For peace, against war: literary selections

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

American writers on peace and against war

Clinton Scollard: Selections on war and peace

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Clinton Scollard
Peace

Not with the high-voiced fife,
Nor with the deep-voiced drum,
To mark the end of strife
The perfect peace shall come.

Nor pomp nor pageant grand
Shall bring War’s blessed surcease,
But silent, from God’s hand
Shall come the perfect peace!

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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

William James: The Moral Equivalent of War

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Marie Drennan
Peace Must Come as a Troubadour

They have pictured Peace at the wheel and loom
While swallows chirp in the nested eaves;
They have shown you fields with their tawny sheaves
And meadow vales where the daisies bloom.
But War rides out to the trumpet shout,
In scarlet and gold and silver and blue.
His strong old song throbs hard in you,
And you swing to your saddle with never a doubt.

They have pictured Peace in mauve and gray,
The pale old man in cowl and gown,
Walled in from the quiet old-world town,
Chanting the twilight hours away.
But down in the pushing, lusting crowd,
Down in the weary, sweating throng,
The faint, slow notes of Evensong
Are lost, for the horns of War are loud.

So Peace must come as a troubadour,
Singing to thatch and turret and spire,
Of smoking feast and of ruddy fire,
Of sleeping babes for the rich and poor.
But the song of Peace must soar and rise
To high adventure and pain and death,
For Youth will wager his dying breath
For a cause that wings to the very skies.

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

British writers on peace and war

Thomas Carlyle: Selections on war

James Anthony Froude: If they had known that war would result

William James: The Moral Equivalent of War

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James Anthony Froude
Homer

If war had been a passion with the Ionians, as it was with the Teutons and the Norsemen, the god of battles would have been supreme in the Pantheon; and Zeus would scarcely have called Ares the most hateful spirit in Olympus – most hateful, because of his delight in war and carnage. Mr. Carlyle looks forward to a chivalry of labour. He rather wishes than expects that a time may come when the campaign of industry against anarchic nature may gather into it those feelings of gallantry and nobleness which have found their vent hitherto in fighting only. The modern man’s work, Mr. Carlyle says, is no longer to splinter lances or break down walls, but to break soil, to build barns and factories, and to find a high employment for himself in what hitherto has been despised as degrading. How to elevate labour – how to make it beautiful – how to enlist the spirit in it (for in no other way can it be made humanly profitable), that is the problem which he looks wistfully to the future to solve for us. He may look to the past as well as to the future; in the old Ionia he will find all for which he wishes. The wise Ulysses built his own house, and carved his own bed. Princes killed and cooked their own food. It was a holy work with them – their way of saying grace for it; for they offered the animal in his death to the gods, and they were not butchers, but sacrificing priests. Even a keeper of swine is called noble, and fights like a hero; and the young princess of Phoeacia – the loveliest and gracefullest of Homer’s women – drove the clothes-cart and washed linen with her own beautiful hands. Not only was labour free – for so it was among the early Romans; or honourable, so it was among the Israelites, – but it was beautiful – beautiful in the artist’s sense, as perhaps elsewhere it has never been….

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..as the spirit of Christianity is antagonistic to the world, whatever form the spirit of the world assumes, the ideals of Christianity will of course be their opposite; as one verges into one extreme, the other will verge into the contrary. In those rough times the law was the sword; animal might of arm, and the strong animal heart which guided it, were the excellences which the world rewarded; and monasticism, therefore, in its position of protest, would be the destruction and abnegation of the animal nature.

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

British writers on peace and war

Richard Aldington: Selections on war

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Richard Aldington
Picket

Dusk and deep silence…
Three soldiers huddled on a bench
Over a red-hot brazier,
And a fourth who stands apart
Watching the cold rainy dawn.
Then the familiar sound of birds –
Clear cock-crow, caw of rooks.
Frail pipe of linnet, the ‘ting! ting!’ of chaffinches.
And over all the lark
Outpiercing even the robin…
Wearily the sentry moves
Muttering the one word: ‘Peace.’

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Three Little Girls
For My Sisters

Three little girls I used to see
Two months ago,
Three little girls with fathers killed
And mothers lost.
Three little girls with broken shoes
And hard, sharp coughs.
Three little girls who sold us sweets
Too near the shells.
Three little girls with names of saints
And angels’ eyes.
Three little girls where are you now?
Marianne, Madeline, Alys.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Robert Underwood Johnson: The fairest of daughters, heavenly Peace

Rossiter Johnson: Infinitely better to learn how to avert war

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Robert Underwood Johnson
To My Countrymen
(A Voice for Peace)

Heirs of great yesterdays, be proud with me
Of your most envied treasure of the Past;
Not wide domain; not doubtful wealth amassed;
Not ganglia cities rival worlds to be:
But great souls, servitors of Liberty,
Who kept the state to star-set Honor fast,
Not for ourselves alone but that, at last,
No nation should to Baal bow the knee.

Are we content to be inheritors?
Can you not hear the pleading of the sod
That canopies our heroes? Hasten, then!
Help the sad earth unlearn the vogue of war.
Be just and earn the eternal praise of men;
Be generous and win the smile of God.

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

British writers on peace and war

C.P. Snow: Selections on war

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C.P. Snow
Corridors of Power

“We all think, from time to time, of thermo-nuclear war. Of course we do. We should be foolish, as well as wicked, if we didn’t. We can dimly imagine what such a war would be like. By its side, any horrors that men have so far contrived to inflict upon other men would look like a tea-party. So we know that this must never happen. Yet, though we know that, we do not know the way to stop it. I have met men of good will, who don’t easily give up hope, thinking to themselves that we are all – all mankind – caught in a hideous trap. I don’t believe that. I believe that with courage and intelligence and a little luck, we shall find a way out. I don’t pretend that it will be easy. I doubt whether there is any total solution. Perhaps we’ve got to hack away here and there, trying to do comparatively small things, which may make war that much less likely….We have been through many dangers. It happens, through no fault of our own, that this new danger, this change in the nature of war, this thermo-nuclear breakthrough, threatens us more vitally and completely than any major power….”

Roger held up his hand. He stood, impassive, immobile, without a flicker. He said: “I’m prepared for anyone to accuse me of being cowardly. That doesn’t matter. It’s hard, I sometimes think, for a man with young children not to be. But I’m not prepared for anyone to accuse the people of this country of being cowardly. They’ve proved the opposite quite enough for any reasonable man. Anything we decide, now or in the future, about our military position, will be done because it seems to us moral and sensible, not because we’re frightened, or because, on the other hand, we have to prove that we’re not.” He drew the first rumble of hear-hears. He let them run, then held up his hand again.

“Now, after this bit of pleasantry, I’m going to ask the questions. As I say, no one knows the answers. But if all of us think about them, we may some day be able to say what decent people, people of good will all over the world, are waiting to hear. First, if there is no agreement or control, how many countries are going to possess thermo-nuclear weapons by, say 1967? My guess, and this is a political guess, and yours is as good as mine, is that four or five will actually have them. Unless it is not beyond the wit of man to stop them. Second, does this spread of weapons make thermo-nuclear war more or less likely? Again, your guess is as good as mine. But mine is sombre. Third, why are countries going to possess themselves of these weapons? Is it for national security, or for less rational reasons? Fourth, can this catastrophe – no, that is going further than I feel inclined; I ought to say, this extreme increase of danger – can it be stopped? Is it possible that any of us, any country or group of countries, can give a message or indication that will, in fact, make military and human sense?”

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Posted for fair use purposes only.

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

American writers on peace and against war

E. Merrill Root: Selections on war

E. Merrill Root: And they died in what forgotten war?

E. Merrill Root: Army of the million ghosts

E. Merrill Root: Drill, like sheep with wolves’ fangs, meek to kill

E. Merrill Root: Military drill. Murder’s witless marionettes.

E. Merrill Root: We crucify Him still upon a cross of war

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

British writers on peace and war

Walter Scott: Selections on war

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Walter Scott
The Abbot

“… I never had the good fortune to see a stricken field.”

“The good fortune!” repeated the Regent, smiling somewhat sorrowfully, “take my word, young man, war is the only game from which both parties rise losers.”

***

“Take an old man’s advice, youth, one who hath seen many days, and sat in higher places than thou canst hope for – bend thy sword into a pruning-hook, and make a dibble of thy dagger – thy days shall be the longer, and thy health the better for it….”

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“They are evil men,” said the Abbot, “but the trade of war demands no saints….”

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

British writers on peace and war

John Galsworthy: Selections on war

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John Galsworthy
Valley of the Shadow

God, I am travelling out to death’s sea,
I, who exulted in sunshine and laughter,
Dreamed not of dying – death is such waste of me! –
Grant me one prayer: Doom not the hereafter
Of mankind to war, as though I had died not –
I, who in battle, my comrade’s arm linking,
Shouted and sang, life in my pulses hot
Throbbing and dancing! Let not my sinking
In dark be for naught, my death a vain thing!
God, let me know it the end of man’s fever!
Make my last breath a bugle call, carrying
Peace o’er the valleys and cold hills for ever!

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

American writers on peace and against war

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Frank L. Stanton
An Old Battle-Field

The softest whisperings of the scented South,
And rust and roses in the cannon’s mouth;

And where the thunders of the fight were born,
The wind’s sweet tenor in the standing corn;

With song of larks, low-lingering in the loam,
And blue skies bending over love and home.

But still the thought: Somewhere upon the hills,
Or where the vales ring with the whip-poor-wills,

Sad wistful eyes and broken hearts that beat
For the loved sound of unreturning feet,

And, when the oaks their leafy banners wave,
Dream of the battle and an unmarked grave!

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

American writers on peace and against war

Upton Sinclair: Selections on war

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Upton Sinclair
Jimmie Higgins

War was a return to savagery, and the worse it became, the better Jimmie’s argument went. He was not interested in men’s efforts to improve war, by agreeing that they would kill in this way but not in that way, they would kill this kind of people but not that kind.

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…all governments were alike – and never so much alike as in war-time!

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The point was that by sending goods to Europe, you helped to keep up the fighting; whereas, if you quit, the fools must come to their senses. So the Jimmie Higginses worked out their campaign-slogan: “Starve the War and Feed America!”

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In former days these men had taken what was handed out to them by their newspaper editors and preachers and politicians; they had engaged in commonplace and respectable activities, had lived tame and unadventurous lives. But now they were making munitions; and you might say what you pleased, but there was a certain psychological condition incidental to the making of munitions. An employer could look pious and talk about law and order, so long as he was setting his men to hoeing weeds or shingling roofs or grading track; but what could he say to his men when he was making shells to be used in blowing men to pieces?

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

American writers on peace and against war

Brent Dow Allinson: Selections on peace and war

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Brent Dow Allinson
To an Ethical Preacher

Four-square against the genial tides of peace
He stands, Cock-Robin – wise in self-esteem,
Pronouncing his implacable decrees, –
Sir Oracle out-oracled – a stream
Of mordant and pontifical abuse
Descending in hot torrents from his tongue
As lava from Vesuvius. “No truce!”
He cries, “between the righteous and the wrong,
No truce but war incessant, – to the hilt –
Between the virtuous and the red-with-guilt!”…
And under every deep portentous breath:
“We are the right; their cause is Cain’s!” he saith.

Behold him on the platform shake his sword, –
Our social darling and consummate child;
Or death-defying at the banquet-board
Sift Truth from Error and with gestures mild
Make hating virtuous for the sovereign State,
Define the duty of all moral men
To praise the war’s “morale,” and demonstrate
That God is with us in the slaughter-pen!

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O, valiant donor of another’s tears, –
Thrice-bless’d of our war-gilded patrioteers,
Starvation-cordons and Youth’s fear-drawn swords
Could never be but for your priceless words!

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

American writers on peace and against war

Carl John Bostelmann: The battlefield is wild with flowers as deep thunders cease

Carl John Bostelmann: Hate, still thy drums! War, make thy trumpets mute!

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Carl John Bostelmann
Conquerors

With Caesar dead now, and Augustus dust,
Tribunal tyranny in Rome is done.
Attila, Xerxes, and Napoleon
Have known king’s splendor and departed. Rust
Of rebel years their sheathèd swords encrusts,
And slow time hides the ugly scars upon
The stricken fields where war’s cold carrion
Has fed old buzzards with its crumbs and crusts.

The dew-drenched meadows by the Marne again
Are occupied with crops, and Waterloo
Is wild with flowers as deep thunders cease
Their long reverberation. Terror’s reign
Is ended now. The Belgian sky is blue,
And life is theirs who love and keep their peace.

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

British writers on peace and war

C.P. Snow: Selections on war

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C.P. Snow
Last Things

“Perhaps it helps the rest of us if one or two people show they don’t approve of mass annihilation.”

“I wonder.”

He had been right about Hiroshima, I said. We got hardened to killing with astonishing speed: it was one of the horrifying features of the human animal.

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Vietnam was hag-riding us. Bitterly Francis said that a country couldn’t be independent in foreign policy if it wasn’t independent in earning its living. That remark had been made in the presence of some of Charles’s friends, and had scandalised them. To many of us, the window of public hope, which had seemed clearer for a few years past, was being blacked out now.

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…a venerable figure spoke, with a disproportionately strong voice, from the government rear.

Lord F: Does the government realise that many of us on this side and throughout the country share our young people’s detestation of this atrocity called biological warfare?

Lord Luke of Salcombe: We fully realize what my noble friend has said.

Lord F: Further, does the government realise that anything said about biological warfare by any of the young spokesmen during what I prefer to call the events of last June was said in a spirit of genuine and absolutely spontaneous indignation?

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Posted for fair use only.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Vincent Godfrey Burns: Selections on war

Vincent Godfrey Burns: An Ex-Serviceman Makes a Vow

Vincent Godfrey Burns: Hell à la mode

Vincent Godfrey Burns: The Hun

Vincent Godfrey Burns: The March of the Ghosts

Vincent Godfrey Burns: O slum town symbol of war’s grim insanity

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

American writers on peace and against war

Robert Underwood Johnson: The Cost

Robert Underwood Johnson: The fairest of daughters, heavenly Peace

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Robert Underwood Johnson
Goethals of Panama

Is life a false gem in our treasure store
Once richly prized, now richly prized no more,
And souls but sands beneath the waves of war?
Come, country of my heart, lest thy pure pledge
Of hope to the unborn be sodden sacrilege,
Cry, though the cannon echoes, “Peace, peace, peace!”

***

Summon thy hosts that kill not but increase:
Firm Justice, calm of Wisdom, fear of Wrong;
Courage of Science, constancy of Law;
The poise of Knowledge and the glow of Song;
Religion’s solace, Doubt’s still reverent awe;
Beauty, the smile of God, Music, His voice.
Oh, may these hold us sane and true,
Lift us from tears and teach us to rejoice,

***

O soldier of our Peace,
If in this conflict thy great work shall be
Not thoroughfare of Honor and Amity,
But route of Conquest, avenue of Hate,
Way of Cupidity and road to Wrong,
Better those hills had never heard the din
Of steam and rivet, and the strong
And jubilant song
Of thy triumphant army, with one purpose kin.
Before it be too late
Adjourn the exultation of the State:
Let it await
An Age of Reason’s more propitious date.

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Soldier of Peaceful War!
Forgive us if our doubt shall mar
Thy victory, that has neither blot nor scar:
‘T is for the moment, when the Muse’s gaze
Wanders from thee. Our country is so dear
Her lovers may indulge a lover’s fear.
Forgive us, too, a final word of praise:
That in these troublous days
Thy hand has written for the world to learn
A symphony of Labor, where we may discern
Life as a grander music than before.

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Then dedicate to dreams this dream fulfilled:
To Hope, the dream on which all dreams we build,
To Honor, what in honor was conceived,
To Brotherhood, whereby it was achieved,
To Peace, that there no hostile gun may sound
And all the Earth at last be holy ground;
Ay, to that dream of dreams, most strangely wrought,
To Man, the Almighty’s most amazing thought.

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

French writers on war and peace

Victor Hugo: Selections on war

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Victor Hugo
Cromwell

To have exile, proscription, hurled at us,
Death-sentences, a price put on our heads,
With how much more, the fruits of wretched war….

The Catholic town of Armagh has been seized
By Devereux, the chaplain Peter sends
This letter, evangelic, on the victory.
He writes, “Jehovah this day showed himself
Most friendly to the arms of Israel.
Armagh is taken; with the sword and fire
We have exterminated old and young;
Two thousand at the least are dead, and blood
Flows everywhere. I’ve come from church, where I
Gave thanks to God.”

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The Burgraves

Horrors everywhere,
And violence, and force the only right!
The sock is trampled into lance of steel,
While scythes forsake the harvest fields for war.

‘Tis you who ordered losses on each side,
And robbed the dead upon the battlefield.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Thomas Curtis Clark: Selections on war

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Thomas Curtis Clark
At Half-Mast

Fly the flag at half-mast
For the life that has been spilt,
For the wealth that has been built
On the bones of men;
Fly the flag at half-mast
Till the day breaks again.

Fly the flag at half-mast
For the greed that would not die,
For the hate that scorched the sky
With envenomed fire;
Fly the flag at half-mast
For the deeds of men’s ire.

Fly the flag at half-mast
For the love that has been slain,
For the conflict’s bloody stain
On the hopes of men;
Fly the flag at half-mast
Till the day breaks again.

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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

Laura Bell Everett: The Skein of Grievous War

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Laura Bell Everett
The Lament of the Voiceless

‘Wars are to be,’ they say, they blindly say,
Nor strive to end them. Had we eyes to see
The ghosts that walk across the fields of slain,
We might behold by each boy soldier’s corpse
An endless line who mourn his fateful doom.

‘Who are you?’ asking, we might hear these words:
‘We are the men and women not to be,
Because the father of our line was slain,
Cut off untimely. Brave he was and strong;
His heritage was ours had he not been
The food of slaughter in a wanton war.’

Boy soldier, sleep, by fireside loved ones mourned;
By neighbor comrades, half ashamed of life,
When death claims him who went that they might stay.

Boy soldier, sleep; if ever these forget,
You still are mourned by that long line unborn,
They mourn for you, your sons who never were.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Upton Sinclair: Selections on war

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Upton Sinclair
Jimmie Higgins

Jimmie saw himself hounded here and there by this accursed war – until it finished by seizing him and dragging him to the trenches!

The new Congress had met, and declared a state of war with Germany, and the whole country was rushing into arms. Men were enlisting by hundreds of thousands; but that was not enough for the militarists – they wanted a conscription-law, so that every man might be compelled to go. If they were so sure of themselves and their wonderful war, why weren’t they satisfied to let those fight it who wanted to? So argued the rebellious Jimmie and his anti-militarist associates. But no! the militarists knew perfectly well that the bulk of the people did not want to fight, so they proposed to make them fight.

***

The Socialists held a National Convention at St. Louis, and drew up their declaration concerning the war. They called it the most unjustifiable war in history, “a crime against the people of the United States”; they called on the workers of the country to oppose it, and pledged themselves “to the support of all mass movements in opposition to conscription.”

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When Jimmie Higgins stepped off the train at Leesville, it was a blustery morning in early March, with snow still on the ground and flurries of it in the air. In front of the station was a public square, with a number of people gathered, and Jimmie strolled over to see what was going on. What he saw was a score of young men, some in khaki uniforms, some in ordinary trousers and sweaters, being drilled. Jimmie, being in the mood of a gentleman of leisure, stopped to watch the show.

It was the thing he had been talking and thinking about for nearly three years: this monstrous perversion of the human soul called Militarism, this force which seized hold of men and made them into automatons, moving machines which obeyed orders in a mass, and went out and did deeds of which none of them taken separately would have been capable, even in their dreams. Here was a bunch of average nice Leesville boys, employees of the shops near-by, “soda-jerkers” and “counter-jumpers”, clerks who had deftly fitted shoes on to the feet of pretty ladies. Now they were submitting themselves to this deforming discipline, undergoing this devilish transmogrification.

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

Canadian writers on war and peace

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Bliss Carmen
The Gate of Peace
Excerpt

Ah, who will build the city of our dream,
Where beauty shall abound and truth avail,
With patient love that is too wise for strife,
Blending in power as gentle as the rain
With the reviving earth on full spring days?
Who now will speed us to its gate of peace,
And reassure us on our doubtful road?

Three centuries ago a fearless man,
Yearning to set his people in the way,
Threw all his royal might into a plan
To found an ideal city that should give
Freedom to every instinct for the best,
From humblest impulse in his own domain
To rumored wisdom from the world’s far ends.
Strengthened with ardor from a high resolve,
Beneath the patient smile of Indian skies
This fair dream flourished for a score of years,
Until the blight of evil touched its bloom
With fading, and transformed its vivid life
Into a ghost-flower of its fair design.

Now ruined nursery tower and gay boudoir,
A sad custodian of sacred tombs,
And scattered feathers from the purple wings description
Of doves who reign in undisputed calm
Over this Eden of hope and fair essay,
Recall the valor of this ancient quest.

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

British writers on peace and war

Walter Scott: Selections on war

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Walter Scott
The Monastery

I never could conceive what influenced me, when a boy, in the choice of a profession. Military zeal and ardour it was not, which made me stand out for a commission in the Scots Fusiliers, when my tutors and curators wished to bind me apprentice to old David Stiles, Clerk to his Majesty’s Signet. I say, military zeal it was not; for I was no fighting boy in my own person, and cared not a penny to read the history of the heroes who turned the world upside down in former ages. As for courage, I had, as I have since discovered, just as much of it as serve’d my turn, and not one grain of surplus. I soon found out, indeed, that in action there was more anger in running away than in standing fast; and besides, I could not afford to lose my commission, which was my chief means of support. But, as for that overboiling valour, which I have heard many of ours talk of, though I seldom observed that it influenced them in the actual affair – that exuberant zeal, which courts Danger as a bride, – truly my courage was of a complexion much less ecstatical.

Again, the love of a red coat, which, in default of all other aptitudes to the profession, has made many a bad soldier and some good ones, was an utter stranger to my disposition….

Thus, a stranger to the ordinary motives which lead young men to make the army their choice, and without the least desire to become either a hero or a dandy, I really do not know what determined my thoughts that way, unless it were the happy state of half-pay indolence enjoyed by Captain Doolittle, who had set up his staff of rest in my native village. Every other person had, or seemed to have, something to do, less or more. They did not, indeed, precisely go to school and learn tasks, that last of evils in my estimation; but it did not escape my boyish observation, that they were all bothered with something or other like duty or labour – all but the happy Captain Doolittle. The minister had his parish to visit, and his preaching to prepare, though perhaps he made more fuss than he needed about both. The laird had his farming and improving operations to superintend; and, besides, he had to attend trustee meetings, and lieutenancy meetings, and head-courts, and meetings of justices, and what not – was as early up, (that I detested,) and as much in the open air, wet and dry, as his own grieve. The shopkeeper (the village boasted but one of eminence) stood indeed pretty much at his ease behind his counter, for his custom was by no means overburdensome; but still he enjoyed his status, as the Bailie calls it, upon condition of tumbling all the wares in his booth over and over, when any one chose to want a yard of muslin, a mousetrap, an ounce of caraways, a paper of pins, the Sermons of Mr. Peden, or the Life of Jack the Giant-Queller, (not Killer, as usually erroneously written and pronounced. – See my essay on the true history of this worthy, where real facts have in a peculiar degree been obscured by fable.) In short, all in the village were under the necessity of doing something which they would rather have left undone, excepting Captain Doolittle, who walked every morning in the open street, which formed the high mall of our village, in a blue coat with a red neck, and played at whist the whole evening, when he could make up a party. This happy vacuity of all employment appeared to me so delicious, that it became the primary hint, which, according to the system of Helvetius, as the minister says, determined my infant talents towards the profession I was destined to illustrate.

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

British writers on peace and war

Richard Aldington: Selections on war

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Richard Aldington
Living Sepulchres

One frosty night when the guns were still
I leaned against the trench
Making for myself ‘hokku’
Of the moon and flowers and of the snow:
But the ghastly scurrying of huge rats
Swollen with feeding upon men’s flesh
Filled me with shrinking dread.

***

A Ruined House

Those who lived here are gone
Or dead or desolate with grief;
Of all their life here
Nothing remains
Except their trampled, dirtied clothes
Among the dusty bricks,
Their marriage bed, rusty and bent,
Thrown down aside as useless ;
And a broken toy left by their child…

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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

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Helen Wieand Cole
Peace on Earth

Shepherds there were who in the fields by night
Kept watch, not wisting that a chorus bright
Of angels would to them the news convey
The dawning of the world’s most potent day.

Countless the nights of darkness and of fear
The world has watched through, but the message clear
Of prophets, martyrs, saints, and poets brought
The healing word for which it blindly sought. –

Visions from God through men must come the word,
Till the whole earth to action deeply stirred
From war and dread and hatred wins release,
And hails once more as King the Prince of Peace.

====

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

British writers on peace and war

====

Robert Nichols
Introduction to Counter-Attack and Other Poems by Siegfried Sassoon

Can he then see nothing else in war? I remember him once turning to me and saying suddenly apropos of certain exalté poems in my ‘Ardours and Endurances’: ‘Yes, I see all that and I agree with you, Robert. War has made me. I think I am a man now as well as a poet. You have said the things well enough. Now let us nevermore say another word of whatever little may be good in war for the individual who has a heart to be steeled.’

I remember I nodded, for further acquaintance with war inclines me to his opinion.

‘Let no one ever,’ he continued, ‘from henceforth say a word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell and those who institute it are criminals. Were there anything to say for it, it should not be said for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages.’

For myself this is the truth. War doesn’t ennoble: it degrades. The words of Barbusse* placed at the beginning of this book should be engraved over the doors of every war office of every State in the world.

While war is a possibility man is little better than a savage and civilisation the mere moments of rest between a succession of nightmares. It is to help to end this horror that Siegfried Sassoon and the many others who feel like him have continued to fight as after the publication of this book he fought in Palestine and in France.

You civilized persons who read this book not only as a poet but as a soldier I beg of you not to turn from it. Read it again and again till its words become part of your consciousness. It was written by a man for mankind’s sake, that ‘that which is humane’ might no more be an empty phrase, that the words of Blake might blossom to a new meaning –

Thou art a man, God is no more,
Thine own humanity learn to adore.

*Dans la trêve desolée de cette matinée, ces hommes qui avaient été tenaillés par la fatigue, fouettés par la pluie, bouleversés par toute une nuit de tonnerre, ces rescapés des volcans et de l’inondation entrevoyaient à quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral qu’au physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit les grandes idées, commande tous les crimes – mais ils se rappelaient combien elle avait développé en eux et autour d’eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en excepter un seul; la méchanceté jusqu’au sadisme, l’égoisme jusqu’à la férocité, le besoin de jouir jusqu’à la folie.

Henri Barbusse, Le Feu.

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

American writers on peace and against war

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Robert Haven Schauffler
The Look in Their Eyes

Youthful and buoyant and blithe they went into battle,
Fresh as Olympian athletes strung for the prize:
Aged and broken and done they dragged from the victory,
All with that look, that terrible look in their eyes.

Plainly I saw in their eyes the plunge of the bayonet.
Plainly the crater’s fresh red, and the faint, overwise
Smile on a comrade’s cold lips and his blackening body
Were mirrored once more by the terrible look in their eyes.

Never again shall they greet with youth’s poignant pleasure,
Forests or tremulous dawns or the round moon’s rise,
Or beauty or grandeur or love or the glory of heaven
Who return with the mark of the knowledge of hell in their eyes.

====

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

British writers on peace and war

William Noel Hodgson: The Hills Shall Bring Peace

====

William Noel Hodgson*
Roma Fuit

The mellow sunshine lies upon the grass,
And peace and restfulness so deeply brood,
That you might think this place has been asleep
Through all the years; the slowly moving sheep
Set up a gentle cropping as they pass,
Drowsily woven with the solitude.

Yet here of old men’s restless spirit stirred
The deeps of war; the crash or shield on targe
Filled all the hills, and drowning all was heard
The swelling thunder of a Roman charge.
And now the play is ended, and they lie
Where sheep are feeding and the curlews cry.

The hero lies no softer than the craven –
Roman and Pict, they share the common bed;
Like men they battled over life’s high seas,
And now laid sleeping in the windless haven,
Sheltered from sound of storm, they take their ease,
And share the great alliance of the dead.

*Died at the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916 at the age of twenty-three.

====

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

American writers on peace and against war

Upton Sinclair: Selections on war

====

Upton Sinclair
Jimmie Higgins

Jimmie knew that on this Sunday, in cities all over Germany, Austria, Belgium, France and England, the workers were gathering by millions and tens of millions, to protest against the red horror of war being let loose over their heads. And in America too – a call would go from the new world to the old, that the workers should rise and carry out their pledge to prevent this crime against mankind. He, Jimmie Higgins, had no voice that anybody would heed; but he had helped to bring the people of his city to hear a man who had a voice, and who would show the meaning of this world-crisis to the working-people.

***

Jimmie raced beside him, afraid to speak, for he divined that the Candidate was brooding over the world-calamity, the millions of young men marching out to slaughter.

***

It had chanced that the day which the War-lords and Money-lords of Europe had chosen to drive their slaves to slaughter was the day on which the Candidate had been scheduled to speak in the Leesville Opera-house.

***

They have plunged mankind into a pit of lunacy. “They call it war,” cried the speaker; “but I call it murder.” And he went on to picture to them what was happening in Europe at that hour – he brought the awful nightmare before their eyes, he showed them homes blown to pieces, cities given to the flames, the bodies of men pierced by bullets or torn to fragments by shells. He pictured a bayonet plunged into the abdomen of a man; he made you see the ghastly deed, and feel its shuddering wickedness.

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

American writers on peace and against war

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Arthur B. Rhinow
The Unknown Soldier

I They look so solemn and fine. Who are they?
MYSELF The best known have come to honor the unknown.
I Why do they honor him?
MYSELF He represents the millions to whom they are
indebted for victory.
I Do they think so highly of them?
MYSELF They bow to the majesty of the common man.
I Then, if another conflict threatens, will they ask the
common people, the Unknown, whether they want war?
MYSELF Look at those beautiful flowers.
I The boys on the farms and in the mills?
MYSELF Hush. Listen to the oratory.
I Will they ask the mothers, the unknown mothers?
MYSELF Ah, the music.

===

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

British writers on peace and war

Walter Scott: Selections on war

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Walter Scott
Count Robert of Paris

“I trust,” said Anna Comnena, “that in my humble sketch of the life of the princely sire from whom I derive my existence, I have not forgot to notice his love of peace, and care for the lives of his soldiery, and abhorrence of the bloody manners of the heretic Franks, as one of his most distinguishing characteristics.”

***

The Patriarch here interposed his opinion. – “There is a consolation,” he said,” in the thought, that the genuine Romans in the imperial army are but few, since a trade so bloody as war, is most fitly prosecuted by those whose doctrines, as well as their doings, on earth, merit eternal condemnation in the next world.”

“Reverend Patriarch,” said the Emperor, “we would not willingly hold with the wild infidels, that Paradise is to be gained by the sabre; nevertheless, we would hope that a Roman dying in battle for his religion and his Emperor, may find as good hope of acceptation, after the mortal pang is over, as a man who dies in peace, and with unblooded hand.”

“It is enough for me to say,” resumed the Patriarch, “that the Church’s doctrine is not so indulgent: she is herself peaceful, and her promises of favour are for those who have been men of peace….”

***

…the sound rather resembled a point of war regularly blown, than the tumultuous blare of bugle-horns and trumpets, the accompaniments at once, and the annunciation, of a taken town, in which the horrid circumstances of storm had not yet given place to such stern peace as the victors’ weariness of slaughter and rapine allows at length to the wretched inhabitants.

====

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

American writers on peace and against war

Brent Dow Allinson: Selections on peace and war

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Brent Dow Allinson
Challenge!

Out of the depths a cry
Rings, rings and is still!
Out of the night a voice:
“Ye that were taught to kill,
Youth blinded, cow’d and bled, –
Who planned your agony?
Ye brave unnumber’d dead,
Have ye not seen the Lie?”

“Into the deserts of Death,
Into the pits of Hell,
Hurl’d, and at whose command, –
Know ye and can ye tell?
Bludgeon’d and crush’d and made
Helots and beasts: – deceived,
Butcher’d and then betray’d, –
Laugh’d at because you believed!”

“Ye who have dream’d and died
That Freedom and Peace might live,
God will forgive your pride;
Never will ye forgive
The crime of pious knaves
Who drove you forth to die!…
No more will you be slaves,
Ye who have seen the Lie!”

====

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

American writers on peace and against war

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Edwin Markham
The Christ of the Andes

After volcanoes husht with snows,
Up where the wide-winged condor goes,
Great Aconcagua, husht and high,
Sends down the ancient peace of the sky.

So, poised in clean Andean air,
Where bleak with cliffs the grim peaks stare,
Christ, reaching out his sacred hands,
Sheds his brave peace upon the lands.

There once of old wild battles roared
And brother-blood was on the sword;
Now all the fields are rich with grain
And only roses redden the plain.

Torn were the peoples with feuds and hates
Fear on the mountain-walls, death at the gates;
Then through the clamor of arms was heard
A whisper of the Master’s word.

“Fling down your swords; be friends again:
Ye are not wolf-packs: ye are men.
Let brother-counsel be the Law:
Not serpent fang, not tiger claw.”

Chile and Argentina heard;
The great hopes in their spirits stirred;
The red swords from their clenched fists fell,
And heaven shone out where once was hell!

They hurled their cannons into flame
And out of the forge the strong Christ came.
Twas thus they molded in happy fire
The tall Christ of their hearts desire…

O Christ of Olivet, you husht the wars
Under the far Andean stars:
Lift now your strong nail-wounded hands
Over all peoples, over all lands
Stretch out those comrade hands to be
A shelter over land and sea!

====

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

American writers on peace and against war

Upton Sinclair: Selections on war

====

Upton Sinclair
The Book of Life

Ever since I can remember the world, there have been peace societies; I look back in history and discover that ever since there have been wars, there have been prophets declaiming against them in the name of humanity and God. As I write, there is a great world conference on disarmament in session in Washington, and all good Americans hope that war is to be ended and permanent peace made safe. All that I can do at this juncture is to point out the fundamental and all-controlling fact of present-day economics: that for the ruling class of any country to agree to disarmament and the abolition of war, is for that class to sign its own death warrant and cut its own throat. American capitalism can survive on this earth only by strangling and destroying Japanese capitalism and British capitalism, and doing it before long. The far-sighted capitalists on both sides know that, and are making their preparations accordingly.

What the members of the peace societies and the diplomats of the disarmament conferences do is to cut off the branches of the tree of war. They leave the roots untouched, and then, when the tree continues to thrive, they are astounded. I conclude this chapter with a concrete illustration, cut from my morning newspaper. We went to war against German militarism, and to make the world safe for democracy – meaning thereby capitalist commercialism. We commanded the German people to “beat their swords into plough-shares”; that is, to set their Krupp factories to making tools of peace; and they did so. We saddled them with an enormous indemnity, making them our serfs for a generation or two, and compelling them to hasten out into the world markets, to sell their goods and raise gold to pay us. And now, how does their behavior strike us? Do we praise their industry, and fidelity to their obligations? Here are the headlines of a news despatch, published by the Los Angeles Times on December 10, 1921, at the top of the front page, right hand column, the most conspicuous position in the paper. Read it, and understand the sources of modern war!

NEW ATTACK BY BERLIN
————
DUMPING GOODS BY WHOLESALE
————
Cheap German Trash Puts Thousands of Americans Out of Employment
————
Glove Plants Shut Down and Potash Industry Killed by Teuton Intrigue

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

American writers on peace and against war

Benjamin Musser: Paradox

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Benjamin Musser
If War Should Come

Bar me in jail, where I can sing
My song of love for erring man,
Flung by old men into this thing
That never did and never can
Bring peace of God. My flag unfurled
Is of no country of this world.

For border-lines and nations are
Less than one life, one heart that sees
A brother linked as star to star,
Souls born for immortalities.
No wrong is righted in the will,
In peace or war, of those who kill.

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

British writers on peace and war

John Oxenham: Selections on war

John Oxenham: “I can imagine a World-Wide Women’s League for Peace”

John Oxenham: The Reaper

John Oxenham: The Stars’ Accusal

John Oxenham: Thank God For Peace!

John Oxenham: “War is the devil,” said the man soberly, and hurried on

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

British writers on peace and war

James Anthony Froude: Chivalry of labor, Carlyle’s alternative to war

James Anthony Froude: If they had known that war would result

====

Our first boy’s feeling with the Iliad is, that Homer is pre-eminently a poet of war; that battles were his own passion, and tales of battles the delight of his listeners. His heroes appear like a great fighting aristocracy, such as the after Spartans were, Homer himself like another Tyrtaeus, and the poorer occupations of life too menial for their notice or for his. They seem to live for glory – the one glory worth caring for only to be won upon the battle-field, and their exploits the one worthy theme of the poet’s song. This is our boyish impression, and, like other such, it is very different from the truth. If war had been a passion with the Ionians, as it was with the Teutons and the Norsemen, the god of battles would have been supreme in the Pantheon; and Zeus would
scarcely have called Ares the most hateful spirit in Olympus – most hateful, because of his delight in war and carnage.

***

The designs on the shield of Achilles are, together, a complete picture of Homer’s microcosm; Homer surely never thought inglorious or ignoble what the immortal art of Hephaistos condescended to imitate.

The first groups of figures point a contrast which is obviously intentional; and the significance becomes sadly earnest when we remember who it was that was to bear the shield. The moral is a very modern one, and the picture might be called by the modern name of Peace and War. There are two cities, embodying in their condition the two ideas. In one, a happy wedding is going forward; the pomp of the hymeneal procession is passing along the streets; the air is full of music, and the women are standing at their doors to gaze. The other is in the terrors of a siege; the hostile armies glitter under the walls, the women and children press into the defence, and crowd to the battlements. In the first city, a quarrel rises, and wrong is made right, not by violence and fresh wrong, but by the majesty of law and order. The heads of the families are sitting gravely in the market-place, the cause is heard, the compensation set, the claim awarded. Under the walls of the other city an ambush lies, like a wild beast on the watch for its prey. The unsuspecting herdsmen pass on with their flocks to the waterside; the spoilers spring from their hiding-place, and all is strife, and death, and horror, and confusion. If there were other war-scenes on the shield, it might be doubted whether Homer intended so strong a contrast as he executed; but fighting for its own sake was evidently held in slight respect with him. The forms of life which were really beautiful to him follow in a series of exquisite Rubens-like pictures: harvest scenes and village festivals; the ploughing and the vintage, or the lion-hunt on the reedy margin of the river; and he describes them with a serene, sunny enjoyment which no other old world art or poetry gives us anything in the least resembling. Even we ourselves, in our own pastorals, are struggling with but half success, after what Homer entirely possessed. What a majesty he has thrown into his harvest scene! The yellow corn falling, the boys following to gather up the large arms-full as they drop behind the reapers; in the distance a banquet preparing under the trees; in the centre, in the midst of his workmen, the king sitting in mellow silence, sceptre in hand, looking on with gladdened heart. Again we see the ploughmen, unlike what are to be seen in our corn-grounds, turning their teams at the end of the furrow, and attendants standing ready with the wine-cup, to hand to them as they pass. Homer had seen these things, or he would not have sung of them; and princes and nobles might have shared such labour without shame, when kings took part in it, and gods designed it, and the divine Achilles bore its image among his insignia in the field.

***

It was the thing itself, the actual fighting and killing, as apart from the heroism for which it makes opportunities, for which we said that he showed no taste. His manner shows that he felt like a cultivated man, and not like a savage. His spirit stirs in him as he goes out with his hero to the battle; but there is no drunken delight in blood; we never hear of warriors as in that grim Hall of the Nibelungen, quenching their thirst in the red stream; never anything of that fierce exultation in carnage with which the war poetry of so many nations, late and old, is crimsoned. Everything, on the contrary, is contrived so as to soften the merely horrible, and fix our interest only on what is grand or beautiful. We are never left to dwell long together on scenes of death, and when the battle is at its fiercest, our minds are called off by the rapid introduction (either by simile or some softer turn of human feeling) of other associations, not contrived, as an inferior artist would contrive, to deepen our emotions, but to soften and relieve them.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Carl John Bostelmann: Hate, still thy drums! War, make thy trumpets mute!

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Carl John Bostelmann
Elegy for Mars

Upon our highest hill, within a clod
Appropriately consecrated, lies
The hero of all holocaust. Now rise
Tumultuous entreaties to a god
Who has forsaken us, whose holy rod
Must nevermore be raised to blind our eyes:
The march of armies and their battlecries
Are buried under furrows of turned sods.

His drums are broken, his frayed banners furled,
His corps disbanded and his bugles mute,
When we who are the liberated world
Can plough and plant and harvest golden fruit
In peaceful orchards, who dared not before
We heaped our stones upon the grave of war.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Thomas Curtis Clark: Selections on war

Thomas Curtis Clark: Apparitions

Thomas Curtis Clark: At Half-Mast

Thomas Curtis Clark: Bugle Song of Peace

Thomas Curtis Clark: Not heroes, only sober men, who vow that war must never be again

Thomas Curtis Clark: Our minds can scarce believe our forefathers strove as very beasts, in blood

Thomas Curtis Clark: Who made war?

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

British writers on peace and war

Walter Scott: Selections on war

====

Walter Scott
A Legend of Montrose

…that half savage state of society, in which war is always more welcome than peace.

***

…the nature and condition of their army; headed by a poor and discontented nobility, under whom it was officered chiefly by Scottish soldiers of fortune, who had served in the German wars until they had lost almost all distinction of political principle, and even of country, in the adoption of the mercenary faith, that a soldier’s principal duty was fidelity to the state or sovereign from whom he received his pay, without respect either to the justice of the quarrel, or to their own connexion with either of the contending parties. To men of this stamp, Grotius applies the severe character – NULLUM VITAE GENUS ET IMPROBIUS, QUAM EORUM, QUI SINE CAUSAE RESPECTU MERCEDE CONDUCTI, MILITANT. [There is no more disgraceful way of life than that of those who, without regard to the cause, are hired for a wage and fight.]

***

“I myself never saw twenty dollars of my own all the time I served the invincible Gustavus, unless it was from the chance of a storm or victory, or the fetching in some town or doorp, when a cavalier of fortune, who knows the usage of wars, seldom faileth to make some small profit.”

***

“I think this fellow Dalgetty is one of those horse-leeches, whose appetite for blood being only sharpened by what he has sucked in foreign countries, he is now returned to batten upon that of his own. Shame on the pack of these mercenary swordmen! they have made the name of Scot through all Europe equivalent to that of a pitiful mercenary, who knows neither honour nor principle but his month’s pay, who transfers his allegiance from standard to standard, at the pleasure of fortune or the highest bidder; and to whose insatiable thirst for plunder and warm quarters we owe much of that civil dissension which is now turning our swords against our own bowels. I had scarce patience with the hired gladiator….”

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

American writers on peace and against war

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Richard Burton
On Syrian Hills

It is said that Bedouins cry on the Syrian hills a clear
Loud summons to war, and the tribe far distant hearken and hear,
So wondrous rare is the air, so crystal the atmosphere.
Their call is to arms; but One, in the centuries long ago,
Spake there for Peace, in tones that were marvelous sweet and low,
And the ages they here Him yet, and His voice do the nations know.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Brent Dow Allinson: Selections on war

Brent Dow Allinson: Challenge to the pious knaves who drove them forth to die

Brent Dow Allinson: Could warring men perceive this thy perfection

Brent Dow Allinson: Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Vivere!

Brent Dow Allinson: Harvard Declares War!

Brent Dow Allinson: To him when he beholds war’s desecration

Brent Dow Allinson: To him who blesses war

Brent Dow Allinson: Two Dreams. Let us wake to peace.

Brent Dow Allinson: What have you done with my legions, Caesar?

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

British writers on peace and war

John Galsworthy: Selections on war

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John Galsworthy
The Mob

He seems about to tear his notes across. Then, changing his mind, turns them over and over, muttering. His voice gradually grows louder, till he is declaiming to the empty room the peroration of his speech.

MORE…We have arrogated to our land the title Champion of Freedom, Foe of Oppression. Is that indeed a bygone glory? Is it not worth some sacrifice of our pettier dignity, to avoid laying another stone upon its grave; to avoid placing before the searchlight eyes of History the spectacle of yet one more piece of national cynicism? We are about to force our will and our dominion on a race that has always been free, that loves its country, and its independence, as much as ever we love ours. I cannot sit silent to-night and see this begin. As we are tender of our own land, so we should be of the lands of others. I love my country. It is because I love my country that I raise my voice. Warlike in spirit these people may be – but they have no chance against ourselves. And war on such, however agreeable to the blind moment, is odious to the future. The great heart of mankind ever beats in sense and sympathy with the weaker. It is against this great heart of mankind that we are going. In the name of Justice and Civilization we pursue this policy; but by Justice we shall hereafter be judged, and by Civilization – condemned.

***

STEEL. [Still breathless and agitated] We were here – he slipped away from me somehow. He must have gone straight down to the House. I ran over, but when I got in under the Gallery he was speaking already. They expected something – I never heard it so still there. He gripped them from the first word – deadly – every syllable. It got some of those fellows. But all the time, under the silence you could feel a – sort of – of – current going round. And then Sherratt – I think it was – began it, and you saw the anger rising in them; but he kept them down – his quietness! The feeling! I’ve never seen anything like it there.

Then there was a whisper all over the House that fighting had begun. And the whole thing broke out – regular riot – as if they could have killed him. Some one tried to drag him down by the coat-tails, but he shook him off, and went on. Then he stopped dead and walked out, and the noise dropped like a stone. The whole thing didn’t last five minutes. It was fine, Mrs. More; like – like lava; he was the only cool person there. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything – it was grand!

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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

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Marion Perham Gale
God’s Challengers

Today I have seen
Mute ghosts of men,
Shaking,
Forever shaking;
Heard grown men’s tongues
A children’s Babel making;
Felt the cold sweat
On trembling giant hands,
As to my own they clung;
Have looked into eyes
Glazed as cold pottery,
Eyes dim as lanterns
In a garden strung,
Their lights most flickered out,
Yet swaying,
Forever swaying.
I have seen smiles
Burn on a hollow cheek
Down to a dry aped grin;
Tears welling from
Great monster dams
Built doggedly within,
I have seen men,
Not blind,
Yet searching,
Forever searching
For something they cannot find;
Men who have done big things,
Alas, content,
To go the useless way
Their feet are sent.

These are the mothers’ sons
Who fought
“To make the world
Safe for Democracy.”
These are the men
Who, silent, tread
The stony road to Calvary.

Go look at them,
I say,
To you, to you, and you!
The truth is known
By, oh, so few!

These are the boys
We sent to War.
God’s challengers

Asking,
Forever asking,
What did we do it for?

====

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

American writers on peace and against war

Thomas Curtis Clark: Selections on war

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Thomas Curtis Clark
Ultimatum

We will not fight!
The rolling drum and trumpet call no more
Excite. We were as foolish boys before,
But now we think as men. Our loyalty
To truth, to human weal, is victory!

We will not fight!
We once were cowards: we could not resist
The lies of statesmen, cries of “Pacifist!”
But now we know that war is waged for gold –
And for men’s profit shall our lives be sold?
We will not fight.

We will not fight!
You may imprison us in walls of stone –
Our souls, our consciences, are still our own.
We are not heroes, only sober men,
Who vow that war must never be again.
We will not fight.

====

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

British writers on peace and war

William Makepeace Thackeray: Selections on war

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William Makepeace Thackeray
The History of Pendennis

Tom, a little wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick last quarter – and there he was in the centre of the square, rallying round the flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, crossbelts, and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging cymbals – talking familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to their chins and Waterloo medals. What would not Pen have given to wear such epaulettes and enter such a service?

But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her by her son, put on a face full of terror and alarm. She said she “did not quarrel with others who thought differently, but that in her opinion a Christian had no right to make the army a profession. Mr. Pendennis never, never would have permitted his son to be a soldier. Finally, she should be very unhappy if he thought of it.” Now Pen would have as soon cut off his nose and ears as deliberately, and of aforethought malice, made his mother unhappy; and, as he was of such a generous disposition that he would give away anything to any one, he instantly made a present of his visionary red coat and epaulettes and his ardour for military glory to his mother.

====

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

German writers on peace and war

====

Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
The Messiah
Translator unidentified

So wild, in midnight’s hour,
Resounds the din of battle, the last shrieks
Of dying warriors, the proud victor’s shout,
When, in his brazen car, the northern blast
Sweeps o’er the scene of conflict, and conveys
To distant echo War’s tremendous roar,
Satan beheld his host.
Filled with fierce joy,
Proudly erect he stood and gazed around.

…with a glance of scorn and triumph, views
The Prince of murderers some exulting chief
Hasting away to battle, o’er whose sight
False dreams of glory rise….
Sweet in his ear
Already rings the warrior’s dying groan;
Forgetful that the trumpet’s voice shall soon
Call him with them to Judgment!

***

A lone and melancholy plaint! From far,
Like coming oceans rolled the dying groans
From battle’s crimson field and testified
Against the spoiler.

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

American writers on peace and against war

Vincent Godfrey Burns: Selections on war

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Vincent Godfrey Burns
To a Certain Very Ugly Building
The Armory

Minotaur of madness, you certainly belong there:
Mountain, grim of black stone, with relevancy rare
You fit most perfectly your slum environment.

In this shambles where every undertaker thrives,
Where not one thing is cheap as human lives,
You are death’s eloquent, ideal advertisement.

You go up mid tenements where out of fetid rooms
Our cocky Irish lads march gayly to their dooms,
Go down to Armageddon with a glory in their eyes.

Just to lie down on winter’s night in warm, clean bed,
To know the joys of comradeship, to be well-fed,
To slum-hell dwellers – what a door to Paradise!

So they laugh, and snatch their guns from out your bloody hands;
What a lark to leave the shop, and ship for foreign lands!
These crippled Christs know no such sport in their drab, dull peace.

Right merrily with cheers they welcome every war,
With hearts of hope and joy they throng your gaping door,
War means not death and doom to these, bur gay release!

But ghost-haunted are your shadowy halls of gloom,
Your gray roof’s a shroud and your sooty walls a tomb,
A tomb for herded, blinded saints of our humanity;

A tomb where throng the ghosts of an uncounted host,
A tomb where ruins lie of a myriad cities lost,
O slum town symbol of war’s grim insanity.

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

British writers on peace and war

Walter Scott: Selections on war

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Walter Scott
Castle Dangerous

“…we martial men ought to make our petitions with peculiar penitence to Heaven for mercy, when we reflect on the various miseries which the nature of our profession compels us to inflict on each other.”

***

Thomas of Erceldoun (Thomas the Rhymer) was, according to the Welsh triads, one of the three bards of Britain, who never stained a spear with blood, or was guilty either of taking or retaking castles and fortresses, and thus far not a person likely, after death, to be suspected of such warlike feats.

***

“…even my own poor house has not escaped the dignity of a garrison of a man-at-arms, besides two or three archer knaves, and one or two slips of mischievous boys called pages, and so forth, who will not let a man say, ‘this is my own,’ by his own fireside.”

***

The farm-house or mansion-house, (for, from its size and appearance, it might have been the one or the other,) was a large but low building, and the walls of the out-houses were sufficiently strong to resist any band of casual depredators. There was nothing, however, which could withstand a more powerful force; for, in a country laid waste by war, the farmer was then, as now, obliged to take his chance of the great evils attendant upon that state of things; and his condition, never a very eligible one, was rendered considerably worse by the insecurity attending it.

***

“The castle was in total tumult; in one corner the war-men were busy breaking up and destroying provisions; in another, they were slaying men, horses, and cattle, and these actions were accompanied with appropriate sounds. The cattle, particularly, had become sensible of their impending fate, and with awkward resistance and piteous cries, testified that reluctance with which these poor creatures look instinctively on the shambles. The groans and screams of men, undergoing, or about to undergo, the stroke of death, and the screeches of the poor horses which were in mortal agony, formed a fearful chorus.”

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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

Louise Morgan Sill: I am the Hell-god, War!

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Louise Morgan Sill
After Battle

I. Wounded

Bare floors, but not too clean;
White beds, but not too white –
I saw blood-stains on one of the sheets.
He had not slept all night;
The shell that burst so deadly near
Had struck out his sight.

His arms were bandaged thick,
Broken by that same shell.
He said he did not know he was hurt,
But heard a savage yell.
He did not know it was himself
Who shrieked it, in that hell.

He told me that he walked
For twenty yards or so,
And sat down by the shelter
He somehow seemed to know.
And all around were terrible sounds
Of human-animal woe.

They’ve bandaged his torn head,
And each queer, moveless arm,
And left him lying on the ground
Out of the way of harm,
And thrust a sharp thing in his flesh
That soothed him like a charm.

And then – twelve endless days
Of unwashed agony.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘since I got here,
And they have tended me,
I’m getting better every day –
It’s fine as it can be.’

His legs were pierced with wounds –
Shell-fragments, stones and such.
‘Some day,’ he said, ‘I’ll walk
All round here with a crutch.’
I asked him if he suffered much.
He said, ‘No – not too much.’

II. The Little Poilu

Up and down the ward he walked,
With one arm in a sling.
’Won’t you have some cigarettes? ’
We asked, ‘ or anything? ’
But up and down he walked,
And ceaselessly he talked.

Oh, such a little man he seemed,
So harmless and so kind.
He had the slightest sort of wound –
But what had hurt his mind?
As up and down he walked,
And eagerly he talked.

And all he said was true,
And sensible and sound.
He talked about the soldiers,
And the shell-ploughed battleground.
But what had happened to his head?
For next day he was dead.

III. At the End

He sat propped up in his bed.
(For the nurse had led me there
To this little room apart
Left to her special care,
Where a soldier was about,
Almost smiling, to ‘go out.’)

By his bed two women sat,
Poor, and trying not to show
What they knew. One was his wife.
I drew near and, speaking low,
Offered some poor humble word
Of human friendship. And he heard.

His impassive gentle face,
Showed a clean life, a pure heart.
He was one of those who leave
Love behind them when they start
Off to ‘join the regiment’ –
Yet with duty are content.

Then I dared: ‘Some cigarettes –
You will smoke them after a while.’
Never can my eyes forget
The salt sweetness of the smile
He turned slowly on his wife,

As if he would thus beguile
The last moments of his life
With a humor truly French: –
‘Very soon I shall be dead –
Does one smoke when one lies under –
Or in Paradise – I wonder?’

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

American writers on peace and against war

Upton Sinclair: Selections on war

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Upton Sinclair
The Book of Life

There was a time when wars were caused by national and racial hatreds. There are still enough of these venerable prejudices left in the world, but no student of the subject would deny that the main source of modern wars is commercial rivalry. In 1917 we sent Eugene V. Debs to prison for declaring that the late world war was a war of capitalist greed. But two years later President Wilson, who had waged the war, declared in a public speech that everybody knew it had been a war of commercial rivalries.

The aims of modern war-makers are two. First, capitalism must have raw materials, including coal and oil, the sources of power, and gold and silver, the bases of credit. Parts of the world which are so unfortunate as to be rich in these substances become the bone of contention between rival financial groups, organized as nations. Some sarcastic writer has defined a “backward” nation as one which has gold mines and no navy. We are horrified to read of the wars of the French monarchs, caused by the jealous quarrels of mistresses; but in 1905 we saw Russia and Japan go to war and waste a million lives because certain Russian grand dukes had bribed certain Chinese mandarins and obtained concessions of timber on the Yalu River. We now observe France and Germany vowed to undying hate because of iron mines in Lorraine, and the efforts of France to take the coal mines of Silesia from Germany, and give them to Poland, which is another name for French capitalism.

The other end sought by the war-makers is markets for manufactured products, and control of trade routes, coaling stations and cables necessary to the building up of foreign trade. England has been “mistress of the seas” for some 300 years, which meant that her traders had obtained most of these advantages. But then came Germany, with her newly developed commercialism, shoving her rival out of the way. The Englishman was easy-going; he liked to play cricket, and stop and drink tea every afternoon. But the German worked all day and part of the night; he trained himself as a specialist, he studied the needs of his customers – all of which to the Englishman was “unfair” competition. But here were the populations of the crowded slums, dependent for their weekly wage and their daily bread upon the ability of the factories to go on turning out products! Here was the ever-blackening shadow of unemployment, the mutterings of social discontent, the agitators on the soap-boxes, the workers listening to them with more and more eager attention, and the journalists and politicians and bankers watching this phenomenon with a ghastly fear.

So came the great war. Social discontent was forgotten over night, and England and France plunged in to down their hated rival, once and for all time. Now they have succeeded: Germany’s ships have been taken from her, and likewise her cables and coaling stations; the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad is a forgotten dream; the British sit in Constantinople, and the traffic goes by sea. American capitalism wakes up, and rubs its eyes after a debauch of Presbyterian idealism, and discovers that it has paid out some $20,000,000,000, in order to confer all these privileges and advantages upon its rivals!

***

[Regarding reparations after the First World War] France wishes to collect an enormous indemnity from Germany, but nobody can figure out how this indemnity can be paid without ruining French industry. The French have demanded coal from Germany, and have got more than they can use, and are “dumping” it in Belgium and Holland, with the result that the British coal industry is ruined. The French clamor that the Germans must pay for the destruction they wrought in Northern France, and the Germans offer to send German workmen to rebuild the ruined towns; but the French denounce this as an insult – it would deprive French workingmen of their jobs! So I might continue for pages, pointing out the manifold absurdities which result from a system of industry for the profit of a few, instead of for the use of all.