Sand and Stars
Translated by Lewis Galantière
Fields have been turned into charnel-houses and the dead are burned in lime or petroleum. Respect for the dignity of man has been trampled under foot. Since on both sides the political parties spy upon the stirrings of man’s conscience as upon the workings of a disease, why should the urn of his flesh be respected? This body that clothes the spirit, that moves with grace and boldness, that knows love, that is apt for self-sacrifice – no one now so much as thinks of giving it decent burial.
***
Below me lay Figueras, and Spain. This was where men killed one another. What was most astonishing here was not the sight of conflagration, ruin, and signs of man’s distress – it was the absence of all these.
***
Stretched out on the parapet I do not care a curse for the rules of war. For justifications or for motives. I listen. I have learned to read the course of these gurglings among the stars. They pass quite close to Sagittarius. I have learned to count slowly up to five. And I listen. But what tree has been sundered by this lightning, what cathedral has been gutted, what poor child has Just been stricken, I have no means of knowing.
***
Their words were not the same, but their truths were identical. Why has this high communion never yet prevented men from dying in battle against each other?
***
Men can of course be stirred into life by being dressed up in uniforms and made to blare out chants of war. It must be confessed that this is one way for men to break bread with comrades and to find what they are seeking, which is a sense of something universal, of self-fulfillment. But of this bread men die.
***
It may be glorious to die for the expansion of territory, but modern warfare destroys what it claims to foster. The day is gone when men sent life coursing through the veins of a race by the sacrifice of a little blood. War carried on by gas and bombing is no longer war, it is a kind of bloody surgery. Each side settles down behind a concrete wall and finds nothing better to do than to send forth, night after night, squadrons of planes to bomb the guts of the other side, blow up its factories, paralyze its production, and abolish its trade. Such a war is won by him who rots last – but in the end both rot together.
André Maurois: Was it possible that such sweetness could serve as the prelude to such horror?
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
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André Maurois
Memoirs
Translated by Denver Lindley
In the train at the Saint-Lazare station, as I opened Le Temps which I had just bought, I read in the Dernières Nouvelles of the murder of the Archduke, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife at Sarajevo. I told Janine about it. She raised her head:
“Who has been assassinated?”
“The Archduke Franz Ferdinand.”
She pouted with indifference.
This news, this instant, marked the end of our peace and happiness, but how were we to have guessed it?
***
Above us the stars were revolving, turning pale, but we talked on in the warm night until dawn. Very shortly after we had finally retired we were awakened by the drums of the mobilization. Only once when I was with the regiment had I heard the lugubrious “beat to arms.” It overwhelmed me. From street corner to street corner the drum beats answered one another….Then the bells in the churches in Elbeuf, in Caudebec, in Saint-Pierre fell to ringing out the tocsin. The die was cast.
***
I had to be in Rouen before the evening. We spent our last morning in the garden. The nurse, silent and icy, as English women are in time of catastrophe, had come and placed the baby’s carriage in front of us. After the rolling of the drums and the breathless summons of the bells, the calm was so complete that we seemed to be living through enchanting hours that could never end. Was it possible that such sweetness could serve as the prelude to such horror? From the town, which was no doubt full of silent farewells, there arose neither songs nor cries. We could hear the bees, busily gathering honey in the lime trees of the arbor, and the quiet breathing of our daughter. This morning, which was one of the most tragic of my life, has left me with an impression of unbelievable beauty, of sweetness unbearable in its intensity, of sad and solemn communion. I felt that these hours, so cruelly and tenderly fleeting, were the last of my youth.
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For fair use only. Posted with the one intent of fostering the love of peace.
Anthony Powell: The world after the bombs
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Anthony Powell: The war blew the whole bloody thing up
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Anthony Powell
A Dance to the Music of Time
Those were the days when his studio was above Mr. Deacon’s antique shop; when he was pursuing Baby Wentworth and about to paint those murals for the Donner-Brebner Building, which were also destroyed, like the Mortimer, by a bomb during the war.
***
Crossing the road by the bombed-out public on the corner and pondering the mystery which dominates vistas framed by a ruined door, I felt for some reason glad the place had not yet been rebuilt. A direct hit had excised even the ground floor so that the basement was revealed as a sunken garden, or site of archeological excavation long abandoned, where great sprays of willow herb and ragwort flowered through cracked paving stones; only a few broken milk bottles and a laceless boot recalling contemporary life. In the midst of this sombre grotto five or six fractured steps had withstood the explosion and formed a projecting island of masonry on the summit of which rose the door. Walls on both sides were shrunk away, but along its lintel, in niggling copybook handwriting, could still be distinguished the word Ladies. Beyond, on the far side of the twin pillars and crossbar, nothing whatsoever remained of that promised retreat, the threshold falling steeply to an abyss of rubble; a triumphal arch erected laboriously by dwarfs, or the gateway to some unknown, forbidden domain, the lair of sorcerers.
***
“…a man I used to sit next to in school was shot in the street in Jerusalem the other day. In the back, just as he was getting into a taxi to go and have a spot of dinner. But he was a professional soldier and they have to expect that sort of thing. Rather different for someone like Erry who is a pacifist. I can’t see the point of being a pacifist if you don’t keep out of the way of fighting. Anyway, we can none of us be certain of surviving when the next war comes.”
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For fair use only. Posted solely for the purpose of exposing the horror of war and for promoting the blessing that is peace.
André Maurois: Drilling in jest, dying in earnest
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
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André Maurois
Memoirs
Translated by Denver Lindley
From the chapter on his year of duty in the French army in 1894.
Lieutenant Breynat, whom we called “Chocotte” because of his pretty, womanish face, lectured us on military history and the War of 1870. Poor Breynat! He himself was not destined to survive the War of 1914.
***
Once a week he had us capture by assault a little chapel situated on the summit of the hill that dominated the Bresle. Our one bugler would sound the charge. “The bugle still sounds,” I would think as I ran. I was a long way from imagining that ten years after the Seven-Four would be rushing to attack real trenches. This training seemed to us at that time just one, happy game.
***
Jean Legrix, one of the noblest souls I have even known, became a close friend at that time and remained so until his death which, alas, occurred during the War of 1914.
***
I received somber but courageous letters from my cousins Pierre and André. André, a lieutenant in the chausseurs à pied, had no doubt about his fate….At the beginning of 1915 he was killed by a bullet through the forehead while leading his company in an attack. I had loved him dearly, his death overwhelmed me.
***
My cousin Pierre Herzog, after being wounded ten times and being cited ten times, had been killed at Château Thierry a few days before the Armistice. Thus the two brilliant and dependable young men who were to have formed a team with me were both gone….
***
Perfection, when it is collective perfection, brings its own reward. I retain from that review, held in the broiling sun, a memory of the same sort that certain fine concerts have left in my mind. This little experience helped me later to understand the technique of military dictatorships and their fascination for young men.
***
My “good fellows” formed opinions of their superiors that were seldom wrong. Our captain was held in contempt by them; ten years later the War of 1914 showed that he was unworthy of command. They adored our lieutenant, who in the same war died a hero. They entertained an invincible distrust of the powerful and rich. Patriots by instinct, they did not question their duty to defend the soil of France….always provided it was not to the profit of the rich.
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For fair use only. Posted with the one intent of fostering the love of peace.
Jaroslav Durych: The water flowed across the battlefield, vainly trying to cleanse the pools of blood
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jaroslav Durych: Battlefield, banquet for the ravens
Jaroslav Durych: Somewhere far above there was a clear blue sky
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Jaroslav Durych
Wandering
Translated by Lynton A. Hudson
Perhaps somewhere in the world a day of God was dawning, but in the city there was only smoke, giant altars of smoke, cathedrals of black fumes, and towers of livid fire. The houses opposite towered to a mighty height, glowing with a dull phosphorescence, grinning like corpses tied to a stake. Tresses and locks of flame waved from the windows, and a devil spat smoke into them with sad and quickly dying sparks. The heat and smoke were beginning to penetrate into the room, stinging the eyes and choking. The glass of the window burst. The rows of windows opposite appeared indistinct. The colors of the paintings and mosaics breathed a rosy glow as if all the ancient beauty and splendor of the city were going to fly upwards with the flames into the heavens and was showing itself for the last time to mortal eyes….But already the roofs were beginning to collapse, the balconies leant forward, golden and glowing timbers slipped and sprawled, only the thin frontages of the houses remained like specters that must crumble at any moment.
***
There were dead bodies on the stairs and in the passage below. They lay stretched out as if they were happy that their wounds were good and deep. They kept a cold and awful silence so as not to break their masks of astonishment. There were more legs and trunks than heads. A mass of tatters. The row ended in the passage in a lake of blood. They had to hold fast to the banisters, and tread on the chests, backs and stomachs of the corpses because their feet slipped dangerously on their limbs and faces. The lieutenant lit the way. They were Imperial soldiers. Death had overtaken them in the passage, and on the stairs. The soldiers of the city or the mob must have caught them unawares. And so the way had been blocked for those who had come after them. The house door stood half open, but was blocked up with dead.
***
The near day broke in cold, frightening and violent rain.
Eyes were blinded. The downpour splashed up clay, sand and pebbles from the damaged ramparts which oozed mud. The water flowed from the gutters into the valley, across the filthy battlefield, vainly trying to cleanse the pools of blood, the dead bodies of men and horses. Even the Swedes had had no appetite during the night to bring in their corpses which proclaimed their defeat. And now the rain and the mud made it necessary to think of the changes required for the following days.
Christmas: 2,000-year prayer – for peace
Please try to watch the video enactment at the bottom of the link for Merry Christmas by one of the great (and most compassionate) humorists in the English language, Canada’s Stephen Leacock (on this occasion very serious). Its production standards may not be the best, but those will be forgotten as the story unfolds.
William Cullen Bryant: Christmas 1875
Stephen Leacock: Merry Christmas
With a video enactment at the bottom of the page.
Christopher Morley: Now humanity has its most beautiful and most appropriate Christmas gift – Peace
Richard Le Gallienne: The Lord Christ came to Notre Dame on Christmas Eve
Alexander Pope: Peace o’er the world her olive wand extend
Stephen Leacock: War-Time Christmas
Dana Burnet: Christmas in the Trenches
Alfred Dommett: A Christmas hymn. The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven.
Herman Melville: Minister of the Prince of Peace serving the God of War
Charles Edward Montague: “What! not shake hands on Christmas Day?”
H. M. Tomlinson: “Oh little town of Bethlehem, To thee we give the lie.”
Edwin Arnold: Heaven’s love descending in that loveliest word, PEACE!
Isabella Banks: A Christmas Carol
Hermann Sudermann: War, and its aftermath
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Hermann Sudermann: Militarism and its terminus
Hermann Sudermann: The somber, the brutal aftermath of war
Hermann Sudermann: War irrigates the soil with blood, fertilizes it with corpses
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Hermann Sudermann
The Dance of Youth
Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul
“I was still at school when the war began,” Fritz resumed. “Then came my period of training, and I was in active service for the last two years of the affair. In spite of dirt and hunger, I should not have minded fighting onto the bitter end. We had become so dehumanized by that time, that the horrors of war held nothing more of horror for us. The real horrors began when peace came. I was spoiled for any life outside the trenches….”
***
“In the war I rubbed shoulders with death again and again; and twice since then I’ve been too near the penitentiary to be pleasant. In these new times, I’ve been washed in oil of vitriol. To anyone who has had such a bath, morality seems nothing more than a fairy tale for children….”
***
Ear and eye were simultaneously assaulted with the full blast of the flashy, barbaric noises our war-weary “civilized” world has adopted as a stimulus to its flagging energies.
***
“…I know gentlemen of the first water who keep themselves in funds sponging on their lady friends. That’s a little peculiarity we owe to the aftermath of war.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: I do not care a curse for the rules of war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Selections on war
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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Wind, Sand and Stars
Translated by Lewis Galantière
I do not care a curse for the rules of war and the law of reprisal. As for the military advantage of such a bombardment, I simply cannot grasp it. I have seen housewives disemboweled, children mutilated; I have seen the old itinerant market crone sponge from her treasures the brains with which they were spattered. I have seen a janitor’s wife come out of her cellar and douse the sullied pavement with a bucket of water, and I am still unable to understand what part these humble slaughterhouse accidents play in warfare.
A moral role? But a bombardment turns against the bombarder!
***
Caught in the cross-fire of artillery, the peasants had evacuated this valley, and their deserted
village lay here drowned in the waters of war. Only their dogs remained, ghostly creatures that hunted their pitiful prey in the day and howled in the night. At four in the morning, when the moon rose white as a picked bone, a whole village bayed at the dead divinity.
***
Cannon and machine-guns are being loaded on board with the strapping muscles and the hoarse gaspings that are always drawn from men by these monstrous insects, these fleshless insects, these lumps of carapace and vertebra. What is startling here is the silence. Not a note of song, not a single shout. Only, now and then, when a gun-carriage lands, the hollow thump of a steel plate. Of human voices no sound.
Halldór Laxness: Same old war that had been going on ever since she could remember
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Nobel prize in literature recipients on peace and war
Halldór Laxness: There are ideals in war too, slaughtering men by the million
Halldór Laxness: Three questions about war on earth and in heaven
====
Halldór Laxness
From Independent People
Translated by J.A. Thompson
…she said there was no world war; she said that at most it was just the same old war that had been going on abroad ever since she could remember….
The father stood on the paving, gazing deep in thought over the valley where we will suppose that in spring dreams of the future he had seen his family line grow and flourish. True, he may never have seen any such vision, and may never have had any articulate ideals about his toil or endowed it with any poetical significance, any more than the French and the Germans, who slew a million men for no reason at all or, as some people believe, just for the fun of the thing….
“…remember this: though the war may be over it doesn’t alter the fact that they are capable of murdering you out of sheer imbecility. Do you think that men who are mad enough to wage a war for four years will suddenly become models of virtue and intelligence just because they have signed a peace? No, they’re madmen all.”
No part of night or day wears such beauty as the time of the suns rising, for then there is quiet, loveliness, and splendor over everything. And now over everything there was quiet, loveliness, and splendor. The song of the birds was sweet and happy. The mirror-like lake and the smoothly flowing river gleamed and sparkled with a silvery, entrancing radiance. The Blue Fells lay gazing in rapture up at their heaven, as if they had nothing in common with this world. They had nothing in common with this world. And in the unsubstantiality of its serene beauty and its peaceful dignity the valley, too, seemed to have in common with this world. There are times when the seems to have nothing in common with the world, times when one can no more understand oneself than if one had been immortal.
The war raised many people, and one or two countries, to positions of great worth, it is, in fact, extremely doubtful whether any number of politicians, however brilliant, however high-minded, can do more for Iceland than one war accompanied by plenty of lively slaughter in foreign parts.
Jaroslav Durych: Battlefield, banquet for the ravens
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jaroslav Durych: Somewhere far above there was a clear blue sky
====
Jaroslav Durych
Wandering
Translated by Lynton A. Hudson
The horses were steaming, snorting with strain, their coats darkened, smeared with a mixture of lather and the filth of the battle. The calvary came out of the skirmish with torn and hanging pieces of their tin and leather equipment, soaked to the skin and spattered with mud and blood. And the rain fell on the distant woods, on the trampled fields, and on the corpses. The earth steamed and little clouds of vapor curled over the dead bodies. Large ravens sat on isolated trees, huddled together in patience, looking with satisfaction at the battlefield and reckoning up their booty. There were over four thousand Protestant and nearly two thousand Imperialist corpses, not counting the horses. It was possible to expect by nightfall a flock of at least a hundred thousand ravens and birds of prey. Occasionally some bird would try to alight on the nearest corpse, but the rain would drive it back. Meanwhile they enjoyed the delightful fumes, hoping that the rain would help them strip the bodies so that they would not injure their beaks. An odd bird would succeed in getting among the corpses and sheltered by them from the rain would peck at its first eye. If it still failed, it would screech angrily, the trees laden with flocks of ravens would answer slavishly, reinforcements came flying up, but the bird quarreled over precedence and the rain soaked their foul prey.
Heinrich Mann: Montaigne thought nothing more alien to religion than religious wars
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Heinrich Mann: Selections on peace and war
====
Heinrich Mann
The Youth of King Henri IV
Translated by Eric Sutton
Michel de Montaigne thought nothing more alien to religion than religious wars; this he said, monstrous as it sounded. Religious wars were not born of faith, nor did they make men more pious. For some they were the pretext of ambition, for others the opportunity of enrichment. Saints do certainly not appear in religious wars. They weaken a nation and a realm, which then becomes a prey to foreign aggression.
From the beginnings of the race, the nobler sons of the race have waged their thankless struggle for reason and for peace.
He asked what had been achieved by all these pitiable wars, these deeds of violence, these millions dead, and more gold squandered than a mine would yield? And the answer was – he really left his readers to make it for themselves: The ruin of the nation. The State lay fevered to death. Misery without end. And what would be the outcome?
When anyone says he wants peace, it is always a question – why? In times of peace corn thrives….
At these words Henri was silent. He never forgot that poem, “Monarchs, slaves of your own folly,” and he privately resolved that no man should ever lie dead upon the ground for his sake, nor shed his blood to increase the domains of France.
Jaroslav Durych: People wandering the world so hardened in their blindness they expected impossibilities from the devil
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jaroslav Durych: Battlefield, banquet for the ravens
====
Jaroslav Durych
Wandering
Translated by Lynton A. Hudson
There were still people wandering about the world so hardened in their blindness that they expected impossibilities from the devil and stirred up the rabble in the country. Vile Bohemian and Moravian nobles ran around like mountebanks with foreign flags infecting the towns in the war zone with pestilence. The peasantry allied itself with bandits and outlaws, and often it only needed a pitchfork or a cudgel for the most honest cavalier to be devilishly murdered.
***
Money was growing scarcer; there was no meat and provisions were replenished only by the occasional visit of some bold ship that sold its cargo at a handsome profit. Of course the inexhaustible resources of the sea always remained, but even the fishermen were now needed for war work….
***
He could see the sky between the roofs, then the shadows of the balcony, in the near distance a reddish mist, like a cloud of dust and smoke, and a patch of white pavement. Something flitted across this patch of white pavement. It was men. They flitted over the white pavement like vaguely outlined phantoms. Only that it seemed that from the distance some of these masses were taller than others, growing in some weird fashion as they hewed about them. From time to time some body would fall from the horse that had been part of it, and horses’ legs wriggled like worms under a stone, and above them was a fluttering and circling of many hats. Those on the ground were lifting muskets, pikes and halberds against those above them. Many of the horses kicked against the chains over which the infantry stumbled and men only opened their mouths, supposing that their cries would be heard in the depths of the earth….Bodies and limbs appeared short and clumsy. Some fell down and lay helpless, entangled with the horses’ hoofs, they ran and sprawled over some cornerstone or timber. There were also figures in women’s dress and they held girls and children by the hand, and they, too, fell on the pavement, striking it with their faces or the backs of their heads, and lay stretched among the lances, boots and horseshoes. The children crawled about on all fours. Everyone pushed and shoved, although they had all got into the street, but no one wanted to give way. The yelling resembled a shout of exultation and coarse laughter; the raucous voices stridently announced their helplessness. Progressively the sunlight gave distinction to the distorted faces, the flying hair, the sprawling figures, the lost articles of clothing. At moments they were lit up in a pool of blood, then they lay in an undistinguishable mass of human faces and heads. Feet trampled about them and upon them, horses’ tails swished in terror, then these smaller figures grew fewer, they lay on the pavement dumb and awkward….
Thomas Mann: In search of the land of peace
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Thomas Mann: Selections on war
====
Thomas Mann
The Holy Sinner
Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter
At Arras it was, in the lofty hall, there consulted and resolved, as I say, the counts of castles, gentlemen of rank, and heads of cities. For now the word went round, this country late so full of need had mastered its misfortune and once more flourished in peace….
***
“Great and weighty must the matter truly be, that has set you stately noblemen on the road and makes you indifferent to hardships you are not used to I well understood that you came from far away and have covered great stretches of ground.”
“That have we,” confirmed the one with the white hair and black eyebrows. “From so far we come as from the land of Italy, where stands the new Jerusalem. But not out of rashness, which would not beseem our age, have we set out on our journey and sought throughout Christendom; no, but instead by direction from on high.”
“With reverence I hear it,” answered the woman. “And with reverence not meddlesomeness it is that I ask what might you be searching for through Christendom?”
“That you will learn,” said the shorter man, ‘together with all the world when the Word has fulfilled itself in us: ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ Not much can fail of it being fulfilled, and we can no longer be far from our goal, according to our instructions. We have crossed the cities and dominions of Italy, on horseback, in wagons and litters, and thus approached the fearsome Alps, in whose gorges the water foams down from horrible rocks and where our path mounted climbing through dampness and mist on long-foretold paths to heights and slopes at whose desolation the soul is benumbed. There grows no tree or bush, in glassy light, the desert rubble spreads, whereon snow-covered peaks look menacingly down and the pure arc of sky stretching over it seems desolate too. We breathed light, our hearts were in our mouths, and by virtue of a sort of intoxication which overcame us and suited ill the awfulness of our surroundings, my companion, the clerical gentleman there, quite contrary to his nature and physical constitution, began to expend himself in jests for which I reproved him because of the nighness of God.”
“You cannot say,” the taller one defended himself, “that my words were light.”
“They could only be called so on account of their gushing abundance,” responded the other, “and I speak of it only to give this good woman an idea of the monstrousness of the spheres whereinto our journey led us. But it went down thence too a as we expected, we arrived in Germany, where men love usefulness and gain; sturdy men grub up woods into heath and meadow; distaff and shuttle support considerable towns, and learning flourishes in peaceful cloisters. We have lingered for naught but needful rest. Even renowned St. Gall could not tempt us to pause. Our mission brooked no delay. Westward and northward it urged us on, through many bishoprics, palatinates, and kingdoms, till we came to this country which borders on the North Sea and of which it is said that it was overspread with ravaging war, from which a firm-holding hand delivered it….”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Selections on war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Selections on war
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Back at home in the peace of our villages
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Building peace is persuading God to enfold all in his shepherd’s cloak
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Charred flesh of children viewed with indifference
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Gone was the feeble spark of humanity
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: I do not care a curse for the rules of war
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Man-made volcanoes in China or Spain
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Such a war is won by him who rots last
William Lyon Phelps: War, poets and spiritual despair
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
William Lyon Phelps: Selections on war
====
William Lyon Phelps
The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century
[Francis] Thompson planned a series of Ecclesiastical Ballads, of which he completed only two – Lilium Regis and The Veteran of Heaven. These were found among his papers, and were published in the January-April 1910 number of the Dublin Review. Both are great poems; but Lilium Regis is made doubly impressive by the present war. With the clairvoyance of approaching death, Thompson foresaw the world-struggle, the temporary eclipse of the Christian Church, and its ultimate triumph….
***
The publication of poems written when he was about twenty-five is interesting to students of Mr. Hardy’s temperament, for they show that he was then as complete, though perhaps not so philosophical a pessimist, as he is now. The present world-war may seem to him a vindication of his despair, and therefore proof of the blind folly of those who pray to Our Father in Heaven.
The title of Mr. Hardy’s latest volume of poems, Moments of Vision, leads one to expect rifts in the clouds – and one is not disappointed. It is perhaps characteristic of the independence of our author, that steadily preaching pessimism when the world was peaceful, he should now not be perhaps quite so sure of his creed when a larger proportion of the world’s inhabitants are in pain than ever before.
***
The shadow of the war darkens nearly every page of this volume [Wilfred Wilson Gibson’s Hill-Tracks], and the last poem expresses not the local but the universal sentiment of us who remain in our homes.
We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun, or feel the rain,
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly, and spent
Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?
A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings –
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
***
Mr. Housman’s poems are nearer to the twentieth century in spirit than the work of the late Victorians, and many of them are curiously prophetic of the dark days of the present war. What strange vision made him write such poems as The Recruit, The Street Sounds to the Soldiers’ Tread, The Day of Battle, and On the Idle Hill of Summer? Change the colour of the uniforms, and these four poems would fit today’s tragedy accurately.
***
Then came the war. As every soldier drew his sword, every poet drew his pen. And of all the poems published in the early days of the struggle, none equalled in high excellence August 1914, by John Masefield. And its tone was precisely the opposite of what his most famous efforts had led us to expect. It was not a lurid picture of wholesale murder, nor a bottle of vitriol thrown in the face of the Kaiser. After the thunder and the lightning, came the still small voice. It is a poem in the metre and manner of Gray, with the same silver tones of twilit peace – heartrending by contrast with the Continental scene.
How still this quiet cornfield is to-night;
By an intenser glow the evening falls,
Bringing, not darkness, but a deeper light;
Among the stocks a partridge covey calls.
The windows glitter on the distant hill;
Beyond the hedge the sheep-bells in the fold
Stumble on sudden music and are still;
The forlorn pinewoods droop above the wold.
An endless quiet valley reaches out
Past the blue hills into the evening sky;
Over the stubble, cawing, goes a rout
Of rooks from harvest, flagging as they fly.
So beautiful it is I never saw
So great a beauty on these English fields
Touched, by the twilight’s coming, into awe,
Ripe to the soul and rich with summer’s yields.
Maurits Dekker: Soldiers were robbers, pirates on land
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Maurits Dekker
Beggars’ Revolt
Translated by Irene Clephene and David Hallet
These envious people behaved in politics as in war; they committed stupidities, and then, when the evil consequences came to light, they reproached someone else for not having committed the same stupidity.
***
Why so much enthusiasm for a war for which nobody could see the need?
***
The country was in a state of perpetual unrest….Indulgences were no longer bought, and even faithful Catholics had fewer Masses read for their beloved dead. When receipts fell, less was spent. The citizens too were living more economically now that times were bad, and they had to meet the demands of the King, who needed money for soldiers and war material.
***
…the work of an honest sailor on a merchant ship could not be compared with that of a soldier: soldiers were robbers, pirates on land.
***
In the city people were praying in cellars, in attics, in darkened rooms. The streets were narrow channels through which pushed a motley stream of soldiers clad in colorful uniforms. Scraps of color moved, changed shape, blended and separated again. The blue of English uniforms supplanted the yellow and gold of the Spanish; the brown of the Germans advanced, for a moment filled the whole street, and then was replaced by the green and gray of the Walloons. Sunlight glinted on cuirasses and on the shining steel of swords, pikes and daggers. Doors were shattered with the butt ends of harquebuses, windows were shivered to atoms with pikes and rapiers. The tinkle of the splintered glass was like the sound of falling gold pieces. The white wounds in the wooden doors, from which the mightily driven hatchets could scarcely be withdrawn, made the marauders think of the flesh of women’s bodies that would soon be in their hands.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Gone was the feeble spark of humanity
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Selections on war
===
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Wind, Sand and Stars
Translated by Lewis Galantière
Stretched out on the parapet I do not care a curse for the rules of war. For justifications or for motives. I listen. I have learned to read the course of these gurglings among the stars. They pass quite close to Sagittarius. I have learned to count slowly up to five. And I listen. But what tree has been sundered by this lightning, what cathedral has been gutted, what poor child has Just been stricken, I have no means of knowing.
That same afternoon I had witnessed a bombardment in the town itself. All the force of this thunder-clap had to burst on the Gran Via in order to uproot a human life. One single life. Passers-by had brushed rubbish off their clothes; others had scattered on the run; and when the light smoke had risen and cleared away, the betrothed, escaped by miracle without a scratch, found at his feet his novia, whose golden arm a moment before had been in his, changed into a blood-filled sponge, changed into a limp packet of flesh and rags.
He had knelt down, still uncomprehending, had nodded his head slowly, as if saying to himself, “Something very strange has happened.”
This marvel spattered on the pavement bore no resemblance to what had been his beloved. Misery was excruciatingly slow to engulf him in its tidal wave. For still another second, stunned by the feat of the invisible prestidigitator, he cast a bewildered glance round him in search of the slender form, as if it at least should have survived. Nothing was there but a packet of muck.
Gone was the feeble spark of humanity. And while in the man’s throat there was brewing that shriek which I know not what deferred, he had the leisure to reflect that it was not those lips he had loved but their pout, not them but their smile. Not those eyes, but their glance. Not that breast, but its gentle swell. He was free to discover at last the source of the anguish love had been storing up for him, to learn that it was the unattainable he had been pursuing. What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a downy spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.
Thomas Mann: The man of war and the man of words
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Selections on war
German writers on peace and war
Thomas Mann: Selections on war
====
Thomas Mann
The Beloved Returns
Lotte in Weimar
Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter
“I marvel, or rather I rejoice, to think of the advantage the man of heroic thought has over the man of heroic deeds. The awful tragedy of Waterloo had made the way for my father to enjoy the hospitality of the Gerbermühle. Of the two who had conversed in Erfurt [Napoleon and Goethe], one sat chained to a rock in the middle of the sea; whilst the other was left free by a favoring destiny to enjoy the moment to his heart’s content.”
“I see but justice in it,” Charlotte remarked. “Our dear Goethe had done naught but good and friendly deeds to men, whereas the other chastised them with scorpions.”
“Still,” answered August, throwing back his head, “no one can persuade me that my father too is not a tremendous and dominating force.”
“No one would try,” responded she, “and no one would dispute. But it is like Roman history, where we read of good and back emperors. Your father is one of the good and mild ones, while the other was a blood-reeking demon. Their diverse destinies mirror the difference you so aptly point out….”
***
“…the happiest means to resolve and banish all one’s own personal problems is of course the gift of poesy. In that confessional lies power to spiritualize our memories, to convert them into terms of universal humanity and make them issue in enduring works of art.”
***
“I realized that the great poet is a ruler of men; that the course of his fate, his work and his life is effective far beyond the confines of his person, and conditions the character, the culture and the future of the nation!”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Man-made volcanoes in China or Spain
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Selections on war
===
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Wind, Sand and Stars
Translated by Lewis Galantière
Every week men sit comfortably at the cinema and look at the bombardment of some Shanghai or other, some Guernica, and marvel without a trace of horror at the long fringes of ash and soot that twist their slow way into the sky from those man-made volcanoes. Yet we all know that together with the grain in the granaries, with the heritage of generations of men, with the treasures of families, it is the burning flesh of children and their elders that, dissipated in smoke, is slowly fertilizing those black cumuli.
***
In civil war the enemy is inward; one as good as fights against oneself.
***
A colony of bees, I said to myself, once it was established so solidly within the boundaries of an acre of flowers, would be assured of peace. But peace is not given to a colony of men.
Heinrich Mann: Selections on peace and war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Heinrich Mann: Selections on peace and war
Heinrich Mann: I am young and not familiar with warfare
Heinrich Mann: I must have my battle
Heinrich Mann: Mission of letters in a world in rubble with 10 million corpses underground
Heinrich Mann: Montaigne thought nothing more alien to religion than religious wars
Heinrich Mann: Nietzsche, war and the butchery of ten to twenty million souls
Heinrich Mann: “No! The less force exercised in the world the better!”
Henryk Sienkiewicz: They had lost all human feelings, and grown wild, like the beasts of the forest
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Nobel prize in literature recipients on peace and war
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Selections on war
====
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Pan Michael: An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey (1888)
Translated by Jeremiah Curtin
The hetman thought always, what he said later on at Vienna, that Pani Wojnina might give birth to people, but that Wojna (war) only killed them.*
***
“Here are the soldiers’ gravediggers!” said Zagloba, pointing at the birds with his sabre; “let us only go away, and wolves will come too, with their orchestra, and will ring with their teeth over these dead men….”
***
This meeting showed her what people in those regions were, and what might be looked for from them. It is true that this knowledge was not unexpected. From her own experience, and from the narratives at Hreptyoff, she knew that the former peaceful settlers had gone from those wilds, or that war had devoured them; those who remained were living in continual alarm, amid terrible civil disturbance and Tartar attacks, in conditions in which one man is a wolf toward another; they were living without churches or faith, without other principles than those of bloodshed and burning, without knowing any right but that of the strong hand; they had lost all human feelings, and grown wild, like the beasts of the forest.
***
The living wall trembles, bends, breaks. The dry crash of broken lances drowns for a time every other sound; after that, is heard the bite of iron, the sound, as it were, of thousands of hammers beating with full force on anvils, as of thousands of flails on a floor, and cries singly and collectively, groans, shouts, reports of pistols and guns, the howling of terror. Attackers and attacked mingle together, rolling in an unimaginable whirl. A slaughter follows; from under the chaos blood flows, warm, steaming, filling the air with raw odor.
***
The whole immense camp was streaming with blood, mixed with snow and rain. So many bodies were lying there that only frost, ravens, and wolves prevented a pestilence, which comes usually from bodies decaying.
***
*Translator’s note: I have not been able to verify the saying said to have been uttered by Sobieski at Vienna. In the text he is made to say that Pani Wojnina (War’s wife) may give birth to people, but Wojna (War) only destroys them. Who the Pani Wojnina was that Sobieski had in view I am unable to say at this moment, unless she was Peace.
Thomas Mann: Fatal hour when hysterical citizens revel in the shedding of blood
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Thomas Mann: Selections on war
====
Thomas Mann
The Beloved Returns
Lotte in Weimar
Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter
“…enthusiasm is beautiful. But not without enlightenment. When hysterical citizens revel metaphorically in the shedding of blood, because the historic hour has given the rein to their evil passions, I must admit that things are painful to behold….”
“Not for the first or last time I made the observation that the warlike national spirit is connected with an increased enthusiasm of man for his own sex. The phenomenon is an inheritance from the customs of the ancient Spartans. It has a strange, harsh flavor not very acceptable to us women.”
“The German, instead of confining himself to himself, must take in the whole world in order to have an effect on the world. Our goal must be, not hostile separation from other peoples, but rather friendly association with all the world, cultivation of the social virtues, even at the expense of our inborn feelings or even rights.”
“Nothing is less my wish, Herr Doctor, than to hurt your feelings [on fighting for the fatherland]. I know you mean well. But it is not enough to mean well, or even nobly. One must also be able to see the consequences of one’s activities. I shudder at yours, because they are the first manifestation, as yet quite high-minded and harmless, of something frightful, to be displayed some day by us Germans in the form of the crassest follies. You yourself, if you could know of them, would turn in your grave.”
Arthur Wing Pinero: War’s psychic disfigurement
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
====
Arthur Wing Pinero
The Enchanted Cottage
OLIVER.
[Raising his head.] My eccentric line of conduct! You see, they don’t realize – these stupid belongings of mine – my mother and stepfather, and my busybody of a sister – they don’t realize that I’m done – finished – down and out. They’re so beastly normal, they haven’t imagination enough to grasp that my chief object for the future is to avoid those who have known me as I was.
HILLGROVE.
Tsch! Rubbish!
OLIVER.
As I was – healthy, strong, active! [Beating his fists upon his knees.] Rubbish or not, I tell you I hate and despise myself. No words can describe the loathing, the contempt I have for my shrivelled face and shrunken carcass. I can’t bear to catch sight of myself in the glass. It’s agony to me. There are days – this is one of them – when I simply can’t bear it.
***
OLIVER.
Pretty girls! Pretty! It’s the pretty girls I’ve splashed about with in town that I can’t face – that I
haven’t the courage to face! [Opening his arms.] Look at me. A hideous casualty for the rest of my life! An eligible husband for a pretty girl I am!
***
OLIVER.
[Brokenly.] Forgive me. I – I’m a blundering ass. What I – what I meant was – oh, I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world! [Moving about the room distractedly.] What I meant was, no woman would marry me except from compassion; and the girls in my set, as you call them, are not the sort who’d give up their dancing and racketing to devote themselves to a helpless, unsightly, neurotic chap such as I’ve become. That’s the point – whether you can bring yourself to take pity on me. [Sitting in the chair on the right of the round table.] Oh, I know there’d be no romance in our marriage – couldn’t be. But we could be pals, you and I. I can’t offer you anything else. Simply pals. [Seeing that she is furtively drying her eyes.] Oh, I am sorry I’ve hurt you!
***
LAURA.
[Beaming upon him.] Oh, Major Hillgrove, I am pleased that you can see! [He bows to her smilingly.]
Don’t you think I am very, very beautiful? [He bows again.] Far, far beyond what you imagined me to be when you could only hear?
[He gives her another bow and makes way for OLIVER, who strides in at that moment. OLIVER also is in khaki, but his clothes are soiled and ragged, his boots heavily caked with mud, and his handsome face is burnt to brick-colour. He goes straight to LAURA and stands before her.]
LAURA.
[Gazing at him as though he were a stranger.] You have just come from the trenches?
OLIVER.
[Nodding.] Yes.
LAURA.
That muffler round your neck – does it comfort you?
OLIVER.
[Nodding.] Yes.
LAURA.
It’s one I have knitted and sent out.
***
HILLGROVE.
[Rising and standing at his full height.] Rector – Mrs. Corsellis – Mr. and Mrs. Smallwood – do any of you believe in miracles? Modern miracles – miracles that may happen to you, to me, today, tomorrow; that may relieve misfortune, retrieve disaster, alter the whole current of our lives; that may heal the sick, make the lame walk, and the blind – the blind! – see! If not – if you don’t – an awakening is in store for you, for I tell you that this man and his wife have been touched by a Power which is beyond earthly power and are wonderfully, gloriously transformed.
HlLLGROVE.
Yes. [In a firm voice.] Mrs. Smallwood, your son is no longer the wretched caricature of himself they sent you back from France. When you see him, you’ll see again the straight, lissom chap who said goodbye to you at the end of his last leave; you’ll find him as handsome as ever and as full of vigour and activity.
Heinrich Mann: I am young and not familiar with warfare
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Heinrich Mann: Selections on peace and war
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Heinrich Mann
The Youth of King Henri IV
Translated by Eric Sutton
“You let the land be ravaged. Lord Admiral, I am young and not, like you, familiar with warfare. Yet surely it’s monstrous that these aliens, instead of fighting at our side, should be let loose to burn our villages and torture our peasants until they give up all they have. Your stragglers are massacred by the country folk as though they were noxious beasts, and we indeed take a viler vengeance every time on those of our own speech.”
“But not of our own creed,” replied the gaunt of Protestant. Henri set his teeth, horror-struck at the blasphemy within him that strove for utterance.
“This cannot be God’s will,” he said.
***
Henri was glad to be with his mother….He was indeed happy too, so long as he did not stop to think. But during the advance he fell sick and lay in bed in a town; then he had time to remember the horrors of the war and mark them firmly on his memory….
He did not hide his inner conflict from the Admiral.
“Lord Admiral,” he said, ” do you truly conceive that religious freedom can be enforced by treaties and decrees? You are a great commander, you have outwitted the enemy and outwitted the king of France in his own capital. Nonetheless, the provincials who we have terrorized go on speaking of the Huguenot rebels and will never let us worship in peace where we have robbed and slaughtered.”
And Coligny, the conqueror, replied:
“Prince, you are still young, and, moreover, you lay sick while we were fighting the good fight. Men soon forget, and only God will remember what we were constrained to do in His cause.”
This Henri did not believe – or indeed, so much the worse, thought he, if God, like himself saw visions of wretched men strung up over a fire until they revealed where they had hidden their money. Fearful of what he might say, he bowed and left the presence of the conqueror.
Mór Jókai: All the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Hungarian writers on war and peace
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Mór Jókai
Debts of Honor
Translated by Arthur B. Tolland
“Your father was older at the time of this event – seventeen years of age. Ever since his birth the world has been rife with discord and revolutions; all the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another. I scarce expected my only son would live to be old enough to join the army. Thither, thither, where death with a scythe in both hands was cutting down the ranks of the armed warriors; thither, where the children of weeping mothers were being trampled on by horses’ hoofs; thither, thither, where they were casting into a common grave the mangled remains of darling first-borns; only not hither, not into this awful house, into these horrible ranks of tempting spectres! Yes, I rejoiced when I knew that he was standing before the foe’s cannons; and when the news of one great conflict after another spread like a dark cloud over the country, with sorrowful tranquillity, I lay in wait for the lightning-stroke which, bursting from the cloud, should dart into my heart with the news: ‘Thy son is dead! They have slain him’…”
***
“This was the doom of God, a curse of man upon us!” continued grandmother, now no longer with terrifying voice. Besides, she spoke as calmly as if she were merely reciting to us the history of some strange family. “Your great-grandfather. Job Áronffy, he who lies in the first niche, bequeathed this terrible inheritance to his heirs; and it was a brother’s hand that hurled this curse at his head. Oh, this is an unhappy earth on which we dwell! In other happy lands there are murderous quarrels between man and man; brothers part in wrath from one another; the ‘mine and thine,’ jealousy, pride, envy, sow tares among them. But this accursed earth of ours ever creates bloodshed; this damned soil, which we are wont to call our ‘dear homeland,’ whose pure harvest we call love of home, whose tares we call treason, while every one thinks his own harvest the pure one, his brother’s the tares, and, for that, brother slays brother! Oh! you cannot understand it yet.”
Thomas Mann: Goethe in wartime
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Selections on war
German writers on peace and war
Thomas Mann: Selections on war
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Thomas Mann
The Beloved Returns
Lotte in Weimar
Translated by H.T. Lowe-Porter
“The disaster of Jena had brought with it serious consequences, not alone at the hands of the victorious French soldiery but even before the battle from the Prussians billeted in Weimar: they broke into his [Goethe’s] garden house and smashed up doors and furniture to kindle their fires. In all that followed he certainly bore his share. They say the visitation cost him fully two thousand thaler, not to mention twelve casks of wine; and the marauders molested him even in his sleeping-chamber….”
***
“It was the worst time of the billeting. Even the beautiful house, though we had hoped it would be spared, was perforce turned into a hostel. For a full week he had twenty-four persons at table every day….”
***
“Did anyone know what would come after the great man’s fall? Russian hegemony instead of French? Cossacks in Weimar? For his part, that was not quite his heart’s desire. Did they behave so much better than the French? These friends of ours would plunder and lay waste, precisely as our foes had done. They took the transport, that was hard to get, away from our soldiers, and our wounded were plundered by their own allies on the field. That was the truth, disguise it as one would with sentimental fables. The poets ruined themselves mixing in politics. They and the people were simply in a state of disgusting and indecent heat. In short, it was awful.”
***
“The wounded came in streams from beleaguered Erfurt; the maimed, the fever and dysentery patients crowded our hospitals; soon the population of the city began to sicken. In November we had five hundred typhus cases – in a population of six thousand souls. There were no doctors, they were all stricken. Johannes Falk, the writer, lost four children in one month; his hair turned white. In some houses not a soul survived. The terror, the feat of contagion, suppressed every sign of life. Twice daily the streets were fumigated with a smudge of white pitch. But the hearse and basket still plied their gruesome trade. There were many suicides, people killed themselves for fear they would starve.”
F. Marion Crawford: With Cicero, preferring most unjust peace to most just war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
F. Marion Crawford: Selections on war
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F. Marion Crawford
Saracinesca
He believed himself a practical man…not prejudiced for any policy save that of peace – preferring, indeed, with Cicero, the most unjust peace to the most just war….
The men who form the majority…have never had either the intelligence or the education to understand that democracy is the ultimate form of government: instead of forming themselves into a federation, they have divided themselves into hostile factions, calling themselves nations, and seeking every occasion for destroying and plundering each other.
In Germany, the aristocratic body takes a certain uniform hue, so to speak, from the army, in which it plays so important a part, and the patriarchal system is broken up by the long absences from the ancestral home of the soldier-sons.
…when in Italy the hand of every house was against its neighbour, and the struggles of Guelph and Ghibelline were but an excuse for the prosecution of private feuds, England was engaged in great wars which enlisted vast bodies of men under a common standard for a common principle. Whether the principle involved chanced to be that of English domination in France, or whether men flocked to the standards of the White Rose of York or the Red Rose of Lancaster….
William Watson: Ground ‘neath iron war, the golden thought survives
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
William Watson: Curse my country for its military victory
William Watson: Dream of perfect peace
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William Watson
The Yellow Pansy
Winter had swooped, a lean and hungry hawk;
It seemed an age since summer was entombed;
Yet in our garden, on its frozen stalk,
A yellow pansy bloomed.
‘Twas Nature saying by trope and metaphor:
“Behold, when empire against empire strives,
Though all else perish, ground ‘neath iron war,
The golden thought survives.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Selections on war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Selections on war
Henryk Sienkiewicz: The approach of war
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Famine, the brother of war
Henryk Sienkiewicz: I thought that war was terrible, but I did not think it was so terrible
Henryk Sienkiewicz: They had lost all human feelings, and grown wild, like the beasts of the forest
Stratis Myrivilis: War’s human flotsam
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Stratis Myrivilis
The Mermaid Madonna
Translated by Abbots Rick
After the war of 1912-13, when it was reported that the Turks were going to drive the Christians out of Anatolia, Captain Lias said to the panicking villagers, “Don’t behave like that. Wherever we go, we are only sojourners. Let us be sure that our bundle is tied and ready for departure at any minute and that we have a knife to cut the mooring quickly.”
***
The refugees disembarked pell-mell….
The corpses were rigid and were taken off in old army blankets. There was no weeping, just the words, “Easy now. Take it by the armpits. Throw the rope,” as if they were unloading freight. They put ashore an old man who had been blinded in both eyes. He stood on land, crossed himself, and started for the sea, holding his arms in front of him. A woman took him by the arm and pulled him back saying, “This way, you poor devil!”
The man turned back,. His eyes had been gouged out with a knife and were red, gaping sores.
There was a young mother who held in her arms a very thin little boy wrapped in a red-fringed blanket. His skinny legs dangled back and forth. His pale right arm hung over his mother’s back and his head rested motionlessly on her shoulder.
Those who ran to assist her thought he was sick. But he was dead. He had died only a short while before. The young woman held him as if he were merely ill. She refused to let his head be uncovered lest he should take cold, but she knew he was dead.
***
Here the island women who had lost sons in the war and in the prison camp renewed their grief. Around the family graves they mourned loudly for the unburied dead who had loyally remained in Anatolia.
***
The odd thing…was that for all the readiness with which they described the blessings they had left behind, it was difficult to get anything out of them about the atrocities they had survived. When they undertook to relate such things, their eyes became veiled and their tongues twisted into knots. If one asked them, for example, why such and such a person, whom everybody in Mouria knew, had not come with them, they shrugged their shoulders and said curtly, “They took him away.”
***
The village women invented a scathing name for the newcomers. They called them the “spoils of war.” This enraged the victims….
***
It is a tradition in Greece for generals to turn to politics when they have no war on their hands.
Hungarian writers on war and peace
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Hungarian writers on war and peace
Ödön von Horváth: We must prepare them to be warriors. Just that.
Mór Jókai: All the nations of the world pursued a bitter warfare one against another
Mór Jókai: Bellona is a fair woman. Rain follows all battles.
Mór Jókai: In praise of naval warriors
Mór Jókai: In the soldier’s march to glory each step is a human corpse
Mór Jókai: A trifling war somewhere
Mór Jókai: War’s patriotic pelf: a slaughtered army tells no tales
Attila József: War stirs its withering alarms, I shudder to see hatred win
Frigyes Karinthy: Lost his mind on the battlefield, thought he knew what he was fighting for
Frigyes Karinthy: Started war of self-defense by attacking neighbor
József Lengyel: Somewhere a great war was being waged
Ferenc Molnár: The first fruits of war
Ferenc Molnár: War is a rough, harsh word; it sounds like miniature thunder
Lajos Zilahy: Called, not without justice, the Third World War
Lajos Zilahy: The greatest efforts were concentrated on the greatest of human problems: how to kill.
Carlo Emilio Gaddo: Sad and atrocious tale
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Italian writers on war and militarism
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Carlo Emilio Gaddo
That Awful Mess on Via Merulana
Translated by William Weaver
Reread the sad and atrocious tale in War and Peace, book three, part two, chapter twenty-five: and understand the summary execution of the helpless Vereshchagin, thought a spy, not being one; Count Rostopchin, governor of Moscow, play-acting on the steps of his palace before the grim, waiting crowd, orders the dragoons to kill him with their sabers, there, in the crowd’s presence: on the fine old principle, by God, “qu’il leur faut une victime.” It was in the morning, ten o’clock. “At four o’clock in the afternoon Murat’s army entered Moscow.”
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For fair use only. Posted only to promote the cause of peace.
Viktor Rozov: War cripples people not just physically; it destroys a man’s inner world
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Russian writers on peace and war
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Viktor Rozov
Life Eternal
Translated by Franklin D. Reeve
ANNA…War cripples people not just physically; it destroys a man’s inner world – and maybe that’s one of the most terrible things it does. You understand how the wounded feel when they cry and groan and carry on so that they even interfere with your curing them….
***
ANTONINA You should have seen my apartment in Leningrad. What furniture! A wardrobe of bird’s-eye maple! And just think, I nailed it shut with huge nails; my china’s in there. The crystal I put in the bathtub. Do you really think they’ll steal it? And the people that met at my place that day! Noise, laughter….Toward the end of the evening we just had to take a car and off we went around town. From one end to the other! To Vasily Island, to the Petrograd side, out to the islands – everywhere! Riding around in cars on that night was a tradition. But now….How terrible this war is! It has sort of knocked me out of that life with one stroke, one blow….And you know, Vava, what the most terrible thought is? Suddenly nothing will be the way it used to. Nothing, ever!
Herman Melville: Butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all military commanders
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Herman Melville: Selections on peace and war
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Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Doubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us whalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a butchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we are surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is true. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been all Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And as for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye shall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally unknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm whale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But even granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered slippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable carrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to drink in all ladies’ plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much enhances the popular conceit of the soldier’s profession; let me assure ye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would quickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale’s vast tail, fanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!
***
I know a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty whales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of antiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.
Jo van Ammers-Küller: The Republic no longer conducts wars
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Women writers on peace and war
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Jo van Ammers-Küller
The House of Tavelinck
Translated by A.v.A. vanDuym and Edmund Gilligan
“Holland has no need of your pugnacity. The Republic no longer conducts wars. When our grandfathers were generals there was still some glory to be gained. Though Rambouts was so poor in the end that he had to pawn his medals and his swords of honor. Today we are careful to remain at peace with our enemies. On the walls of our fortresses cows are grazing and, although the States would like to build men-of-war, there’s not a single city in the Seven Provinces that is willing to give money for it.”
“But there are still other countries that wage war….”
His pleading became so passionate that his father, willy-nilly, had to take it more seriously than he intended. Angrily he shook his head.
“A stupid occupation – to shed one’s blood for a foreign country! You belong to your own country, son….”
“You must be crazy,” he blazed out. Who has inspired you with this nonsense – that it would be the right thing for the son of an Amsterdam burgomaster to become a soldier and risk his life under a foreign potentate….”
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Hatred in hearts everywhere, as if people were obeying the commands of the Devil and not of the Lord
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Nobel prize in literature recipients on peace and war
Henryk Sienkiewicz: Selections on war
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Henryk Sienkiewicz
Pan Michael: An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey (1888)
Translated by Jeremiah Curtin
Father Kaminski had been a soldier in his youthful years and a cavalier of great courage; he was now stationed at Ushytsa and was reorganizing a parish. But as the church was in ruins, and parishioners were lacking, this pastor without a flock visited Hreptyoff, and remained there whole weeks, edifying the knights with pious instruction. He listened with attention to the narrative of Pan Mushalski, and spoke to the assembly a few evenings later as follows: –
“I have always loved to hear narratives in which sad adventures find a happy ending, for from them it is evident that whomever God’s hand guides, it can free from the toils of the pursuer and lead even from the Crimea to a peaceful roof. Therefore let each one of you fix this in his mind: For the Lord there is nothing impossible, and let no one of you even in direst necessity lose trust in God’s mercy. This is the truth!
“It was praiseworthy in Pan Mushalski to love a common man with brotherly affection. The Saviour Himself gave us an example when He, though of royal blood, loved common people and made many of them apostles and helped them to promotion, so that now they have seats in the heavenly senate.
“But personal love is one thing, and general love – that of one nation to another – is something different. The love which is general, our Lord, the Redeemer, observed no less earnestly than the other. And where do we find this love? When, O man, you look through the world, there is such hatred in hearts everywhere, as if people were obeying the commands of the Devil and not of the Lord.”
“It will be hard, your grace,” said Zagloba, “to persuade us to love Turks, Tartars, or other barbarians whom the Lord God Himself must despise thoroughly.”
“I am not persuading you to that, but I maintain this: that children of the same mother should have love for one another; but what do we see? From the days of Hmelnitski, or for thirty years, no part of these regions is dried from blood.”
“But whose fault is it?”
“Whoso will confess his fault first, him will God pardon.”
“Your grace is wearing the robes of a priest to-day; but in youth you slew rebels, as we have heard, not at all worse than others.”
“I slew them, for it was my duty as a soldier to do so; that was not my sin, but this, that I hated them as a pestilence. I had private reasons which I will not mention, for those are old times and the wounds are healed now. I repent that I acted beyond my duty. I had under my command one hundred men from the squadron of Pan Nyevodovski; and going often independently with my men, I burned, slaughtered, and hanged. You, gentlemen, know what times those were. The Tartars, called in by Hmelnitski, burned and slew; we burned and slew; the Cossacks left only land and water behind them in all places, committing atrocities worse than ours and the Tartars. There is nothing more terrible than civil war! What times those were no man will ever describe; enough that we and they fought more like mad dogs than men.
“Once news was sent to our command that ruffians had besieged Pan Rushitski in his fortalice. I was sent with my troops to the rescue. I came too late; the place was level with the ground. But I fell upon the drunken peasants and cut them down notably; only a part hid in the grain. I gave command to take these alive, to hang them for an example. But where? It was easier to plan than to execute; in the whole village there was not one tree remaining; even the pear-trees standing on the boundaries between fields were cut down. I had no time to make gibbets; a forest too, as that was a steppe-land, was nowhere in view. What could I do? I took my prisoners and marched on. ‘I shall find a forked oak somewhere,’ thought I. I went a mile, two miles, – steppe and steppe; you might roll a ball over it. At last we found traces of a village; that was toward evening. I gazed around; here and there a pile of coals, and besides gray ashes, nothing more. On a small hillside there was a cross, a firm oak one, evidently not long made, for the wood was not dark yet and glittered in the twilight as if it were afire. Christ was on it, cut out of tin plate and painted in such a way that only when you came from one side and saw the thinness of the plate could you know that not a real statue was hanging there; but in front the face was as if living, somewhat pale from pain; on the head a crown of thorns; the eyes were turned upward with wonderful sadness and pity. When I saw that cross, the thought flashed into my mind, ‘There is a tree for you; there is no other,’ but straightway I was afraid. In the name of the Father and the Son! I will not hang them on the cross. But I thought that I should comfort the eyes of Christ if I gave command in His presence to kill those who had spilled so much innocent blood, and I spoke thus: ‘O dear Lord, let it seem to Thee that these men are those Jews who nailed Thee to the cross, for these are not better than those.’ Then I commanded my men to drag the prisoners one by one to the mound under the cross. There were among them old men, gray-haired peasants, and youths. The first whom they brought said, ‘By the Passion of the Lord, by that Christ, have mercy on me!’ And I said in answer, ‘Off with his head!’ A dragoon slashed and cut off his head. They brought another; the same thing happened: ‘By that Merciful Christ, have pity on me!’ And I said again, ‘Off with his head!’ the same with the third, the fourth, the fifth; there were fourteen of them, and each implored me by Christ. Twilight was ended when we finished. I gave command to place them in a circle around the foot of the cross. Fool! I thought to delight the Only Son with this spectacle. They quivered awhile yet, -one with his hands, another with his feet, again one floundered like a fish pulled out of water, but that was short; strength soon left their bodies, and they lay quiet in a circle.
“Since complete darkness had come, I determined to stay in that spot for the night, though there was nothing to make a fire. God gave a warm night, and my men lay down on horse-blankets; but I went again under the cross to repeat the usual ‘Our Father’ at the feet of Christ and commit myself to His mercy. I thought that my prayer would be the more thankfully accepted, because the day had passed in toil and in deeds of a kind that I accounted to myself as a service.
“It happens frequently to a wearied soldier to fall asleep at his evening prayers. It happened so to me. The dragoons, seeing how I was kneeling with head resting on the cross, understood that I was sunk in pious meditation, and no one wished to interrupt me; my eyes closed at once, and a wonderful dream came down to me from that cross. I do not say that I had a vision, for I was not and am not worthy of that; but sleeping soundly, I saw as if I had been awake the whole Passion of the Lord. At sight of the suffering of the Innocent Lamb the heart was crushed in me, tears dropped from my eyes, and measureless pity took hold of me. ‘O Lord,’ said I, ‘I have a handful of good men. Dost Thou wish to see what our cavalry can do? Only beckon with Thy head, and I will bear apart on sabres in one twinkle those such sons, Thy executioners.’ I had barely said this when all vanished from the eye; there remained only the cross, and on it Christ, weeping tears of blood. I embraced the foot of the holy tree then, and sobbed. How long this lasted, I know not; but afterward, when I had grown calm somewhat, I said again, ‘O Lord, O Lord! why didst Thou announce Thy holy teaching among hardened Jews? Hadst Thou come from Palestine to our Commonwealth, surely we should not have nailed Thee to the cross, but would have received Thee splendidly, given Thee all manner of gifts, and made Thee a noble for the greater increase of Thy divine glory. Why didst Thou not do this, O Lord?’
“I raise my eyes, – this was all in a dream, you remember, gentlemen, – and what do I see? Behold, our Lord looks on me severely; He frowns, and suddenly speaks in a loud voice: ‘Cheap is your nobility at this time; during war every low fellow may buy it, but no more of this! You are worthy of each other, both you and the ruffians; and each and the other of you are worse than the Jews, for you nail me here to the cross every day. Have I not enjoined love, even for enemies, and forgiveness of sins? But you tear each other’s entrails like mad beasts. Wherefore I, seeing this, suffer unendurable torment. You yourself, who wish to rescue me, and invite me to the Commonwealth, what have you done? See, corpses are lying here around my cross, and you have bespattered the foot of it with blood; and still there were among them innocent persons, – young boys, or blinded men, who, having care from no one, followed others like foolish sheep. Had you mercy on them; did you judge them before death? No! You gave command to slay them all for my sake, and still thought that you were giving comfort to me. In truth, it is one thing to punish and reprove as a father punishes a son, or as an elder brother reproves a younger brother, and another to seek revenge without judgment, without measure, in punishing and without recognizing cruelty. It has gone so far in this land that wolves are more merciful than men; that the grass is sweating bloody dew; that the winds do not blow, but howl; that the rivers flow in tears, and people stretch forth their hands to death, saying, ”Oh, our refuge!”
“‘O Lord,’ cried I, ‘are they better than we? Who has committed the greatest cruelty? Who brought in the Pagan?’
“‘Love them while chastising,’ said the Lord, ‘and then the beam will fall from their eyes, hardness will leave their hearts, and my mercy will be upon you. Otherwise the onrush of Tartars will come, and they will lay bonds upon you and upon them, and you will be forced to serve the enemy in suffering, in contempt, in tears, till the day in which you love one another. But if you exceed the measure in hatred, then there will not be mercy for one or the other, and the Pagan will possess this land for the ages of ages.’
“I grew terrified hearing such commands, and long I was unable to speak till, throwing myself on my face, I asked, ‘O Lord, what have I to do to wash away my sins?’ To this the Lord said, ‘Go, repeat my words; proclaim love.’ After that my dream ended.
“As night in summer is short, I woke up about dawn, all covered with dew. I looked; the heads were lying in a circle about the cross, but already they were blue. A wonderful thing, – yesterday that sight delighted me; to-day terror took hold of me, especially at sight of one youth, perhaps seventeen years of age, who was exceedingly beautiful. I ordered the soldiers to bury the bodies decently under that cross; from that day forth I was not the same man.
“At first I thought to myself, the dream is an illusion; but still it was thrust into my memory, and, as it were, took possession of my whole existence. I did not dare to suppose that the Lord Himself talked with me, for, as I have said, I did not feel myself worthy of that; but it might be that conscience, hidden in my soul in time of war, like a Tartar in the grass, spoke up suddenly, announcing God’s will. I went to confession; the priest confirmed that supposition. ‘It is,’ said he, ‘the evident will and forewarning of God; obey, or it will be ill with thee.’
“Thenceforth I began to proclaim love. But the officers laughed at me to my eyes. ‘What!’ said they, ‘is this a priest to give us instruction? Is it little insult that these dog brothers have worked upon God? Are the churches that they have burned few in number; are the crosses that they have insulted not many? Are we to love them for this?’ In one word, no one would listen to me.
“After Berestechko I put on these priestly robes so as to announce with greater weight the word and the will of God. For more than twenty years I have done this without rest. God is merciful; He will not punish me, because thus far my voice is a voice crying in the wilderness.
“Gracious gentlemen, love your enemies, punish them as a father, reprimand them as an elder brother, otherwise woe to them, but woe to you also, woe to the whole Commonwealth!
“Look around; what is the result of this war and the animosity of brother against brother? This land has become a desert; I have graves in Ushytsa instead of parishioners; churches, towns, and villages are in ruins; the Pagan power is rising and growing over us like a sea, which is ready to swallow even thee, O rock of Kamenyets.”
Jewish writers on peace and war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jewish writers on peace and war
Mark Aldanov: War was the only subject she avoided
Sholom Aleichem: War, I tell you, is a worldwide massacre
Yehuda Amichai: Knowledge of peace passes from country to country, like children’s games
Sholem Asch: Selections on war
Sholem Asch: All I want is to be allowed to go about my work in peace
Sholem Asch: Culture founded on egotism, ambition leads to war
Sholem Asch: He was still a child of the War
Sholem Asch: War-weariness showed itself, and the cry for Peace grew louder
Sholem Asch: The whole world thirsted for peace
Sholem Asch: You must fight war first of all in yourself
Berthold Auerbach: Practicing for mutual manslaughter
Julien Benda: The God of war and the God of peace
Julien Benda: Military mysticism
Walter Benjamin: Self-alienated mankind experiences its own destruction as aesthetic pleasure
Henri Bergson and Henry Bordeaux: Has humanity progressed only to destroy itself?
Georg Brandes: Selections on war
Georg Brandes: An Appeal Against Wholesale Murder
Georg Brandes: War, uninterrupted series of horrors, atrocities, and slaughter
Georg Brandes: The World at War
Georg Brandes: The Praise of War
Georg Brandes: Only officers and ammunition-makers wish war
Georg Brandes: Two million men held in readiness to exterminate each other
Georg Brandes: Wars waged by governments fronting for financial oligarchies
Georg Brandes: Abrupt about-face, the glorification of war
Georg Brandes: Giants of bloodshed; military staffs foster war
Georg Brandes: The future will look on war as the present looks on witchcraft, the Inquisition
Georg Brandes: War not fight for ideals but fight for concessions
James Darmesteter: War and prophecy
Maurits Dekker: Soldiers were robbers, pirates on land
Alfred Döblin: Selections on war
Alfred Döblin: Cry of war – raging death rattle, triumphant howl of the unredeemed creature
Alfred Döblin: It was better in the cemeteries
Alfred Döblin: The law and the police are at the service of the war state and its slavery
Alfred Döblin: Military dragon snaking its way through cities and villages
Alfred Döblin: The old grim cry for war
Alfred Döblin: A perfect metaphor for our masters of war
Alfred Döblin: War is not ineluctable fate
Alfred Döblin: We march to war, Death folds his cloak singing: Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.
Maurice Druon: A contempt for all things military
Maurice Druon: The dual prerogatives of minting coins and waging wars
Maurice Druon: Why I exhort you not to threaten each other with your armaments
Georg Ebers: Each one must bring a victim to the war
Georg Ebers: I tremble at the word, the mere word, war
Georg Ebers: Reign of war and reign of peace
Georg Ebers: War is a perversion of nature
Eleanor Farjeon: Now that you too join the vanishing armies
Lion Feuchtwanger: Selections on war
Lion Feuchtwanger: The demand for perpetual peace must be raised again and again
Lion Feuchtwanger: The future national state: A military power beyond conception
Lion Feuchtwanger: The privilege, the courage of fighting for peace
Lion Feuchtwanger: Service at the front gave him a burning hatred for militarism
Lion Feuchtwanger: There is no greater crime than an unnecessary war
Lion Feuchtwanger: War to make the world safe for democracy
Hans Habe: Hiroshima-born realization of man’s destructibility by man
Hans Habe: John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered
Charles Yale Harrison: Selections on war
Charles Yale Harrison: Bombardment, maniacal congealed hatred
Charles Yale Harrison: This is called an artillery duel
Charles Yale Harrison: War and really murdering someone
Charles Yale Harrison: War’s snarling, savage beasts
Charles Yale Harrison: War’s whispered reminder, you must come back to my howling madness
Charles Yale Harrison: We have learned who our enemies are
Stefan Heym: Sure it’s a vicious circle, it’s war
Stefan Heym: The whole scene was immersed in the silence of absolute death
Stefan Heym: The world market…making new wars
Paul Heyse: Abandoning a career that makes man act against his convictions
Josephus: Admonition against war
Frigyes Karinthy: Lost his mind on the battlefield, thought he knew what he was fighting for
Frigyes Karinthy: Started war of self-defense by attacking neighbor
Veniamin Kaverin: A dream of war
Joseph Kessel: In my family, war is in the blood…the blood of others
Joseph Kessel: The monstrous ululation of an air-raid siren
Joseph Kessel: War’s ultimate fratricide, killed for not killing
Karl Kraus: Aphorisms and obloquies on war
Karl Kraus: This is world war. This is my manifesto to mankind.
Karl Kraus: The evolution of humanitarian bombing
Karl Kraus: The Last Days of Mankind
Karl Kraus: War renders unto Caesar that which is God’s
Karl Kraus: In war, business is business
Karl Kraus: Wire dispatches are instruments of war
Karl Kraus: The vampire generation; prayer in wartime
József Lengyel: Somewhere a great war was being waged
Emil Ludwig: Dialogue on “humanitarian war”
Albert Maltz: A children’s wartime bestiary
Albert Maltz: Conquering the world but losing your son
Albert Maltz: “Ten thousand dead today. That’s what the war means.”
Klaus Mann: The whole country was transformed into an armed camp
André Maurois: Selections on war and peace
André Maurois: Drilling in jest, dying in earnest
André Maurois: The killing machine started up with pitiless smoothness
André Maurois: Was it possible that such sweetness could serve as the prelude to such horror?
André Maurois: The worst of compromises is better than the best of wars
Albert Memmi: So the war had caught up with us, a celebration in honor of death
Ferenc Molnár: The first fruits of war
Ferenc Molnár: War is a rough, harsh word; it sounds like miniature thunder
Alberto Moravia: Selections on war
Alberto Moravia: “Ah well, war is war, you know”
Alberto Moravia: Even in uniform and with a chest covered with medals, always a thief and a murderer
Alberto Moravia: That is what war is like, the war is everywhere
Alberto Moravia: Torn colored posters inciting people to war
Alberto Moravia: War destroys all things seen and unseen
Alberto Moravia: War survives in our souls long after it is over
George Jean Nathan: Clarence Darrow on the spurious and futile heroism of war
Robert Nathan: Harder to make peace than to make war
Alfred Neumann: Selections on war
Alfred Neumann: Debunking the glory of twenty murderous years, the greatest mass-murderer in history
Alfred Neumann: Empire destroys peace, converts liberalism into harvest of blood
Alfred Neumann: European hegemony emerges from piled-up corpses, out of recent graves
Alfred Neumann: Four thousand miles of fratricidal murder
Alfred Neumann: Modern war, the murderous happiness of the greatest number
Alfred Neumann: The morals and manners of the War God
Alfred Neumann: Sacred recalcitrance toward the black hatred of war
Alfred Neumann: The stench of burning flesh. That happens sometimes.
Alfred Neumann: Ten million lives for one man’s glory; the emperor changes his hat
Alfred Neumann: Twilight of a conqueror
Alfred Neumann: The ultima ratio of all dictatorships: war
Alfred Neumann: War and the stock market
Alfred Neumann: War, the Great Incendiary, the everlasting prototype of annihilation
Alfred Neumann: War is not ambiguous after all, but a horribly intelligent affair
Alfred Neumann: The War Minister
Alfred Neumann: War nights were never silent
Alfred Neumann: War: Sad, hate-filled, hopeless and God-forsaken
Alfred Neumann: War’s arena, a monstrous distortion, a blasphemous coupling of life and death
E. Philips Oppenheim: Black tragedy leaned over the land
Amos Oz: “Best of all, write for the peace”
Philo: “Ah, my friends, how should you not hate war and love peace?”
Philo: Casting off the warlike spirit in its completeness
Philo: “Nourished” for war and all its attendant evils
Harold Pinter: Art, Truth and Politics
Vladimir Pozner: Mars and Ceres
Marcel Proust: Every day war is declared anew
Elmer Rice: The expediency of choosing the right side in a war
Isaac Rosenberg: Break of Day in the Trenches
Isaac Rosenberg: Dead Man’s Dump
Isaac Rosenberg: O! ancient crimson curse! On receiving news of the war
Isaac Rosenberg: Soldier: Twentieth Century
Joseph Roth: Black and red, death fluttered over them
Joseph Roth: His son was dead. His world had ended.
Siegfried Sassoon: Selections on war
Siegfried Sassoon: Arms and the Man
Siegfried Sassoon: At the Cenotaph
Siegfried Sassoon: “The bullet and the bayonet are brother and sister”
Siegfried Sassoon: Creatures whose faces knew nothing of War’s demented language
Siegfried Sassoon: The foul beast of war that bludgeons life
Siegfried Sassoon: Gloom and disaster of the thing called Armageddon
Siegfried Sassoon: In war-time the word patriotism means suppression of truth
Siegfried Sassoon: Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace
Siegfried Sassoon: No doubt he loathed the war and longed for peace
Siegfried Sassoon: Our deeds with lies were lauded, our bones with wrongs rewarded
Siegfried Sassoon: Repression of War Experience
Siegfried Sassoon: To Any Dead Officer
Siegfried Sassoon: The Tombstone-Maker
Siegfried Sassoon: The unheroic dead who fed the guns, those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones
Siegfried Sassoon: War, remorse and reconciliation
Siegfried Sassoon: We left our holes and looked above the wreckage of the earth
Arthur Schnitzler: Cannot praise war in general and oppose individual wars
Arthur Schnitzler: Remold the structure of government so that war becomes impossible
Arthur Schnitzler: War, making fathers pay wages to their sons whom we sent to their deaths
Anna Seghers: War enthusiasm, brewed from equal parts of age-old memories and total oblivion
Stephen Spender: Selections on war
Stephen Spender: Lecture on Hell: battle against totalitarian war
Stephen Spender: Ultima Ratio Regum
Stephen Spender: The Woolfs in the 1930s: War the inevitable result of an arms race.
Baruch Spinoza: Selections on war and peace
Baruch Spinoza: Fleeing peace for the despotic discipline of war
Baruch Spinoza: Men shouldn’t choose slavery in time of peace for better fortune in war
Baruch Spinoza: Peace is not mere absence of war
Baruch Spinoza: Tyrants and war for its own sake
Baruch Spinzoa: War corrupts civil society
G. B. Stern: Conventions of war? War itself is the outrage.
Ernst Toller: Corpses In The Woods
Yuri Trifonov: Our world – the world of peace!
Kurt Tucholsky: The White Spots
Kurt Tucholsky: Murder in disguise
Louis Untermeyer: Daybreak after war
Jakob Wassermann: Was there ever since the world began a just cause for war?
Franz Werfel: Selections on war
Franz Werfel: Advent of air war and apocalyptic visions
Franz Werfel: Cities disintegrated within seconds in the Last War
Franz Werfel: How describe in a few words a world war?
Franz Werfel: Leaders’ fear of their people drives them to war
Franz Werfel: To a Lark in War-Time
Franz Werfel: Twenty thousand well-preserved human skulls of the Last War
Franz Werfel: Waging currish, cowardly war to plunder the poor
Franz Werfel: War behind and in front, outside and inside
Franz Werfel: War is the cause and not the result of all conflicts
Nathanael West: Selections on war
Nathanael West: Every defeat is a victory in a war of attrition
Nathanael West: The noble motives, the noble methods of war
Nathanael West: Not their fault, they thought they had bombed a hospital
Nathanael West: One live recruit is better than a dozen dead veterans
Nathanael West: They haven’t the proper military slant
Leonid Zhukhovitsky: May the book prove more powerful than the bomb
Arnold Zweig: Selections on war
Arnold Zweig: Conducting the business of murder with embittered reluctance
Arnold Zweig: Education Before Verdun
Arnold Zweig: The final trump in the struggle for world markets: the Gun
Arnold Zweig: From the joy of the slayer to being dimly aware of the man on the other side
Arnold Zweig: In the war you’ve lost all the personality you’ve ever had
Arnold Zweig: Keep the war going to the last drop of – other – people’s blood
Arnold Zweig: The meaning, or rather the meaninglessness, of war
Arnold Zweig: Mere existence of armies imposes upon mankind the mentality of the Stone Age
Arnold Zweig: Military strips nation of all that is worthy of defense
Arnold Zweig: Never again! On reading Barbusse
Arnold Zweig: No joy to be born into world of war
Arnold Zweig: Of course, one had to shoot at crowds of civilians, men, women and children
Arnold Zweig: Only the wrong people are killed in a war
Arnold Zweig: The plague has always played a part in war
Arnold Zweig: Pro-war clerks and clerics are Herod’s mercenaries
Arnold Zweig: Reason is the highest patriotism and militarism is evil its very essence
Arnold Zweig: They won no more ground than they could cover with their corpses
Arnold Zweig: War a deliberate act, not an unavoidable natural catastrophe
Arnold Zweig: War, a gigantic undertaking on the part of the destruction industry
Arnold Zweig: War of all against all, jaded multitudes of death
Arnold Zweig: War transforms rescue parties into murder parties
Arnold Zweig: War was in the world, and war prevailed
Arnold Zweig: War’s brutality, folly and tyranny practiced even on its own
Arnold Zweig: War’s communion, hideous multiplication of human disasters
Arnold Zweig: War’s hecatomb from the air, on land and at sea
Stefan Zweig: Selections on peace and war
Stefan Zweig: The army of the spirit, not the army of force
Stefan Zweig: The bloody cloud-bank of war will give way to a new dawn
Stefan Zweig: The fear of opposing military hysteria
Stefan Zweig: The fruits of peace, the drive toward war
Stefan Zweig: “How much rottenness there is in war”
Stefan Zweig: I would never have believed such a crime on the part of humanity possible
Stefan Zweig: Idea of human brotherhood buried by the grave-diggers of war
Stefan Zweig: The idealism which sees beyond blood-drenched battlefields
Stefan Zweig: Opposition to war, a higher heroism still
Stefan Zweig: Origin of the Nobel Peace Prize
Stefan Zweig: Propaganda is as much war matériel as arms and planes
Stefan Zweig: Romain Rolland and the campaign against hatred
Stefan Zweig: A single conscience defies the madness of war
Stefan Zweig: Stendhal, in war but not of it
Stefan Zweig: War, the ultimate betrayal of the intellectuals
Stefan Zweig: The whole world of feeling, the whole world of thought, became militarized
Ferenc Molnár: War is a rough, harsh word; it sounds like miniature thunder
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Hungarian writers on war and peace
Ferenc Molnár: The first fruits of war
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Ferenc Molnár
The Captain of St. Margaret’s
Translated by Barrows Mussey
“There’s a heavy load on my heart, on my lungs,” said the newspaperman.
“Low air pressure,” said Pharmaco.
“No, Serbia,” said the newspaperman, flinging himself on the bed. The bells came from across the Danube. The wind howled, and a darkness like night came down upon us. The rain was already drumming somewhere on a tin roof. There was a terrific crash high up in the heavens. The twelve trees leaned over sideways. From somewhere beyond the building the storm came rushing out, laying them low. There was the tinkle of broken windowpanes. Curtains of water flapped in the air. A woman gave a scream of fright. Thunder, crashing; not a sign of what we had known as rain – nothing but great curtains of water, everywhere.
At six o’clock we walked across the battered island. The newspaperman had been urgently summoned to the press department of the Prime Minister, Count Tisza, for half past ten that night; there was to be important news for the press. The editor-in-chief nervously smoked one cigarette after another. He paced his room in silence. We stood in a corner, like frightened children.
What was all this today? The Last Judgment? Uprooted trees, lightning, thunder, hurricane, tolling bells, sirens, urgent newspaper conferences at night….
A fellow worker whispered in my ear, “We’re marching on Serbia.” In another corner I caught a scrap: “The Prime Minister has called the city editors in to see him tonight.”
We went to a café. All the telephone booths were occupied. Impatient people stood in line outside the booths.
At eleven-thirty a large car stopped outside the café. Everyone jumped up from the tables. A man came in, whispered something to somebody at a table, and in an instant the place was empty. The big car sped away; twelve people were standing, sitting, or clinging aboard. For the first time I heard the word: “Haboru.” In Hungarian the word haboru, meaning war, is a rough, harsh word; it sounds like miniature thunder. Broadside sheets, printed in haste, lay scattered and trampled in the street.
F. Marion Crawford: Selections on war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
F. Marion Crawford: Selections on war
F. Marion Crawford: Find a priest for those I have killed
F. Marion Crawford: Military empires, war and the descent of man into ape
F. Marion Crawford: The real issue is between civilization and barbarism, between peace and war
F. Marion Crawford: When everyone understands war it will stop by universal consent
F. Marion Crawford: With Cicero, preferring most unjust peace to most just war
Ferenc Molnár: The first fruits of war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Hungarian writers on war and peace
Ferenc Molnár: War is a rough, harsh word; it sounds like miniature thunder
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Ferenc Molnár
The Captain of St. Margaret’s
Translated by Barrows Mussey
I consoled myself with the reflection that it was not enough to be kind, but you also had to have luck. And afterward I saw an incident confirming this theory of mine. It happened in the autumn of 1914, during the first month of the World War. War wounded were arriving in Budapest for the first time, on a long railroad train. A great crowd was standing around the station, gaping as the grisly spectacle to which in the course of years they became so accustomed – bleeding men, handled by the hundreds like railroad freight. This particular load were all Russian prisoners of war. When we newspapermen arrived, their stretchers were already unloaded side by side in the square before the station. The poor fellows were moaning loudly. The doctors went to them by torchlight, and we followed the doctors. K, a reporter, was the one most upset. A really kind and tenderhearted man, he turned pale at the sight, and looked upon this bloodstained misery, still new at the time, with deep pity. Her stopped beside a gigantic black-bearded Russian, who was wailing the loudest of any. Next to him stood the Hungarian doctor, who spoke some sort of broken Russian, and was able to make the soldier understand him.
My friend K inquired, “What’s this fellow bellowing about?”
“He says,” said the doctor, that at the front there was a rumor going around that the Hungarians execute all prisoners of war. Now he’s bawling because he’s afraid of that.”
My friend K was honestly indignant. “Unheard of!” he cried. “Shameful lying propaganda! We must reassure this poor man at once. Let’s show him our love and sympathy.”
So staying, he stepped over to the Russian, smiled tenderly at him, and began to pat him kindly on the shoulder. The Russian replied to this amiability with a frightful roar. That shoulder was where the bullet had lodged.
As I say, it is not enough to be kind: you need luck as well.
For peace, against war: literary selections 