Nikolai Leskov: Immorality
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
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Nikolai Leskov
From The Cathedral Folk (1872)
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
Owing to the illness of the teacher Gonorsky, Prepotensky was temporarily entrusted with the history lessons, and he immediately began to hold forth on the immorality of war, and applied this directly to the happenings in Poland. But as though this were not enough for him, he also ridiculed civilization, censured patriotism, and the principle of nationality, furthermore he made fun of decency to the children, representing it even as, in many respects, immoral; and he cited as an example of this, that cultivated peoples conceal the begetting of a man, but do not conceal the act of murder, and even carry the weapons of war on their shoulders…
Maurice Baring: Unalterable horror, misery, pain and suffering which is caused by modern war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
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Maurice Baring
From With the Russians in Manchuria (1905)
As to the war I shall be satisfied if there is a single sentence in this book which will have brought home to anyone the unalterable horror, misery, pain, and suffering which is caused by a modern war – anything which will make people reflect when, or rather before, they beat the big drum and appeal to St. Jingo.
War is an insensate abomination…
Ivan Turgenev: “Militarism, the soldiery, have got the upper hand”
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
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Ivan Turgenev
From Old Portraits
Unknown Translator
‘There was more freedom in those days, more decorum; on my honour, I assure you! but since the year eighteen hundred…militarism, the soldiery, have got the upper hand. Our soldier gentlemen stuck some sort of turbans of cocks’ feathers on their heads then, and turned like cocks themselves; began binding their necks up as stiff as could be…they croak, and roll their eyes – how could they help it, indeed? The other day a police corporal came to me; “I’ve come to you,” says he, “honourable sir,”…(fancy his thinking to surprise me with that!…I know I’m honourable without his telling me!) “I have business with you.” And I said to him, “My good sir, you’d better first unfasten the hooks on your collar. Or else, God have mercy on us – you’ll sneeze. Ah, what would happen to you! what would happen to you! You’d break off, like a mushroom … and I should have to answer for it!” And they do drink, these military gentlemen – oh, oh, oh! I generally order home-made champagne to be given them, because to them, good wine or poor, it’s all the same; it runs so smoothly, so quickly, down their throats – how can they distinguish it? And, another thing, they’ve started sucking at a pap-bottle, smoking a tobacco-pipe. Your military gentleman thrusts his pap-bottle under his moustaches, between his lips, and puffs the smoke out of his nose, his mouth, and even his ears – and fancies himself a hero!’
Alphonse Daudet: Revenge and war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Alphonse Daudet
From Support of the Family
Unknown translator
“Mauglas, whom we just picked up on the road, declares that from one generation to another is as far as from Mars to the earth or any other planet, and that urchins like Raymond here, when I talk to them of the coup d’État of 1852 and of Badingue’s [Napoleon III’s] cowardly recantation, do not know what I mean.”
“Any more than they understand those of my generation who preach revenge and war to them.”
***
Mademoiselle Pulchérie, the older sister, betrayed by a very keen taste for hussars, gave every year a fresh proof of her affection for them to some officer of the 12th, then in garrison at Saint-Lô. When the war of 1870 scattered the jaunty hussars with their wasp-waists, one of Monsieur Denizan’s clerks took the place left vacant by the officers of the 12th, and, being less scrupulous than they, ran away with the daughter and the money-box.
***
There was no more carting, but the roads were abandoned to parties of abandoned troops, Algerian swallows who devoured even the window curtains. Twice, soldiers on their way to their regiments had set the house on fire.
***
“I agree with you, my boy. But the novelist, who is the historian of unimportant people, of those who have no history, has no more right than other historians to deal in imposture and evil speaking…”
Anton Chekhov: You can’t remember a single year without war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
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Anton Chekhov
The Rook
Translator unknown
The rooks had arrived and swarmed in great circles around the Russian cornfields. I singled out the most important-looking I could find, and began to talk to him. Unfortunately I hit upon a rook who was a moralist and a great reasoner; consequently our conversation was a dull one.
This is what we talked about:
I. “It’s said that you rooks live to a great age. The naturalists cite you and the pike as great examples of longevity. How old are you?”
The Rook. “I am three hundred and seventy-six years old.”
I. “Well, I never! You’ve lived precious long! In your place, old bird, the devil only knows how many articles I could have written for the Russian Antiquarian and the Historical Journal. If I had lived three hundred and seventy-six years I can’t imagine how many novels, stories, plays, scenes and other trifles I should have written. What numbers of fees I should have pocketed! Now, what have you, old rook, done during all those years?”
The Rook. “Nothing, Mr. Man. I have only eaten, drunk, slept and multiplied.”
I. “Shame! I really feel shame for you, silly old bird. You have lived in the world three hundred and seventy-six years, and you are as stupid today as you were three hundred years ago. Not a ha’p’orth of progress.”
The Rook. “Wisdom, Mr. Man, comes not from age, but from education and learning. Look at China – she has existed much longer than I have, and she is till as great a simpleton to-day as she was a thousand years ago.”
I (with astonishment). “Three hundred and seventy-six years! What do you call that? An eternity! During that time I should have been able to attend lectures in every faculty; I could have been married twenty times; tried every profession and employment; attained the devil only knows what high rank and, no doubt, have died a Rothschild. Just think of it, you fool, one rouble placed in the bank at five per cent compound interest becomes in two hundred and eighty-three years a million. Just calculate. That means, if you had placed one rouble on interest two hundred and eighty-three years ago, you would have had a million roubles today. Ah, you fool, you fool! Are you not ashamed, don’t you feel a fool to be so stupid?”
The Rook. “Not at all. We are stupid; but we can comfort ourselves with the thought that during the four hundred years of our life we do fewer foolish things than a man does during his forty years. Yes, Mr. Man, I have lived three hundred and seventy-six years, and I have never once seen rooks make war on one another, or kill one another, and you can’t remember a single year without war. We do not rob one another, or open savings banks or schools for modern languages; we do not bear false witness or blackmail; we do not write bad novels and bad verse, or edit blasphemous newspapers…I have lived three hundred and seventy-six years and I have never seen that our mates have been unfaithful to, or have injured their husbands…and with you, Mr. Man, how is it? We have no lackeys, no back-biters, no sycophants, no swindlers, no panderers, no hypocrites…”
At that moment this talker was called by his companions, and flew away over the fields before he had time to finish his sentence.
***
From Miss N. N.’s Story
There is never a wall that cannot be broken through; but the heroes of present-day fiction, as far as I know them, are too timid, too slow, too lazy and fearsome, and they are too apt to be satisfied with the thought that they are failures, and that their own life has duped them; instead of struggling, they only criticize and call the world mean, and they forget that their own criticism gradually degenerates into meanness.
***
From At Home
Such appears to be the law of life; the more intangible the evil the more fiercely and mercilessly is it combated.
***
From Two Tragedies
The general stupefaction, the mother’s pose, the father’s indifferent face, exhaled something attractive and touching; exhaled that subtle, intangible beauty of human sorrow which cannot be analysed or described, and which music alone can express.
In general, phrases, however beautiful and profound, act only on those who are indifferent, and seldom satisfy the happy or unhappy; it is for this reason that the most touching expression of joy or sorrow is always silence; sweethearts understand one another best when they are silent; and a burning passionate eulogy spoken above a grave touches only the strangers present, and seems to widow and child inexpressive and cold.
In each was expressed the egoism of the unfortunate. And men who are unfortunate, egotistical, angry, unjust, and heartless are even less than stupid men capable of understanding one another. For misfortune does not unite, but sever; and those who should be bound by community of sorrow are much more unjust and heartless than the happy and contented.
Alfred de Vigny: Selections on war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Alfred de Vigny: Admiration for military commander turns us into slaves and madmen
Alfred de Vigny: The army is a machine wound up to kill
Alfred de Vigny: It is war that is wrong, not we
Alfred de Vigny: War is condemned of God and even of man who holds it in secret horror
Libanius: Rulers more popular for granting mercy than possessing multitudes of soldiers
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Greek and Roman writers on war and peace
Libanius: War in time of peace
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Libanius
From Orations
Translated by A. F. Norman
[T]he ruling power gets its popularity not so much from its trophies, from cities either taken in war or received into alliance, from the multitudes of its soldiery, or from its legislation, wisdom and scrupulous administration of justice, as from its grants of pardon in their misdeeds.
***
This is the normal treatment of the weaker at the hands of the influential, of the penniless at the hands of the wealthy, of the masses at the hands of the elite…[T]his the treatment accorded to the manufacturing class by…lackeys of the governors to such as do not gratify their every whim. Brutal masters make full use of this technique every single day, for any one who is compelled by law to remain silent, however wronged he may be, must needs be arrested also. Into this category are also to be put the peasants who work for the landlords, for some treat them just as though they were slaves, and if they do not acquiesce in the extortions that are practised upon them, just a word or two is needed, and a soldier goes down to the farm, complete with fetters, they are arrested, and the jail takes them in…
Henry Noel Brailsford: Who is the happy warrior?
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Henry Noel Brailsford: Waiting for the horrors of a war that was coming
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Henry Noel Brailsford
From The Broom of the War God (1898)
“Ah! I have killed them. A sergeant and five men. I shot them with my own hand from behind a rock as they entered Domoko this morning. A sergeant and five men! And you?”
“We chased the Turks for two miles.”
“Kala,” said Alexi, as he rolled himself in his rug.
“Nay, simple shepherd. It is not well,” thought Graham.“ Six Moslem mothers are desolate in Anatolia, and Varatasi has fallen, and all that true men loved is lost, and there is none to heed. And now there is joy in all the Chancelries, and the Philistines make merry.” And he envied Varatasi.
“Who is the happy warrior? who is be
That every man in arms would wish to be!”
And then as the grey dawn defined the outlines of the hills, blackened the great fortress and revealed the snows, he fell asleep and dreamed. And in his dream he was at rest. He lay on his back on the plain of Domoko, dead, and Varatasi was near him. A blaze of white light illumined the hillside. It shone till the blood danced as to the noise of a trumpet. And men in shimmering armour swept up towards him, with a song in their mighty throats and a purpose of victory in their tread.
“Hail, Saviour, Prince of Peace,
Thy Kingdom shall increase.”
They sang the brave words to that old crusader’s tune, with the clang of arms in its rhythms, the resistless ardour in the throbbing of its accents…
Wearily he rose, rubbing his eyes, for he was fain of victory and the magic wrought by courage.
He noticed Alexi peacefully resting. He looked more closely and saw the stain of blood on his sheepskin cloak. He had been shot in the side, and had died quietly as he slept.
And then he turned and went without a word to his thankless task. As he tramped the three miles in the grey light and the bitter cold along the mountain path, he thought of his dream, and found comfort. For there is a time to fight and a time to rest. He took up the great burden of peace and dishonour; he thought no more of the madness of the charge; he ceased to long for a death among the enemy. The time for fierce energy was past…For there is a time to fight and a time to rest, a time for resurrection and a time to acquiesce in death. He trudged long accepting the mortal prose of failure.
Suetonius: Not let slip any pretext for war, however unjust and dangerous
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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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Suetonius
From Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Translated by J. C. Rolfe
Caesar compelled Pompeius and Crassus to come to Luca, a city in his province, where he prevailed on them to stand for a second consulship, to defeat Domitius; and he also succeeded through their influence in having his term as governor of Gaul made five years longer. Encouraged by this, he added to the legions which he had received from the state others at his own cost, one actually composed of men of Transalpine Gaul…which he trained in the Roman tactics and equipped with Roman arms; and later on he gave every man of it citizenship. After that he did not let slip any pretext for war, however unjust and dangerous it might be, picking quarrels as well with allied, as with hostile and barbarous nations; so that once the senate decreed that a commission be sent to inquire into the condition of the Gallic provinces, and some even recommended that Caesar be handed over to the enemy.
***
He doubled the pay of the legions for all time. Whenever grain was plentiful, he distributed it to them without stint or measure, and now and then gave each man a slave from among the captives.
***
He took no less pains to win the devotion of princes and provinces all over the world, offering prisoners to some by the thousand as a gift, and sending auxiliary troops to the aid of others whenever they wished, and as often as they wished, without the sanction of the senate or people…
***
There is a saying of Marcus Cato that Caesar was the only man who undertook to overthrow the state when sober.
***
Neither when in command of armies nor as a magistrate at Rome did he show a scrupulous integrity; for as certain man have declared in their memoirs, when he was proconsul in Spain,he not only begged money from the allies, to help pay his debts, but also attacked and sacked some towns of the Lusitanians although they did not refuse his terms and opened their gates to him on his arrival. In Gaul he pillaged shrines and temples of the gods filled with offerings, and oftener sacked towns for the sake of plunder than for any fault. In consequence he had more gold than he knew what to do with, and offered it for sale throughout Italy and the provinces at the rate of three thousand sesterces the pound. In his first consulship he stole three thousand pounds of gold from the Capitol, replacing it with the same weight of gilded bronze. He made alliances and thrones a matter of barter, for he extorted from Ptolemy alone in his own name and that of Pompey nearly six thousand talents, while later on he met the heavy expenses of the civil wars and of his triumphs and entertainments by the most bare-faced pillage and sacrilege.
Alfred de Vigny: It is war that is wrong, not we
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Alfred de Vigny: Selections on war
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Alfred de Vigny
From Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
Translated by Humphrey Hare
‘We were at war. He’s no more a murderer than I was myself at Rheims. When I killed the Russian boy perhaps I, too, was a murderer? In the great war in Spain the men who stabbed our sentries did not consider themselves murderers and, since they were at war, perhaps they were not. Did the Catholics and Huguenots murder each other or not? How many murders are there in a big engagement? That is a point upon which our reasoning fails and is silent. It is war that is wrong, not we…’
The dazzling Grandeur of conquerors is quenched, perhaps for ever. Their past luster fades, I repeat, in proportion to the growth in human minds of contempt for war and, in human hearts, of loathing for its ruthless cruelty. Standing armies are an embarrassment to their masters…Happily, philosophy has belittled war; negotiations replaced it; scientific invention will end by abolishing it.
***
Soldiers fight and die with little thought of God. Our age knows this is so, would wish it otherwise, and can do nothing.
***
Cold calculation now enables war to be waged with scientific violence.
Rutilius Namatianus: Races of demigods who knew not iron-harnessed Mars
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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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Rutilius Namatianus
From A Voyage Home to Gaul
Translated by J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff
More good is done to the world by teeming earth which gives birth to iron than by the golden gravel washed down by the Tagus in the distant West; for deadly gold is the substance that makes vice: blind lust of gold leads into every crime: golden gifts carry by storm the troth of wedded brides: a golden shower can buy the maid’s embraces: loyalty sapped by gold betrays the well-walled town: scandalous misuse of gold ambition itself pursues its wild career. But not so iron: it is with iron that neglected fields are tilled; by iron was the first way of living found. Races of demigods, who knew not iron-harnessed Mars, by iron faced the charge of savage beasts.
Alexandre Dumas: The dove
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Alexandre Dumas
From The Chevalier de Maison Rouge (1845)
Translator unknown
In the tempest which unchains the wind and hurls the thunderbolt, the nest of the dove is shaken in the tree where it had retired for shelter.
***
The house of justice was a large and somber building, exciting more fear than love for the goddess. There might be seen united in this narrow space all the instruments and attributes of human vengeance.
***
These cries were mournful and prolonged; there was about them something unearthly and piercing, like the howling of wind in the dark and deserted corridor, when the tempest borrows the human voice to animate the passions of the elements.
Alfred de Vigny: Admiration for military commander turns us into slaves and madmen
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Alfred de Vigny: Selections on war
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Alfred de Vigny
From Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
Translated by Humphrey Hare
Such things happen in a society where feeling is repressed. The constant and excessive effort to toughen one’s character is one of the bad sides of the profession of arms. The heart is trained to be hard, and pity hidden for fear it should seem weakness; one tries one’s hardest to conceal the divine sense of compassion, without realizing that by dint of locking up a good emotion the prisoner is stifled.
***
Martial Grandeur…seems to me to be of two kinds: that of command and that of obedience. The first, wholly superficial, active, brilliant, proud, egotistical and capricious, will daily become rarer, and less coveted, as civilization grows more peaceful; the other, wholly interior, passive, hidden, modest, devoted and persevering, will be honoured more every day; for, to-day, when the spirit of conquest is dying out, the only kind of greatness an exalted character can bring to the profession of arms seems to me to reside to less in the glory of battle than in the honour of silent suffering…
***
O dreams of command and slavery! O corrupting thoughts of power, fit only to deceive children! False enthusiasms! Subtle poisons, who will ever succeed in finding an antidote for you?
***
Admiration for a military commander becomes a passion, a fanaticism, a frenzy, which blinds us and turns us into slaves and madmen.
Libanius: War in time of peace
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Greek and Roman writers on war and peace
Libanius: Rulers more popular for granting mercy than possessing multitudes of soldiers
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Libanius
From Oration 30
Unknown translator
[T]he husbandman is impoverished, and the revenue suffers. For, be the will ever so good, impossibilities are not to be surmounted. Of such mischievous consequence are the arbitrary proceedings of those persons in the country, who say, ‘they fight with the temples.’ But that war is the gain of those who oppress the inhabitants: and robbing these miserable people of their goods, and what they had laid up of the fruits of the earth for their sustenance, they go off as with the spoils of those whom they have conquered…[T]hese also are your subjects, and so much more profitable than those who injure them, as laborious men are than the idle: for they are like bees, these like drones…Others glory and boast, and tell their exploits to those who are ignorant of them, and say they are more deserving than the husbandmen. Nevertheless, what is this but in time of peace to wage war with the husbandmen? For it by no means lessens these evils that they suffer from their countrymen. But it is really more grievous to suffer the things which I have mentioned in a time of peace, from those who ought to assist them in a time of trouble.
Alfred de Vigny: War is condemned of God and even of man who holds it in secret horror
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Alfred de Vigny: Selections on war
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Alfred de Vigny
From Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
Translated by Humphrey Hare
I had not at that time any comprehensive view of our Fatherland of France or of that other Fatherland of Europe which surrounds it; indeed, looking further, of the fatherland of humanity, the whole world, which happily becomes smaller each day, as the hand of civilization closes around it. I had not then thought how much happier the soldier would be at heart if he could feel that there were two men within him, the one obeying the other; if he knew that after the hard part he must play in war, he had the right to play another, more benevolent and no less glorious, in peace…
[I]t is too much for a single head to bear the heavy responsibility of so many murders; if there were as many to bear it as there are combatants, they would be none too many. Those who are responsible for executing the law of bloodshed should in justice at least properly understand it…I repeat once more, armies and wars will not endure for ever. Despite the words of the sophist, with whom I have argued elsewhere, it is quite untrue to suppose that there is anything sacred about war, even against a foreign enemy; nor is there any truth in the saying that the earth thirsts for blood. War is condemned of God and even of man who, though he makes it, holds it in secret horror; and the earth cries to heaven for no more than the fresh water of its rivers and the pure dew of its clouds.
Henry Noel Brailsford: Waiting for the horrors of a war that was coming
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Henry Noel Brailsford: Who is the happy warrior?
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Henry Noel Brailsford
From The Broom of the War God (1898)
It was a charitable darkness. The persons of the farce dropped their masks. They moved about, black human figures, neither petty nor frivolous, black human figures waiting for the horrors of a war that was coming. A sense of pity and forgiveness, of a simple sadness in the tragedy that called for no clever phrase to express it, came over Graham as he sat on his bench, thinking without words. Yes, yes, it was Fate that moved them, those black masses on legs, those things in the dark without eyes. And he abandoned himself to the fancy. It seemed the road to rest, to walk towards Death in this fashion, with grown-up children about one, with “Folly” for the rule of life.
***
The company had covered half-a-mile when a halt was called, and the captain and the sergeant went aside again to peer over the plain and discuss the situation.
“Hallo!” said Smith, “that road wasn’t red a minute ago.” It was as though a vein had been opened on the moor three miles away, and the red blood trickled slowly down, a thin streak soaking its way through the yellow dust. The eyes of the company were fixed on the dry road, greedily watching the yellow absorbing the red.
It had a fascination like nothing else on earth, this thin red symbol of terror that crept remorselessly over the sand.
Alfred de Vigny: The army is a machine wound up to kill
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Alfred de Vigny: Selections on war
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Alfred de Vigny
From Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
Translated by Humphrey Hare
The army is blind and dumb, strikes down unquestioningly those to whom it is opposed, desires nothing for itself and acts under compulsion; it is a machine wound up to kill…
In looking closely at the life of the armed forces – the daily burden imposed upon us by successive governments – we shall indeed find, as I have said, that the soldier’s lot is the most melancholy relic if barbarism (next to capital punishment) that lingers on among mankind…
The life is regular, monotonous and dull. The hours are as muffled and sullen as the drum that marks their passing. Bearing and demeanor are as uniform as the dress. The animation of youth and the sluggishness of age are reduced to the same denominator, which is that of Service. The Service in which one serves is the mould into which one’s character is thrown and there changed, recast, shaped for ever to a common pattern. The Man is lost in the Soldier.
Military bondage is as oppressive and inflexible as the iron mask of the unknown prisoner and confers upon all soldiers and aspect of uniformity and reserve.
***
I shall choose among my memories those that seem to me at once to clothe, most fitly and decently, a chosen subject, and to show how many conditions, which are opposed to the development of character and intelligence, arise from the gross bondage and primitive customs of standing armies.
Their crown is a crown of of thorns, and among its spokes there is none, I think, more painful than passive obedience…
Alfred de Vigny: When armies and war exist no more
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
Alfred de Vigny: Selections on war
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Alfred de Vigny
From Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835)
Translated by Humphrey Hare
We cannot sufficiently forestall the time when the army is identified with the nation if we are ever to see the day when armies and war exist no more, when the world consists of but one nation unanimous at last as regards its social structure – an event which should already have occurred ages ago.
***
The army is a nation within a nation; this is a defect of our times.
***
The fate of a modern army is quite other [than that of the Middle Ages to the middle of the eighteenth century], and the centralization of power has made it what it is. It is a body divorced from the great body of the nation, resembling a child in its lagging intelligence, a child, moreover, forbidden to grow up. The modern army, as soon as it ceases to be at war, becomes a kind of constabulary. It is ashamed, knowing neither its duty nor its status, whether it rules the state or is its slave; a body searching in vain for its own soul.
Scandinavian writers on peace and war
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Scandinavian writers on peace and war
Hans Christian Andersen: Art, not arms, rules the world. War, an allegory.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: All labor’s dread of war’s mad waste and murder
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson: I saw a dove fear-daunted
Georg Brandes: Selections on war
Georg Brandes: An Appeal Against Wholesale Murder
Georg Brandes: War, uninterrupted series of horrors, atrocities, and slaughter
Georg Brandes: The World at War
Georg Brandes: The Praise of War
Georg Brandes: Only officers and ammunition-makers wish war
Georg Brandes: Two million men held in readiness to exterminate each other
Georg Brandes: Wars waged by governments fronting for financial oligarchies
Georg Brandes: Abrupt about-face, the glorification of war
Georg Brandes: Giants of bloodshed; military staffs foster war
Georg Brandes: The future will look on war as the present looks on witchcraft, the Inquisition
Georg Brandes: War not fight for ideals but fight for concessions
Nordahl Grieg: War is contempt for life
Pentti Haanpää: War suits only such people as want to die
Ludvig Holberg: Military modesty and candor
Ellen Key: Overcoming the madness of a world at war
Pär Lagerkvist: If such a thing as war can end
Selma Lagerlöf: The Fifth Commandment. The Great Beast is War.
Selma Lagerlöf: The mark of death was on them all
Martin Andersen Nexø : From warlike giant to hysterical popinjay
August Strindberg: Progeny of soulless militarism
August Strindberg: What has become of the sacred promise of peace on our earth?
August Strindberg: Progeny of soulless militarism
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
August Strindberg: What has become of the sacred promise of peace on our earth?
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August Strindberg
From Corinna (1886)
Translator unknown
Since her father occupied the highest rank in their circle of friends, everybody treated him with an amount of respect which is rarely shown to equals, and as she was the general’s daughter, she was treated in the same way. She held the rank of a general and she knew it.
There was always an orderly sitting in the hall who rose with much clanking and clashing of steel and stood at attention whenever she went in or out. At the balls none but the majors dared to ask her for a dance; she looked upon a captain as a representative of an inferior race, and a lieutenant as a naughty boy.
She fell into the habit of appreciating people entirely according to their rank. She called all civilians “fishes,” poorly-clad people “rascals,” and the very poor “the mob.”
***
As she belonged to an old family which on her father’s side, had squandered its strength in a soulless militarism, drink and dissipation, and on her mother’s had suppressed fertility to prevent the splitting up of property, Nature seemed to have hesitated about her sex at the eleventh hour; or perhaps had lacked strength to determine on the continuation of the race.
Cicero: All wars, undertaken without a proper motive, are unjust
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Greek and Roman writers on war and peace
Cicero: Military commands, phantom of glory and the ruin of one’s own country and personal downfall
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Cicero
From De re publica
Translated by Francis Barham
No war can be undertaken by a just and wise state, unless for faith or self–defence…
All wars, undertaken without a proper motive, are unjust. And no war can be reputed just, unless it be duly announced and proclaimed, and if it be not preceded by a rational demand for restitution.
When Alexander inquired of a pirate by what right he dared to infest the sea with his little brigantine: “By the same right (he replied) which is your warrant for conquering the world.”…This same Alexander, this mighty general, who extended his empire over all Asia, how could he, without violating the property of other men, acquire such universal dominion, enjoy so many pleasures, and reign without bound or limit?
Now if Justice, as you assert, commands us to have mercy upon all; to exercise universal philanthropy; to consult the interests of the whole human race; to give every one his due, and to injure no sacred, public, or foreign rights – how shall we reconcile this vast and all–embracing justice with worldly wisdom and policy, which teach us how to gain wealth, power, riches, honours provinces, and kingdoms from all classes, peoples, and nations?
If we were to examine the conduct of states by the test of justice, as you propose, we should probably make this astounding discovery, that very few nations, if they restored what they have usurped, would possess any country at all, – with the exception, perhaps, of the Arcadians and Athenians, who, I presume, dreading that this great act of retribution might one day arrive, pretend that they were sprung from the earth like so many of our field mice.
There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing to–day and another to–morrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must for ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings.
August Strindberg: What has become of the sacred promise of peace on our earth?
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
August Strindberg: Progeny of soulless militarism
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August Strindberg
From Holy Trinity Night
Translated by Lotta M. Löfgren
“What has become of the sacred promise of peace on our earth?
Human intentions are noble, peace is our greatest desire;
Forced into violence and war, to betrayal and treacherous language –
Harken to roars of the damned who have lost all faith in goodness;
Life is ugly, an evil, yet people abominate evil.
Does he not suffer who sevenfold battered the already conquered?
Mankind’s intentions were good, but life insisted on evil…”
Ludvig Holberg: Military modesty and candor
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Ludvig Holberg
From Diderich the Terrible (1724)
Translated by Henry Alexander
JEW. Who are you?
HENRIK. I’m Christopher Battering-ram.
JEW. Christopher Battering-ram! That’s a strange name.
HENRIK. That name’s a proud one. Open up!
JEW. A little patience, sir.
HENRIK. What d’you mean, patience? I’m an officer.
JEW. And I’m a resident here.
HENRIK. That’s just like saying: “You’re Joergen the Hat-maker and I’m Alexander the Great.” Open up, or you’re a dead man!
JEW. (coming out) What do you want, mounseer?
HENRIK. Perhaps you don’t know Christopher Battering-ram?
JEW. No, sir.
HENRIK. Haven’t you read my name in the papers?
JEW. No, Mr. Battering-ram.
HENRIK. Haven’t you heard of the battle of Ragusa?
JEW. No, sir.
HENRIK. You civilians are as stupid as oxen.
JEW. Everyone knows something; maybe I understand some things you don’t understand.
HENRIK. What do you understand? Heark’ee, poltroon! What’s a counterscarp?
JEW. I don’t know.
HENRIK. What’s a ravelin?
JEW. I don’t know.
HENRIK. A company in square formation?
JEW. I don’t understand that.
HENRIK. A Gregory regiment?
JEW. I’m not a soldier.
HENRIK. An approach of petards?
JEW. I don’t know that either.
HENRIK. An escort, a battalion, a squadron, an order of battle, an order for the ramparts, a protective volley, a platoon, a bastion, a company, a dromedary, a military commissar?
JEW. Mounseer, I don’t understand any military language.
HENRIK. Then you’re as annoying as a brure beast.
***
MENSCHENSKRAEK…The Turks were so terrified of my name that they wouldn’t try to take any plunder, I’d make them so sick of that business. I dare say that all by myself in battles here and there I killed twenty thousand men, and once during one month I massacred two thousand Janissaries with my own hand. Isn’t that so, Christopher Battering-ram?
CHRISTOPHER. Certainly.
MENSCHENSKRAEK. That’s why the general himself gave me the name Menschenskraek (“The Terrible”).
ELVIRE. Is that possible? Is that how you got your name?
MENSCHENSKRAEK. Yes, he himself did me the honor of presenting me to the Duke of Dalmatia with these words: Your Highness, here is a second Scanderberg, the scourge of the Turks.
ELVIRE. Really?
MENSCHENSKRAEK. Nothing was more pleasant to me than to meet a whole company of armed Turks all by myself. Isn’t that so, Battering-ram?
CHRISTOPHER. Certainly.
MENSCHENSKRAEK. I had the Turkish vizier Mahometh Podolski by the heels, but just at that moment a bomb came and blew my hand back, so he escaped that time. But it’s only a short respite. I’ll never forget how he shrieked in Turkish: oh, la, la, la.
ELVIRE: What does that mean in our language?
MENSCHENSKRAEK. It means: Oh, great Mahomet, help me against this this strong warrior Menshencskraek.
ELVIRE. Can those few words mean so much?
MENSCHENSKRAEK. Yes, the Turkish language is very rich.
Plautus: Military braggadocio
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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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Plautus
From Miles Gloriosus, or The Braggart Captain
Translated by Henry Thomas Riley
PYRGOPOLINICES
What do you remember?
ARTOTROGUS
I do remember this. In Cilicia there were a hundred and fifty men, a hundred in Cryphiolathronia, thirty at Sardis, sixty men of Macedon, whom you slaughtered altogether in one day.
PYRGOPOLINICES
What is the sum total of those men?
ARTOTROGUS
Seven thousand.
PYRGOPOLINICES
It must be as much: you keep the reckoning well.
ARTOTROGUS
Yet I have none of them written down; still, so I remember it was.
PYRGOPOLINICES
By my troth, you have a right good memory.
***
ARTOTROGUS
Besides, in Cappadocia, you would have killed five hundred men altogether at one blow, had not your sabre been blunt.
PYRGOPOLINICES
I let them live, because I was quite sick of fighting.
ARTOTROGUS
Why should I tell you what all mortals know, that you, Pyrgopolinices, live alone upon the earth, with valour, beauty, and achievements most unsurpassed? All the women are in love with you, and that not without reason, since you are so handsome…
This city is Ephesus; then, the Captain, my master, who has gone off hence to the Forum, a bragging, impudent, stinking fellow, brimful of lying and lasciviousness, says that all the women are following him of their own accord. Wherever he goes, he is the laughing-stock of all…
Pär Lagerkvist: If such a thing as war can end
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Pär Lagerkvist
From The Death of Ahasuerus (1960)
Translated by Naomi Walford
“I’d left the others and was roving on my own…yes, I was a soldier; there was war, of course, there always was…”
“The war went on for many years…She lived in the midst of brutality, whoring and drunkenness there in the baggage-train, among those lecherous women whom the army dragged with it until they became so worn out, used up and ill that they straggled behind or were chased away, while in their place others were sucked in on the march through that ravaged, plundered country…”
“Then the war came to an end at last – if such a thing as war can end. We soldiers were disbanded – ‘sent home,’ as they called it, although we had no homes and turned bandit instead…”
“Disgust and loathing I felt too for the life itself – this life of rough soldiering and banditry – this criminal life that seemed to fill the world, to lay waste the world, expose it to senseless devastation; to shame, misery and despair. The criminal life I had led so long – I and all these others. Why was I in it, why was I just like all the others? How could I endure it, stoop to it? What sort of life was it? How could I go on? I became more and more revolted by this existence, my own shameless existence, and by myself.”
“The region I was walking in was deserted. That I’d already seen, but now I saw how deserted it really was, and in what way. It was no wilderness, but cultivated land; yet the fields lay untended; they could not have been tilled for a very long time, for they were full of saplings and bushes and here and there half-grown trees; the forest had broken into those fields again and won them back. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere, not any trace of one. It was forsaken.
“It came as no surprise, for many places were in the same state. For years war had rolled its devastation over this land, and was no doubt the cause of its neglect. And perhaps there were no folk left to cultivate it. After the war, plague had spread more swiftly than before, and claimed many more victims than the war itself; whole tracts of country were quite depopulated, and lay abandoned and desolate…”
Montaigne: Monstrous war waged for frivolous reasons
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Michel de Montaigne
Translated by Charles Cotton
From Of Managing the Will
Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins! And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent? – for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime, absolutely depended upon the ladies’ cabinet council, and the inclination of some bit of a woman.
The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to fire and sword about an apple [the Trojan War]. Look why that man hazards his life and honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the occasion is so idle and frivolous.
A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more important. How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out? Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first vigour and firmness; ’twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to keep one’s breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the business. We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, ’tis they that guide and govern us, and we are to follow them.
***
From Of Physiognomy
A monstrous war! Other wars are bent against strangers, this against itself, destroying itself with its own poison. It is of so malignant and ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own rage mangles and tears itself to pieces. We more often see it dissolve of itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the enemy. All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the example; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its own. What a condition are we in! Our physic makes us sick!
***
I underwent the inconveniences that moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline
***
From Of Experience
Pain, pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible of: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.
***
Between ourselves, I have ever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of singular accord.
***
‘Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model without miracle, without extravagance.
Montaigne: War’s fury
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Michel de Montaigne
Translated by Charles Cotton
From Of Diversion
Whoever shall ask a man, “What interest have you in this siege?” – “The interest of example,” he will say, “and of the common obedience to my prince: I pretend to no profit by it; and for glory, I know how small a part can affect a private man such as I: I have here neither passion nor quarrel.” And yet you shall see him the next day quite another man, chafing and red with fury, ranged in battle for the assault; ’tis the glittering of so much steel, the fire and noise of our cannon and drums, that have infused this new rigidity and fury into his veins. A frivolous cause, you will say. How a cause? There needs none to agitate the mind; a mere whimsy without body and without subject will rule and agitate it.
***
From Upon Some Verses of Virgil
Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but, to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: ’tis a man’s duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but ’tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to kill him.
[I]s it not seen that in places where faults are crimes, crimes are but faults…?
Virgil: Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?
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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
Translated by Charles Cotton
From Aeneid
Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies, and living by rapine.
Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes
Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto.
***
From Eclogues
Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?
Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit!
Horace: Let there be a limit to warfare
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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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Horace
From The Odes
Translated by Charles Cotton
Let my old age have a fixed seat; let there be a limit to fatigues from the sea, journeys, warfare.
Sit meae sedes utinam senectae,
Sit modus lasso maris, et viarum,
Militiaeque.
***
Alas! our crimes and our fratricides are a shame to us! What crime does this bad age shrink from? What wickedness have we left undone? What youth is restrained from evil by the fear of the gods? What altar is spared?
Eheu! cicatricum, et sceleris pudet,
Fratrumque: quid nos dura refugimus
Aetas? quid intactum nefasti
Liquimus? Unde manus inventus
Metu Deorum continuit? quibus
Pepercit aris.
Lucretius: Lull to a timely rest the savage works of war
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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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Lucretius
From De Rerum Natura
Translated by William Ellery Leonard
Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,
Dear Venus…
Lull to a timely rest
O’er sea and land the savage works of war,
For thou alone hast power with public peace
To aid mortality; since he who rules
The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,
How often to thy bosom flings his strength
O’ermastered by the eternal wound of love –
And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,
Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,
Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath
Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined
Fill with thy holy body, round, above!
Pour from those lips soft syllables to win
Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!
Montaigne: The ignominy of lopsided military conquest
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Michel de Montaigne
From Of Coaches
Translated by Charles Cotton
Our world has lately discovered another…as large, well-peopled, and fruitful as this whereon we live…
As to boldness and courage, stability, constancy against pain, hunger, and death, I should not fear to oppose the examples I find amongst them to the most famous examples of elder times that we find in our records on this side of the world. Far as to those who subdued them, take but away the tricks and artifices they practised to gull them, and the just astonishment it was to those nations to see so sudden and unexpected an arrival of men with beards, differing in language, religion, shape, and countenance, from so remote a part of the world, and where they had never heard there was any habitation, mounted upon great unknown monsters, against those who had not only never seen a horse, but had never seen any other beast trained up to carry a man or any other loading; shelled in a hard and shining skin, with a cutting and glittering weapon in his hand, against them, who, out of wonder at the brightness of a looking glass or a knife, would exchange great treasures of gold and pearl; and who had neither knowledge, nor matter with which, at leisure, they could penetrate our steel: to which may be added the lightning and thunder of our cannon and harquebuses, enough to frighten Caesar himself, if surprised, with so little experience, against people naked, except where the invention of a little quilted cotton was in use, without other arms, at the most, than bows, stones, staves, and bucklers of wood; people surprised under colour of friendship and good faith, by the curiosity of seeing strange and unknown things; take but away, I say, this disparity from the conquerors, and you take away all the occasion of so many victories. When I look upon that in vincible ardour wherewith so many thousands of men, women, and children so often presented and threw themselves into inevitable dangers for the defence of their gods and liberties; that generous obstinacy to suffer all extremities and difficulties, and death itself, rather than submit to the dominion of those by whom they had been so shamefully abused; and some of them choosing to die of hunger and fasting, being prisoners, rather than to accept of nourishment from the hands of their so basely victorious enemies: I see, that whoever would have attacked them upon equal terms of arms, experience, and number, would have had a hard, and, peradventure, a harder game to play than in any other war we have seen.
Montaigne: It is enough to dip our pens in ink without dipping them in blood
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Michel de Montaigne
Translated by George B. Ives
From Cowardice, the Mother of Cruelty
What is it that, in these days, makes our quarrels ever deadly; and that, whereas our fathers had some stages in revenge, we now begin with the extreme degree, and at the outset speak of nothing but killing? What is this, if it is not cowardice?
If we thought to be always masters of our foes by force, and to domineer over him at our pleasure, we should be very sorry that he should escape us, as he does by dying…
***
From Of the Useful and the Honorable
[O]ne man said to the Mamertines that statutes had no force against armed men; another, to a tribune of the people, that the times of justice and of war were not the same; and a third, that the noise of arms prevented him from hearing the voice of laws…
This is a lesson suited to this time; we need not armour our heart: it is enough that our backs be armoured; it is enough to dip our pens in ink without dipping them in blood…Let us deprive of this pretext of rightness those who are by nature wicked and blood-thirsty and treacherous; let us turn our backs on this heinous and insane justice, and hold fast to more human copies.
***
I would not put so high a price upon wisdom. I do not so much consider what a man does, as what it costs him not to do worse.
Montaigne: Selections on war
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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Montaigne: Blood on the sword: From slaughter of animals to slaughter of men
Montaigne: The ignominy of lopsided military conquest
Montaigne: Invasion concerns all men; not so defense: that concerns only the rich
Montaigne: It is enough to dip our pens in ink without dipping them in blood
Montaigne: Monstrous war waged for frivolous reasons
Montaigne: This furious monster war
Nonnos: Brother-murdering blade. Disarming the god of war.
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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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Nonnos
From Dionysiaca
Translated by W. H. D. Rouse
“I will strip murderous Ares of his ragged bucklers, I will bind the lord of battle, and carry him off, and make him Killer the Gentle…that I may see Ares a slave…”
“[C]lamp with chains of bronze Ares the governor of iron!”
***
Cadmos for all that did not neglect Athena’s injunction. He reaped the stubble of giants springing up ever anew. One he struck with windswift spear over the breast, hit one on the broad neck by the collarbone shearing the bones of the hairy throat: another he tore with hurtling stone while he sowed as far as the belly. The blood of the dreadful giants flowed in rivers; Ares slipt in the gore staining his limbs with crimson, and Victory’s robe was reddened with purple drops while she stood beside the battle…
Then by the wise counsel of Pallas he lifted a stone high above the giants’ heads; and they drunken with gory lust for Enyo, went wild with warlike fury and destroyed each other with the steel of their cousin, and found burial in the dust. One fought with another: with ruddy gore the surface of the shield was drenched and spotted and darkened, as a giant died; the crop of that field was shorn by the brother-murdering blade of an earthgrown knife.
