Jules Lemaître: With the millions that armies cost….

====

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

French writers on war and peace

====

Jules Lemaître
The Kings
Translated by Ernest Tristan and G.F. Monkshood

…this old world is too weighed down with memories, too involved in traditions of violence, authority and useless legislation. It bends beneath exorbitant charges, and the waste of human effort is excessive. Europe maintains ten million soldiers. The amount of work and intelligence expended for the organization and perfecting of real armies is incalculable. With the millions her armies cost her, Europe could remodel her industrial material, and redouble her means of communication.

***

In vague terms he was accused of weakness and, by some, of cowardice. Wearers of uniforms murmured: “We shall see!” as they dreamt of future disasters to the scandalous country where efforts had the effrontery to take place so peacefully.

***

How he had cried when at the age of eight he was first dressed in the uniform of an officer of the Guard! With an obstinacy of which he could not have given the reason, he resisted in tears, as if he foresaw that this first uniform was an enlistment and for life.