Quote Good to Hang a Few Soldiers Now and Again
I dig former books. ™
Est. 1998
Quotations about War
Peace is the only adequate war memorial. ~Ehren Tool In civilized countries educational activity gets the crumbs that can be spared from armaments. ~"Poor Richard Junior'south Philosophy," The Sat Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor It'll be a neat solar day when education gets all the coin it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~American Friends Service Committee, c.1978 Waste of Muscle, waste of Encephalon, ...O war, m son of hell, Give me the money that has been spent in war, and I will purchase every foot of land upon the globe. I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire that kings and queens would exist proud of; I volition build a school-house upon every valley over the whole habitable earth; I will supply that school house with a competent teacher; I will build an academy in every boondocks, and endow it; a college in every land, and fill up it with able Professors; I will crown every loma with a church consecrated to the promulgation of the gospel of peace; I volition back up in its pulpit an able teacher of righteousness, and so that on every Sabbath morning the chime on one loma should answer to the chime on some other, around the earth's broad circumference; and the vocalism of prayer and the vocal of praise should ascend like a universal holocaust to heaven. ~Charles Sumner, c.1840 I dream State of war volition never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. ~H.L. Mencken You know, sometimes I think in that location should exist a rule of war proverb you have to meet someone up close and get to know him before it'due south okay to shoot him. ~1000*A*S*H, "Give and Take," 1983, written past Dennis Koenig All the artillery we need are for hugging. ~Author unknown Few veterans cherish a romantic remembrance of war. War is atrocious. When nations seek to settle their differences by force of arms a million tragedies ensue. Nothing, non the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause information technology serves, can glorify state of war. State of war is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its barbarous reality. ~John McCain, 1999 Loud roar defiant throats of doom, If nosotros do not cease war — war will stop usa. Everybody says that, millions of people believe it, and nobody does anything. ~H.G. Wells, Things to Come (the "film story"), Role Iii, adapted from his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come up, spoken by the grapheme John Cabal (Thanks Bill!) A great war leaves the state with three armies — an ground forces of cripples, an army of mourners, and an ground forces of thieves. ~German language maxim The world has accomplished brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a earth of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more than most war that we know about peace, more virtually killing that we know near living. ~Omar Bradley Mod war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better artery to plunder; merely modern human being inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the dear of glory of his ancestors. Showing war'due south irrationality and horror is of no effect upon him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war-taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations prove united states. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the last sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are common cold and are not clothed. This globe in artillery is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Nether the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953 The about persistent sound which reverberates through man'southward history is the chirapsia of state of war drums. ~Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up, 1975 When yous're wearing a light-green tuxedo, you dance where they tell you. ~Yard*A*S*H, "Besides Many Cooks," 1979, written past Dennis Koenig Only what a roughshod thing is war; to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted u.s.a. in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful earth! I pray that on this day, when only peace and practiced-will are preached to mankind, better thoughts may fill up the hearts of our enemies and turn them to peace. ~Robert E. Lee, letter to married woman, Christmas Day, 1862 There has been state of war since the offset of time and we are no smarter than the people that have gone before us. There is apt to be some more war. ~Volition Rogers (1879–1935) "...You volition never hang a single trooper, for hanging is condign more unpopular every day. Powder and shot has about had its day, too. I am already looking for a general abandonment of warfare with guns; What this planet needs is more mistletoe and less Merely Clara's father believed that nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when state of war preys on their minds. ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, 2001, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, 2004 You are not going to become peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot accelerate over a road littered with cannon. ~David Lloyd George, c.1930 Sometime they'll give a state of war, and nobody will come. ~Carl Sandburg, 1936 In modern war you lot volition die similar a canis familiaris for no practiced reason. ~Ernest Hemingway, as quoted in A. Eastward. Hotchner, The Good Life According To Hemingway, 2008 In war there are no unwounded soldiers. ~José Narosky, Si Todos Los Tiempos: Aforismos, 1977 State of war would not be and then savage if it destroyed only men. ~José Narosky, Si Todos Los Tiempos: Aforismos, 1977 Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn't have every bit many monuments t' unveil. ~Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) Nosotros kind o' thought Christ went agin state of war and pillage... ~James Russell Lowell Grandpa says mankind's took over likewise much lately. Says folks used to exit the Last Day and the stop of the world in the Lord'due south easily, but at present they've took it over themselves, with the atom flop. That's how-come everyone'due south and then uneasy. They don't trust each other similar they used to trust the Lord. ~Cid Ricketts Sumner, Tammy Out of Time, 1958 The mere existence of nuclear weapons past the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity. ~Isaac Asimov I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sunday'due south energy... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries agone. ~George Porter, 1973 State of war would cease if the dead could return. ~Stanley Baldwin State of war, that mad game the world then loves to play... ~Jonathan Swift, "Ode to the Hon. Sir William Temple," 1689 Information technology is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. ~Voltaire If information technology's natural to impale, why do men have to get into training to learn how? ~Joan Baez, "What Would You Do If?," 1969 Being without food, fearful for i's life, the bombings — all made me so appreciative of safety, of liberty. ~Audrey Hepburn, 1990 All wars are planned by older men Human being, in his sensitivity, does not give names to animals he intends to eat just goes on giving names to children he intends to ship to war. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Es fer war, I telephone call information technology murder,— Homo is the only creature that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, State of war. He is the merely ane that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages volition march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no damage and with whom he has no quarrel. Final wintertime once, in the Wilderness, Peace is the curt interval when nations toil to pay the costs of past and futurity wars. ~Herbert Five. Prochnow The wonderful innocence that was hers past the gift of God. Ruth knew no more than of worldly wickedness and wisdom than did the flowers in her garden, or the grass in her field. Her idea of concern — "Henry, why practise people who have plenty money try to get more money?" Her idea of politics — "I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars." ~E. M. Forster, Howards End, 1910 After every war When I went over there to fight for Republic I was just a kid. I didn't have any great ambitions, neither did I have whatever desire to kill everyone. I was brought up to believe that the shedding of blood was a offense against God and human. Well, I did what they asked me to, like a practiced soldier... Why, your own female parent wouldn't recognize y'all if she saw you... crawling in the mud and sticking a bayonet in a homo who never did you lot any harm. I'thousand telling yous, it got so filthy and poisonous I didn't know who I was whatsoever more than... I wasn't an animal because if I had been an animal I'd have had amend sense than to get myself into such a mess. Animals kill one another only when they're hungry. We kill because we're afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if nosotros used a trivial common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong. Today I haven't got any principles... I have only one ambition left — to get enough booze nether my belt every day so as to forget what the world looks like... I want to be left lone; I want to dream my dreams, to believe as I in one case believed, that life is good and beautiful and that men can live with ane another in peace and enough. ~Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Centre, 1941 The boy who was start to dice The refuge of the morally, intellectually, artistically and economically bankrupt is war. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) The following list of ports of telephone call between Panama and Valparaiso contains the name of every of import point on the coast, and gives the relative positions of many places which, if the war continues, will become familiar, for whatever evil state of war brings in its train, it has value in instruction us geography. ~J. Douglas, Jr. (tardily of Quebec), "The Seat of the War in South America," in Rose-Belford's Canadian Monthly and National Review, August 1879 The era of true peace on earth will not come up every bit long as a tremendous percentage of your taxes goes to educate men in the trades of slaughter... ~Reginald Wright Kauffman, "To Guide Our Anxiety into the Way of Peace," 1910 The way to win an diminutive war is to make certain it never starts. ~Gen. Omar N. Bradley, 1948 State of war is simply a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. ~Thomas Mann Courage in state of war is safer than cowardice. ~Maxim Well, in my opinion, maybe wars wouldn't happen if men simply had better manners. ~Dickinson, "I Like a Look of Agony," 2021, written past Macdonald, Edebiri, Light-green, Greller, & Zucker We accept failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a unmarried unit, and that for a unit of measurement to fight confronting itself is suicide. ~Havelock Ellis ...the American war in Vietnam seemed to me incorrect. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. ~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, 1990 The trouble with selfish motives is that they harden into principles, and you terminate upwardly sending your kids to state of war for them. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Never remember that state of war, no thing how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ~Ernest Hemingway, as quoted in A. E. Hotchner, The Skilful Life Co-ordinate To Hemingway, 2008 War. The night fourth dimension of valour, loss and hope where a man is controlled by his gun; where a gun is controlled by his hatred. Completely uncontrollable. ~Daniel Ha Ii foes who slew If it were proved to me that in making war my platonic had a risk of being realized, I would still say "No" to state of war. For one does non create a homo society on mounds of corpses. ~Louis Lecoin (1888–1971) War is fright cloaked in backbone. ~William Westmoreland, c.1966 GUNPOWDER A black substance much employed in marking the boundary lines of nations. ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Foolish Lexicon, Executed by Gideon Wurdz, Chief of Pholly, Physician of Loquacious Lunacy, etc., 1904 But men are so serious. Why? Why violence? Why hatred? Why war? If people want to brand war, they should make a colour war, and paint each others metropolis up during the dark in pinks and greens. Perchance we should develop a Crayola bomb every bit our adjacent secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Flop. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch ane. It would explode loftier in the air — explode softly — and transport thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth — boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go inexpensive, either — not niggling boxes of 8. Boxes of sixty-iv, with the sharpener built correct in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a footling funny expect on their faces and cover the world with imagination. ~Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, 1986 Profoundly different meanings attach to the word peace. In the lexicon of democracies peace is a desirably permanent status of amicable relations with all other nations. In the dictionary of dictatorships peace ways: a quiet and an undisturbed menstruum in which to fix for war, either a national state of war or, in the Russian case, the international form war. ~Dorothy Thompson, "Political Dictionary," 1936 War is hell, merely that'southward not the one-half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; state of war is fun. State of war is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a human being; war makes you expressionless. ~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, 1990 State of war is an human action of hot anger. The power of the league of nations to enforce peace is not in any strength of arms but in the potency of the boycott past the globe of the nation which would disturb the peace. No ground forces is needed for that purpose, President Woodrow Wilson said in stressing anew the theory that the boycott and occludent will always exist an effective weapon. It will starve an offending nation into submission. ~"Wilson Scores All Who Oppose Treaty," The Free Lance–Star, 1919 WAR Trying to make the blood of a Nation blot out the bile of its Rulers. ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Birthday New Foolish Dictionary, by Gideon Wurdz, 1914 'Mid palms and cacti bivouacked, I have just seen it quoted over again. Yes, it appears solemnly in impress, fifty-fifty at present, at the end of the greatest war in history. Si vis pacem, para bellum. Being separated for the moment from my book of quotations, I cannot say who was the Roman thinker who first gave this brilliant paradox to the world, but I imagine him a fat, easy-going admirer, who occasionally threw off proficient things after dinner. He never thought very much of Si vis pacem, para bellum; it was non one of his all-time; but it seemed to delight some of his political friends, one of whom asked if he might utilize it in his next spoken communication in the Senate. Our fat admirer said: "Certainly, if you lot similar," and added with unusual frankness: "I don't quite know what it means." State of war does not decide who is right — just who is left. ~Montreal Star, quoted in Reader's Assimilate, February 1932, see: quoteinvestigator.com/2015/10/10/ War is simply the survival of the tiger and lion in man. Information technology settles everything on the airplane of concrete forcefulness. State of war does not decide what is correct, but what is strongest. It never decides a moral principle. ~The Boston Post, 1896 The wound combat makes in you, every bit a writer, is a very irksome-healing one. ~Ernest Hemingway, as quoted in A. E. Hotchner, The Skillful Life According To Hemingway, 2008 ...war is our race's well-nigh popular diversion, 1 which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. ~Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) What a fine-looking matter is war! Yet dress it equally 1 may, dress and plumage information technology, daub it with gilt, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs most it, what is it, nine times out of ten, simply murder in uniform...? ~Douglas Jerrold (1803–1857) Is it a rascal rabble-fox? ...a solar day of boxing is a 24-hour interval of harvest for the devil. ~William Hooke (1601–1678) For though war is evil, it is occasionally the lesser of two evils. ~McGeorge Bundy (1919–1996), "They Say in the Colleges," in Cipher Hour: A Summons to the Free, 1940 In Flemish region fields the poppies blow I accept a scheme for stopping state of war. It's this — no nation is allowed to enter a state of war till they accept paid for the last one. ~Will Rogers (1879–1935) Washington seems to exist more concerned about political mud than radioactive grit. ~Walter Winchell, 1959 The war is not in Europe. No. It's hither I've got a full abdomen and healthy kids who withal dance nether the rain clouds. Es un momento fugaz. How long can we even claim this small spot of peace? It is a privilege threatened past war. And war, at its most elemental, is death for all of the states. "Not in my dorsum thousand" no longer exists, America. ~Cherríe Fifty. Moraga, "From Inside the First World: On 9/11 and Women-of-Colour Feminism," 2001 O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, get along to battle — exist Thou nearly them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help united states of america to tear their soldiers to encarmine shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help u.s.a. to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of burn down; aid us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; assist usa to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun-flames of summer and the icy winds of wintertime, cleaved in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who admire Thee, Lord, smash their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, brand heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snowfall with the claret of their wounded feet! Nosotros ask it, in the spirit of honey, of Him Who is the Source of Dearest, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. ~Marker Twain, "The War-Prayer" ...Then came the war; and I went with the rest The festering mass of human being wretchedness about me offended not now my senses merely, but pierced my eye like a knife... I not only saw but felt in my torso all that I saw... On each fell forehead was plainly written the hic jacct of a soul dead within. Equally I looked, horror struck, from i death'southward caput to some other, I was affected by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent spirit face superimposed upon each of these brutish masks, I saw the ideal, the possible face that would have been the actual if mind and soul had lived... Therefore now I plant upon my garments the blood of this slap-up multitude of strangled souls of my brothers. The vocalism of their claret cried out confronting me from the ground. ~Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, 1888 If you shoot one person you are a murderer. If you lot kill a couple persons you are a gangster. If you are a crazy statesman and send millions to their deaths you are a hero. ~Author unknown, 1939 newspaper The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression presently fades away; so more claret must be shed to renew it. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827 Men always said that Decease was old, I think that we should be men showtime, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the police, so much equally for the right. The but obligation which I have a right to assume is to exercise at whatsoever time what I remember right. Information technology is truly enough said that a corporation has no censor; simply a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never fabricated men a whit more than only; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-tending are daily fabricated the agents of injustice. A common and natural results of an undue respect for law is, that you may come across a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in beauteous order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the centre... Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous homo in power? ~Henry David Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government," a.chiliad.a. "Ceremonious Defiance," 1849 Its hurly-burly warlike made, War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the rust-covered and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nix worth a war, is worse... A human being who has naught which he is willing to fight for, cypher which he cares more near than he does virtually his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being costless, unless made and kept and so past the exertions of ameliorate men than himself. ~John Stuart Mill, "The Competition in America," 1862 Y'all can't say that civilization don't accelerate, however, for in every war they impale yous in a new way. ~Will Rogers, 1929 Youth, crucified to save the world, I am fixed in awe at the mighty disharmonize to which two groovy nations are advancing, and recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than strength? Are there no means of coercing injustice more than gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands, & of the labor of millions of our boyfriend-creatures? ~Thomas Jefferson, 1798 A fond prophetic sight that sees I believe that all the people who stand up to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts by accredited representatives of the loyal citizens of their country who will fight it. ~Ernest Hemingway, equally quoted in A. E. Hotchner, The Good Life Co-ordinate To Hemingway, 2008 Borders are scratched beyond the hearts of men War is not an adventure. Information technology is a illness. It is like typhus. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flying to Arras, 1942, translated from the French by Lewis Galantière Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another state of war, I'chiliad going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will. ~J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951 Without discipline the Army would just be a agglomeration of guys wearing the same color clothing. ~M*A*S*H, "The Novocaine Mutiny," 1976, written by Burt Prelutsky They should pick a dry out twelvemonth to fight the war. Better yet, civilize the moronic races and have no wars at all. ~Lt. Clair J. Clark, letter to wife, March 1944 O! how many ghosts in a wound of state of war. ~Terri Guillemets
Waste product of Patience, waste material of Hurting,
Waste of Manhood, waste product of Wellness,
Waste of Beauty, waste material of Wealth,
Waste of Blood, and waste product of Tears,
Waste product of Youth's most precious years,
Waste of ways the Saints have trod,
Waste of Glory, waste product of God,—
War!
~Thousand. A. Studdert Kennedy, "Waste matter," The Sorrows of God and Other Poems, 1924
Whom angry heavens do make their minister
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part
Hot coals of vengeance!...
~William Shakespeare, Henry 6, Part II, c.1590 [V, 2, Immature Clifford]
of
giving birth
to
a child
who volition ask
"Mother,
what was war?"
~Eve Merriam (1916–1992), "Fantasia," Finding a Poem, 1970
Shrill battle-cries and bugle-calls;
The bursting shrapnel-shards and balls,
Staining the soil with red rheum...
~Henry Bedlow (1821–1914), War and Worship; A Poem, Convictions Based on Recollections of the Revolts of 1848, 1902
History is a bath of blood. ~William James, "The Moral Equivalent of State of war," 1910
"No, I don't believe information technology. Fighting is a freeman'south mode of defence," he said...
"It may have been a defense in the past, only
A sickly smile of unbelief came to the High german's face. "Mere stuff, that," he said...
"...I believe in the kickoff you meant well, but a curdle has got into your milk of kindness, and life is losing its sweetness for you..." ~Alwyn M. Thurber, Quaint Crippen, 1896
In council rooms apart,
Who call for greater ammunition
And map the battle chart.
But out forth the shattered fields
Where golden dreams turned grayness,
How very immature their faces were
Where all the dead men lay.
Portly and solemn, in their pride
The elders cast their vote
For this or that, or something else,
That sounds the warlike note.
But where their sightless eyes stare out
Beyond life's vanished joys,
I've noticed nearly all the dead
Were hardly more boys.
~Grantland Rice (1880–1954), "The Two Sides of War," 1921
In that location you hev information technology, apparently an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that;
God hez sed and then, plump an' fairly,
It's ez long ez it is broad,
An' you've gut to git upwardly airly
Ef y'all want to take in God.
~James Russell Lowell
Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his land — takes possession of information technology and drives him out of it or destroys him....
Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his ain state, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on paw at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the claret off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" — with his mouth. ~Mark Twain, What Is Man?
In the noise and the fume and the stink and the wet,
All of the states swore, if we got habitation,
To forget.
It's pleasanter now
To remember...
It'due south pleasant, the curl of the smoke
Of merely tobacco.
It'southward pleasant to tighten the trigger finger
Warm on the stalk of your pipe—
And nothing go off.
It's pleasant, here at the manufacturing plant,
With only your time to kill...
~Mark Van Doren, "Reverie Afterwards State of war: 1866," Leap Thunder and Other Poems, 1924
someone has to tidy upward.
Things won't pick
themselves upwardly, afterwards all.
Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by...
~Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), "The Finish and the Beginning," The End and the Offset, 1993, translated from the Polish past Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh
For the cause they are fighting for
Links his arm and walks with the lads
Who are going to die in the war.
He bled in agony
A very long time ago.
Now they greet him comradely,
With eyes that newly know.
They are brothers-in-artillery in the one-time,
Old state of war that is never washed...
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "At Wipers and Calvary," The Drums in Our Street: A Book of War Poems, 1918
Each other, lay
In slow decay;
From them there grew
This poppy which I pluck today.
Here where I continue a rendezvous
With you
The hatred of ii men
Leads round to honey once more.
All hate
To love leads, soon or late.
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "On an Old Battlefield," The Drums in Our Street: A Volume of War Poems, 1918
Reclused from worldly cark and care,
A din of disharmonize freights the air,
And cloistered calm with tumult racked.
Clairaudient in my solitude,
However dubious if the stir proclaim
A strife in Liberty'south cherished name,
Or mock heroics of a feud;
Some factious ball, corrupt in deed;
A demagogic enterprise,
To cozen, dupe and victimize
The purblind gulls of others' greed...
~Henry Bedlow (1821–1914), War and Worship; A Poem, Convictions Based on Recollections of the Revolts of 1848, 1902
But the other did non think that that would affair very much. So he quoted it, and it had a considerable vogue. 2 thousand years from now people will withal exist quoting it, and killing each other on the strength of it. Or mayhap I am wrong. Perchance two 1000 years from now, if the English language language is sufficiently dead past then, the world will take some casual paradox of Bernard Shaw'southward or Oscar Wilde'south on its lips, passing information technology reverently from oral cavity to mouth as if it were Holy Writ, and dropping bombs on Mars to show that they know what it ways.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. And then it follows that preparation for war means goose egg. It is an activity which is as likely to have been inspired by an evil motive as by a skillful motive. When a gentleman with a van calls for your furniture you have means of ascertaining whether he is the furniture-remover whom yous ordered or the burglar whom you didn't order, simply there is no way of discovering which of 2 Latin tags is inspiring a nation's armaments.
However, I tin can produce a 3rd tag in the same language, which is worth consideration. Si vis amare bellum, para bellum. It is a pity, simply Universal Peace will hardly come as the result of universal preparedness for state of war, as these honey people seem to promise. It will only come equally the result of a universal feeling that state of war is the most babyish and laughably idiotic thing that this poor world has evolved. Our writer says sadly that at that place is no promise of doing without armies—we are non angels. It is not a question of "not existence angels," it is a question of not being childish lunatics. Possibly at that place is no hope of either, merely I remember we might make an effort.
~A.A. Milne (1882–1956), "The Record Lie," c.1919
Is Liberty'southward purpose festered thus?
And this mere sputum and the pus
Of ulcerous bodies politic,
Decadent at heart? their aim to rob,
To roister, ravage, loot and kill;
Murder, the Sergeant of their drill,
Their strength'southward Sovereign head, Rex Mob?
~Henry Bedlow (1821–1914), War and Worship; A Poem, Convictions Based on Recollections of the Revolts of 1848, 1902
Betwixt the crosses, row on row,
That marking our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, wing
Deficient heard among the guns beneath. //
Nosotros are the Expressionless. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw dusk glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flemish region fields...
~John McCrae (1872–1918), "In Flanders Fields," in Punch (London), 1915 Dec 8th
In our parlor, underneath the chandelier
Where Evan used to sit...
We must not feel worried; for he's fine and fit,
And proud to exist out there and do his bit.
It's strange that I should mind, should fret or fear—
Or feel the war is not in France, but here—
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "Evan," The Drums in Our Street: A Volume of State of war Poems, 1918
To learn my lessons, with expiry as a guest...
The days and nights that I spent overseas,
The bombing of cities, of people, of copse...
That Hell of antisocial and killing, of shot and shell...
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "The Hard Way," 1940s
A slow, bent man with wrinkled hand
Who with a shining sickle, stern and cold
Went reaping through the land.
But now we have learned bitterly
They only spoke with ignorant tongue.
This yr has touched our optics and now we see
That Death is fair and young...
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "Immature Decease," The Drums in Our Street: A Volume of War Poems, 1918
With cannon roar and clarion band,
And yet a ruffian ranting thing,
A brawling mob's fanfaronade;
Or rallying slogan, wild huzza,
Rude shock of armies, hissing bombs,
The carbine-clatter, coil of drums,
The maddening, murderous coil of war;
Its 'larums weird, its frenzied shrieks
Of women in sacked cities, when
The red streets clogged with armèd men,
But dead—each finding him she seeks.
~Henry Bedlow (1821–1914), War and Worship; A Poem, Convictions Based on Recollections of the Revolts of 1848, 1902
Hangs on the cross...
~Mary Carolyn Davies, "The Great War," 1917
The bonds of slave and villeinage,
Rent in the stress of manhood's rage:
The doom of old feudalities?
Will Liberty again count her gains?
Volition outraged masses listen her calls,
And, house of purpose, rend the thralls
And fetters of a race in chains?
~Henry Bedlow (1821–1914), War and Worship; A Verse form, Convictions Based on Recollections of the Revolts of 1848, 1902
By strangers with a at-home, judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the map turn ruby-red.
~Marya Mannes, "Gaza Strip," 1955
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Last saved 2022 Mar x Thu thirteen:05 PST
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