Antiwar literary and philosophical selections

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

British writers on peace and war

William Hazlitt: Selections on war

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William Hazlitt
The Speeches of Western and Broughan (1816)

This is a sore subject; and it is here handled with much tenderness and delicacy. It puts one in mind of the traveller’s nose, and the nuns of Strasburgh, in the tale of Slaukenbergius. “I will touch it, said one; I dare not touch it, said another; I wish I had touched it, said a third; let me touch it, said a fourth.” While the gentlewomen were debating the point, the traveller with the great nose rode on. It would be no ungracious task to treat of the distresses of the country, if all were distressed alike; but that is not the case; nor is it possible to trace the necessities of one part of the community to their source, or to hint at a remedy, without glancing invidiously at the superfluities of others. “Why, there’s the rub, that makes calamity of so long life.” The speeches before us are to the subject what a veil is to a lady’s face, or a blind to a window. Almost all that has been said or written upon it is a palpable delusion – an attempt to speak out and say nothing; to oppose something that might be done, and propose something that cannot be done; to direct attention to the subject, and divert it from it; to do something and nothing; and to come to this potent conclusion, that while nothing is done, nothing can be done. “But have you then any remedy to propose instead?” What sort of a remedy do you mean? “Oh, one equally safe and efficacious, that shall set every thing to rights, and leave every thing just as it is, that does not touch either the tythes or the national debt, nor places and pensions, nor property of any kind, except the poor’s fund; that you may take from them to make them independent of the rich, as you leave Lord Camden in possession of thirty thousand a year to make him independent of the poor.” – Why, then, what if the Lord Chancellor and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to play a game at push-pin on the top of St. Paul’s; or if Mr Brougham and Mr Horner were to play at cat’s-cradle on the top of the Monument; or if the little garden between the Speaker’s house and the river-side were to be sown with pearls and cockle-shells? Or if – Pshaw! Patience, and shuffle the cards.

The great problem of our great problem-finders appears to be, to take nothing from the rich, and give it to the poor. That will never do. We find them and their schemes of diversion well described in Rabelais, book v. chap. xxii.

“How Queen Whims’ officers were employed; and how the said Lady retained us among her Abstractors.”
“I then saw a great number of the queen’s officers, who made blackamoors white as fast as hops, just rubbing their bellies with the bottom of a pannier.
“Others, with three couples of foxes in one yoke, ploughed a sandy shore, and did not lose their seed.
“Others washed burnt tiles, and made them lose their colour.
“Others extracted water out of pumice-stones, braying them a good while in a mortar, and changed their substance.
“Others sheared asses, and thus got long fleece wool.
“Others gathered off of thorns grapes, and figs off of thistles.
“Others stroked he-goats by the dugs, and saved their milk; and much they got by it.
“Others washed asses’ heads without losing their soap.
“Others taught cows to dance, and did not lose their fiddling.
“Others pitched nets to catch the wind, and took cock-lobsters in them.
“Others out of nothing made great things, and made great things return to nothing.
“Others made a virtue of necessity, and the best of a bad market, which seemed to me a very good piece of work.
“I saw two Gibroins by themselves keeping watch on the top of a tower, and we were told they guarded the moon from the wolves.”

The war has cost the country five or six hundred millions of money. This has not been a nominal expence, a playing at ducks and drakes with the King’s picture on the water, or a manufacturing of bank-notes, and then lighting our pipes with them, but real bona fide waste of the means, wealth, labour, produce or resources of the country, in the carrying on of the war. About one hundred of these five or six hundred millions have been sent directly out of the country in loans to our Allies, from the year 1793 to the year 1815, inclusive, during which period there is not a single year in which we did not (from our desire of peace with the legitimate government of that country) subsidise one or all of the powers of Europe to carry on war against the rebels, regicides, republicans and usurpers of France. Now the interest on this money alone would be five millions yearly, which would be nearly enough to pay the amount of the poor-rates of the whole country, which is seven millions of our yearly taxes, or might at least be applied to mitigate the mild severity of Mr Malthus’s sweeping clauses on that defenceless part of the subject. Here is a hundred millions then gone clean out of the country: there are four of five hundred millions more which have been sunk in the expenses of the war, and which might as well have been sunk in the sea; or what has been saved out of the wreck by those who have been most active in running the vessel aground, is in the hands of persons who are in no hurry that the public should go snacks with them in their excessive good fortune. In all three cases, and under each several head of loans, waste, or monopoly, John Bull pays the piper, or the interest of the whole money in taxes. He is just so many hundred millions the worse for the war, (whoever may be the better for it) not merely in paper, which would be nothing, nor in golden guineas, which would be something; but in what is better and more substantial than either, in goods and chattels, in the produce of the soil, and the work of his hands – in the difference between what the industry of man, left to itself, produces in time for peace for the benefit of man, and what the same industry, under the direction of government, produces in time of war for the destruction of others, without any benefit to himself, real, imaginary, or pretended; we mean in a physical and economical point of view, which is here the question – a question, which seems to last when the religion, politics, and morality of the affair are over. We have said that the expenses of the war might as well have been sunk in the sea; and so they might, for they have been sunk in unproductive labour, that is, in maintaining large establishments, and employing great numbers of men in doing nothing or mischief; for example, in making ships to destroy other ships, guns and gun-powder to blow out men’s brains, pikes and swords to run them through the body, drums and fifes to drown the noise of cannon and the whizzing of bullets, in making caps and coats to deck the bodies of those who live by killing others; in buying up pork and beef, butter and cheese to enable them to do this with more effect: in barracks, in transport-ships, in baggage and baggage-waggons, on horses, bridles and saddles in suttlers and followers of the camp, in chaplains of the regiment, in common trulls, and the mistresses of generals and commanders in chief; in contractors, in army and navy agents, their partners, clerks, relations, dependents, wives, families, servants in and out of livery, their town and country houses, coaches, curricles, parks, gardens, grottos, hot-houses, green-houses, pictures, statues, libraries; in treasury scribes, in secretaries and under-secretaries of state, of the foreign, colonial, and war departments, with their swarms of underlings, all of whom are maintained out the labour and sweat of the country, and for all of whom, and for all that they do (put together) the country is not one pin the better, or at least, one penny more in pocket, than if they were at the bottom of the Channel. The present may have been the most just and necessary war, in a political, moral and religious point of view, that ever was engaged in; but it has also been the most expensive; and what is worse, the expense remains just the same, though it may have been the most unjust and unnecessary in the world. We have paid for it and we must pay for it equally in either case, and wholly out of our own pockets. The price of restoring the Pope, the Inquisition, the Bourbons and the doctrine of Divine Right, is half of our nine hundred millions of debt. That is the amount of the government bill of costs, presented to John Bull for payment, not of the principle but the interest; that is what he has got by the war; the load of taxes at his back, with which he comes out of his glorious five and twenty-years’ struggle, like Christian’s load of sins, which whether it will not fall off from his back like Christian’s, into the Slough of Despond, will be seen before long. The difference between the expense of war or a peace establishment is just the difference between a state of productive and unproductive labour. Now this whole question, which from its complexity puzzles many people, and has given rise to a great deal of partly wilful and partly shallow sophistry, may be explained in two words. – Suppose I give a man five shillings a day for going out in a boat and catching fish for me. This is paying for productive labour: that is, I give him so much for what he does, or a claim upon so much of the public stock: but in taking so much from the stock, by laying out his five shillings, he adds so much to it by his labour, or the disposal of his time it catching fish. But if I, having the money to do what I please with, give him five shillings a day for shooting at crows, he is paid equally for his trouble, and accordingly takes so much from the public stock, while he adds nothing to it but so much carrion. So if the government pay him so much a-day for shooting at Frenchmen and Republicans, this is a tax, a loss, a burthen to the country, without any thing got by it; for we cannot, after all, eat Frenchmen and Republicans when we have killed them. War is in itself is a thriving, sensible traffic only to cannibals! Again – if I give a man five shillings for making a pair of shoes, this is paying for productive labour, viz. for labour that is useful, and that must be performed by some one; but if I give the same man five shillings for standing on his head or behind my chair while I am picking my teeth, or for running up a hill and down again for a wager – this is unproductive labour, nothing comes of it, and though the man who thus idly employed live by it, others starve, upon whose pittance and whose labour he lives through me. Such is the nature and effect of war; all the energies of which tend to waste, and to throw an additional and heavy burthen upon the country, in proportion to the extent and length of time that it is carried on. It creates so many useless members of the community: every man paid by the war out of the taxes paid by the people, is, in fact, a dead body fastened to a living one, that by its weight drags it to the earth. A five and twenty years’ war, and nine hundred millions in debt, are really a couple of millstones round the neck of a country, that must naturally press her down a little in the scale of prosperity. That seems to be no riddle. We defy any sophist to answer this statement of the necessary tendency of war in its general principle to ruin and impoverish a country. We are not to wonder, when it does so; but when other causes operate to counteract or retard this tendency. What is extraordinary in our own case is, that the pernicious effects of war have been delayed so long, not that they have come upon us at last. – That money laid out in war is thrown away is self-evident from this single circumstance, that government never refund. The reason is, because they never do any thing with their money that produces money again. They are the worst bankers in the world. The exchequer is a true Sinking Fund. If you lend money to a farmer, a manufacturer, a merchant, he employs it in getting something done for which others will pay, because it is useful; as in raising corn, in weaving cotton, in bringing home sugar or tobacco. But money sunk in a war brings in no returns – except of killed and wounded. What will any one give the government for the rotten bones that lie buried at Walcheren, or the dry ones at Waterloo? Not a six-pence. They cannot make a collection of wooden legs or dangling sleeves from the hospitals at Greenwich or Chelsea to set up a raffle or a lottery. They cannot bring the fruits of war to auction, or put up the tottering throne of the Bourbons to the best bidder. They can neither bring back a drop of the blood that has been shed, nor recover a shilling of the treasure that has been wasted. If the expenses of the war are not a burden to the people, which must sink it according to their weight, why do not government take the whole of this thriving concern into their own hands, and pay the national debt out of the Droits of Admiralty? In short, the way to ascertain this point is, by the old method of reductio ad absurdam: Suppose we had to pay the expense of such another peace-establishment and such another war. Who does not see that they would eat up the whole resources of the country, as the present peace-establishment and the actual debt do just one half?

[Second Part]

“Come, let us leave off children’s play, and go to push-pin.”
Polite Conversation.

The war has wasted the resources of the country in foolery, which the country has now to pay for in a load of taxes on its remaining resources, its actual produce and labour. The tax-gatherer is a government-machine that takes sixty-five millions a-year from the bankrupt pockets of the nation, to give to those who have brought it into that situation; who take so much from the necessaries of life belonging to the poor, to add to the superfluities of the rich; who adds so much to the hard labour of the working part of the community, to “relieve the killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of those who have nothing to do;” who, in short, out of the grinding poverty and ceaseless toil of those who pay the taxes, enables those who receive them to live in luxury and idleness.

Mr Burke, whom we have just quoted, has said that “if the poor were to cut the throats of the rich, they would not have a meal the more for it.” First, (for truth is the first thing in our thoughts, and not to give offence the second) this is a falsehood; a greater one than the answer of a Bond-street lounger, who coming out of a confectioner’s shop, where he has had a couple of basins of turtle-soup, an ice, some jellies, and a quantity of pastry, as he saunters out picking his teeth and putting the change into his pockets, says to a beggar at the door, “I have nothing for you.” We confess, we have always felt it an awkward circumstance to be accosted in this manner, when we have been caught in the act of indulging a sweet tooth, and it costs us an additional penny. The rich and poor may at present be compared to the two classes of frequenters of pastry-cooks’ shops, those on the outside and those on the in. We would seriously advise the later, who see the gaunt faces staring at them through the glass door, to recollect, that though custard is nicer than bread, bread is the greatest necessary of the two. – We had forgot Mr Burke’s sophism, to which we reply in the second place, that the cutting of throats is a figure of speech, like the dagger which he produced in the House of Commons, not necessary to the speculative decision of the question. The most civil, peaceable, and complaisant way of putting it is this – whether if the rich were to give all that they are worth to the poor, the latter would be none the richer for it? If so, the rich would be none the poorer, and so far could be no losers on Mr Burke’s own hypotheses, which supposes, with that magnanimity of contempt for plain matter of fact which distinguished the author’s theories, that the rich have nothing, and the poor have every thing? Had not Mr Burke a pension of 4000£. a year? Was this nothing? But even this is not the question neither. It is not, whether if the rich were to part with all they have to the poor (which is a mere absurdity) but whether if the rich do not take all they have left from the poor (which we humbly hope is a proposition that has common sense in it) the latter may not be the better off with something to live upon than with nothing? Whether, if the whole load of taxes could be taken off from them, it would not be a relief to them? Whether, if half the load of taxes were taken off from them, it would not be a relief to them? Whether, if any part of the load of taxes that can be taken off from them were taken off, it would not be in the same proportion be relief to them? We will venture to say, that no one will deny these propositions who does not receive so much a year for falsehood and impudence. The resistance which is made to the general or abstract principle is not intended to prevent the extreme sweeping application of that principle to the plundering or (as Mr Burke will have it) to the cutting of the throats of the rich, but it is a manoeuvre, by getting rid of the general principle altogether, viz. that the extravagance and luxury of the rich, war, taxes, &c. have a tendency to increase the distresses of the poor, or measures of retrenchment and reform to lighten those distresses – to give carte-blanche to the government to squander the wealth, the blood, the happiness of the nation at pleasure; to grant jobs, places, pensions, sinecures, reversions without end, to grind down, to starve and impoverish the country with systematic impunity. It is a legerdemain trick played off by hireling politicians, to enable their patrons and employers to pick our pockets and laugh in our faces at the same time.

It has been said by such person that taxes are not a burthen to the country; that the wealth collected in taxes returns through those who receive to those who pay them, only divided more equally and beneficially among all parties, just (they say) as the vapours and moisture of the earth collected in the clouds return to enrich the soil in soft and fertilizing showers. We shall set ourselves to shew that this is not true.

Suppose a society of ten persons, without taxes to pay, and who live on their own labour on the produce of the ground, and the exchange of one commodity among themselves for another. Some of these persons will be naturally employed in tilling the ground, others in tending cattle, others in making instruments of husbandry, others in waving cloth, others in making shoes, others in building houses, others in making roads, others in buying and selling, other in fetching and carrying what the others want. All will be employed in something that they want themselves, or that others want. In such a state of society, nothing will be given for nothing. If a man has a bushel of wheat, and only wants half of it, he will give the other half to some one, for making him a coat or a pair of shoes. As every one will be paid for what he does out of the earnings of the labour of others, no one will waste his time or his strength in doing any thing that is not wanted by some one else, that is not as useful and necessary to his subsistence and comfort, and more so, than the commodity which he gives in exchange for it. There will be no unproductive labour. What each person gets will be either in proportion to what he has done for himself, or what he has added to the comforts of others. Exchange there will be no robbery. The wealth of all will be the results of the exertions of each individual, and will circulate equally and beneficially, because those who produce that wealth will share it among themselves. This is an untaxed state of society, where wealth changes hands indeed, but finds its level, notwithstanding. – Now suppose two other individuals to be fastened upon this society of ten persons – a government-man and a fund-holder. They change the face of it in an instant. The equilibrium, the balance is upset. The amount of the wealth of the society before was a thousand pound a-year, suppose. The two new-comers take a writ out of their pockets, by which they quietly lay hands on five hundred of it as their fair portion. Where are the ten persons now? Mr Burke, Mr Coleridge, Mr Vanstitart, The Courier, say – Just where they were before! We say, No such thing. For three reasons: 1. It cannot be denied that the interlopers, the government-man and his friend, the fund-holder, who has lent him money to sport with on all occasions, are substantial bona fide persons, like other men., who live by eating, drinking &c. and who, if they only shared equally with the other ten what they had got amongst them, (for they added nothing to the common stock) must be a sufficient burthen upon the rest, that is, must diminish the comforts or increase the labour of each person one-fifth. To hear the other side talk, one would suppose that those who raise and are paid out of the taxes never touch a farthing of them, that they have no occasion for them, that they neither eat nor drink, nor buy clothing, or build houses with them; that they live upon air, or that harmless food, bank notes (a thing not to speak of), and that all the money they are so anxious to collect is distributed by them again for the sole benefit of others, or passes back through the Exchequer, as if it were a conduit-pipe or empty tunnel, in the hands of the original proprietors, without diminution or diversion. Now this is not so. 2. Not only do our government-man and his friend live like other people upon their means, but they live better than other people for they have better means, that is, these two take half of what the other ten get. They would be fools if they gave it back to them; no, depend upon it, they lay out their five hundred a-year upon themselves, for their own sole use, benefit, pleasure, mirth and pastime. For each of these gentleman has just five times as much to spend as any of those that he lives upon at free cost, and he has nothing to do but to think how he shall spend it. He eats and drinks as much as he can, and always of the best and most costly. It is pretended that the difference in the consumption of the produce of the soil is little or nothing, for a poor man’s belly will hold as much as a rich man’s. But not if the one is full, and the other empty. The man who lives upon the taxes, feasts upon venison and turtle, and crams himself to the throat with fish, flesh, and fowl; the man who pays the taxes, upon a crust of mouldy bread, and fat rusty bacon: the man who receives the taxes drinks rich and sparkling wines, hock and canary; the man who pays them, sour small beer. If the poor man gets drunk and leads an idle life, his family starve: the rich man drinks his three bottles a day and does nothing, while his family live on the fat of the land. If the poor man dies of hard labour and poor living, his family comes to the parish; if the rich man dies of hard living and want of exercise, he leaves his family to be provided for by the state. But, 3. All that the government-man and the fund-holder do not spend upon their bellies, in reveling and gormandising, they lay out upon their backs, their houses, their carriages, &c in inordinate demands upon the labour of the former ten persons, who are now employed, not in working for one another, but in pampering the pride, ostentation, vanity, folly, or vices of our two gentleman comers. After glutting their physical appetites, they take care to apply all the rest to the gratification of their factitious, arbitrary, and fantastic wants, which are unlimited, and which the universe could not supply. “They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these:” – while the poor are clothed in rags, and the dogs lick up their sores. The money that is taken from you and me, or the more industrious members of the community, and that we should have laid on in having snug, comfortable houses built for us all, or two bed-rooms for our families instead of one, is employed, now that it has got into the tax-gatherer’s hands, in hiring the same persons to build two enormous houses for the government-man and the fund-holder, who live in palaces while we live in hovels. What are we, the people, the original ten men, the better for that? The taxes enable those who receive them to pay our masons, carpenters, &c. for working for them. If we had not been forced to pay the money in taxes, the same persons would have been employed by us for our common benefit. Suppose the government-man takes it into his head to build a colossus, a rotunda, a pyramid, or any thing else equally absurd and gigantic, it would, we say, be a nuisance in proportion to its size. It would be ten times as great a nuisance if it was ten times bigger. If it covered a whole county, it would ruin the landed interest. If it was spread over the whole country, the country must starve. When the government-man and the fund holder, have got their great houses built, they must next have them furnished with proportionable magnificence, and by the same means; with Persian and Turkey carpets, with Egyptian sofas, down beds, silk curtains, china vases, services of plate, tables chairs, stoves, glasses, mirrors, chandeliers, paper hangings, pictures, busts, ornaments, kickshaws without number, while you and I live on a mud floor, with bare walls, stuck with a penny ballad, with a joint-stool to sit upon, a tea-pot without a tea-spout to drink out of, a truckle-bed or some straw and a blanket to lie upon! Yet Mr. Burke says, that if we were suddenly converted into state-pensioners with thirty-thousand a-year, we could not furnish our houses a bit the better for it. This is like Lord Peter, in the Tale of a Tub. Then the government-man and his friend must have their train of coaches, horses, dogs, footmen dressed in blue, green, yellow, and red, lazy rascals, making work for the taylor, the hatter, the shoe-maker, the button-maker, the hair-dresser, the gold and silver laceman, to powder, dress and trick them out, that they may lounge behind their mistresess’ coaches, walk before their sedan chairs, help on their master’s stockings, block up his doors, and perform a variety of little nameless offices much to the ease and satisfaction of the great, but not of the smallest benefit to any one else. With respect to the article of dogs and horses, a word in Mr Malthus’s ear. They come under the head of consumption, and a swinging item they are. They eat up the food of the children of the poor. The pleasure and coach-horses kept in this kingdom consume as much of the produce of the soil as would maintain all the paupers in it. Let a tax be laid upon them directly, to defray the expense of the poor-rates, and to suspend the operation of Mr Malthus’s geometrical and arithmetical ratios. We see no physical necessity why that ingenious divine should put a stop to the propagation of the species that he may keep two sleek geldings in his stable. We have lately read Swift’s account of the Houyuhyms and Yahoos. There is some truth in it; but still it has not reconciled us to Mr Malthus’s proposal of starving the children of the poor to feed the horses of the rich. But no more of that! We have said enough at present to shew how taxes fly away with the money of a nation; how they go into the hands of the government-man and the fund holder, and do not return into the pockets of the people, who pay them. For the future, Mr. Burke’s assertion, that the taxes are like the vapours that ascend into the clouds and return to earth in fertilizing showers, may pass for an agreeable metaphor, but for nothing more. A pretty joke truly, this of people’s receiving their taxes back again in payment for what the rich want of them. It is as if I should buy a pound of beef in a butcher’s shop, and take the money out of his own till to pay him! It is as if a bill is presented to me for payment, and I ask the notary for the money to take it up with! It is as if a Noble Earl was to win 50,000 pounds. of a Noble Duke over-night, and offer to return it to him the next morning, for one of his estates! It is as if Mr Burke had been robbed of a bond for 4000 pounds. and the fortunate possessor had offered to restore it, on receiving in lieu his house and gardens at Beaconsfield! Having thus pointed out the nature of the distress, we need not inquire far for the remedy.

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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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Velleius Paterculus
From Roman History
Translated by Frederick W. Shipley

As Gracchus fled, and was running down the steps which led from the Capitol, he was struck by the fragment of a bench, and ended by an untimely death the life which he might have made a glorious one. This was the beginning in Rome of civil bloodshed, and of the licence of the sword. From this time on right was crushed by might, the most powerful now took precedence in the state, the disputes of the citizens which were once healed by amicable agreements were now settled by arms, and wars were now begun not for good cause but for what profit there was in them. Nor is this to be wondered at; for precedents do not stop where they begin, but, however narrow the path upon which they enter, they create for themselves a highway whereon they may wander with the utmost latitude; and when once the path of right is abandoned, men are hurried into wrong in headlong haste, nor does anyone think a course is base for himself which has proven profitable to others.

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Though I frequently search for the reasons why men of similar talents occur exclusively in certain epochs and not only flock to one pursuit but also attain like success, I can never find any of whose truth I am certain, though I do find some which perhaps seem likely, and particularly the following. Genius is fostered by emulation, and it is now envy, now admiration, which enkindles imitation, and, in the nature of things, that which is cultivated with the highest zeal advances to the highest perfection; but it is difficult to continue at the point of perfection, and naturally that which cannot advance must recede. And as in the beginning we are fired with the ambition to overtake those whom we regard as leaders, so when we have despaired of being able either to surpass or even to equal them, our zeal wanes with our hope; it ceases to follow what it cannot overtake, and abandoning the old field as though pre-empted, it seeks a new one. Passing over that in which we cannot be pre-eminent, we seek for some new object of our effort. It follows that the greatest obstacle in the way of perfection in any work is our fickle way of passing on at frequent intervals to something else.

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[W]e are naturally more inclined to praise what we have heard than what has occurred before our eyes; we regard the present with envy, the past with veneration, and believe that we are eclipsed by the former, but derive instruction from the latter.

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

Montaigne: War, that malady of mankind

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Michel de Montaigne
From Of Cruelty
Translated by Charles Cotton

I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel and fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would hack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent unusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in anguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:

“Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,
tantum spectaturus, occidat.”

[“That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not
in fear, only for the sake of the spectacle.”
–Seneca, Ep., 90.]

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all; and that which frequently happens, that the stag we hunt, finding himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy, surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy by his tears:

“Questuque cruentus,
Atque imploranti similis,”

[“Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy.”
–Aenead, vii. 501.]

has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take a beast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras bought them of fishermen and fowlers to do the same:

“Primoque a caede ferarum,
Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum.”

[“I think ’twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained
the steel of man with blood.” – Ovid, Met., xv. 106.]

Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the slaughter of men, of gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprinted in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in seeing beasts play with and caress one another, but every one is delighted with seeing them dismember, and tear one another to pieces.

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Plutarch: Selections on war and peace

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Plutarch
Translated by John Dryden

From Coriolanus

“[We] do but desire a deliverance equally expedient for them and us; only more glorious and honourable on the Volscian side, who, as superior in arms, will be thought freely to bestow the two greatest of blessings, peace and friendship, even when they themselves receive the same. If we obtain these, the common thanks will be chiefly due to you as the principal cause; but if they be not granted, you alone must expect to bear the blame from both nations. The chance of all war is uncertain, yet thus much is certain in the present, that you, by conquering Rome, will only get the reputation of having undone your country; but if the Volscians happen to be defeated under your conduct, then the world will say, that, to satisfy a revengeful humour, you brought misery on your friends and patrons.”

From Marcellus

Marcellus, at length recalled by the people of Rome to the immediate war at home, to illustrate his triumph, and adorn the city, carried away with him a great number of the most beautiful ornaments of Syracuse. For, before that, Rome neither had, nor had seen, any of those fine and exquisite rarities; nor was any pleasure taken in graceful and elegant pieces of workmanship. Stuffed with barbarous arms and spoils stained with blood, and everywhere crowned with triumphal memorials and trophies, she was no pleasant or delightful spectacle for the eyes of peaceful or refined spectators; but, as Epaminondas named the fields of Boeotia the stage of Mars; and Xenophon called Ephesus the workhouse of war; so, in my judgment, may you call Rome, at that time (to use the words of Pindar), “the precinct of the peaceless Mars.” Whence Marcellus was more popular with the people in general, because he had adorned the city with beautiful objects that had all the charms of Grecian grace and symmetry; but Fabius Maximus, who neither touched nor brought away anything of this kind from Tarentum, when he had taken it, was more approved of by the elder men. He carried off the money and valuables, but forbade the statues to be moved; adding, as it is commonly related, “Let us leave to the Tarentines these offended gods.” They blamed Marcellus, first for placing the city in an invidious position, as it seemed now to celebrate victories and lead processions of triumph, not only over men, but also over the gods as captives…

He triumphed upon the Alban mount, and thence entered the city in ovation, as it is called in Latin, in Greek eua; but in this ovation he was neither carried in a chariot, nor crowned with laurel, nor ushered by trumpets sounding; but went afoot with shoes on, many flutes or pipes sounding in concert, while he passed along, wearing a garland of myrtle, in a peaceable aspect, exciting rather love and respect than fear. Whence I am, by conjecture, led to think that, originally, the difference observed betwixt ovation and triumph did not depend upon the greatness of the achievements, but the manner of performing them. For they who, having fought a set battle, and slain the enemy, returned victors, led that martial, terrible triumph, and, as the ordinary custom then was in lustrating the army, adorned the arms and the soldiers with a great deal of laurel. But they who without force, by colloquy, persuasion, and reasoning, had done the business, to these captains custom gave the honour of the unmilitary and festive ovation. For the pipe is the badge of peace, and myrtle the plant of Venus, who more than the rest of the gods and goddesses abhors force and war. It is called ovation, not as most think, from the Greek euasmus, because they act it with shouting and cries of Eua: for so do they also the proper triumphs. The Greeks have wrested the word to their own language, thinking that this honour, also, must have some connection with Bacchus, who in Greek has the titles of Euius and Thriambus. But the thing is otherwise. For it was the custom for commanders, in their triumph, to immolate an ox, but in their ovation, a sheep: hence they named it Ovation, from the Latin ovis. It is worth observing, how exactly opposite the sacrifices appointed by the Spartan legislator are to those of the Romans. For at Lacedaemon, a captain, who had performed the work he had undertook by cunning, or courteous treaty, on laying down his command, immolated an ox; he that did the business by battle, offered a cock; the Lacedaemonians, though most warlike, thinking exploit performed by reason and wisdom to be more excellent and more congruous to man, than one effected by mere force and courage. Which of the two is to be preferred I leave to the determination of others.

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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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Strabo
From The Geography
Translated by Horace Leonard Jones

Onesieritus…describes…the country of Musicanus, lauding it rather at length for things of which some are reported as common also to other Indians, as, for example, their length of life…and simple diet, even though their country has an abundance of everything. Peculiar to them is the fact that they have a kind of Laconian common mess, where they eat in public…and that they do not use gold or silver, although they have mines; and instead of slaves they use young men in the vigour of life…and that they make no accurate study of the sciences except that of medicine, for they regard too much training in some of them as wickedness; for example, military science and the like…

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

William Hazlitt: Selections on war

William Hazlitt: Harpies of the press. Juggling fiends. Systematic opponents of peace. Ceaseless partisans of interminable hostilities.

William Hazlitt: High-priests of Moloch foam at the mouth at the name of peace

William Hazlitt: Keystone of indestructible war-system: Closing up the avenues to peace, shutting the gates of mercy on mankind

William Hazlitt: Systematic patrons of eternal war

William Hazlitt: Ultima ratio regum: liberals and conservatives united by leaden bullets and steel bayonets

William Hazlitt: War is in itself is a thriving, sensible traffic only to cannibals

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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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Julian
Translated by Wilmer Cave Wright

From Letter to Themistius

Who, I ask you, ever found salvation through the conquests of Alexander? What city was more wisely governed because of them, what individual improved? Many indeed you might find whom these conquests enriched, but not one whom they made wiser or more temperate than he was by nature, if indeed they have not made him more insolent and arrogant…

From The Caesars

I did not give way to boundless ambition and aim at enlarging her empire at all costs, but assigned for it two boundaries defined as it were by nature itself, the Danube and the Euphrates. Then after conquering the Scythians and the Thracians I did not employ the long reign that you gods vouchsafed me in making projects for war after war, but devoted my leisure to legislation and to reforming the evils that war has caused.

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Lactantius: Selections on war

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Lactantius
From Divine Institutes
Translated by William Fletcher

For when God forbids us to kill, He not only prohibits us from open violence, which is not even allowed by the public laws, but He warns us against the commission of those things which are esteemed lawful among men. Thus it will be neither lawful for a just man to engage in warfare, since his warfare is justice itself, nor to accuse any one of a capital charge, because it makes no difference whether you put a man to death by word, or rather by the sword, since it is the act of putting to death itself which is prohibited. Therefore, with regard to this precept of God, there ought to be no exception at all; but that it is always unlawful to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred animal.

***

Therefore, as the end of this world approaches, the condition of human affairs must undergo a change, and through the prevalence of wickedness become worse; so that now these times of ours, in which iniquity and impiety have increased even to the highest degree, may be judged happy and almost golden in comparison of that incurable evil. For righteousness will so decrease, and impiety, avarice, desire, and lust will so greatly increase, that if there shall then happen to be any good men, they will be a prey to the wicked, and will be harassed on all sides by the unrighteous; while the wicked alone will be in opulence, but the good will be afflicted in all calumnies and in want. All justice will be confounded, and the laws will be destroyed. No one will then have anything except that which has been gained or defended by the hand: boldness and violence will possess all things. There will be no faith among men, nor peace, nor kindness, nor shame, nor truth; and thus also there will be neither security, nor government, nor any rest from evils. For all the earth will be in a state of tumult; wars will everywhere rage; all nations will be in arms, and will oppose one another; neighbouring states will carry on conflicts with each other…Then the sword will traverse the world, mowing down everything, and laying low all things as a crop…For when Carthage was taken away, which was long its rival in power, it stretched out its hands by land and sea over the whole world, until, having subdued all kings and nations, when the materials for war now failed, it abused its strength, by which it destroyed itself.

***

Then for seven continuous years the woods shall be untouched, nor shall timber be cut from the mountains, but the arms of the nations shall be burnt; and now there shall be no war, but peace and everlasting rest. But when the thousand years shall be completed, the world shall be renewed by God, and the heavens shall be folded together, and the earth shall be changed, and God shall transform men into the similitude of angels, and they shall be white as snow…

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

British writers on peace and war

William Hazlitt: Selections on war

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William Hazlitt
From the preface to Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters (1819)

Talk of mobs as we will, the only true mob is that incorrigible mass of knaves and fools in every country, who never think at all, and who never feel for any one but themselves. I call any assembly of people a mob (be it the House of Lords or House of Commons) where each person’s opinion on any question is governed by what others say of it, and by what he can get by it. The only instance of successful resistance in the House of Commons to Ministers for many years was in the case of the Income-Tax; which touched their own pockets nearly.

***

A modern Whig is but the fag-end of a Tory…But the Opposition have pressed so long against the Ministry without effect, that being the softer substance and made of more yielding materials, they have been moulded into their image and superscription, spelt backwards, or they differ as concave and convex, or they go together like substantive and adjective, or like man and wife, they two have become one flesh…To interfere between them is as dangerous as to interfere in a matrimonial squabble. To overturn the one is to trip up the heels of the other….But the leaden bullets and steel bayonets, the ultima ratio regum by which these questions are practically decided, do their business in another-guess manner; they do not stand on the same ceremony.

***

From The Bourbons and Bonaparte (1813)

It is the spirit of treating the French people as of a different species from ourselves – as a monster or a non-entity – of disposing of their government at the will of every paragraph-monger – of arming our hatred against them by ridiculous menaces and incessant reproaches – of supposing that their power was either so tremendous as to threaten the existence of all nations, or so contemptible that we could crush it by a word, – it is this uniform system, practised by the incendiaries of the press, of inflaming our prejudices and irritating our passions, that has so often made us rush upon disaster, and submit to every extremity rather than forego the rancorous and headstrong desire of revenge.

***

Instead of a proud repose on our own strength and courage, these writers only feel secure in the destruction of an adversary. The natural intoxication of success is heightened into a sort of delirium by the recollection of the panic into which they had been thrown. The Times‘ editor thinks that nothing can be so easy as for an army “to run with the stream of popular feeling” from one end of Europe to the other. Strange that these persons, like desperate adventurers, are incorrigible to experience. They are always setting out on the same forlorn hope. The tide of fortune, while it sets in strong against us, they prove to be the most variable of all things; but it no sooner changes in our favour, than it straight

“Flows on to the Propontic,
And knows no ebb.”

To encourage themselves in the extravagance of their voluntary delusions, they are as prodigal of titles of honour as the college of heralds, and erect a standard of military fame, with all the authority, but not with the impartiality of history. Lord Wellington is “the great commander,” and “the unconquered general,” while “the little captain,” and “the hero” or “the deserter of Smorgonne,” are the only qualifications of Bonaparte.

***

We can easily believe…”it was ever the fault of our English nation” to wish to interfere with what did not concern them, for the very reason that they could interfere with comparative impunity. What is sport to them is death to others. The writer also draws a parallel as if it were a feasible case, between Holland, Spain, and Germany throwing off a foreign yoke, and the French throwing off their own; in other words, submitting to a foreign one. We beg pardon of these acute discriminators. We know they have an answer. We leave them in possession of the nice distinction – between a foreign yoke, and a yoke imposed by foreigners!

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Plutarch: Selections on war and peace

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Plutarch
Translated by John Dryden

From Caius Marius

There was now an edict preferred to recall Metellus from banishment; this he vigorously, but in vain, opposed both by word and deed, and was at length obliged to desist…For, in fact, being a man altogether ignorant of civil life and ordinary politics, he received all his advancement from war; and supposing his power and glory would by little and little decrease by his lying quietly out of action, he was eager by every means to excite some new commotions, and hoped that by setting at variance some of the kings, and by exasperating Mithridates, especially, who was then apparently making preparations for war, he himself should be chosen general against him, and so furnish the city with new matter of triumph, and his own house with the plunder of Pontus and the riches of its king.

From Nicias

The Athenians and the Spartans had before this concluded a truce for a year, and during this, by associating with one another, they had tasted again the sweets of peace and security and unimpeded intercourse with friends and connections, and thus longed for an end of that fighting and bloodshed, and heard with delight the chorus sing such verses as –

” – my lance I’ll leave
Laid by, for spiders to o’erweave,”

and remembered with joy the saying, In peace, they who sleep are awaked by the cock-crow, not by the trumpet. So shutting their ears, with loud reproaches, to the forebodings of those who said that the Fates decreed this to be a war of thrice nine years, the whole question having been debated, they made a peace. And most people thought, now, indeed, they had got an end of all their evils. And Nicias was in every man’s mouth, as one especially beloved of the gods, who, for his piety and devotion, had been appointed to give a name to the fairest and greatest of all blessings. For in fact they considered the peace Nicias’s work, as the war the work of Pericles; because he, on light occasions, seemed to have plunged the Greeks into great calamities, while Nicias had induced them to forget all the evils they had done each other and to be friends again; and so to this day it is called the Peace of Nicias.

From Agesilaus

For as we see in human bodies, long used to a very strict and too exquisitely regular diet, any single great disorder is usually fatal; so here one stroke overthrew the whole state’s long prosperity. Nor can we be surprised at this. Lycurgus had formed a polity admirably designed for the peace, harmony, and virtuous life of the citizens; and their fall came from their assuming foreign dominion and arbitrary sway, things wholly undesirable, in the judgment of Lycurgus, for a well-conducted and happy state.

From Alexander

It being my purpose to write the lives of Alexander the king, and of Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed, the multitude of their great actions affords so large a field that I were to blame if I should not by way of apology forewarn my reader that I have chosen rather to epitomize the most celebrated parts of their story, than to insist at large on every particular circumstance of it. It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters and inclinations, than the most famous sieges, the greatest armaments, or the bloodiest battles whatsoever…

From Phocion

When he was then attacked by Hyperides, who asked him when the time would come that he would advise the Athenians to make war. “As soon,” said he, “as I find the young men keep their ranks, the rich men contribute their money, and the orators leave off robbing the treasury.”

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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
From Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus
Translated by Rev. John Selby Watson

Justice is observed among them [the Scythians], more from the temper of the people, than from the influence of laws. No crime in their opinion is more heinous than theft; for, among people that keep their flocks and herds without fence or shelter in the woods, what would be safe, if stealing were permitted? Gold and silver they despise, as much as other men covet them. They live on milk and honey. The use of wool and clothes is unknown among them, although they are pinched by perpetual cold; they wear, however, the skins of wild animals, great and small. Such abstemiousness has caused justice to be observed among them, as they covet nothing belonging to their neighbours; for it is only where riches are of use, that the desire of them prevails. And would that other men had like temperance, and like freedom from desire for the goods of others! There would then assuredly be fewer wars in all ages and countries, and the sword would not destroy more than the natural course of destiny.

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

Montaigne: Blood on the sword: From slaughter of animals to slaughter of men

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Michel de Montaigne
Translated by George B. Ives

So many names, so many victories and conquests buried in oblivion make it ridiculous to hope to perpetuate our names by the capture of ten insignificant troops and an unimportant little fortress that is known only by its fall. The proud pomp of so many foreign nations, the swollen majesty of so many courts and stately mansions, steadies us and permits our sight to endure the brilliancy of our own without blinking…

(On the Education of Children)

This belief is in some sort related to that other so ancient one, the thought that heaven and nature were gratified by our massacring and murdering…

(On Moderation)

We can, then, rightly call them barbarians with respect to the rules of reason, but not with respect to ourselves, who surpass them in every sort of barbarism. Their warfare is wholly noble and honourable, and has as much excuse and beauty as that malady of mankind can have. With them it has no other motive than simply eagerness of prowess. They are not at strife for the conquest of new territories…

(Of Cannibals)

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Juvenal: Mighty warriors and their tombs are circumscribed by Fate

Juvenal: The spoils of war and the price thereof

Juvenal: Weigh the greatest military commanders in the balance

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Juvenal
From Satires
Translated by G. G. Ramsay

The Pygmy warrior marches forth in his tiny arms to encounter the sudden swoop and clamorous cloud of Thracian birds; but soon, no match for his foe, he is snatched up by the savage crane and borne in his crooked talons through the air. If you saw this in our own country, you would shake with laughter; but in that land, where the whole host is only one foot high, though like battles are witnessed every day, no one laughs.

***

It is here mostly that lies the cause of crime. No human passion has mingled more poison-bowls, none has more often wielded the murderous dagger, than the fierce craving for unbounded wealth. For the man who wants wealth must have it at once; what respect for laws, what fear, what sense of shame is to be found in a miser hurrying to be rich? “Live content, my boys, with these cottages and hills of yours,” said the Marsian or Hernican or Vestinian father in the days of yore; “let the plough win for us what bread shall suffice our table; such fare the rustic Gods approve, whose aid and bounty gave us the glad ear of corn, and taught man to disdain the acorn of ancient times. The man who is not ashamed to wear high boots in time of frost, and who keeps off the East wind with skins turned inwards, will never wish to do a forbidden thing; it is purple raiment, whatever it be, foreign and unknown to us, that leads to crime and wickedness.”

Such were the maxims which those ancients taught the young; but now, when autumn days are over, the father rouses his sleeping son after midnight with a shout: “Awake, boy, and take your tablets; scribble away and get up your cases; read through the red-lettered laws of our forefathers, or send in a petition for a centurion’s vine-staff…destroy the huts of the Moors and the forts of the Brigantes, that your sixtieth year may bring you the eagle that will make you rich…Let this maxim be ever on your lips, a saying worthy of the Gods, and of Jove himself if he turned poet: ‘No matter whence the money comes, but money you must have.'”

“When you tell a youth that a man is a fool who makes a present to a friend, or relieves and lightens the poverty of a kinsman, you teach him to plunder and to cheat and to commit any kind of crime for money’s sake, the love of which is as great in you as was love of their country in the hearts of the Decii, or in that of Menoeceus…”

***

When Nature gave tears to man, she proclaimed that he was tender-hearted; and tenderness is the best quality in man. She therefore bids us weep for the misery of a friend upon his trial, or when a ward whose streaming cheeks and girlish locks raise a doubt as to his sex brings a defrauder into court. It is at Nature’s behest that we weep when we meet the bier of a full-grown maiden, or when the earth closes over a babe too young for the funeral pyre. For what good man, what man worthy of the mystic torch, and such as the priest of Ceres would wish him to be, believes that any human woes concern him not? It is this that separates us from the dumb herd; and it is for this that we alone have had allotted to us a nature worthy of reverence, capable of divine things, fit to acquire and practise the arts of life, and that we have drawn from on high that gift of feeling which is lacking to the beasts that grovel with eyes upon the ground. To them in the beginning of the world our common maker gave only life; to us he gave souls as well, that fellow-feeling might bid us ask or proffer aid, gather scattered dwellers into a people, desert the primeval groves and woods inhabited by our forefathers, build houses for ourselves, with others adjacent to our own, that a neighbour’s threshold from the confidence that comes of union, might give us peaceful slumbers…and seek protection inside the same city walls, and behind gates fastened by a single key.

But in these days there is more amity among serpents than among men; wild beasts are merciful to beasts spotted like themselves. When did the stronger lion ever take the life of the weaker? In what wood did a boar ever breathe his last under the tusks of a boar bigger than himself? The fierce tigress of India dwells in perpetual peace with her fellow; bears live in harmony with bears. But man finds it all too little to have forged the deadly blade on an impious anvil; for whereas the first artificers only wearied themselves with forging hoes and harrows, spades and ploughshares, not knowing how to beat out swords, we now behold a people whose wrath is not assuaged by slaying someone, but who deem that a man’s breast, arms, and face afford a kind of food. What would Pythagoras say, or to what place would he not flee, if he beheld these horrors of to-day, – he who refrained from every living creature as if it were human, and would not indulge his belly with every kind of vegetable?

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Lactantius: Selections on war

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Lactantius
From Divine Institutes
Translated by William Fletcher

“Then war’s indomitable rage,
And greedy lust of gain;” (Virgil, Aeneid )

and not without reason. For the worship of God being taken away, men lost the knowledge of good and evil. Thus the common intercourse of life perished from among then, and the bond of human society was destroyed. Then they began to contend with one another, and to plot, and to acquire for themselves glory from the shedding of human blood.

***

Be just and good, and the justice which you seek will follow you of her own accord. Lay aside every evil thought from your hearts, and that golden age will at once return to you…But if God only were worshipped, there would not be dissensions and wars, since men would know that they are the sons of one God; and, therefore, among those who were connected by the sacred and inviolable bond of divine relationship, there would be no plottings, inasmuch as they would know what kind of punishments God prepared for the destroyers of souls, who sees through secret crimes, and even the very thoughts themselves. There would be no frauds or plunderings if they had learned, through the instruction of God, to be content with that which was their own, though little, so that they might prefer solid and eternal things to those which are frail and perishable…How happy and how golden would be the condition of human affairs, if throughout the world gentleness, and piety, and peace, and innocence, and equity, and temperance, and faith, took up their abode! In short, there would be no need of so many and varying laws to rule men, since the law of God alone would be sufficient for perfect innocence; nor would there be any need of prisons, or the swords of rulers, or the terror of punishments, since the wholesomeness of the divine precepts infused into the breasts of men would of itself instruct them to works of justice.

***

[J]ustice, who had no other reason for leaving the earth than the shedding of human blood…Therefore they are to be accounted as savage beasts who injure man; who, in opposition to every law and right of human nature, plunder, torture, slay, and banish.

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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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Pausanias
From Description of Greece
Translated by W. H. S. Jones

After the sanctuary of Ammon at Thebes comes what is called the bird-observatory of Teiresias, and near it is a sanctuary of Fortune, who carries the child Wealth. According to the Thebans, the hands and the face of the image were made by Xenophon the Athenian, the rest of it by Callistonicus, a native. It was a clever idea of these artists to place Wealth in the arms of Fortune, and so to suggest that she is the mother or nurse. Equally clever was the conception of Cephisodotus, who made the image of Peace for the Athenians with Wealth in her arms.

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

British writers on peace and war

William Hazlitt: Selections on war

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William Hazlitt
From Illustrations of Vetus (1813)

We agree with the sentiment with which he commences his last Letter, that it is ”particularly desirable to follow up the question of peace” at the present crisis, but not with the reason which he assigns for his extreme anxiety to enter upon the question, “because this is just the moment to dread the entertainment of a pacific overture.” We can readily believe that at no other moment than when he dreads its approach, would Vetus ever breathe a syllable on the subject of peace, and then only to avert it. Whenever “a spurious and mawkish beneficence” an alarm of peace sounds, the dogs of war stand ready on the slip to hunt it down.

***

That which is here said to be the only legitimate basis of a treaty is one, which if admitted and acted upon, would make it impossible that any treaty should ever be formed. It is a basis, not of lasting peace, but of endless war. To call that the basis of a treaty which precludes the possibility of any concession or compensation, of every consideration either of the right or power of each party to retain its actual acquisitions, is one of those misnomers which the gravity of Vetus’s manner makes his readers overlook…We quarrel with France on continental grounds; we strip her of her colonies to support the quarrel; and yet we refuse to restore any part of them, in order to secure peace. If so, we are only ostensible parties in the contest, and in reality robbers…But still more preposterous is the madness or malice of the assertion, that no peace can be made by a wise nation, which is not a living record of their own superiority. This is the key-stone which makes up the arch of Vetus’s indestructible war-system. Can it have escaped even the short-sighted logic of this writer that to make superiority an indispensable condition of a wise peace is to proscribe peace altogether, because certainly this superiority cannot belong at the same time to both parties, and yet we conceive that the consent of both parties is necessary to a peace? Any other peace, we are told, than that which is at times impracticable between rival states, ought not only never to be made, but it ought to be held in abhorrence, we ought to shudder at its approach as the last of evils, and throw it to an immeasurable distance from us. This is indeed closing up the avenues to peace, and shutting the gates of mercy on mankind in a most consummate and scientific manner…[H]e supposes that there is some celestial ichor in our veins which we alone shed for our country, while other nations neither bleed nor suffer from war, nor have a right to profit by peace. This may be very well in poetry, or on the stage, but it will not pass current in diplomacy. Vetus, indeed, strains hard to reconcile inconsistencies, and to found the laws of nations on the sentiments of exclusive patriotism. But we would think that the common rules of peace and war, which necessarily involve the rights, interests, and feelings of different nations, cannot be dictated by the heroic caprices of a few hair-brained egotists, on either side of the question…

The general principle here stated is self-evident, and one would think indisputable. For the very ground of war is a peace whose conditions are thought to hear hard on one of the parties, and yet, according to Vetus, the only way to make peace durable, to prevent the recurrence of an appeal to force, is to impose such hard conditions on an enemy, as it is his interest, and must be his inclination to break by force. An opinion of the disproportion between our general strength, and our actual advantages, seems to be the necessary ground of war, but it is here converted into the permanent source of peace.

***

First, this security can be good only on one side: secondly, it is not good at all : the only security for peace is not in the actual losses or distresses incurred by states, but in the settled conviction that they cannot better themselves by war.

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Plutarch: Selections on war and peace

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Plutarch
Translated by John Dryden

From Aristides

Of all his virtues, the common people were most affected with his justice, because of its continual and common use; and thus, although of mean fortune and ordinary birth, he possessed himself of the most kingly and divine appellation of just: which kings, however, and tyrants have never sought after; but have taken delight to be surnamed besiegers of cities, thunderers, conquerors, or eagles again, and hawks; affecting, it seems, the reputation which proceeds from power and violence, rather than that of virtue. Although the divinity, to whom they desire to compare and assimilate themselves, excels, it is supposed, in three things, immortality, power, and virtue; of which three the noblest and divinest is virtue. For the elements and vacuum have an everlasting existence; earthquakes, thunders, storms, and torrents have great power; but in justice and equity nothing participates except by means of reason and the knowledge of that which is divine.

From Pyrrhus

After Antigone’s death, he married several wives to enlarge his interest and power. He had the daughter of Autoleon, King of the Paeonians, Bircenna, Bardyllis the Illyrian’s daughter, Lanassa, daughter of Agathocles the Syracusan, who brought with her in dower the city of Corcyra, which had been taken by Agathocles. By Antigone he had Ptolemy, Alexander by Lanassa, and Helenus, his youngest son, by Bircenna: he brought them up all in arms, hot and eager youths, and by him sharpened and whetted to war from their very infancy. It is said, when one of them, while yet a child, asked him to which he would leave the kingdom, he replied, to him that had the sharpest sword, which indeed was much like that tragical curse of Oedipus to his sons:-

“Not by the lot decide,
But within the sword the heritage divide.”

So unsocial and wild-beast-like is the nature of ambition and cupidity.

***

For men whose ambition neither seas, nor mountains, nor unpeopled deserts can limit, nor the bounds dividing Europe from Asia confine their vast desires, it would be hard to expect to forbear from injuring one another when they touch and are close together. These are ever naturally at war, envying and seeking advantages of one another, and merely make use of those two words, peace and war, like current coin, to serve their occasions, not as justice but as expediency suggests, and are really better men when they openly enter on a war, than when they give to the mere forbearance from doing wrong, for want of opportunity, the sacred names of justice and friendship…

This person, seeing Pyrrhus eagerly preparing for Italy, led him one day when he was at leisure into the following reasonings: “The Romans, sir, are reported to be great warriors and conquerors of many warlike nations; if God permit us to overcome them, how should we use our victory?” “You ask,” said Pyrrhus, “a thing evident of itself. The Romans once conquered, there is neither Greek nor barbarian city that will resist us, but we shall presently be masters of all Italy, the extent and resources and strength of which any one should rather profess to be ignorant of than yourself.” Cineas after a little pause, “And having subdued Italy, what shall we do next?” Pyrrhus not yet discovering his intention, “Sicily,” he replied, “next holds out her arms to receive us, a wealthy and populous island, and easy to be gained; for since Agathocles left it, only faction and anarchy, and the licentious violence of the demagogues prevail.” “You speak,” said Cineas, “what is perfectly probable, but will the possession of Sicily put an end to the war?” “God grant us,” answered Pyrrhus, “victory and success in that, and we will use these as forerunners of greater things; who could forbear from Libya and Carthage then within reach, which Agathocles, even when forced to fly from Syracuse, and passing the sea only with a few ships, had all but surprised? These conquests once perfected, will any assert that of the enemies who now pretend to despise us, any one will dare to make further resistance?” “None,” replied Cineas, “for then it is manifest we may with such mighty forces regain Macedon, and make an absolute conquest of Greece; and when all these are in our power what shall we do then?” Said Pyrrhus, smiling, “We will live at our ease, my dear friend, and drink all day, and divert ourselves with pleasant conversation.” When Cineas had led Pyrrhus with his argument to this point: “And what hinders us now, sir, if we have a mind to be merry, and entertain one another, since we have at hand without trouble all those necessary things, to which through much blood and great labour, and infinite hazards and mischief done to ourselves and to others, we design at last to arrive?”

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Quintus Smyrnaeus: In his talons bore a gasping dove. Where never ceased Ares from hideous slaughter.

Quintus Smyrnaeus: While here all war’s marvels were portrayed, there were the works of lovely peace

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Quintus Smyrnaeus
From The Fall of Troy
Translated by Arthur S. Way

…earth
Ran red with blood, as slaughtered heroes fell
And horses, mid a tangle of shattered cars,
Some yet with spear-wounds gasping, while on them
Others were falling. Through the air upshrieked
An awful indistinguishable roar;
For on both hosts fell iron-hearted Strife…
Their mad hands clutched all manner of tools of death.
At first the Argives bore the ranks of Troy
Backward a little; and they rallied, charged,
Leapt on the foe, and drenched the field with blood.

***

Spears plunge into men’s flesh: dread Ares drank
His fill of blood: struck down fell man on man…

So man to man dealt death; and joyed the Fates
And Doom and fell Strife in her maddened glee
Shouted aloud, and Ares terribly
Shouted in answer…

…swift closed the fronts of war.
Loud clashed their arms all around; from either side
War-cries were mingled in one awful roar.
Swift-wined full many a dart and arrow flew
From host to host; loud clanged the smitten shields
‘Neath thrusting spears, neath javelin-point and sword:
Men hewed with battle-axes lightening down;
Crimson the armour ran with blood of men.

…without pause before the wall they fought,
Whole Death exulted o’er them; deadly Strife
Shrieked out a long wild cry from host to host.
With blood of slain men dust became red mire…

“The hand of Heaven is in our sufferings:
Some fate devised our ruin – oh that I
Had not lived to endure it, but had died
In days of wealthy peace! But now I see
Woes upon woes, and ever look to see
Worse things – my children slain, my city sacked
And burned with fire by stony-hearted foes…”

…Strife and deadly Enyo in the midst
Stalked, like the fell Erinyes to behold,
Breathing destruction from their lips like flame.
Beside them raged the ruthless-hearted Fates
Fiercely: here Panic-fear and Ares there
Stirred up the hosts: hard after followed Dread
With slaughter’s gore besprent…
And all around were javelins, spears and darts
Murder athirst from this side, that side, showered
Aye, as they hurled together, armour clashed,
As foe grappled in murderous fight.

***

…The black Fates joyed to see
Their conflict. Ares Laughed, Enyo yelled
Horrible. Loud their glancing armour clanged:
They stabbed, they hewed down hosts of foes untold
With irresistible hands. The reeling ranks
Fell, as the swath falls in the harvest heat,
When the swift-handed reapers, ranged adown
The field’s long furrows, play the sickle fast;
So fell before their hands ranks numberless:
With corpses earth was heaped, with torrent blood
Was streaming: Strife incarnate o’er the slain
Gloated…

Over the battle-slain the vultures joyed,
Hungry to rend the hearts and flesh of men.

***
…like fierce ravening beasts the Argive men
Leapt on them, mad with murderous rage of war.
Choked with their slain the river-channels were,
Heaped was the field; in red dust thousands fell,
Horses and men; and chariots overturned
Were strewn there: blood was streaming all around
Like rain, for deadly Doom raged through the fray.
Men stabbed with swords, and men impaled on spears
Lay all confusedly, like scattered beams…

So lay in dust and blood the slaughtered men,
Rapture and pain of fight forgotten now.
A remnant from the pitiless strife escaped
Entered their stronghold. scarce eluding doom.
Children and wives from their limbs blood-besprent
Received their arms bedabbled with foul gore…

***

“…Honour princely men and wise;
For the true man is still the true man’s friend,
Even as the vile man cleaveth to the knave.
If good thy though be, good shall be thy deeds:
But no man shall attain to Honour’s height,
Except his heart be right within: her stem
Is hard to climb, and high in heaven spread
Her branches: only they whom strength and toil
Attend, strain up to pluck her blissful fruit,
Climbing the Tree of Honour glory-crowned.
Thou therefore follow fame, and let thy soul
By\e not in sorrow afflicted overmuch,
Not in prosperity over-glad. To friends,
To comrades, child and wife, be kindly of heart,
Remembering still that near to all men stand
The gates of doom, the mansions of the dead:
For humankind are like the flowers of grass,
The blossom of spring; these fade the while those bloom:
Therefore be ever kindly with thy kind.

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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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Fronto
From his letters
Translated by C.R. Haines

He made his way not only into frozen lands, but also into a southern situation, to the advantage of those provinces which, lying beyond the Euphrates and the Danube, Trajan had annexed to the Roman Empire…These entire provinces, Dacia and the parts lost by the Parthians, Hadrian voluntarily restored. His armies in Asia he amused with “sallies” in the camp instead of with swords and shields: a general the like of him the army never afterward saw.

The same devotion to peace is said to have withheld him from action absolutely justified, so that in his freedom from empty ambition he is clearly comparable in all the line of Roman Emperors to Numa alone.

***

The power of the Macedonians swelling like a torrent with mighty force in a brief day fell away to nothing: and their empire was extinguished in the lifetime of a single generation…

Not one of them anywhere has a town or permanent dwelling or settled home: they owe their freedom to their poverty, for he who goes about to subjugate the poor gets but a barren return for his labour…

Those nations whose plundering raids have caused disasters I class as brigands rather than as enemies.

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

British writers on peace and war

Robert Southey: The Battle of Blenheim

Robert Southey: Preparing the way for peace; militarism versus Christianity

Robert Southey: The Soldier’s Wife

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Robert Southey
From Wat Tyler (1794)

Curse on these taxes – one succeeds another –
Our ministers – panders of a king’s will –
Drain all our wealth away – waste it in revels –
And lure, or force away our boys, who should be
The props of our old age! – to fill their armies
And feed the crows of France! year follows year,
And still we madly prosecute the war; –
Draining our wealth-distressing our poor peasants –
Slaughtering our youths – and all to crown our chiefs
With Glory! – I detest the hell-sprung name.

***

Think ye, my friend,
That I – a humble blacksmith, here at Deptford,
Would part with these six groats – earn’d by hard toil,
All that I have! To massacre the Frenchmen,
Murder as enemies men I never saw!
Did not the state compel me?
(Tax gatherers pass by)
There they go, privileg’d r———s! –

***

Enter Tax-gatherers.

COLLECTOR. Three groats a head for all your family.

PIERS. Why is this money gathered? – ’tis a hard tax
On the poor labourer! – it can never be
That government should thus distress the people. Go to the rich for money – honest labour
Ought to enjoy its fruits.

COLLECTOR. The state wants money.
War is expensive – ’tis a glorious war,
A war of honour, and must be supported. –
Three groats a head.

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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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Philostratus
From Lives of the Sophists
Translated by Wilmer Cave Wright

Leon of Byzantium was in his youth a pupil of Plato, but when he reached man’s estate he was called a sophist because he employed so many different styles of oratory, and also because his repartees were so convincing. For example, when Philip brought an army against Byzantium, Leon went out to meet him and said: “Tell me, Philip, what moved you to begin war on us?” And when he replied: “Your birthplace, the fairest of cities, lured me on to love her, and that is why I have come to my charmer’s door.” Leon retorted: “They come not with swords to the beloved’s door who are worthy of requited love. For lovers need not the instruments of war but of music.”

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

British writers on peace and war

William Hazlitt: Selections on war

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William Hazlitt
From On the Courier and Times Newspapers (1814)

To produce such a passage, at such a moment, required that union of impudence and folly which has no parallel elsewhere. From the quarter from which it comes, it could not surprize us; it is consistent; it is in keeping; it is of a piece with the rest. It is worthy of those harpies of the press, whose business is to scare away the approach of peace by their obscene and dissonant noises, and to tear asunder the olive-branch, whenever it is held out to us, with their well-practised beaks; who fill their hearts with malice, and their mouths with falsehood; who strive to soothe the dastard passion of their employers by inflaming those of the multitude; creatures that would sell the lives of millions for a nod of greatness, and make their country a by-word in history, to please some punk of quality.

***

We are to understand from no less an authority than that of The Courier, that Lord Castlereagh is sent out professedly to make peace, but in reality to hinder it: and we learn from an authority equally respectable (The Times) that nothing can prevent the destruction of Bonaparte but this country’s untimely consenting to make peace with him. And yet we are told in the same breath, that the charge of eternal war which we bring against these writers, is the echo of the French war-faction, who, at the commencement of every series of hostilities, and at the conclusion of every treaty, have accused this country of a want of good faith and sincere disposition to peace. We are told, that if the French do not force Bonaparte to make peace now, which yet these writers are determined to prevent him from doing, ”they are sunk beneath the worshippers of cats and onions.” These “knavish but keen” politicians tell the French people in so many words – ” We will not make peace with your government, and yet, if it does not make peace with us, we will force what Government we please upon you.” What effect this monstrous and palpable insult must have upon the French nation, will depend upon the degree of sense and spirit they have left among them. But with respect to ourselves, if the line of policy pointed out by these juggling fiends is really meant to be pursued, if a pretended proposal to treat for peace on certain grounds is only to be converted into an insidious ground for renewed war for other purposes, if this offensive and unmanly imposture is to be avowed and practised upon us in the face of day, then we know what will be the duty of Parliament and of the country.

***

It is curious to hear these systematic opponents of peace, (with infuriate and insensate looks scattering firebrands and death,) at the same time affecting the most tender concern for the miseries of war; or like that good-natured reconciler of differences, Iago, hypocritically shifting the blame from themselves – “What, stab men in the dark!” They ask with grave faces, with very grave faces, “Who are the authors, the propagators, and practisers of this dreadful war system? who the aggressors? who the unrelenting persecutors of peace?” War is their everlasting cry,”one note day and night;” during war, during peace, during negotiation, in success, in adversity; and yet they dare to tax others as the sole authors of the calamities which they would render eternal, sooner than abate one jot of their rancorous prejudices…

But do not these persons also attach the highest degree of probability, or, when; they are so inclined, moral certainty, to every thing that tends to make peace unattainable?…But of this we are sure, from all experience, that the way to render the fruits of those reverses uncertain, or to defeat them altogether, is the very mode of proceeding recommended by the ceaseless partizans of interminable hostilities.

***

[T]he project of starving France in 1796 – of hurling her down the gulph of bankruptcy in 1797 – the coalitions of different periods in which England saved herself and Europe from peace by her energy, or her example – the contemptuous rejection of every offer of negotiation in every situation, the unwearied prosecution of the war on the avowed principle that we were never to leave it off as long as we could carry it on, or get any one to carry it on for us, or until we buried ourselves under the ruins of the civilized world (a prediction which we narrowly escaped verifying)…

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Plutarch: Selections on war and peace

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Plutarch
Translated by John Dryden

From Tiberius Gracchus

Tiberius, maintaining an honourable and just cause, and possessed of eloquence sufficient to have made a less creditable action appear plausible, was no safe or easy antagonist, when, with the people crowding around the hustings, he took his place, and spoke in behalf of the poor. “The savage beasts,” said he, “in Italy, have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge; but the men who bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the meantime nothing more in it but the air and light and, having no houses or settlements of their own, are constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children.” He told them that the commanders were guilty of a ridiculous error, when, at the head of their armies, they exhorted the common soldiers to fight for their sepulchres and altars; when not any amongst so many Romans is possessed of either altar or monument, neither have they any houses of their own, or hearths of their ancestors to defend. They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men. They were styled the masters of the world, but in the meantime had not one foot of ground which they could call their own.

From Demetrius

“Mars,” as says Timotheus, “is the tyrant,” but Law, in Pindar’s words, the king of all. Homer does not say that kings received at the hands of Jove besieging engines or ships of war, but sentences of justice, to keep and observe; nor is it the most warlike, unjust, and murderous, but the most righteous of kings, that has from him the name of Jupiter’s “familiar friend” and scholar. Demetrius’s delight was the title most unlike the choice of the king of gods. The divine names were those of the Defender and Keeper, his was that of the Besieger of Cities. The place of virtue was given by him to that which, had he not been as ignorant as he was powerful, he would have known to be vice, and honour by his act was associated with crime…

[He] had foolishly let himself be seduced away from…that highest good which he had thought to obtain by arms and fleets and soldiers he had now discovered unexpectedly in idleness, leisure, and repose. As, indeed, what other end or period is there of all the wars and dangers which hapless princes run into, whose misery and folly it is, not merely that they make luxury and pleasure. instead of virtue and excellence, the object of their lives, but that they do not so much as know where this luxury and pleasure are to be found?

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

British writers on peace and war

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: All our dainty terms for fratricide

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: War and all its dread vicissitudes pleasingly agitate their stagnant hearts

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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Fire, Famine, And Slaughter: A War Eclogue (1813)

SCENE — A DESOLATED TRACK IN LA VENDEE. — FAMINE IS DISCOVERED STRETCHED ON THE GROUND: TO HER ENTER FIRE AND SLAUGHTER.

FAMINE.
Sisters! Sisters! who sent you here?

SLAUGHTER.
I will name him in your ear.

FIRE.
No! no! no!
Spirits hear what spirits tell:
‘Twill make a holiday in hell.
No! no! no!
Myself I nam’d him once below,
And all the souls, that damned be,
Leap’d up at once in anarchy;
Clapp’d their hands and danc’d for glee;
They no longer heeded me;
But laugh’d to hear Hell’s burning rafters
Unwillingly re-echo laughters.
No! no! no!
Spirits hear what spirits tell,
‘Twill make a holiday in hell.

FAMINE.
Then sound it not, yet let me know;
Darkly hint it — soft and low!

SLAUGHTER.
Four letters form his name. [Pitt]
And who sent you?

FAMINE.
The same! the same!

SLAUGHTER.
He came by stealth and unlock’d my den,
And I have drank the blood since then
Of thrice ten hundred thousand men.

FIRE AND FAMINE.
Who bade you do’t?

SLAUGHTER.
The same! the same!
Four letters form his name.
He let me loose, and cry’d Halloo!
To him alone the praise is due.

FAMINE.
Thanks, Sisters, thanks! the men have bled,
Their wives and their children faint for bread;
I stood in a swampy field of battle,
With bones and sculls I made a rattle,
To frighten the wolf and the carrion crow,
And the homeless dog – but they would not go.
So off I flew; for how could I bear
To see them gorge their dainty fare.
I heard a groan, and a peevish squall,
And thro’ the chink of a cottage wall,
Can you guess what I saw there?

SLAUGHTER AND FIRE.
Whisper it, Sister! in our ear!

FAMINE.
A baby beat its dying mother –
I had starv’d the one, and was starving the other!

SLAUGHTER AND FIRE.
Who bad you do’t?

FAMINE.
The same! the same!
Four letters form his name.
He let me loose, and cry’d Halloo!
To him alone the praise is due.

FIRE.
Sisters! I from Ireland came –
Hedge and corn-fields all on flame,
I triumph’d o’er the setting Sun;
And all the while the work was done.
And on as I strode with monst’rous strides,
I flung back my head, and held my sides;
It was so rare a piece of fun,
To see the swelter’d cattle run,
With uncouth gallop, all the night,
Scar’d by the red and noisy light!
By the light of his own blazing Cot
Was many a naked Rebel shot:
The house-stream met the flames, and hiss’d
While crash! fell in the roof, I wist
On some of those old bed-rid nurses,
That deal in discontent and curses!

SLAUGHTER AND FAMINE.
Who bade you do’t?

FIRE.
The same! the same!
Four letters form his name.
He let me loose, and cry’d Halloo!
How shall I give him honour due?

ALL.
He let us loose, and cry’d halloo!
How shall we give him honour due?

FAMINE.
Wisdom comes with lack of food,
I’ll gnaw, I’ll gnaw the multitude,
Till the cup of rage o’er brim,
They shall seize him and his brood.

SLAUGHTER.
They shall tear him limb from limb!

FIRE.
O thankless Beldames, and untrue,
And is this all that you can do
For him who did so much for you?

TO SLAUGHTER.
For you he turn’d the dust to mud,
With his fellow creatures’ blood!

TO FAMINE.
And hunger scorch’d as many more,
To make your cup of joy run o’er.

TO BOTH.
Full ninety moons, he by my troth,
Hath richly cater’d for you both;
And in an hour would you repay,
An eight years debt, away! away!
I alone am faithful, I
Cling to him everlastingly!

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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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Statius
From Thebaid
Translated by J.H. Mozley

Rumour flies through the kindred cities, and is carried from lip to lip in the neighbouring lands…nor less does the same tumultuous goddess descend upon Ogygian Thebes. With wings full-stretched she broods over those walls, bringing terror that accords with the past night to the Labdacian chief: the welcome and the marriage does she relate, and the royal covenant and the union of houses – what mad licence in the devilish monster’s tongue! – and at last she tells of war…

The folk are swift to believe him; the Lord of Arms inclines them to credit all, and, once welcomed, Rumour redoubles fear…

And now amid the night-wandering shades the god of battle from on high made to resound with the thunder of arms the Nemean fields and Arcady from end to end, and the height of Taenarum and Therapnae favoured of Apollo, and filled excited hearts with passion for himself. Fury and Wrath make trim his crest, and Panic, his own squire, handles his horses’ reins. But Rumour, awake to every sound and girt with empty tidings of tumult, flies before the chariot, sped onward by the winged steeds’ panting breath, and with loud whirring shakes out her fluttering plumes; for the charioteer with blood-stained goad urges her to speak, be it truth or falsehood

***

[A]lready we suffer the extremities of war. Alas! what sweat of toil in the thick dust of battle is in store for men and steeds! alas! how high will ye flow, ye rivers, blushing your cruel red! All this will our youth behold, yet green to war…

And now tumultuous grow the Thunderer’s high behests, and lay waste of men both fields and ancient towns; on every side the war-god sweeps countless troops before him; gladly do they leave their homes and beloved wives and babes that wail upon the threshold; with such power hath the god assailed their frenzied hearts. Eager are they to tear away the weapons from their fathers’ doorposts and the chariots made fast in the inmost shrines of the gods; then they refashion for cruel wounds the spears that rotting rust has worn, and the swords that stick in their scabbards from neglect, and on the grindstone force them to be young once more. Some try shapely helms and the brazen mail of mighty corselets, and fit to their breasts tunics that creak with the mouldering iron, others bend Gortynian bows; in greedy furnaces scythes, ploughs and harrows and curved mattocks glow fiercely red. Nor are they ashamed to cut strong spear-shafts from sacred trees, or to make a covering for their shields from the worn-out ox. They rush to Argos, and at the doors of the despondent king clamour with heart and voice for war, for war!

***

“Whither, unhappy ones, whither are ye rushing to war, though fate and heaven would bar the way? What Furies’ lash drives you blindly on? Are ye so weary of life? Is Argos grown so hateful? Hath home no sweetness? Heed ye not the omens?…I saw a mighty ruin foreshown, I saw gods and men dismayed and Megaera exultant and Lachesis with crumbling thread laying the ages waste. Cast away your arms! behold! heaven, yea, heaven withstands your frenzy! Miserable men, what glory is there in drenching Aonia and the fallows of dire Cadmus with the blood of vanquished foes? But why do I warn in vain? why do I repel a fate foredoomed? I go to meet it –“ Here ceased the prophet and groaned.”

***

“One would think it was Scythia swarming with tumultuous bucklers, when the Father gives rein to armed conflict and flings wide the gates of savage War. Their uproar held no varying voices, nor did dissension cleave into opposing factions, as is the wont of a crowd; one frenzy, one purpose inspires all alike, to lay desolate our homes, to break life’s thread for young and old, to crush babes against the teeming breasts, and with the sword make havoc through every age…”

And now the horn-footed steeds snort at the corpses in alarm and probe the ground, and every wheel-track runs o’er bodies and reddens deep with severed limbs. Some the remorseless axle grinds unconscious, but others half-dead from wounds – and powerless to escape – see it as it draws nigh to crush them. Already the reins are wet with gore, the slippery care gives no foothold, blood clogs the wheels and trampled entrails hinder the horses’ hooves: then the hero himself madly tears out darts abandoned in the slain and spears projecting from the midst of corpses: ghosts shriek and pursue the chariot.

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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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Lactantius: The arms of the nations shall be burnt; and now there shall be no war, but peace and everlasting rest

Lactantius: Duties relating to warfare are accommodated neither to justice nor to true virtue

Lactantius: Justice had no other reason for leaving the earth than the shedding of human blood

Lactantius: No one can befittingly describe the cruelty of this beast, which rages with iron teeth throughout the world

Lactantius: The pernicious and impious madness of deifying warlike generals who have inundated plains with blood

Lactantius: Sacrificing to the gods of war

Lactantius: War, object of execration, and its domestic analogue

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Quintus Smyrnaeus: In his talons bore a gasping dove. Where never ceased Ares from hideous slaughter.

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Quintus Smyrnaeus
From The Fall of Troy
Translated by Arthur S. Way

Thetis the Goddess laid down in the midst
Great-souled Achilles’ arms divinely wrought;
And all around flashed out the cunning work
Wherewith the Fire-god overchased the shield…

Around them hovered the relentless Fates;
Beside them Battle incarnate onward pressed
Yelling, and from their limbs streamed blood and sweat.
There were the ruthless Gorgons: through their hair
Horribly serpents coiled with flickering tongues.
A measureless marvel was that cunning work
Of things that made men shudder to behold
Seeming as though they verily lived and moved.
And while here all war’s marvels were portrayed,
Yonder were the works of lovely peace.
The myriad tribes of much-enduring men
Dwelt in fair cities. Justice watched o’er all.
To diverse toils they set their hands; the fields
Were harvest-laden; earth her increase bore.
Most steeply rose on that god-laboured work
The rugged flanks of holy Honour’s mount,
And there upon a palm-tree throned she sat
Exalted, and her hands reached up to heaven.

***

Many were doomed to Hades to descend,
Whence there is no return, thrust down by hands
Of Aeacus’ son, who also was foredoomed
To perish that same day by Priam’s wall.
Swiftly met the fronts of conflict: all the tribes
Of Troy’s host, and the battle-biding Greeks,
Afire with that new-kindled fury of war.
Then through the foe the son of Peleus made
Wide havoc: all around the earth was drenched
With gore, and choked with corpses were the streams
Of Simois and Xanthus.

***

…he trod on dead men, arms, and blood;
For countless corpses lay o’er that wide stretch
Even from broad-wayed Troy to Hellespont,
Bodies of strong men slain, the spoils of Doom.
As when the dense stalks of sun-ripened corn
Fall ‘neath the reapers’ hands, and the long swaths,
Heavy with full ears, overspread the field,
And joys the heart of him who oversees
The toil, lord of the harvest; even so,
By baleful havoc overmastered, lay
All around face-downward men remembering not
The death-denouncing war shout.

***

Then by the those dark ships they thought
Of white-haired fathers left in halls afar,
Of wives new-wedded, who by couches cold
Mourned, waiting, waiting, with their tender babes
For husbands unreturning; and they groaned
In bitterness of soul.

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

British writers on peace and war

William Hazlitt: Selections on war

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William Hazlitt
From Vetus (1813)

This patriot and logician in a letter in The Times of Friday, labours to stifle the most distant hope of peace in its birth. He lays down certain general principles which must for ever render all attempts to restore it vain and abortive. With the watch-word of Eternal war with Bonaparte blazoned on his forehead, in the piety of his pacific zeal, he challenges Bonaparte as the wanton, unprovoked, implacable enemy of the peace of mankind. We will also venture to lay down a maxim, which is – That from the moment that one party declares and acts upon the avowed principle that peace can never be made with an enemy, it renders war on the part of that enemy a matter of necessary self-defence, and holds out a plea for every excess of ambition or revenge. If we are to limit our hostility to others only with their destruction, we impose the adoption of the same principle on them as their only means of safety. There is no alternative. But this is probably the issue to which Vetus wishes to bring the question. This writer not only outlaws Bonparte, but in a summary way, disfranchises the French nation at large of the right of making peace or war. ”Who?” he exclaims in wanton defiance of common sense, “are the French nation? To us a rank non-entity. We have only to do with Napoleon Bonaparte – with his rights, his interests, his honour. Who are to be the sole judges of his rights ? We and our Allies.” Admirable politician!

The events which have lately taken place on the Continent, and the moderate and manly tone in which those events have been received by Ministers, have excited the utmost degree of uneasiness and alarm in the minds of certain persons, who redouble the eagerness of their cries for war. The cold blooded fury and mercenary malice of these panders to mischief, can only be appeased by the prospect of lasting desolation. They rave, foam at the mouth, and make frantic gestures at the name of peace. These high-priests of Moloch daily offer up to their grim idol the same nauseous banquet of abuse and lies. Round them “a cry of hell-hounds never ceasing bark,” that with greedy appetite devour the offal. Every day they act over the same foul imposture, and repeat their monstrous masque. These mighty soothsayers took forward to another restoration of Europe after another twenty years of havoc and destruction. After urging her to the very edge of the precipice from which she has only just recovered, breathless and affrighted, they wish to goad her on once more to the same mad career. The storm is for the moment over-past, but they will not suffer the vessel of the state to enter the harbour, in the hope that they may still plunder the wreck and prey upon the carcases. The serpent’s hiss, the assassin’s yell, the mowing and chattering of apes, drown the voice of peace; and Vetus, like the solemn owl, joins in the distance, and prolongs the dreary note of death!

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

American writers on peace and against war

William Cullen Bryant: Emblem of the peace that yet shall be, noise of war shall cease from sea to sea

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William Cullen Bryant
Christmas 1875

(Supposed to be written by a Spaniard)

No trumpet-blast profaned
The hour in which the Prince of Peace was born;
No bloody streamlet stained
Earth’s silver rivers on that sacred morn;
But, o’er the peaceful plain,
The war-horse drew the peasant’s loaded wain.

The soldier had laid by
The sword and stripped the corselet from his breast,
And hung his helm on high –
The sparrow’s winter home and summer nest;
And, with the same strong hand
That flung the barbed spear, he tilled the land.

Oh, time for which we yearn;
Oh, sabbath of the nations long foretold!
Season of peace, return,
Like a late summer when the year grows old,
When the sweet sunny days
Steeped mead and mountain-side in golden haze.

For now two rival kings
Flaunt, o’er our bleeding land, their hostile flags,
And every sunrise brings
The hovering vulture from his mountain-crags
To where the battle-plain
Is strewn with dead, the youth and flower of Spain.

Christ is not come, while yet
O’er half the earth the threat of battle lowers,
And our own fields are wet,
Beneath the battle-cloud, with crimson showers –
The life-blood of the slain,
Poured out where thousands die that one may reign.

Soon, over half the earth,
In every temple crowds shall kneel again
To celebrate His birth
Who brought the message of good-will to men,
And bursts of joyous song
Shall shake the roof above the prostrate throng.

Christ is not come, while there
The men of blood whose crimes affront the skies
Kneel down in act of prayer,
Amid the joyous strains, and when they rise
Go forth, with sword and flame,
To waste the land in His most holy name.

Oh, when the day shall break
O’er realms unlearned in warfare’s cruel arts,
And all their millions wake
To peaceful tasks performed with loving hearts,
On such a blessed morn,
Well may the nations say that Christ is born.

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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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Virgil
Eclogue IV
Translated by A. S. Kline

Pollio

Muses of Sicily, let me sing a little more grandly.
Orchards and humble tamarisks don’t please everyone:
if I sing of the woods, let the woods be fit for a Consul.

Now the last age of the Cumaean prophecy begins:
the great roll-call of the centuries is born anew:
now Virgin Justice returns, and Saturn’s reign:
now a new race descends from the heavens above.
Only favour the child who’s born, pure Lucina, under whom
the first race of iron shall end, and a golden race
rise up throughout the world: now your Apollo reigns.
For, Pollio, in your consulship, this noble age begins,
and the noble months begin their advance:
any traces of our evils that remain will be cancelled,
while you lead, and leave the earth free from perpetual fear.
He will take on divine life, and he will see gods
mingled with heroes, and be seen by them,
and rule a peaceful world with his father’s powers.
And for you, boy, the uncultivated earth will pour out
her first little gifts, straggling ivy and cyclamen everywhere
and the bean flower with the smiling acanthus.
The goats will come home themselves, their udders swollen
with milk, and the cattle will have no fear of fierce lions:
Your cradle itself will pour out delightful flowers:
And the snakes will die, and deceitful poisonous herbs
will wither: Assyrian spice plants will spring up everywhere.
And you will read both of heroic glories, and your father’s deeds,
and will soon know what virtue can be.
The plain will slowly turn golden with tender wheat,
and the ripe clusters hang on the wild briar,
and the tough oak drip with dew-wet honey.
Some small traces of ancient error will lurk,
that will command men to take to the sea in ships,
encircle towns with walls, plough the earth with furrows.
Another Argo will arise to carry chosen heroes, a second
Tiphys as helmsman: there will be another War,
and great Achilles will be sent once more to Troy.
Then when the strength of age has made you a man,
the merchant himself will quit the sea, nor will the pine ship
trade its goods: every land will produce everything.
The soil will not feel the hoe: nor the vine the pruning hook:
the strong ploughman too will free his oxen from the yoke:
wool will no longer be taught to counterfeit varied colours,
the ram in the meadow will change his fleece of himself,
now to a sweet blushing purple, now to a saffron yellow:
scarlet will clothe the browsing lambs of its own accord.
‘Let such ages roll on’ the Fates said, in harmony,
to the spindle, with the power of inexorable destiny.
O dear child of the gods, take up your high honours
(the time is near), great son of Jupiter!
See the world, with its weighty dome, bowing,
earth and wide sea and deep heavens:
see how everything delights in the future age!
O let the last days of a long life remain to me,
and the inspiration to tell how great your deeds will be:
Thracian Orpheus and Linus will not overcome me in song,
though his mother helps the one, his father the other,
Calliope Orpheus, and lovely Apollo Linus.
Even Pan if he competed with me, with Arcady as judge,
even Pan, with Arcady as judge, would account himself beaten.
Little child, begin to recognise your mother with a smile:
ten months have brought a mother’s long labour.
Little child, begin: he on whom his parents do not smile
no god honours at his banquets, no goddess in her bed.

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Juvenal: Mighty warriors and their tombs are circumscribed by Fate

Juvenal: The spoils of war and the price thereof

Juvenal: War and violence, baser than the beasts

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Juvenal
From Satires
Translated by G. G. Ramsay

Put Hannibal into the scales; how many pounds’ weight will you find in that greatest of commanders? This is the man for whom Africa was all too small – a land beaten by the Moorish sea and stretching to the steaming Nile, and then, again, to the tribes of Aethiopia and a new race of elephants! Spain is added to his dominions: he overleaps the Pyrenees; Nature throws in his way Alps and snow: he splits the rocks asunder, and breaks up the mountain-side with vinegar! And now Italy is in his grasp, but still on he presses: “Nought is accomplished,” he cries, “until my Punic host breaks down the city gates, and I plant my standard in the midst of the Subura! “O what a sight was that! What a picture it would make, the one-eyed General riding on the Gaetulian monster! What then was his end? Alas for glory! A conquered man, he flees headlong into exile, and there he sits, a mighty and marvellous suppliant, in the King’s antechamber, until it please his Bithynian Majesty to awake! No sword, no stone, no javelin shall end the life which once wrought havoc throughout the world: that little ring shall avenge Cannae and all those seas of blood. On! on! thou madman, and race over the wintry Alps, that thou mayest be the delight of schoolboys and supply declaimers with a theme!

One globe is all too little for the youth of Pella; he chafes uneasily within the narrow limits of the world, as though he were cooped up within the rocks of Gyara or the diminutive Seriphos; but yet when once he shall have entered the city fortified by the potter’s art, a sarcophagus will suffice him! Death alone proclaims how small are our poor human bodies! We have heard how ships once sailed through Mount Athos, and all the lying tales of Grecian history; how the sea was paved by those self-same ships, and gave solid support to chariot-wheels; how deep rivers failed, and whole streams were drunk dry when the Persian breakfasted, with all the fables of which Sostratus sings with reeking pinions. But in what plight did that king flee from Salamis? he that had been wont to inflict barbaric stripes upon the winds Corus and Eurus – never treated thus in their Aeolian prison-house – he who had bound the Earth-shaker himself with chains, deeming it clemency, forsooth, not to think him worthy of a branding also: what god, indeed, would be willing to serve such a master? – in what plight did he return? Why, in a single ship; on blood-stained waves, the prow slowly forcing her way through waters thick with corpses! Such was the penalty exacted for that long-desired glory!

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

German writers on peace and war

Friedrich Schiller: The citizen is naught, the soldier all; rude hordes, lawless grown in lengthy war

Friedrich Schiller: Oh, blessed peace, may the day of grim War’s ruthless crew never dawn

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Friedrich Schiller
From Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man
Translated unknown

The germ of the beautiful will find an equal difficulty in developing itself in countries where a severe nature forbids man to enjoy himself, and in those where a prodigal nature dispenses him from all effort; where the blunted senses experience no want, and where violent desire can never be satisfied. The delightful flower of the beautiful will never unfold itself in the case of the Troglodyte hid in his cavern always alone, and never finding humanity outside himself; nor among nomads, who, travelling in great troops, only consist of a multitude, and have no individual humanity. It will only flourish in places where man converses peacefully with himself in his cottage, and with the whole race when he issues from it.

***

The arms themselves ought to be no longer only objects of terror, but also of pleasure; and the skilfully worked scabbard will not attract less attention than the homicidal edge of the sword. The instinct of play, not satisfied with bringing into the sphere of the necessary an æsthetic superabundance for the future more free, is at last completely emancipated from the bonds of duty, and the beautiful becomes of itself an object of man’s exertions.

***

The beautiful reconciles the contrast of different natures in its simplest and purest expression. It also reconciles the eternal contrast of the two sexes, in the whole complex framework of society, or at all events it seeks to do so; and, taking as its model the free alliance it has knit between manly strength and womanly gentleness, it strives to place in harmony, in the moral world, all the elements of gentleness and of violence. Now, at length, weakness becomes sacred, and an unbridled strength disgraces; the injustice of nature is corrected by the generosity of chivalrous manners. The being whom no power can make tremble, is disarmed by the amiable blush of modesty, and tears extinguish a vengeance that blood could not have quenched. Hatred itself hears the delicate voice of honour, the conqueror’s sword spares the disarmed enemy, and a hospitable hearth smokes for the stranger on the dreaded hill-side where murder alone awaited him before.

***

Strength must let the Graces bind it, and the arbitrary lion must yield to the reins of love. For this purpose taste throws a veil over physical necessity, offending a free mind by its coarse nudity, and dissimulating our degrading parentage with matter by a delightful illusion of freedom. Mercenary art itself rises from the dust; and the bondage of the bodily, in its magic touch, falls off from the inanimate and animate. In the æsthetic state the most slavish tool is a free citizen, having the same rights as the noblest; and the intellect which shapes the mass to its intent must consult it concerning its destination. Consequently in the realm of æsthetic appearance, the idea of equality is realised, which the political zealot would gladly see carried out socially. It has often been said that perfect politeness is only found near a throne. If thus restricted in the material, man has, as elsewhere appears, to find compensation in the ideal world.

***

What is man before beauty liberates him from free pleasure, and the serenity of form tames down the savageness of life? Eternally uniform in his aims, eternally changing in his judgments, self-seeking without being himself, unfettered without being free, a slave without serving any rule. At this period, the world is to him only destiny, not yet an object; all has existence for him only in as far as it procures existence to him; a thing that neither seeks from nor gives to him is non-existent. Every phenomenon stands out before him, separate and cut off, as he finds himself in the series of beings. All that is, is to him through the bias of the moment; every change is to him an entirely fresh creation, because with the necessary in him, the necessary out of him is wanting, which binds together all the changing forms in the universe, and which holds fast the law on the theatre of his action, while the individual departs. It is in vain that nature lets the rich variety of her forms pass before him; he sees in her glorious fullness nothing but his prey, in her power and greatness nothing but his enemy. Either he encounters objects, and wishes to draw them to himself in desire, or the objects press in a destructive manner upon him, and he thrusts them away in dismay and terror. In both cases his relation to the world of sense is immediate contact; and perpetually anxious through its pressure, restless and plagued by imperious wants, he nowhere finds rest except in enervation, and nowhere limits save in exhausted desire.

Ignorant of his own human dignity, he is far removed from honouring it in others, and conscious of his own savage greed, he fears it in every creature that he sees like himself. He never sees others in himself, only himself in others, and human society, instead of enlarging him to the race, only shuts him up continually closer in his individuality. Thus limited, he wanders through his sunless life, till favouring nature rolls away the load of matter from his darkened senses, reflection separates him from things, and objects show themselves at length in the after-glow of the consciousness.

***

As soon as light dawns in man, there is no longer night outside of him; as soon as there is peace within him the storm lulls throughout the universe, and the contending forces of nature find rest within prescribed limits.

***

I hope that I shall succeed in convincing you that this matter of art is less foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our age; nay, that, to arrive at a solution even in the political problem, the road of æsthetics must be pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.

***

The governing authorities find themselves compelled to classify, and thereby simplify, the multiplicity of citizens, and only to know humanity in a representative form and at second hand. Accordingly they end by entirely losing sight of humanity, and by confounding it with a simple artificial creation of the understanding, whilst on their part the subject classes cannot help receiving coldly laws that address themselves so little to their personality. At length society, weary of having a burden that the state takes so little trouble to lighten, falls to pieces and is broken up – a destiny that has long since attended most European states. They are dissolved in what may be called a state of moral nature, in which public authority is only one function more, hated and deceived by those who think it necessary, respected only by those who can do without it.

***

The Roman had already bent his knee for long years to the divinity of the emperors, and yet the statues of the gods stood erect; the temples retained their sanctity for the eye long after the gods had become a theme for mockery, and the noble architecture of the palaces that shielded the infamies of Nero and of Commodus were a protest against them. Humanity has lost its dignity, but art has saved it, and preserves it in marbles full of meaning; truth continues to live in illusion, and the copy will serve to reestablish the model.

***

Live with your age, but be not its creation; labour for your contemporaries, but do for them what they need, and not what they praise. Without having shared their faults, share their punishment with a noble resignation, and bend under the yoke which they find is as painful to dispense with as to bear. By the constancy with which you will despise their good fortune, you will prove to them that it is not through cowardice that you submit to their sufferings. See them in thought such as they ought to be when you must act upon them; but see them as they are when you are tempted to act for them. Seek to owe their suffrage to their dignity; but to make them happy keep an account of their unworthiness; thus, on the one hand, the nobleness of your heart will kindle theirs, and, on the other, your end will not be reduced to nothingness by their unworthiness. The gravity of your principles will keep them off from you, but in play they will still endure them. Their taste is purer than their heart, and it is by their taste you must lay hold of this suspicious fugitive. In vain will you combat their maxims, in vain will you condemn their actions; but you can try your moulding hand on their leisure. Drive away caprice, frivolity, and coarseness, from their pleasures, and you will banish them imperceptibly from their acts, and length from their feelings. Everywhere that you meet them, surround them with great, noble, and ingenious forms; multiply around them the symbols of perfection, till appearance triumphs over reality, and art over nature.

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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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Valerius Flacchus
From Argonautica
Translated by J.H. Mozley

“I will tell thee,” said Mopsus, “and wholly explain the causes of this plague;” then, looking at the stars, “If we, who once were fire and high Olympus’ kin, suffer mortal frames and brief apportionments and a short span of destiny, it is not therefore right to engage in reckless slaughter and to drive hence with the sword souls that yet would tarry, and seeds that will one day return to heaven; for we are not dissolved into the breezes or into mere bones at the last: anger abides and grief endures. Thereafter when they are come to the throne of awful Jove and have set forth all the sorrowful story of their dreadful end, the gate of death is opened for them and they may return a second time; one of the Sisters is given them as a companion, and they range together over lands and seas. Each involves in penalties the guilty souls of his own foes; they rack them with various terrors after their deserving. But those whose hands have dripped with blood unwillingly – or were it cruel mischance, though nigh to guilt, that swept away the wretches – these men their own minds harry in divers ways, and their own deeds vex the doers; languid now and ventureless they decline into tears and spiritless alarms and sickly sloth: such thou doest here behold…”

Moreover, he duly places oak trees stripped of their foliage and shaped to the likeness of the warriors, and fastens thereto pretended armour. To these with prayer he bids pass over the Stygian threats and the shed blood’s unrelenting anger, upon these he prays that he wakeful remorse may weigh, and thus with atoning chant he calls to them: “Go, slain ones, make an end of unforgetting wrath; leave us in peace, and be content at last with your Stygian resting-place; far from our course, far from the sea abide, and have naught to do with wars. I would not have you go to Grecian cities or shriek at cross-roads; let no plague come hereby on herds or crops, nor baneful season bear hard upon them; let not our people or our offspring atone these deeds.”

At the dead of night they hear from closed caverns of the earth the unresting labour of the Chalybes; thy husbandmen, Gradivus, they ply their weary tools; loud rings the travail of those hands that first created war, the scourge of all the earth. For ere they dragged unknown iron from its stony bed and provided swords, Hatred roamed feeble because unarmed, Anger was resourceless and Revenge but slow…

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Clement of Alexandria: Gods of war

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Clement of Alexandria
From Exhortations to the Greeks
Translated by G.W. Buttterworth

And the Word, having spread abroad the truth, showed to men the grandeur of salvation, in order that they may either be saved if they repent, or be judged if they neglect to obey. This is the preaching of righteousness; to those who obey, good news; to those who disobey, a means of judgment. But when the shrilling trumpet blows, it assembles the soldiers and proclaims war; shall not Christ, think you, having breathed to the ends of the earth a song of peace, assemble the soldiers of peace that are His? Yes, and He did assemble, O man, by blood and by word His bloodless army, and to them He entrusted the kingdom of heaven. The trumpet of Christ is His gospel. He sounded it, and we heard. Let us gird ourselves with the armour of peace, “putting on the breastplate of righteousness,” and taking up the shield of faith, and placing on our head the helmet of salvation; and let us sharpen ” the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.” Thus does the apostle marshal us in the ranks of peace.

Clement of Alexandria
From The Rich Man’s Salvation
Translated by G.W. Butterworth

Do not you be deceived, however, who have tasted of truth, and have been deemed worthy of the great redemption; but, contrary to the rest of men, enlist on your behalf an army without weapons, without war, without bloodshed, without anger, without stain, an army of God-fearing old men, of God-beloved orphans, of widows armed with gentleness, of men adorned with love.

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Procopius: Refuge from war

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Procopius
From History of the Wars
Translated by H. B. Dewing

At this same time an insurrection broke out unexpectedly in Byzantium among the populace, and, contrary to expectation, it proved to be a very serious affair, and ended in great harm to the people and to the senate, as the following account will shew. In every city the population has been divided for a long time past into the Blue and the Green factions; but within comparatively recent times it has come about that, for the sake of these names and the seats which the rival factions occupy in watching the games, they spend their money and abandon their bodies to the most cruel tortures, and even do not think it unworthy to die a most shameful death. And they fight against their opponents knowing not for what end they imperil themselves, but knowing well that, even if they overcome their enemy in the fight, the conclusion of the matter for them will be to be carried off straightway to the prison, and finally, after suffering extreme torture, to be destroyed. So there grows up in them against their fellow men a hostility which has no cause, and at no time does it cease or disappear, for it gives place neither to the ties of marriage nor of relationship nor of friendship, and the case is the same even though those who differ with respect to these colours be brothers or any other kin. They care neither for things divine nor human in comparison with conquering in these struggles; and it matters not whether a sacrilege is committed by anyone at all against God, or whether the laws and the constitution are violated by friend or by foe; nay even when they are perhaps ill supplied with the necessities of life, and when their fatherland is in the most pressing need and suffering unjustly, they pay no heed if only it is likely to go well with their “faction”; for so they name the bands of partisans. And even women join with them in this unholy strife, and they not only follow the men, but even resist them if opportunity offers, although they neither go to the public exhibitions at all, nor are they impelled by any other cause; so that I, for my part, am unable to call this anything except a disease of the soul. This, then, is pretty well how matters stand among the people of each and every city.

***

“The peace, therefore, as far as concerns him, has already been broken for thee, and he himself has set an end to the endless peace. For they break the peace, not who may be first in arms, but they who may be caught plotting against their neighbours in time of peace. For the crime has been committed by him who attempts it, even though success be lacking. Now as for the course which the war will follow, this is surely clear to everyone. For it is not those who furnish causes for war, but those who defend themselves against those who furnish them, who are accustomed always to conquer their enemies…”

***

“It is the part of men of discretion and those by whom divine things are treated with due respect, when causes of war arise, and in particular against men who are in the truest sense friends, to exert all their power to put an end to them; but it belongs to foolish men and those who most lightly bring on themselves the enmity of Heaven to devise occasions for war and insurrection which have no real existence. Now to destroy peace and enter upon war is not a difficult matter, since the nature of things is such as to make the basest activities easy for the most dishonourable men. But when they have brought about war according to their intention, to return again to peace is for men, I think, not easy…”

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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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Ovid
From Tristia
Translated by Arthur Leslie Wheeler

Poetry comes fine spun from a soul at peace; my mind is clouded with unexpected woes. Poetry requires the writer to be in privacy and ease; I am harrassed by the sea, by gales, by wintry storms. Poetry is injured by any fear; I in my ruin am ever and ever expecting a sword to pierce my throat…

Wild is the shore on my left, accustomed to the greed of robbers, ever filled with bloodshed and murder and war…

[If] I look upon the men, they are scarce men worthy the name; they have more of cruel savagery than wloves. They fear not laws; right gives way to force, and justice lies conquered beneath the aggressive sword…

Countless tribes round about threaten cruel war, thinking it base to to live if not by plunder. Without, nothing is secure: the hill itself is defended by meagre walls and its skilful site. When least expected, like birds, the foe swarms upon us and when scarce well seen is already driving off the booty. Oft, though the gates be closed, we pick up amidst the streets deadly missiles that come within the walls. Few then venture to till the fields, for the wretch must plough with one hand, and hold arms in the other. The shepherd wears a helmet while he plays upon his pitch-cemented reeds, and instead of a wolf the timorous ewes dread war.

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

Mario Vargas Llosa
From address given upon receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels in 1996

I can state for two reasons that if literature does not continue to play this role as it did in the past – refusing to be merely light entertainment, becoming once again ‘committed,’ trying to open people’s eyes, through words and fantasy, to the reality that surrounds them – it will be more difficult to contain the outbreaks of wars, killings, genocides, ethnic conflict, religious struggles, refugee displacements and terrorism which threaten to proliferate, destroying the hopes for a peaceful world…

The first reason for literature’s continuing moral importance is the urgent need to mobilize public opinion to demand that democratic governments take resolute action to support peace…

Writers can contribute to this task, as they did so often in the past, when they still believed that literature was not mere entertainment but also a way of raising concerns, sounding the alarm and guiding people to act for a good cause. The survival of the species and culture are a good cause…

Previously we wondered whether the great confrontation of the Cold War would turn hot and consume the world in the great holocaust of a single apocalyptic conflict between East and West. Now it is about knowing whether the death of civilization will be slower and more decentered, the result of a succession of many regional and national wars provoked by ideological, religious and ethnic factors, and by crude ambitions for power. The lethal arms are there and are still being manufactured. There are more than enough atomic and conventional weapons to wipe out several planets, along with our own small planet…

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Philo: “Ah, my friends, how should you not hate war and love peace?”

Philo: Casting off the warlike spirit in its completeness

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Philo
From Who is the Heir of Divine Things
Translated by F.H. Colson and Rev. G.H. Whitaker

Inequality is the mother of the twins, foreign war and civil war, just as its opposite, equality is the mother of peace.

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“…I am the harbinger of peace to creation from that God whose will is to bring wars to an end, who is ever the guardian of peace.”

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“[T]hou shall depart to thy fathers nourished with peace, in a goodly old age.” So then we who are imperfect are victims both of war and slavery, and hard-won is our release from the terrors which menace us. But the perfect are a race subject neither to war nor slavery, but nourished in peace and freedom sure and secure.

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The words “nourished with peace” are not a pointless addition, but mean that the greater part of the human race are with little exception “nourished” for war and all its attendant evils. Now war sometimes arises from things outside us, waged against us by ill-repute and poverty and mean birth and the like. Sometimes it arises from intestine enemies…

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Seneca the Elder: What is this hideous disease, this appalling evil that drove you to shed each other’s blood?

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Seneca the Elder
From Controversiae
Translated by M. Winterbottom

Be reconciled: on a fatal battlefield armed hands stretch out to seal a treaty. The whole world would have been destroyed if pity did not put an end to anger…

I owe a debt of pity to many: I have given it to many. Whoever makes me his image by suffering any disaster, I regard as my relation.

“How much longer will you lie on that comfortless camp bed? How much longer will the trumpet break into your sleep? How much longer will you live stained with blood?”

“What longing is this , my child, to eat and drink blood? I fear you may be a prey to battle, disease, suffering. I fear for the whole world…”

Do not covet money. What am I to say to you? It is this that feeds the discord of a city and drives the world into war, spurring on the human race, that is by nature akin, to fraud, crime and and mutual hatred…

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Lactantius: Selections on war

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Lactantius
From Divine Institutes
Translated by William Fletcher

“Moreover, to reckon the interests of our country as in the first place.”

When the agreement of men is taken away, virtue has no existence at all; for what are the interests of our country, but the inconveniences of another state or nation? – that is, to extend the boundaries which are violently taken from others, to increase the power of the state, to improve the revenues, – all which things are not virtues, but the overthrowing of virtues: for, in the first place, the union of human society is taken away, innocence is taken away, the abstaining from the property of another is taken away; lastly, justice itself is taken away, which is unable to bear the tearing asunder of the human race, and wherever arms have glittered, must be banished and exterminated from thence. This saying of Cicero is true: “But they who say that regard is to be had to citizens, but that it is not to be had to foreigners, these destroy the common society of the human race; and when this is removed, beneficence, liberality, kindness, and justice are entirely taken away.” For how can a man be just who injures, who hates, who despoils, who puts to death? And they who strive to be serviceable to their country do all these things: for they are ignorant of what this being serviceable is, who think nothing useful, nothing advantageous, but that which can be held by the hand; and this alone cannot be held, because it may be snatched away.

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Whoever, then, has gained for his country these goods – as they themselves call them – that is, who by the overthrow of cities and the destruction of nations has filled the treasury with money, has taken lands and enriched his country-men – he is extolled with praises to the heaven: in him there is said to be the greatest and perfect virtue. And this is the error not only of the people and the ignorant, but also of philosophers, who even give precepts for injustice, lest folly and wickedness should be wanting in discipline and authority. Therefore, when they are speaking of the duties relating to warfare, all that discourse is accommodated neither to justice nor to true virtue, but to this life and to civil institutions; and that this is not justice the matter itself declares, and Cicero has testified. “But we,” he says, “are not in possession of the real and life-like figure of true law and genuine justice, we have nothing but delineations and sketches; and I wish that we followed even these, for they are taken from the excellent copies made by nature and truth.”

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[H]ow greatly utility differs from justice the Roman people themselves teach, who, by proclaiming war through the Fecials, and by inflicting injuries according to legal forms, by always desiring and carrying off the property of other, have gained for themselves the possession of the whole world.

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[T]hose who are inexperienced in affairs and ignorant of reason, have expelled those affections which have been given to man for good uses, and they wander more widely than reason demands. From this cause they live unjustly and impiously. They employ anger against their equals in age: hence disagreements, hence banishments, hence wars have arisen contrary to justice. They use desire for the amassing of riches: hence frauds, hence robberies, hence all kinds of crimes have originated. They use lust only for the enjoyment of pleasures: hence debaucheries, hence adulteries, hence all corruptions have proceeded…

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

American writers on peace and against war

George Santayana: Selections on war

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George Santayana
From Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Good honest unguided creatures! They are hardly out of the fog of war when they are lost in the fog of peace. If experience could teach mankind anything, how different our morals and our politics would be, how clear, how tolerant, how steady! If we knew ourselves, our conduct at all times would be absolutely decided and consistent; and a pervasive sense of vanity and humour would disinfect all our passions, if we knew the world. As it is, we live experimentally, moodily, in the dark; each generation breaks its egg-shell with the same haste and assurance as the last, pecks at the same indigestible pebbles, dreams the same dreams, or others just as absurd, and if it hears anything of what former men have learned by experience, it corrects their maxims by its first impressions, and rushes down any untrodden path which it finds alluring, to die in its own way, or become wise too late and to no purpose. These young men are no rustics, they are no fools; and yet they have passed through the most terrible ordeal, they have seen the mad heart of this world riven and unmasked, they have had long vigils before battle, long nights tossing with pain, in which to meditate on the spectacle; and yet they have learned nothing. The young barbarians want to be again at play.

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Classic liberty was a sort of forced and artificial liberty, a poor perfection reserved for an ascetic aristocracy in whom heroism and refinement were touched with perversity and slowly starved themselves to death.

Since those days we have discovered how much larger the universe is, and we have lost our way in it. Any day it may come over us again that our modern liberty to drift in the dark is the most terrible negation of freedom. Nothing happens to us as we would. We want peace and make war. We need science and obey the will to believe, we love art and flounder among whimsicalities, we believe in general comfort and equality and we strain every nerve to become millionaires. After all, antiquity must have been right in thinking that reasonable self-direction must rest on having a determinate character and knowing what it is, and that only the truth about God and happiness, if we somehow found it, could make us free.

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Certainly many a sad figure and many a broken soul must slink henceforth on crutches, a mere survival; but they, too, will die off gradually. The grass soon grows over a grave.

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Only the physical failure of solitude drove the spirit at first into society, as the moral failure of society may drive it later into solitude again.

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Whilst dreams entertain us, the balance of our character is shifting beneath: we are growing while we sleep.

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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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Plutarch: Advanced and bettered by wars? Only if riches, luxury, dominion are preferred to security, gentleness, independence accompanied by justice.

Plutarch: Entire and universal cessation of war

Plutarch: Lover of peace changed the first month of the year

Plutarch: Motivations and consequences of war

Plutarch: Numa’s guardians of peace

Plutarch: Sharpened and whetted to war from their very infancy. So unsocial and wild-beast-like is the nature of ambition and cupidity.

Plutarch: On war and its opponents

Plutarch: They fought indeed and were slain, but it was to maintain the luxury and the wealth of other men

Plutarch: Venus, who more than the rest of the gods and goddesses abhors force and war

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Plato: Selections on war

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Plato
From Laws
Translated by R.G. Bury

Athenian
And during all this period, or even longer, all the arts that require iron and bronze and all such metals must have remained in abeyance?

Clinias
Of course.

Athenian
Moreover, civil strife and war also disappeared during that time, and that for many reasons.

Clinias
How so?

Athenian
In first place, owing to their desolate state, they were kindly disposed and friendly toward one another…[T]hey were not excessively poor, nor were they constrained by stress of poverty to quarrel with one another; and, on the other hand, since they were without gold and silver, they could never become rich. Now a community which has no communion with either poverty or wealth is generally the one in which the noblest characters will be formed: for in it there is no place for the growth of insolence and injustice, of rivalries and jealousies…

Athenian
And shall we not say that people living in this fashion for many generations were bound to be unskilled, as compared to either the antediluvians or the men of today…of the arts of war as now practised by land and sea, including those warlike acts which, disguised under the names of law-suits and factions, are peculiar to cities, contrived as they are with every device of word and deed to inflict mutual hurt and injury…

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Athenian
…The injunction you gave was that the good lawgiver must frame all his laws with a view to war: I, on the other hand, maintained that, whereas by your injunction the laws would be framed with reference to one only of the four virtues, it was really essential to look to the whole of virtue, and first and above all to pay regard to the principle virtue of the four, which is wisdom and reason and opinion, together with the love and desire that accompany them. Now the argument has come again back to the same point, and I now repeat my former statement, – in jest, if you will, or in earnest; I assert that prayer is a perilous practice for him who is devoid of reason, and that what he obtains is the opposite of his desires. For I certainly expect that, as you follow the argument recently propounded, you will now discover that the cause of the ruin of those kingdoms, and of their whole design, was not cowardice or ignorance of warfare on the part of either or the rulers or of those who should have been their subjects; but that what ruined them was badness of all other kinds, and especially ignorance concerning the greatest of human interests…

Athenian
It was our investigation of the polity of the Persians that caused us to discuss these matters at greater length. We find that they grew still worse, the reason being, as we say, that by robbing the commons unduly of their liberty and introducing despotism in excess, they destroyed in the State, the bonds of friendliness and fellowship. And when these are destroyed, the policy of the rulers no longer consults for the good of the subjects and the commons, but solely for the maintenance of their own power; if they think that it will profit them in the least degree, they are ready at any time to overturn States and to overturn and burn up friendly nations; and thus they both hate and are hated. And when they come to need the commons, to fight in their support, they find in them no patriotism or readiness to endanger their lives in battle; so that, although they possess countless myriads of men, they are all useless for war, and they hire soldiers from abroad as though they were short of men, and imagine that their safety will be secured by hirelings and aliens. An besides all this, they inevitably display their ignorance, inasmuch as by their acts they declare that the things reputed to be honourable and noble in a State are never anything but dross compared to silver and gold.

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

Greek and Roman writers on war and peace

Pliny the Elder: Curious disease of the sublunary, sanguinary human mind

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Pliny the Elder
From Natural History
Translated by H. Rackham

Next comes the earth, the one division of the natural world on which for its merits we have bestowed the venerable title of mother. She belongs to men as the sky belongs to God: she receives us at birth, and gives us nurture after birth, and when once brought forth she upholds us always, and at the last when we have now been disinherited by the rest of nature she embraces us in her bosom and at that very time gives us her maternal shelter; sanctified by no service more than that whereby she makes us also sacred, even bearing our monuments and epitaphs and prolonging our name and extending our memory against the shortness of time…[W]hat earth has produced as a cure for our ills, we have made into a deadly poison; why, do we not also put her indispensable gift of iron to a similar use? Nor yet should we have any right to complain even if she had engendered poison to serve the purpose of crime. In fact in regard to one of nature’s elements we have no gratitude. For what luxuries and for what outrageous uses does she not subserve mankind? She is flung into the sea, or dug away to allow us to let in the channels. Water, iron, wood, fire, stone, growing crops, are employed to torture her at all hours, and much more to make her minister to our luxuries than our sustenance. Yet in order to make the sufferings inflicted on her surface and mere outer skin seem endurable, we probe her entrails, digging into her veins of gold and silver and mines of copper and lead; we actually drive shafts down into the depth to search for gems and certain tiny stones; we drag out her entrails, we seek a jewel merely to be worn upon a finger! How many hands are worn away with toil that a single knuckle may shine resplendent! If any beings of the nether world existed, assuredly even they would have been dug up ere now by the burrowings of avarice and luxury! And can we wonder if earth has also generated some creatures for our harm? since the wild animals, I well believe, are her guardians, and protect her from sacrilegious hands; do not serpents infest our mines, do we not handle veins of gold mingled with the roots of poison? Yet that shows the goddess all the kinder towards us, because all these avenues from which wealth issues lead but to crime and slaughter and warfare, and her whom we besprinkle with our blood we cover with unburied bones, over which nevertheless, when at length our madness has been finally discharged, she draws herself as a veil, and hides even the crimes of mortals.

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The extent of the trespass of ocean is unascertained; but even the one portion left to us suffers perhaps an even greater loss, inasmuch as the same ocean, spreading out, as we shall describe, into a number of bays, advances with its threatening roar so close to the inner seas that there is only a distance of 115 miles between the Arabian Gulf and the Egyptian Sea and of between the Caspian and the Black Sea; and also with its inner channels through so many seas whereby it sunders Africa, Europe and Asia, it occupies – what area of the land? Calculate moreover the dimensions of all those rivers and vast swamps, add also the lakes and pools, and next the ridges too that rise into the heaven and are precipitous even to the eye, next the forests and steep glens, and the deserts and areas for a thousand reasons left deserted; subtract all these portions from the earth or rather from this pin-prick, as the majority of thinkers have taught, in the world – for in the whole universe the earth is nothing else: and this is the substance of our glory, this is its habitation, here it is that we fill positions of power and covet wealth, and throw mankind into an uproar, and launch even civil wars and slaughter one another to make the land more spacious! And to pass over the collective insanities of the nations, this is the land in which we expel the tenants next to us and add a spade-full of turf to our own estate by stealing from our neighbour’s – to the end that he who has marked out his acres most widely and banished his neighbours beyond all record may rejoice in owning – how small a fraction of the earth’s surface? or, when he has stretched his boundaries to the full measure of his avarice, may still retain – what portion, pray, of his estate when he is dead?

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For let earthquakes not be mentioned, and every case where at least the tombs of cities survive, and at the same time let us tell of the marvels of the earth rather than the crimes of nature. And, I will swear, not even the heavenly phenomena could have been more difficult to recount: the wealth of mines so varied, so opulent, so prolific, brought to the surface in so many ages, although every day all over the world so much devastation is wrought by fires, collapse of buildings, shipwrecks, wars, frauds, and so great is the consumption of luxury…