Archive
Padraic Fiacc: Der Bomber Poet
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Irish writers on peace and war
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Padraic Fiacc
Der Bomber Poet
Spring Song 1941
Today is my birth
-day. I am seventeen.
My home town
Has just bin
Blown up:
Dead feet in dead faces,
Corpses still alight,
Students helping kids
And old people out of
Still burning houses.
I have nothing to write
Poems about.
This is my twentieth-century
Night-life.
Thomas McGrath: Homecoming
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Thomas McGrath: All the Dead Soldiers
Thomas McGrath: Senators mine our lives for another war
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Thomas McGrath
Homecoming (1946)
After the cries of gulls and the fogbound island;
After the last accident, the last suicide, the last alert;
After we had broken the ties of separation;
After the ship, projection of desire, and the homeward passage;
When the country opened up like a child’s picture book,
(The hills were colored by our loneliness, lakes by the years of exile)
Until geography began to reassume its civilian status
And the slight smell of death was lost in the untroubled darkness;
Then we were troubled by our second coming:
The thing that takes our hand and leads us home –
Where we must clothe ourselves in the life of a stranger
Whose name we carry but can no longer know –
Is a new fear born between the doorstep and the door
Far from the night patrol, the terror, the long sweat.
And far from the dead boy who left so long ago.
Herman Melville: The whole matter of war is a thing that smites common-sense and Christianity in the face
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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
From White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War
Were the secret history of all sea-fights written, the laurels of sea-heroes would turn to ashes on their brows.
And how nationally disgraceful, in every conceivable point of view, is the IV. of our American Articles of War: “If any person in the Navy shall pusillanimously cry for quarter, he shall suffer death.” Thus, with death before his face from the foe, and death behind his back from his countrymen, the best valour of a man-of-war’s-man can never assume the merit of a noble spontaneousness. In this, as in every other case, the Articles of War hold out no reward for good conduct, but only compel the sailor to fight, like a hired murderer, for his pay, by digging his grave before his eyes if he hesitates.
But this Article IV. is open to still graver objections. Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues; the only one shared with us by the beasts of the field; the one most apt, by excess, to run into viciousness. And since Nature generally takes away with one hand to counter-balance her gifts with the other, excessive animal courage, in many cases, only finds room in a character vacated of loftier things. But in a naval officer, animal courage is exalted to the loftiest merit, and often procures him a distinguished command.
Hence, if some brainless bravo be Captain of a frigate in action, he may fight her against invincible odds, and seek to crown himself with the glory of the shambles, by permitting his hopeless crew to be butchered before his eyes, while at the same time that crew must consent to be slaughtered by the foe, under penalty of being murdered by the law. Look at the engagement between the American frigate Essex with the two English cruisers, the Phoebe and Cherub, off the Bay of Valparaiso, during the late war. It is admitted on all hands that the American Captain continued to fight his crippled ship against a greatly superior force; and when, at last, it became physically impossible that he could ever be otherwise than vanquished in the end; and when, from peculiarly unfortunate circumstances, his men merely stood up to their nearly useless batteries to be dismembered and blown to pieces by the incessant fire of the enemy’s long guns. Nor, by thus continuing to fight, did this American frigate, one iota, promote the true interests of her country. I seek not to underrate any reputation which the American Captain may have gained by this battle. He was a brave man; that no sailor will deny. But the whole world is made up of brave men. Yet I would not be at all understood as impugning his special good name. Nevertheless, it is not to be doubted, that if there were any common-sense sailors at the guns of the Essex, however valiant they may have been, those common-sense sailors must have greatly preferred to strike their flag, when they saw the day was fairly lost, than postpone that inevitable act till there were few American arms left to assist in hauling it down. Yet had these men, under these circumstances, “pusillanimously cried for quarter,” by the IV. Article of War they might have been legally hung.
According to the negro, Tawney, when the Captain of the Macedonian – seeing that the Neversink had his vessel completely in her power – gave the word to strike the flag, one of his officers, a man hated by the seamen for his tyranny, howled out the most terrific remonstrances, swearing that, for his part, he would not give up, but was for sinking the Macedonian alongside the enemy. Had he been Captain, doubtless he would have done so; thereby gaining the name of a hero in this world; – but what would they have called him in the next?
But as the whole matter of war is a thing that smites common-sense and Christianity in the face; so everything connected with it is utterly foolish, unchristian, barbarous, brutal, and savouring of the Feejee Islands, cannibalism, saltpetre, and the devil.
Thomas McGrath: Nocturne Militaire
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Thomas McGrath: All the Dead Soldiers
Thomas McGrath: Senators mine our lives for another war
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Thomas McGrath
Nocturne Militaire
Miami Beach: wartime
Imagine or remember how the road at last led us
Over bridges like prepositions, linking a drawl of islands.
The coast curved away like a question mark, listening slyly
And shyly whispered the insomniac Atlantic.
But we were uncertain of both question and answer,
Stiff and confused and bemused in expendable khaki,
Seeing with innocent eyes, the walls gleaming,
And the alabaster city of a rich man’s dream.
Borne by the offshore wind, an exciting rumor,
The legend of tropic islands, caresses the coast like hysteria,
Bringing a sound like bells rung under sea;
And brings the infected banker and others whose tenure
Is equally uncertain, equally certain: the simple
And perfect faces of women – like the moon
Whose radiance is disturbing and quite as impersonal:
Not to be warmed by and never ample.
They linger awhile in the dazzling sepulchral city,
Delicately exploring their romantic diseases,
The gangster, the capitalist and their protegés
With all their doomed retainers:
not worth your hate or pity
Now that they have to learn a new language –
And they despise the idiom like an upper class foreigner:
The verb to die baffles them. We cannot mourn,
But their doom gives stature at last, moon-dazzled,
silhouette on the flaming Atlantic.
Something is dying. But in the fierce sunlight,
On the swanky golf-course drill-field, something is being born
Whose features are anonymous as a child’s drawing
Of the lonely guard whose cry brings down the enormous night.
For the sentry moonlight is only moonlight, not
Easy to shoot by. But our devouring symbols
(Though we walk through their dying city
and their moonlight lave us like lovers)
Are the loin-sprung spotlight sun and the hangman sack-hooded
blackout.
***
Now in the east the dark, like many waters,
Moves, and uptown, in the high hotels, those few
Late guests move through their remembered places
But their steps are curiously uncertain, like a sick man’s
or a sleepwalker’s.
Down the beach, in rooms designed for their masters,
The soldiers curse and sing in the early blackout.
Their voices nameless but full of fear or courage
Ring like calm bells through their terrible electric idyll.
They are the nameless poor who have been marching
Out of the dark, to that possible moment when history
Crosses the tracks of our time. They do not see it approaching,
But their faces are strange with a wild and unnoticed mystery.
And now at the Casino the dancing is nice and no one
Notices the hunchback weeping among the bankers,
Or sees, like the eye of an angel, offshore, the burning tanker,
As the night patrol of bombers climbs through the rain and is gone.
Herman Melville: When shall the time come, how much longer will God postpone it?
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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
From White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War
When shall the time come, how much longer will God postpone it, when the clouds, which at times gather over the horizons of nations, shall not be hailed by any class of humanity, and invoked to burst as a bomb? Standing navies, as well as standing armies, serve to keep alive the spirit of war even in the meek heart of peace. In its very embers and smoulderings, they nourish that fatal fire, and half-pay officers, as the priests of Mars, yet guard the temple, though no god be there.
***
Archipelago Rio! ere Noah on old Ararat anchored his ark, there lay anchored in you all these green, rocky isles I now see. But God did not build on you, isles! those long lines of batteries; nor did our blessed Saviour stand godfather at the christening of yon frowning fortress of Santa Cruz, though named in honour of himself, the divine Prince of Peace!
Amphitheatrical Rio! in your broad expanse might be held the Resurrection and Judgment-day of the whole world’s men-of-war, represented by the flag-ships of fleets – the flag-ships of the Phoenician armed galleys of Tyre and Sidon; of King Solomon’s annual squadrons that sailed to Ophir; whence in after times, perhaps, sailed the Acapulco fleets of the Spaniards, with golden ingots for ballasting; the flag-ships of all the Greek and Persian craft that exchanged the war-hug at Salamis; of all the Roman and Egyptian galleys that, eagle-like, with blood-dripping prows, beaked each other at Actium; of all the Danish keels of the Vikings; of all the musquito craft of Abba Thule, king of the Pelaws, when he went to vanquish Artinsall; of all the Venetian, Genoese, and Papal fleets that came to the shock at Lepanto; of both horns of the crescent of the Spanish Armada; of the Portuguese squadron that, under the gallant Gama, chastised the Moors, and discovered the Moluccas; of all the Dutch navies red by Van Tromp, and sunk by Admiral Hawke; of the forty-seven French and Spanish sail-of-the-line that, for three months, essayed to batter down Gibraltar; of all Nelson’s seventy-fours that thunder-bolted off St. Vincent’s, at the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar; of all the frigate-merchantmen of the East India Company; of Perry’s war-brigs, sloops, and schooners that scattered the British armament on Lake Erie; of all the Barbary corsairs captured by Bainbridge; of the war-canoes of the Polynesian kings, Tammahammaha and Pomare – ay! one and all, with Commodore Noah for their Lord High Admiral in this abounding Bay of Rio these flag-ships might all come to anchor, and swing round in concert to the first of the flood.
Thomas McGrath: Ode for the American Dead in Asia
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Thomas McGrath: All the Dead Soldiers
Thomas McGrath: Senators mine our lives for another war
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Thomas McGrath
Ode for the American Dead in Asia
1.
God love you now, if no one else will ever,
Corpse in the paddy, or dead on a high hill
In the fine and ruinous summer of a war
You never wanted. All your false flags were
Of bravery and ignorance, like grade school maps:
Colors of countries you would never see –
Until that weekend in eternity
When, laughing, well armed, perfectly ready to kill
The world and your brother, the safe commanders sent
You into your future. Oh, dead on a hill,
Dead in a paddy, leeched and tumbled to
A tomb of footnotes. We mourn a changeling: you:
Handselled to poverty and drummed to war
By distinguished masters whom you never knew.
2.
The bee that spins his metal from the sun,
The shy mole drifting like a miner ghost
Through midnight earth – all happy creatures run
As strict as trains on rails the circuits of
Blind instinct. Happy in your summer follies,
You mined a culture that was mined for war:
The state to mold you, church to bless, and always
The elders to confirm you in your ignorance.
No scholar put your thinking cap on nor
Warned that in dead seas fishes died in schools
Before inventing legs to walk the land.
The rulers stuck a tennis racket in your hand,
An Ark against the flood. In time of change
Courage is not enough: the blind mole dies,
And you on your hill, who did not know the rules.
3.
Wet in the windy counties of the dawn
The lone crow skirls his draggled passage home:
And God (whose sparrows fall aslant his gaze,
Like grace or confetti) blinks and he is gone,
And you are gone. Your scarecrow valor grows
And rusts like early lilac while the rose
Blooms in Dakota and the stock exchange
Flowers. Roses, rents, all things conspire
To crown your death with wreaths of living fire.
And the public mourners come: the politic tear
Is cast in the Forum. But, in another year,
We will mourn you, whose fossil courage fills
The limestone histories: brave: ignorant: amazed:
Dead in the rice paddies, dead on the nameless hills.
Herman Melville: Gaining glory by a distinguished slaughtering of their fellow-men
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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
From White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War
And why should they desire a war? Would their wages be raised? Not a cent. The prize-money, though, ought to have been an inducement. But of all the “rewards of virtue,” prize-money is the most uncertain; and this the man-of-war’s-man knows. What, then, has he to expect from war? What but harder work, and harder usage than in peace; a wooden leg or arm; mortal wounds, and death? Enough, however, that by far the majority of the common sailors of the Neversink were plainly concerned at the prospect of war, and were plainly averse to it.
But with the officers of the quarter-deck it was just the reverse. None of them, to be sure, in my hearing at least, verbally expressed their gratification; but it was unavoidably betrayed by the increased cheerfulness of their demeanour toward each other, their frequent fraternal conferences, and their unwonted animation for several clays in issuing their orders. The voice of Mad Jack -always a belfry to hear – now resounded like that famous bell of England, Great Tom of Oxford. As for Selvagee, he wore his sword with a jaunty air, and his servant daily polished the blade.
But why this contrast between the forecastle and the quarter-deck, between the man-of-war’s-man and his officer? Because, though war would equally jeopardize the lives of both, yet, while it held out to the sailor no promise of promotion, and what is called glory, these things fired the breast of his officers.
It is no pleasing task, nor a thankful one, to dive into the souls of some men; but there are occasions when, to bring up the mud from the bottom, reveals to us on what soundings we are, on what coast we adjoin.
How were these officers to gain glory? How but by a distinguished slaughtering of their fellow-men. How were they to be promoted? How but over the buried heads of killed comrades and mess-mates.
This hostile contrast between the feelings with which the common seamen and the officers of the Neversink looked forward to this more than possible war, is one of many instances that might be quoted to show the antagonism of their interests, the incurable antagonism in which they dwell. But can men, whose interests are diverse, ever hope to live together in a harmony uncoerced? Can the brotherhood of the race of mankind ever hope to prevail in a man-of-war, where one man’s bane is almost another’s blessing? By abolishing the scourge, shall we do away tyranny; that tyranny which must ever prevail, where of two essentially antagonistic classes in perpetual contact, one is immeasurably the stronger? Surely it seems all but impossible. And as the very object of a man-of-war, as its name implies, is to fight the very battles so naturally averse to the seamen; so long as a man-of-war exists, it must ever remain a picture of much that is tyrannical and repelling in human nature.
Thomas Moore: No trophies but of Love
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Thomas More: Battles result from lust for fame and glory
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Thomas Moore
How Lightly Mounts the Muse’s Wing
How lightly mounts the Muse’s wing,
Whose theme is in the skies –
Like morning larks that sweeter sing
The nearer Heaven they rise,
Tho’ love his magic lyre may tune,
Yet ah, the flowers he round it wreathes,
Were plucked beneath pale Passion’s moon,
Whose madness in their ode breathes.
How purer far the sacred lute,
Round which Devotion ties
Sweet flowers that turn to heavenly fruit,
And palm that never dies.
Tho’ War’s high-sounding harp may be
Most welcome to the hero’s ears,
Alas, his chords of victory
Are wet, all o’er, with human tears.
How far more sweet their numbers run,
Who hymn like Saints above,
No victor but the Eternal One,
No trophies but of Love!
Herman Melville: How can a religion of peace flourish in a castle of war?
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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
From White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War
The motive which prompts the introduction of chaplains into the Navy cannot but be warmly responded to by every Christian. But it does not follow, that because chaplains are to be found in men-of-war, that, under the present system, they achieve much good, or that, under any other, they ever will.
How can it be expected that the religion of peace should flourish in an oaken castle of war? How can it be expected that the clergyman, whose pulpit is a forty-two-pounder, should convert sinners to a faith that enjoins them to turn the right cheek when the left is smitten? How is it to be expected that when, according to the XLII. of the Articles of War, as they now stand unrepealed on the Statute-book, “a bounty shall be paid” (to the officers and crew) “by the United States government of $20 for each person on board any ship of an enemy which shall be sunk or destroyed by any United States ship;” and when, by a subsequent section (vii.), it is provided, among other apportionings, that the chaplain shall receive “two twentieths” of this price paid for sinking and destroying ships full of human beings? How is it to be expected that a clergyman, thus provided for, should prove efficacious in enlarging upon the criminality of Judas, who, for thirty pieces of silver, betrayed his Master?
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But besides these differences between a sham-fight at general quarters and a real cannonading, the aspect of the ship, at the beating of the retreat, would, in the latter case, be very dissimilar to the neatness and uniformity in the former.
…Our stout masts and yards might be lying about decks, like tree boughs after a tornado in a piece of woodland; our dangling ropes, cut and sundered in all directions, would be bleeding tar at every yard; and strew with jagged splinters from our wounded planks, the gun-deck might resemble a carpenter’s shop. Then, when all was over, and all hands would be piped to take down the hammocks from the exposed nettings (where they play the part of the cotton bales at New Orleans), we might find bits of broken shot, iron bolts and bullets in our blankets. And, while smeared with blood like butchers, the surgeon and his mates would be amputating arms and legs on the berth-deck, an underling of the carpenter’s gang would be new-legging and arming the broken chairs and tables in the Commodore’s cabin; while the rest of his squad would be splicing and fishing the shattered masts and yards. The scupper-holes having discharged the last rivulet of blood, the decks would be washed down; and the galley-cooks would be going fore and aft, sprinkling them with hot vinegar, to take out the shambles’ smell from the planks; which, unless some such means are employed, often create a highly offensive effluvia for weeks after a fight.
Then, upon mustering the men, and calling the quarter-bills by the light of a battle-lantern, many a wounded seaman with his arm in a sling, would answer for some poor shipmate who could never more make answer for himself:
“Tom Brown?”
“Killed, sir.”
“Jack Jewel?”
“Killed, sir.”
“Joe Hardy?”
“Killed, sir.”
And opposite all these poor fellows’ names, down would go on the quarter-bills the bloody marks of red ink – a murderer’s fluid, fitly used on these occasions.
Herman Melville: Selections on peace and war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
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Herman Melville: Selections on peace and war
Herman Melville: Characterological drawback of consorting with cannon
Herman Melville: Gaining glory by a distinguished slaughtering of their fellow-men
Herman Melville: How can a religion of peace flourish in a castle of war?
Herman Melville: In the solace of the Truce of God, the Calumet has come
Herman Melville: Minister of the Prince of Peace serving the God of War
Herman Melville: Trophies of Peace
Herman Melville: War-pits and rattraps. Soldier sold to the army as Faust sold himself to the devil.
Herman Melville: When shall the time come, how much longer will God postpone it?
Herman Melville: Characterological drawback of consorting with cannon
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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
From White-Jacket; or, The World in a Man-of-War
Quoin, the quarter-gunner, was the representative of a class on board the Neversink, altogether too remarkable to be left astern, without further notice, in the rapid wake of these chapters.
As has been seen, Quoin was full of unaccountable whimsies; he was, withal, a very cross, bitter, ill-natured, inflammable old man. So, too, were all the members of the gunner’s gang; including the two gunner’s mates, and all the quarter-gunners. Every one of them had the same dark brown complexion; all their faces looked like smoked hams. They were continually grumbling and growling about the batteries; running in and out among the guns; driving the sailors away from them; and cursing and swearing as if all their conscience had been powder-singed, and made callous, by their calling. Indeed they were a most unpleasant set of men; especially Priming, the nasal-voiced gunner’s mate, with the hare-lip; and Cylinder, his stuttering coadjutor, with the clubbed foot. But you will always observe, that the gunner’s gang of every man-of-war are invariably ill-tempered, ugly featured, and quarrelsome. Once when I visited an English line-of-battle ship, the gunner’s gang were fore and aft, polishing up the batteries, which, according to the Admiral’s fancy, had been painted white as snow. Fidgeting round the great thirty-two-pounders, and making stinging remarks at the sailors and each other, they reminded one of a swarm of black wasps, buzzing about rows of white headstones in a church-yard.
Now, there can be little doubt, that their being so much among the guns is the very thing that makes a gunner’s gang so cross and quarrelsome. Indeed, this was once proved to the satisfaction of our whole company of main-top-men. A fine top-mate of ours, a most merry and companionable fellow, chanced to be promoted to a quarter-gunner’s berth. A few days afterward, some of us main-top-men, his old comrades, went to pay him a visit, while he was going his regular rounds through the division of guns allotted to his care. But instead of greeting us with his usual heartiness, and cracking his pleasant jokes, to our amazement, he did little else but scowl; and at last, when we rallied him upon his ill-temper, he seized a long black rammer from overhead, and drove us on deck; threatening to report us, if we ever dared to be familiar with him again.
My top-mates thought that this remarkable metamorphose was the effect produced upon a weak, vain character suddenly elevated from the level of a mere seaman to the dignified position of a petty officer. But though, in similar cases, I had seen such effects produced upon some of the crew; yet, in the present instance, I knew better than that; – it was solely brought about by his consorting with with those villainous, irritable, ill-tempered cannon; more especially from his being subject to the orders of those deformed blunderbusses, Priming and Cylinder.
The truth seems to be, indeed, that all people should be very careful in selecting their callings and vocations; very careful in seeing to it, that they surround themselves by good-humoured, pleasant-looking objects; and agreeable, temper-soothing sounds. Many an angelic disposition has had its even edge turned, and hacked like a saw; and many a sweet draught of piety has soured on the heart from people’s choosing ill-natured employments, and omitting to gather round them good-natured landscapes. Gardeners are almost always pleasant, affable people to converse with; but beware of quarter-gunners, keepers of arsenals, and lonely light-house men.
***
Look at the barons of the gun-room – Lieutenants, Purser, Marine officers, Sailing-master – all of them gentlemen with stiff upper lips, and aristocratic cut noses. Why was this? Will any one deny, that from their living so long in high military life, served by a crowd of menial stewards and cot-boys, and always accustomed to command right and left; will any one deny, I say, that by reason of this, their very noses had become thin, peaked, aquiline, and aristocratically cartilaginous?
Elmer Rice: The expediency of choosing the right side in a war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
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Elmer Rice
From Imperial City
By the time the Civil War broke out he had made himself invaluable. Eakins, whose family came from Virginia, sympathized with the South and wanted to help underwrite the Confederacy, especially as he believed that the secessionists would win. But James Coleman vigorously opposed this policy and succeeded in winning the majority of the partners. At the time he arranged to finance a large number of contracts for the Federal Army. These contracts merited and, indeed, underwent considerable federal investigation, but nothing came of it. Millions flowed into the strong-boxes of the firm and the name was changed to Eakins, Coleman and Company. When Eakins died shortly thereafter without male descendants, there was no one to challenge the absolute sovereignty of James Coleman.
***
With a great effort of her will, she returned to Galahad, though she could scarcely make her voice audible. She explained that the poem was a parable that taught us to be chivalrous and selfless. There was more potency in high ideals than in force of arms, a greater conquering power in purity of heart than in brute strength. It was through devotion to what was pure and beautiful that mankind attained to even greater heights. Nobility consisted not in the heritage of blood or worldly goods, but in the dedication of the spirit to a better way of life. No evil, no snare could defeat the valor of goodness.
***
Christmas was approaching, and more and more the activities of the city centered about the celebration of the greatest of annual festivals. The great metropolis, capital of the earth’s proudest and wealthiest domain, turned its energies to paying homage to the lowly preacher of humility and godliness, Whose teachings had for nineteen hundred years, profoundly stirred the minds and hearts of men, and Whose church had conquered the mightiest empire of antiquity and shaped the course of history. The potency of that Name and of the spiritual force which It symbolized still influenced the lives of the inhabitants of this soaring city of steel, so inconceivably remote from that obscure province of Asia Minor, and so fantastically unlike. Science, art and human cunning had altered the conditions of life almost beyond recognition; but, for the most part, the basic problems of man’s relations to his fellow-man, to society and to the unknown remained unchanged.
Material riches had multiplied almost beyond belief. Man soared above the clouds and sent his words abroad upon waves of ether. He scanned the cosmos and dissected the infinitesimal. He read in the rocks the history of organic life; and his imagination charted the future. He created incredible structures and miracle-working contrivances and the humblest citizen of the modern empire had at his command forces and powers that surpassed the legendary attributes of the Olympians.
But the evils of human society remained unconquered. War, poverty, vice, injustice still ravaged humanity. Reason had invented a thousand remedies for these ills; but, unhappily, the fertile mind was matched with an impotent spirit. Man the builder, man the creator, had conquered the external world, but he had not yet learned to conquer himself. His boundless imaginings were linked to a perishable organism, which clutched blindly and fiercely to security or the shadow of security. The ills of mankind were no more than the collective expression of a multitude of individuals, whose conduct was largely motivated by cruelty, avarice, lust and jealously. Basically, every man was still ruled by fear: fear of his neighbor, fear of the future, fear of the unknown – most of all, fear of himself.
Machado de Assis: Let the reader decide between the soldier and the priest
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Latin American writers on war and peace
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Machado de Assis
From The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
Translated by William L. Grossman
As uncle of mine, a canon receiving a full prebend, used to say that the love of temporal glory was the perdition of the soul, which should covet only eternal glory. To which to my other uncle, an officer in one of the old infantry regiments, would reply that the love of glory was the most truly human thing about a man and, consequently, his most genuine characteristic.
Let the reader decide between the soldier and the canon….
Joseph Conrad: Humanity’s inhuman toleration of war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Joseph Conrad: Selections on war
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Joseph Conrad
From War and Autocracy (1905)
An over-worked horse falling in front of our windows, a man writhing under a cart-wheel in the streets awaken more genuine emotion, more horror, pity, and indignation than the stream of reports, appalling in their monotony, of tens of thousands of decaying bodies tainting the air of the Manchurian plains, of other tens of thousands of maimed bodies groaning in ditches, crawling on the frozen ground, filling the field hospitals; of the hundreds of thousands of survivors no less pathetic and even more tragic in being left alive by fate to the wretched exhaustion of their pitiful toil.
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From Poland Revisited – 1915
Indeed, the haughty passenger might very well have been, most probably was, an officer of the Landwehr; and perhaps those two fine active boys are orphans by now. Thus things acquire significance by the lapse of time. A citizen, a father, a warrior, a mote in the dust-cloud of six million fighting particles, an unconsidered trifle for the jaws of war, his humanity was not consciously impressed on my mind at the time.
***
From Confidence – 1919
It is not the first time in history that excited voices have been heard urging the warrior still panting from the fray to fling his tried weapons on the altar of peace, for they would be needed no more! And such voices have been, in undying hope or extreme weariness, listened to sometimes. But not for long.
Joseph Conrad: Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Joseph Conrad: Selections on war
====
Joseph Conrad
From Autocracy and War (1905)
Never before in history has the right of war been more fully admitted in the rounded periods of public speeches, in books, in public prints, in all the public works of peace, culminating in the establishment of the Hague Tribunal – that solemnly official recognition of the Earth as a House of Strife. To him whose indignation is qualified by a measure of hope and affection, the efforts of mankind to work its own salvation present a sight of alarming comicality. After clinging for ages to the steps of the heavenly throne, they are now, without much modifying their attitude, trying with touching ingenuity to steal one by one the thunderbolts of their Jupiter. They have removed war from the list of Heaven-sent visitations that could only be prayed against; they have erased its name from the supplication against the wrath of war, pestilence, and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the Roman Catholic Church; they have dragged the scourge down from the skies and have made it into a calm and regulated institution. At first sight the change does not seem for the better. Jove’s thunderbolt looks a most dangerous plaything in the hands of the people. But a solemnly established institution begins to grow old at once in the discussion, abuse, worship, and execration of men. It grows obsolete, odious, and intolerable; it stands fatally condemned to an unhonoured old age.
Therein lies the best hope of advanced thought, and the best way to help its prospects is to provide in the fullest, frankest way for the conditions of the present day. War is one of its conditions; it is its principal condition. It lies at the heart of every question agitating the fears and hopes of a humanity divided against itself. The succeeding ages have changed nothing except the watchwords of the armies. The intellectual stage of mankind being as yet in its infancy, and States, like most individuals, having but a feeble and imperfect consciousness of the worth and force of the inner life, the need of making their existence manifest to themselves is determined in the direction of physical activity….
There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them is one and the same – the magazine rifle of the latest pattern. In preparation for or against that form of action the States of Europe are spending now such moments of uneasy leisure as they can snatch from the labours of factory and counting-house.
Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men, and reigned with less disputed sway in their minds. It has harnessed science to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few respectable manufacturers, scattered doles of food and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled workmen, devoured the first youth of whole generations, and reaped its harvest of countless corpses. It has perverted the intelligence of men, women, and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings, Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of fidelity to peace. Indeed, war has made peace altogether its own, it has modelled it on its own image: a martial, overbearing, war-lord sort of peace, with a mailed fist, and turned-up moustaches, ringing with the din of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions to glorious feats of arms; it has made peace so magnificent as to be almost as expensive to keep up as itself. It has sent out apostles of its own, who at one time went about (mostly in newspapers) preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity of its sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt blood, to the poor in mind – whose name is legion.
***
Civilisation has done its little best by our sensibilities for whose growth it is responsible. It has managed to remove the sights and sounds of battlefields away from our doorsteps. But it cannot be expected to achieve the feat always and under every variety of circumstance. Some day it must fail, and we shall have then a wealth of appallingly unpleasant sensations brought home to us with painful intimacy.
Herman Melville: Minister of the Prince of Peace serving the God of War
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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
====
Herman Melville
From Billy Budd, Sailor
The Chaplain coming to see him and finding him thus, and perceiving no sign that he was conscious of his presence, attentively regarded him for a space, then slipping aside, withdrew for the time, peradventure feeling that even he the minister of Christ, though receiving his stipend from Mars, had no consolation to proffer which could result in a peace transcending that which he beheld….
Bluntly put, a chaplain is the minister of the Prince of Peace serving in the host of the God of War – Mars. As such, he is as incongruous as a musket would be on the altar at Christmas. Why then is he there? Because he indirectly subserves the purpose attested by the cannon; because too he lends the sanction of the religion of the meek to that which practically is the abrogation of everything but brute Force.
Mary Shelley: On peace and war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Women writers on peace and war
Mary Shelley: On peace and war
Mary Shelley: The fate of the world bound up with the death of a single man
Mary Shelley: I do not sympathize in their dreams of massacre and glory
Mary Shelley: I turned to the corpse-strewn earth and felt ashamed of my species
Mary Shelley: Men have slain each other by thousands, now man is a creature of price
Joseph Conrad: Democratic, commercial wars more ferocious than those of kings
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Joseph Conrad: Selections on war
====
Joseph Conrad
From Autocracy and War (1905)
The idea of a Europe united in the solidarity of her dynasties, which for a moment seemed to dawn on the horizon of the Vienna Congress through the subsiding dust of Napoleonic alarums and excursions, has been extinguished by the larger glamour of less restraining ideals. Instead of the doctrines of solidarity it was the doctrine of nationalities much more favourable to spoliations that came to the front, and since its greatest triumphs at Sadowa and Sedan there is no Europe….
The era of wars so eloquently denounced by the old Republicans as the peculiar blood guilt of dynastic ambitions is by no means over yet. They will be fought out differently, with lesser frequency, with an increased bitterness and the savage tooth-and-claw obstinacy of a struggle for existence. They will make us regret the time of dynastic ambitions, with their human absurdity moderated by prudence and even by shame, by the fear of personal responsibility and the regard paid to certain forms of conventional decency. For, if the monarchs of Europe have been derided for addressing each other as “brother” in autograph communications, that relationship was at least as effective as any form of brotherhood likely to be established between the rival nations of this continent, which, we are assured on all hands, is the heritage of democracy. In the ceremonial brotherhood of monarchs the reality of blood-ties, for what little it is worth, acted often as a drag on unscrupulous desires of glory or greed. Besides, there was always the common danger of exasperated peoples, and some respect for each other’s divine right. No leader of a democracy, without other ancestry but the sudden shout of a multitude, and debarred by the very condition of his power from even thinking of a direct heir, will have any interest in calling brother the leader of another democracy – a chief as fatherless and heirless as himself.
***
The war of 1870, brought about by the third Napoleon’s half-generous, half-selfish adoption of the principle of nationalities, was the first war characterised by a special intensity of hate, by a new note in the tune of an old song for which we may thank the Teutonic thoroughness….
***
To-day, in the fierce grapple of two nations of different race, the short era of national wars seems about to close. No war will be waged for an idea. The “noxious idle aristocracies” of yesterday fought without malice for an occupation, for the honour, for the fun of the thing. The virtuous, industrious democratic States of to-morrow may yet be reduced to fighting for a crust of dry bread, with all the hate, ferocity, and fury that must attach to the vital importance of such an issue. The dreams sanguine humanitarians raised almost to ecstasy about the year fifty of the last century by the moving sight of the Crystal Palace – crammed full with that variegated rubbish which it seems to be the bizarre fate of humanity to produce for the benefit of a few employers of labour – have vanished as quickly as they had arisen. The golden hopes of peace have in a single night turned to dead leaves in every drawer of every benevolent theorist’s writing table. A swift disenchantment overtook the incredible infatuation which could put its trust in the peaceful nature of industrial and commercial competition.
Industrialism and commercialism – wearing high-sounding names in many languages (Weltpolitik may serve for one instance) picking up coins behind the severe and disdainful figure of science whose giant strides have widened for us the horizon of the universe by some few inches – stand ready, almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as the globe of the earth has shrunk beneath our growing numbers by another ell or so. And democracy, which has elected to pin its faith to the supremacy of material interests, will have to fight their battles to the bitter end, on a mere pittance….
***
This seems the only expedient at hand for the temporary maintenance of European peace, with its alliances based on mutual distrust, preparedness for war as its ideal, and the fear of wounds, luckily stronger, so far, than the pinch of hunger, its only guarantee. The true peace of the world will be a place of refuge much less like a beleaguered fortress and more, let us hope, in the nature of an Inviolable Temple.
Joseph Conrad: From the frozen ground of battlefields a chorus of groans calls for vengeance from Heaven
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Joseph Conrad: Selections on war
====
Joseph Conrad
From Autocracy and War (1905)
An early Victorian, or perhaps a pre-Victorian, sentimentalist, looking out of an upstairs window, I believe, at a street – perhaps Fleet Street itself – full of people, is reported, by an admiring friend, to have wept for joy at seeing so much life. These arcadian tears, this facile emotion worthy of the golden age, comes to us from the past, with solemn approval, after the close of the Napoleonic wars and before the series of sanguinary surprises held in reserve by the nineteenth century for our hopeful grandfathers. We may well envy them their optimism of which this anecdote of an amiable wit and sentimentalist presents an extreme instance, but still, a true instance, and worthy of regard in the spontaneous testimony to that trust in the life of the earth, triumphant at last in the felicity of her children. Moreover, the psychology of individuals, even in the most extreme instances, reflects the general effect of the fears and hopes of its time. Wept for joy! I should think that now, after eighty years, the emotion would be of a sterner sort. One could not imagine anybody shedding tears of joy at the sight of much life in a street, unless, perhaps, he were an enthusiastic officer of a general staff or a popular politician, with a career yet to make. And hardly even that. In the case of the first tears would be unprofessional, and a stern repression of all signs of joy at the provision of so much food for powder more in accord with the rules of prudence….
***
The nineteenth century began with wars which were the issue of a corrupted revolution. It may be said that the twentieth begins with a war which is like the explosive ferment of a moral grave….
***
For a hundred years the ghost of Russian might, overshadowing with its fantastic bulk the councils of Central and Western Europe, sat upon the gravestone of autocracy, cutting off from air, from light, from all knowledge of themselves and of the world, the buried millions of Russian people. Not the most determined cockney sentimentalist could have had the heart to weep for joy at the thought of its teeming numbers! And yet they were living, they are alive yet, since, through the mist of print, we have seen their blood freezing crimson upon the snow of the squares and streets of St. Petersburg; since their generations born in the grave are yet alive enough to fill the ditches and cover the fields of Manchuria with their torn limbs; to send up from the frozen ground of battlefields a chorus of groans calling for vengeance from Heaven; to kill and retreat, or kill and advance, without intermission or rest for twenty hours, for fifty hours, for whole weeks of fatigue, hunger, cold, and murder – till their ghastly labour, worthy of a place amongst the punishments of Dante’s Inferno, passing through the stages of courage, of fury, of hopelessness, sinks into the night of crazy despair.
Mary Shelley: Men have slain each other by thousands, now man is a creature of price
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Women writers on peace and war
Mary Shelley: On peace and war
====
Mary Shelley
From The Last Man
No truly, though thinned, the race of man would continue, and the great plague would, in after years, become matter of history and wonder. Doubtless this visitation was for extent unexampled – more need that we should work hard to dispute its progress; ere this men have gone out in sport, and slain their thousands and tens of thousands; but now man had become a creature of price; the life of one of them was of more worth than the so called treasures of kings.
***
Adrian led the troops. He was full of care. It was small relief to him that our discipline should gain us success in such a conflict; while plague still hovered to equalize the conqueror and the conquered, it was not victory that he desired, but bloodless peace.
***
Delight awoke in every heart, delight and exultation; for there was peace through all the world; the temple of Universal Janus was shut, and man died not that year by the hand of man.
“Let this last but twelve months,” said Adrian; “and earth will become a Paradise. The energies of man were before directed to the destruction of his species: they now aim at its liberation and preservation. Man cannot repose, and his restless aspirations will now bring forth good instead of evil. The favoured countries of the south will throw off the iron yoke of servitude; poverty will quit us, and with that, sickness. What may not the forces, never before united, of liberty and peace achieve in this dwelling of man?”
***
In the old out-worn age, the Sovereign Pontiff was used to go in solemn pomp, and mark the renewal of the year by driving a nail in the gate of the temple of Janus. On that day I ascended St. Peter’s, and carved on its topmost stone the aera 2100, last year of the world!
My only companion was a dog, a shaggy fellow, half water and half shepherd’s dog, whom I found tending sheep in the Campagna. His master was dead, but nevertheless he continued fulfilling his duties in expectation of his return. If a sheep strayed from the rest, he forced it to return to the flock, and sedulously kept off every intruder. Riding in the Campagna I had come upon his sheep-walk, and for some time observed his repetition of lessons learned from man, now useless, though unforgotten. His delight was excessive when he saw me. He sprung up to my knees; he capered round and round, wagging his tail, with the short, quick bark of pleasure: he left his fold to follow me, and from that day has never neglected to watch by and attend on me, shewing boisterous gratitude whenever I caressed or talked to him. His pattering steps and mine alone were heard, when we entered the magnificent extent of nave and aisle of St. Peter’s. We ascended the myriad steps together, when on the summit I achieved my design, and in rough figures noted the date of the last year….
Mary Shelley: I turned to the corpse-strewn earth and felt ashamed of my species
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
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Mary Shelley: On peace and war
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Mary Shelley
From The Last Man
The last beams of the nearly sunken sun shot up from behind the far summit of Mount Athos; the sea of Marmora still glittered beneath its rays, while the Asiatic coast beyond was half hid in a haze of low cloud. Many a casque, and bayonet, and sword, fallen from unnerved arms, reflected the departing ray; they lay scattered far and near. From the east, a band of ravens, old inhabitants of the Turkish cemeteries, came sailing along towards their harvest; the sun disappeared. This hour, melancholy yet sweet, has always seemed to me the time when we are most naturally led to commune with higher powers; our mortal sternness departs, and gentle complacency invests the soul. But now, in the midst of the dying and the dead, how could a thought of heaven or a sensation of tranquillity possess one of the murderers? During the busy day, my mind had yielded itself a willing slave to the state of things presented to it by its fellow-beings; historical association, hatred of the foe, and military enthusiasm had held dominion over me. Now, I looked on the evening star, as softly and calmly it hung pendulous in the orange hues of sunset. I turned to the corse-strewn earth; and felt ashamed of my species. So perhaps were the placid skies; for they quickly veiled themselves in mist, and in this change assisted the swift disappearance of twilight usual in the south; heavy masses of cloud floated up from the south east, and red and turbid lightning shot from their dark edges; the rushing wind disturbed the garments of the dead, and was chilled as it passed over their icy forms. Darkness gathered round; the objects about me became indistinct, I descended from my station, and with difficulty guided my horse, so as to avoid the slain.
Mary Shelley: I do not sympathize in their dreams of massacre and glory
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
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Mary Shelley: On peace and war
====
Mary Shelley
From The Last Man
Raymond was to inspire them with his beneficial will, and the mechanism of society, once systematised according to faultless rules, would never again swerve into disorder. For these hopes he abandoned his long-cherished ambition of being enregistered in the annals of nations as a successful warrior; laying aside his sword, peace and its enduring glories became his aim – the title he coveted was that of the benefactor of his country.
***
“It is well,” said Adrian, “to prate of war in these pleasant shades, and with much ill-spent oil make a show of joy, because many thousand of our fellow-creatures leave with pain this sweet air and natal earth. I shall not be suspected of being averse to the Greek cause; I know and feel its necessity; it is beyond every other a good cause. I have defended it with my sword, and was willing that my spirit should be breathed out in its defence; freedom is of more worth than life, and the Greeks do well to defend their privilege unto death. But let us not deceive ourselves. The Turks are men; each fibre, each limb is as feeling as our own, and every spasm, be it mental or bodily, is as truly felt in a Turk’s heart or brain, as in a Greek’s. The last action at which I was present was the taking of -. The Turks resisted to the last, the garrison perished on the ramparts, and we entered by assault. Every breathing creature within the walls was massacred. Think you, amidst the shrieks of violated innocence and helpless infancy, I did not feel in every nerve the cry of a fellow being? They were men and women, the sufferers, before they were Mahometans, and when they rise turbanless from the grave, in what except their good or evil actions will they be the better or worse than we? Two soldiers contended for a girl, whose rich dress and extreme beauty excited the brutal appetites of these wretches, who, perhaps good men among their families, were changed by the fury of the moment into incarnated evils. An old man, with a silver beard, decrepit and bald, he might be her grandfather, interposed to save her; the battle axe of one of them clove his skull. I rushed to her defence, but rage made them blind and deaf; they did not distinguish my Christian garb or heed my words – words were blunt weapons then, for while war cried ‘havoc,’ and murder gave fit echo, how could I –
Turn back the tide of ills, relieving wrong
With mild accost of soothing eloquence?”
One of the fellows, enraged at my interference, struck me with his bayonet in the side, and I fell senseless.
“This wound will probably shorten my life, having shattered a frame, weak of itself. But I am content to die. I have learnt in Greece that one man, more or less, is of small import, while human bodies remain to fill up the thinned ranks of the soldiery; and that the identity of an individual may be overlooked, so that the muster roll contain its full numbers. All this has a different effect upon Raymond. He is able to contemplate the ideal of war, while I am sensible only to its realities. He is a soldier, a general. He can influence the blood-thirsty war-dogs, while I resist their propensities vainly. The cause is simple. Burke has said that, ‘in all bodies those who would lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow.’ – I cannot follow; for I do not sympathize in their dreams of massacre and glory – to follow and to lead in such a career, is the natural bent of Raymond’s mind….”
Grant Allen: How can he be good if he hires himself out indiscriminately to kill or maim whoever he’s told to?
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Grant Allen: War and blood money
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Grant Allen
From The British Barbarians
Bertram rather yawned through that technical talk; he was a man of peace, and schemes of organised bloodshed interested him no more than the details of a projected human sacrifice, given by a Central African chief with native gusto, would interest an average European gentleman.
***
“Oh, he’s a gentleman,” the General repeated, with unshaken conviction: “a thoroughbred gentleman.” And he scanned Philip up and down with his keen grey eye as if internally reflecting that Philip’s own right to criticise and classify that particular species of humanity was a trifle doubtful. “I should much like to make a captain of hussars of him. He’d be splendid as a leader of irregular horse; the very man for a scrimmage!” For the General’s one idea when he saw a fine specimen of our common race was the Zulu’s or the Red Indian’s – what an admirable person he would be to employ in killing and maiming his fellow-creatures!
***
“That’s General Claviger of Herat, I suppose,” he said in a low tone, as they retreated out of ear-shot beside the clump of syringas. “What a stern old man he is, to be sure, with what a stern old face! He looks like a person capable of doing or ordering all the strange things I’ve read of him in the papers.”
“Oh, yes,” Frida answered, misunderstanding for the moment her companion’s meaning. “He’s a very clever man, I believe, and a most distinguished officer.”
Bertram smiled in spite of himself. “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” he cried, with the same odd gleam in his eyes Frida had so often noticed there. “I meant, he looked capable of doing or ordering all the horrible crimes he’s credited with in history. You remember, it was he who was employed in massacring the poor savage Zulus in their last stand at bay, and in driving the Afghan women and children to die of cold and starvation on the mountain-tops after the taking of Kabul. A terrible fighter, indeed! A terrible history!”
“But I believe he’s a very good man in private life,” Frida put in apologetically, feeling compelled to say the best she could for her husband’s guest. “I don’t care for him much myself, to be sure, but Robert likes him. And he’s awfully nice, every one says, to his wife and step-children.”
“How CAN he be very good,” Bertram answered in his gentlest voice, “if he hires himself out indiscriminately to kill or maim whoever he’s told to, irrespective even of the rights and wrongs of the private or public quarrel he happens to be employed upon? It’s an appalling thing to take a fellow-creature’s life, even if you’re quite, quite sure it’s just and necessary; but fancy contracting to take anybody’s and everybody’s life you’re told to, without any chance even of inquiring whether they may not be in the right after all, and your own particular king or people most unjust and cruel and blood-stained aggressors? Why, it’s horrible to contemplate. Do you know, Mrs. Monteith,” he went on, with his far-away air, “it’s that that makes society here in England so difficult to me. It’s so hard to mix on equal terms with your paid high priests and your hired slaughterers, and never display openly the feelings you entertain towards them. Fancy if you had to mix so yourself with the men who flogged women to death in Hungary, or with the governors and jailors of some Siberian prison! That’s the worst of travel. When I was in Central Africa, I sometimes saw a poor black woman tortured or killed before my very eyes; and if I’d tried to interfere in her favour, to save or protect her, I’d only have got killed myself, and probably have made things all the worse in the end for her. And yet it’s hard indeed to have to look on at, or listen to, such horrors as these without openly displaying one’s disgust and disapprobation. Whenever I meet your famous generals, or your judges and your bishops, I burn to tell them how their acts affect me; yet I’m obliged to refrain, because I know my words could do no good and might do harm, for they could only anger them. My sole hope of doing anything to mitigate the rigour of your cruel customs is to take as little notice of them as possible in any way whenever I find myself in unsympathetic society.”
W. R. Titterton: The Silent People of No Man’s Land
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
====
W. R. Titterton
The Silent People
The Silent People of No Man’s Land
Calm they lie,
With a stare and vacant smile
At the vacant sky.
Over them swept the battle,
And stirred them not.
Armies passed over, beyond them.
They are forgot.
Calmly the earth deals with them,
Melts them away.
Nothing is left of them now but bones,
Bones and clay.
Bones of the Valley of Judgment,
Bones stripped clean.
We fought, day in, day out, and the others,
With this between.
Dawn comes white and finds them
Stark and cold.
Twilight creeps over and covers them,
Fold on fold.
Night cannot hide them from us.
In the dark, again,
We see the Silent People
Who once were men.
The Silent People of No Man’s Land,
They rise, they rise,
With the glory of utter loss
In their stary eyes.
Beckoning, beckoning, calling,
Pointing the way.
But the dawn comes white, and finds them
Bones and clay.
Winds of the world blow o’er them
Your serenade!
Touch like a lute the broken earth
Where our dead are laid!
Broken bones of the martyrs,
Reliques of pain,
Anoint them, anoint them with sunlight,
Robe them in rain.
The Silent People of No Man’s Land
Calm they lie,
Bones, broken and bleached,
Under the sky.
Over them sweeps the tempest,
And stirs them not.
We pass over, beyond them,
They are forgot.
Eunice Tietjens: Children of War
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Women writers on peace and war
====
Eunice Tietjens
Children of War
Out of the womb of war we cry to you,
We who have yet to be,
We who lie waiting in the strong loins of time, unformed and hesitant,
We who shall be your sons and your slim daughters.
In the womb of war shall you beget us, and with the seal of the war-god shall we be sealed;
In ditches shall we be begotten, of lust-crazed soldiers on the screaming women of the enemy.
Of camp followers and scavengers shall we be conceived, of the weakling and the sick.
We shall be begotten in secret, stolen meeting of man and wife, drunk with weariness the man, and blind with terror the woman.
In bitterness of soul shall we be borne, and deeply shall we suck the pap of hatred.
Revenge shall be our daily bread, and with blood-lust shall we be nourished.
Yea, in our bodies shall we bear the seal of the war-beast.
Our hearts shall be thin and naked as your sword-blades, and our souls ruthless as your cannon.
And we shall pay – year by year, in our frail bodies and our twisted souls shall we pay
For your glorious patriotism.
Out of the womb of war we cry to you,
We who have yet to be!
Justin Martyr: We who formerly murdered one another now refrain from making war upon our enemies
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Greek and Roman writers on war and peace
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Justin Martyr
From The First Apology
Translated by Marcus Dods and George Reith
And when the Spirit of prophecy speaks as predicting things that are to come to pass, He speaks in this way: For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. Isaiah 2:3 And that it did so come to pass, we can convince you. For from Jerusalem there went out into the world, men, twelve in number, and these illiterate, of no ability in speaking: but by the power of God they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach to all the word of God; and we who formerly used to murder one another do not only now refrain from making war upon our enemies, but also, that we may not lie nor deceive our examiners, willingly die confessing Christ.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Selections on peace and war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
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Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Selections on peace and war
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: The Paean of Peace
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: A Plea To Peace
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: What We Need
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: What We Need
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Women writers on peace and war
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Selections on peace and war
====
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
What We Need
What does our country need? No armies standing
With sabres gleaming ready for the fight;
Not increased navies, skilful and commanding,
To bound the waters with an iron might;
Not haughty men with glutted purses trying
To purchase souls, and keep the power of place;
Not jewelled dolls with one another vying
For palms of beauty, elegance, and grace.
But we want women, strong of soul, yet lowly,
With that rare meekness, born of gentleness;
Women whose lives are pure and clean and holy,
The women whom all little children bless;
Brave, earnest women, helpful to each other,
With finest scorn for all things low and mean;
Women who hold the names of wife and mother
Far nobler than the title of a queen.
Oh! these are they who mould the men of story,
These mothers, ofttimes shorn of grace and youth,
Who, worn and weary, ask no greater glory
Than making some young soul the home of truth;
Who sow in hearts all fallow for the sowing
The seeds of virtue and of scorn for sin,
And, patient, watch the beauteous harvest growing
And weed out tares which crafty hands cast in;
Women who do not hold the gift of beauty
As some rare treasure to be bought and sold.
But guard it as a precious aid to duty –
The outer framing of the inner gold;
Women who, low above their cradles bending,
Let flattery’s voice go by, and give no heed,
While their pure prayers like incense are ascending.
These are our country’s pride, our country’s need.
Alice Cary: Better dwell the lowliest shepherd of Arcadia’s bowers
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
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====
Alice Cary
From Hannibal’s Lament for His Brother
“Gaul’s proudest chivalry I ‘ve met in fight,
And trampled them as reeds upon the plain;
Slaughtered at bay, and hunted down in flight,
They cried for quarter, but they cried in vain;
And the blue waters of the Rhone that night
Stood red and stagnant, choked with heaps of slain!”
Were there no spectral shadows gliding there,
0 baffled champion, for thy country’s weal?
No semblances of “angels with bright hair
Dabbled in blood,” to fix the damning seal
To a close-hugged ambition? Better dwell
The lowliest shepherd of Arcadia’s bowers,
Than mount to where the insatiate fire of hell,
Like to a serpent’s tooth, the heart devours!
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: When the Regiment Came Back
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Women writers on peace and war
Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Selections on peace and war
====
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
When the Regiment Came Back
All the uniforms were blue, all the swords were bright and new,
When the regiment went marching down the street,
All the men were hale and strong as they proudly moved along,
Through the cheers that drowned the music of their feet.
Oh the music of the feet keeping time to drums that beat,
Oh the splendour and the glitter of the sight,
As with swords and rifles new and in uniforms of blue
The regiment went marching to the fight!
When the regiment came back all the guns and swords were black
And the uniforms had faded out to gray,
And the faces of the men who marched through that street again
Seemed like faces of the dead who lose their way.
For the dead who lose their way cannot look more wan and gray.
Oh the sorrow and the pity of the sight,
Oh the weary lagging feet out of step with drums that beat,
As the regiment comes marching from the fight.
Sven Delblanc: No, three megatons, it’s a question of moral principle
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Scandinavian writers on peace and war
====
Sven Delblanc
From Homunculus
Translated by Verne Moberg
“I do think the measure seems a bit drastic,” said Rear Admiral George S. Taylor III. He screwed up his mouth and leaned back in his armchair with a look of controlled indignation. Taylor had that silver-haired appearance that often distinguishes corrupt southern senators. The decorations on his white uniform were like a Flag of the World color plate in a reference book. His tanned, Caesarean face was wrinkled in an expression of dignified disapproval, as if confronted by a breach of etiquette from a subaltern at the mass. “Definitely a far too drastic measure. For that matter you’re just a commander. I could pull rank.”
“But I work for the CIA,” said Commander Hettner.
“That’s true,” Rear Admiral Taylor said thoughtfully. “Well then, full steam ahead. I’ll hit ’em with three megatons.”
“Five megatons.”
“Three megatons,” said Taylor.
“Well, dammit, let’s say three megatons. That’ll have to do for a shitty little town like this. And they’ve got no morals either. Just fags and Socialists, the whole bunch.”
“True, as you say. But actually I’m not permitted to charge ahead without the President’s orders, you know,” Taylor said. “If we only had Barry in the White House….”
“There’s no sense crying over spilt milk,” said Hettner severely. “Just go at ’em boy. Lyndon or Barry, what difference does it make? The CIA’s handling this. Just sock it to ’em. We know for certain that Sebastian’s been in contact with the Swedish Defense Ministry. Under no circumstances may his secret be allowed to fall into the hands of degenerate, socialist, sex maniac crooks. Just lay it on ’em. Five megatons.”
“Three megatons,” said Rear Admiral Taylor, thumping hos forefinger on the tabletop. “Socialists or no socialists, this is a question of moral principle.”
“Well, dammit, all right then, we’ll say three megatons. Just lay it on ’em.”
“Easy, boy, easy,” said Taylor, stroking his fragrant silver hair. “I’m not taking off until tomorrow. And by the way, there was one other thing I happened to think of – what the hell are we going to do about world opinion?”
“You can stick world opinion up your ass,” said Commander Hettner. “I’ve already thought of that. When you go through the Baltic, set your course as close to Russian territorial waters as you reasonably can….”
Victor Hugo: At last, a peaceful strain!
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Victor Hugo: Selections on war
====
Victor Hugo
From The Universal Republic
Translator unknown
Ye, liberated lands, we hail!
Your sails are whole despite the gale!
Your masts are firm, and will not fail –
The triumph follows pain!
Hear forges roar! the hammer clanks –
It beats the time to nations’ thanks –
At last, a peaceful strain!
Tis rust, not gore, that gnaws the guns,
And shattered shells are but the runs
Where warring insects cope;
And all the headsman’s racks and blades
And pincers, tools of tyrants’ aids,
Are buried with the rope.
Nathaniel Hawthorne: War personified; red cheek emblem of fire and sword; blackness of other betokened mourning that attends them
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selections on war
====
Nathaniel Hawthorne
From My Kinsman, Major Molineux
A mighty stream of people now emptied into the street, and came rollmg slowly towards the church. A single horseman wheeled the corner in the midst of them, and close behind him came a band of fearful wind-instruments, sending forth a fresher discord now that no intervening buildings kept it from the ear. Then a redder light disturbed the moonbeams, and a dense multitude of torches shone along the street, concealing, by their glare, whatever object they illuminated. The single horseman, clad in a military dress, and bearing a drawn sword, rode onward as the leader, and, by his fierce and variegated countenance, appeared like war personified; the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword; the blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attends them. In his train were wild figures in the Indian dress, and many fantastic shapes without a model, giving the whole march a visionary air, as if a dream had broken forth from some feverish brain, and were sweeping visibly through the midnight streets. A mass of people, inactive, except as applauding spectators, hemmed the procession in; and several women ran along the sidewalk, piercing the confusion of heavier sounds with their shrill voices of mirth or terror.
Victor Hugo: I prefer poet to marshals’ cannonade
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Victor Hugo: Selections on war
====
Victor Hugo
From Imperial Revels
Translated by H.L.W.
Ye troopers who shot mothers down,
And marshals whose brave cannonade
Broke infant arms and split the stone
Where slumbered age and guileless maid –
Though blood is in the cup you fill,
Pretend it “rosy” wine, and still
Hail Cannon “King!” and Steel the “Queen!”
But I prefer to sup
From Philip Sidney‘s cup –
True soldier’s draught serene.
Herman Melville: In the solace of the Truce of God, the Calumet has come
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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
====
(Of course there are healthier alternatives.)
Herman Melville
Herba Santa
I
After long wars when comes release
Not olive wands proclaiming peace
Can import dearer share
Than stems of Herba Santa hazed
In autumn’s Indian air.
Of moods they breathe that care disarm,
They pledge us lenitive and calm.
II
Shall code or creed a lure afford
To win all selves to Love’s accord?
When Love ordained a supper divine
For the wide world of man,
What bickerings o’er his gracious wine!
Then strange new feuds began.
Effectual more in lowlier way,
Pacific Herb, thy sensuous plea
The bristling clans of Adam sway
At least to fellowship in thee!
Before thine altar tribal flags are furled,
Fain wouldst thou make one hearthstone of the world.
III
To scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod –
Yea, sodden laborers dumb;
To brains overplied, to feet that plod,
In solace of the Truce of God
The Calumet has come!
IV
Ah for the world ere Raleigh’s find
Never that knew this suasive balm
That helps when Gilead’s fails to heal,
Helps by an interserted charm.
Insinuous thou that through the nerve
Windest the soul, and so canst win
Some from repinings, some from sin,
The Church’s aim thou dost subserve.
The ruffled fag fordone with care
And brooding, God would ease this pain:
Him soothest thou and smoothest down
Till some content return again.
Even ruffians feel thy influence breed
Saint Martin’s summer in the mind,
They feel this last evangel plead,
As did the first, apart from creed,
Be peaceful, man – be kind!
V
Rejected once on higher plain,
O Love supreme, to come again
Can this be thine?
Again to come, and win us too
In likeness of a weed
That as a god didst vainly woo,
As man more vainly bleed?
VI
Forbear, my soul! and in thine Eastern chamber
Rehearse the dream that brings the long release:
Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber
Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace.
Heinrich Mann: “No! The less force exercised in the world the better!”
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
German writers on peace and war
Heinrich Mann: Mission of letters in a world in rubble with 10 million corpses underground
Heinrich Mann: Nietzsche, war and the butchery of ten to twenty million souls
Heinrich Mann: Nowadays the real power is peace
====
Heinrich Mann
From The Little Town
Translated by Winifred Ray
“These people seem to you somewhat capricious, somewhat unruly. But if they were humble, I should not care to be their deputy, for I should despise them – nor their master, for the master is even more despicable than the slave from whose degradation he profits….No!” he shouted to a group of citizens, some of whom, including Salvatori, Mancafede and Baron Torroni, were backing Lieutenant Cantinelli’s appeal for an increase of the armed force.
“No, gentlemen! The less force is exercised in the world the better!”
***
“The root of the disaster is this: that I desired progress too ardently to take heed for the preservation of what we had already possessed. The minds of most men are, however, concerned above all for preservation. So, through my fault, the people were divided, and so, alas! there ensued civil war.”
***
“What remains?” he answered. “I do not wish to speak of the works which remain. But love remains. Others who knew me will love the town as I have loved it. And, above all, it is more honorable, whether in a man or in a nation, to desire good and perish half-way than to go on living without blame because without deeds.”
Latin American writers on war and peace
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Latin American writers on war and peace
Arturo Arias: There were bodies everywhere. They didn’t move. They were called corpses.
Ernesto Cardenal: They speak of peace and secretly prepare for war
Alejo Carpentier: War’s long reach
José Santos Chocano: When a future explorer uncovers that rarest of things, a sword
Rubén Darío: You think the future is wherever your bullet strikes
Gabriel García Márquez: Five wars and seventeen military coups
Nicolás Guillén: Come, dove, come tell me the tale of your woe
Machado de Assis: Let the reader decide between the soldier and the priest
José Martí: Oscar Wilde on war and aesthetics
Gabriela Mistral: Dance of Peace
Pablo Neruda: Bandits with planes, jackals that the jackals would despise
Julio Ortega: The fall of the great warrior empires
Mariano Picón-Salas: From dream of warlike soldiers to nightmare of flames and ashes
Victor Domingo Silva: Cain, the fratricide
César Vallejo: So much love and yet so powerless against death
Mario Vargas Llosa: More than enough atomic and conventional weapons to wipe out several planets
Mariano Picón-Salas: From dream of warlike soldiers to nightmare of flames and ashes
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Latin American writers on war and peace
====
Mariano Picón-Salas
From The Ignoble Savages
Translated by Herbert Weinstock
Berlin is there on its drained Brandenburg swamp, surrounded by lakes and woods, as if awakening from a nightmare that burned out its eyes. From the Friedrichs and Wilhelms through the time of Bismarck and ending with that of Hitler, it was built as the capital of force, and it was transformed into a capital of flames and ashes during the most horrible nights in European history. Seventy-five cubic meters of rubble accumulated in 1945 on the wide avenues of former times. From the Brandenburg Gate, through which, in the imperial dream, the most warlike soldiers had marched, friezes and columns were borne away. The freezing multitudes made firewood and charcoal from the well-cared-for trees of Unter den Linden. The subway was flooded, and the bodies of the final victims of the shipwreck floated in black water impregnated with soot, dust, and sulfur.
Julio Ortega: The fall of the great warrior empires
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Latin American writers on war and peace
====
Julio Ortega
From The Land in the Day
Translated by Julio Ortega and Ewing Campbell
The migration was destined to grow because of successive social catastrophes that left thousands of survivors, fugitives who ran from history in search of new names. At the fall of the great warrior empires, the migration had already become a universal movement: entire populations seeking new lands and all of them joined in diverse migrant waves.
***
First he studied potential places: distant towns, deserted shores, fields of pleasant tillage, countries in which neither war nor commerce has destroyed speech, places where one can escape and, at least in the solitude of an exacerbated conscience, act between the loss of a former land, which must be pertinent to him, and a chosen one in which he is a stranger. The world has been minutely divided, and it expects his acceptance of that fragmentation.
Ambrose Bierce: Military Malthusianism
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Ambrose Bierce: Selections on war
====
Ambrose Bierce
From The Devil’s Dictionary
MACROBIAN, n. One forgotten of the gods and living to a great age. History is abundantly supplied with examples, from Methuselah to Old Parr, but some notable instances of longevity are less well known. A Calabrian peasant named Coloni, born in 1753, lived so long that he had what he considered a glimpse of the dawn of universal peace….The President of the United States was born so long ago that many of the friends of his youth have risen to high political and military preferment without the assistance of personal merit.
MALTHUSIAN, adj. Pertaining to Malthus and his doctrines. Malthus believed in artificially limiting population, but found that it could not be done by talking. One of the most practical exponents of the Malthusian idea was Herod of Judea, though all the famous soldiers have been of the same way of thinking.
MAN, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
MEANDER, n. To proceed sinuously and aimlessly. The word is the ancient name of a river about one hundred and fifty miles south of Troy, which turned and twisted in the effort to get out of hearing when the Greeks and Trojans boasted of their prowess.
MEDAL, n. A small metal disk given as a reward for virtues, attainments or services more or less authentic.
It is related of Bismarck, who had been awarded a medal for gallantly rescuing a drowning person, that, being asked the meaning of the medal, he replied: “I save lives sometimes.” And sometimes he didn’t.
Marcel Moreau: Children playing at war, the actual weapon of a crime
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Marcel Moreau
From Quintes
Translated by Bernard Frechtman
Children were playing war, there was real hatred in their eyes; that’s always the actual weapon of a crime; what there is in the eyes, the hand obeys the eyes.
***
I saw an extraordinary sight, I saw the thought of a crime run from soul to soul like a password. I saw hands at the ends of arms twist and close and make terrifying clubs of them, I saw the crowd change in a flash from man to wolf, I saw an extraordinary sight: human rage.
***
A community of innocent people isn’t that far from being a demoniacal community. And we have no recourse against a people that has one idea, no attack is possible against a people that has an accepted, cultivated idea. The leader, or rather the inventor of the idea, must overcome three obstacles: the people’s resistance to the idea; the people’s resistance to the resignation it feels as a result of the propagation of that idea; and the people’s resistance to the enthusiasm to which it’s driven by that idea, which is intended to drive them to it.
Ambrose Bierce: He created patriotism and taught the nations war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Ambrose Bierce: Selections on war
====
Ambrose Bierce
From The Devil’s Dictionary
FLAG, n. A colored rag borne above troops and hoisted on forts and ships. It appears to serve the same purpose as certain signs that one sees on vacant lots in London – “Rubbish may be shot here.”
FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscient, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war….
GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.
HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used in giving stability to light lovers – particularly to those who love not wisely but other men’s wives. Lead is also of great service as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.
Hail, holy Lead! – of human feuds the great
And universal arbiter; endowed
With penetration to pierce any cloud
Fogging the field of controversial hate,
And with a swift, inevitable, straight,
Searching precision find the unavowed
But vital point. Thy judgment, when allowed
By the chirurgeon, settles the debate.
O useful metal! – were it not for thee
We’d grapple one another’s ears alway:
But when we hear thee buzzing like a bee
We, like old Muhlenberg, “care not to stay.”
And when the quick have run away like pellets
Jack Satan smelts the dead to make new bullets.
Henry James: No more sacrifice on the altar of war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Henry James: War, the waste of life and time and money
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Henry James
From The Reverberator
His only brother had fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country. Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather, was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed, extorted from him the promise that he wouldn’t take service in its armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son – Gaston, in 1870, had been a boy of ten – that the family had sacrificed enough on the altar of sympathy.
George Frederick Cameron: Is it true greatness to lead armed hirelings on to bleed?
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
George Frederick Cameron
True Greatness
What is true greatness? Is ’t to climb
Above the rocks and shoals of time
To sculpture on some height sublime
A name
To live immortal in its prime
And flush of fame?
What is true greatness? Is ’t to lead
Your armèd hirelings on to bleed,
And move a terrible god, indeed,
An hour;
To sate your lust of gold, or greed
Of despot power?
What is true greatness? Question not,
But go to yon secluded spot
And enter yonder humble cot
And find
A husbandman who never fought
Or wronged his kind:
For whom the lips of war are dumb:
Who loves far more than beat of drum
The cattle’s low, the insect’s hum
In air:
And find true greatness in its sum
And total there!
What is true Greatness? ’Tis to clear
From sorrow’s eye the glistening tear:
To comfort there, to cherish here,
To bless:
To aid, encourage, and to cheer
Distress.
Percy Bysshe Shelley: War and the decline of poetry
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Percy Bysshe Shelley: Selections on war
====
Percy Bysshe Shelley
From A Defence of Poetry
Civil war, the spoils of Asia, and the fatal predominance first of the Macedonian, and then of the Roman arms, were so many symbols of the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece.
At the approach of such a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps of Astræa, departing from the world….It will readily be confessed that those among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease.
Roger Nimier: Selections on war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
====
Roger Nimier: Selections on war
Roger Nimier: I saw war in its stark reality
Roger Nimier: Soldiers are like that
Roger Nimier: Thankful for divine justice: a horrible wound rewarded me for all the harm I had done
Roger Nimier: Those who fall in love with war will surely die in her arms
Sydney Dobell: The Army Surgeon
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
====
Sydney Dobell
The Army Surgeon
Over that breathing waste of friends and foes,
The wounded and the dying, hour by hour, –
In will a thousand, yet but one in power, –
He labours thro’ the red and groaning day.
The fearful moorland where the myriads lay
Moved as a moving field of mangled worms.
And as a raw brood, orphaned in the storms,
Thrust up their heads if the wind bend a spray
Above them, but when the bare branch performs
No sweet parental office, sink away
With hopeless chirp of woe, so as he goes
Around his feet in clamorous agony
They rise and fall; and all the seething plain
Bubbles a cauldron vast of many-coloured pain.
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: “How I am wounded for thee in these wars”
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
====
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Her Name Liberty
I thought to do a deed of chivalry,
An act of worth, which haply in her sight
Who was my mistress should recorded be
And of the nations. And, when thus the fight
Faltered and men once bold with faces white
Turned this and that way in excuse to flee,
I only stood, and by the foeman’s might
Was overborne and mangled cruelly.
Then crawled I to her feet, in whose dear cause
I made this venture, and “Behold,” I said,
“How I am wounded for thee in these wars.”
But she, “Poor cripple, wouldst thou I should wed
A limbless trunk?” and laughing turned from me.
Yet was she fair, and her name “Liberty.”
Roger Nimier: Sacrificial lambs whose howls could be heard from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caspian Sea
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Roger Nimier: Selections on war
====
Roger Nimier
From The Blue Hussar
Translated by Jacques Le Clercq
Well-informed minds affirm that we must believe in God. François did not believe in God, yet he was in favor of Him. He compared believers to munitions makers who furnished him with proofs, which, alas, exploded in his hands.
***
The army was the refuge of all sentimentalists, who, weary of the world – such a hard world! – reverted to their childhood and drew up in ranks.
Otherwise men were all alike; it was useless to look at them as though they were stalking across movie screens. A few morons erred and made their exits by throwing themselves out of the window instead of through the door. They were decorated as heroes, and subsequently their sacrifice was dangled before the eyes of dazzled little boys, so that they might prepare themselves for the same fate at the age of twenty; but these same little boys, now grown up, preferred to sell refrigerators.
***
The armies that have run up and down Europe these last few years were not fundamentally evil. But after all, they had to pretend to be strong and brutal. The most beautiful bride in the world does not go before the altar without the traditional bridal gown. The ceremonial apparel which the victorious armies wore for their meeting with history was tailored from a red and costly material. Yes, these hostages were recruited and turned into sacrificial lambs whose howls could be heard from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caspian Sea.
Roger Nimier: Those who fall in love with war will surely die in her arms
====
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Roger Nimier: Selections on war
====
Roger Nimier
From The Blue Hussar
Translated by Jacques Le Clercq
The war over, there was no reason for me to die for years to come. When a man’s been lucky enough to forget himself for a while, he lacks the curiosity to renew the acquaintance.
Maximilian was dead, a fact which roused my hatred. I felt a sense of horror when I remembered his laughing eyes – that attractive, somewhat ingenuous look of those who fall in love with war, and will surely die in her arms. What a wretched survivor I made.
***
These were Frantz, Darmun, Laudenbach. But there were especially the Frenchmen, militiamen whose frivolity in no way lessened their desperate condition; they knew what imperious necessity put weapons into their hands. There were men completely without hope, they belonged to that somber race which often reddens the muddy waters of history.
***
“At least we were civilized, you understand. We left all our corpses piled up.”
***
…The Krauts didn’t look they they were going to give up; they felt very Wagnerian, it suited them. As for the democracies, they were delighted with the war; it saved them from bankruptcy, and made their industry boom. And there were still sixty million six hundred and two thousand Germans left. It was fun to count from eighty million to zero. Theirs was an ideal, an absorbing ideal, but as for our ideal, we were left holding the bag. Here we were, sitting in Germany like on a poisonous toadstool, or on the belly of a woman who couldn’t whelp. There was some talk of us going to the Russian front; I think they organized a brigade in January….
For peace, against war: literary selections 