Thomas Carlyle: Inept government’s sole achievement, getting together men to kill other men

====

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

British writers on peace and war

Thomas Carlyle: Selections on war

====

Thomas Carlyle
From Past and Present

Who can despair of Governments that passes a Soldiers’ Guardhouse, or meets a redcoated man on the streets! That a body of men could be got together to kill other men when you bade them: this, a priori, does it not seem one of the impossiblest things? Yet look, behold it: in the stolidest of Donothing Governments, that impossibility is a thing done. See it there, with buff-belts, red coats on its back; walking sentry at guardhouses, brushing white breeches in barracks; an indisputable palpable fact. Out of grey Antiquity, amid all finance-difficulties, scaccarium-tallies, ship-monies, coat- and-conduct monies, and vicissitudes of Chance and Time, there, down to the present blessed hour, it is.