War

“ It is some such high cause as this, such principles and emotions as these that give war nearly all the poetry and the glory that can ever be found in it. There is nothing of either in the mere exhibition of military might, the boast of conquest, the raw carnage, the hecatombs of slain. ”

“ Every one of you won the war— You and you and you— Each one knowing what it was for, And what was his job to do. Every one of you won the war, Obedient, unwearied, unknown, Dung in the trenches, drift on the shore, Dust to the world's end blown ”

“ The war is waging, slaughter raging, And heavy through the reeking pall, The iron death-dice fall! Nearer they close—foes upon foes "Ready!"—From square to square it goes, Down on the knee they sank, And fire comes sharp from the foremost rank. ”

“ It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance, or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. ”

“ The gluttonous guns of War.
Everywhere thrill the air
The maniac bells of War.
There will be little of sleeping to-night;
There will be wailing and weeping to-night;
Death's red sickle is reaping to-night:
War! War! War! ”

“ It is war, I assure you, war that is great and good, that is glorious! It makes towns hum like hives, it gives men all the strong traits, daring, will, determination! It makes great races. It made my own people. ”

“ I was not disturbed by any inkling of the shadow of a possibility that one could think of war’s not being in the world at all. As well might one think of leaves not being on the trees, or waves on the sea. Why, war is the form in which human history accomplishes itself: the founding of empires, the settlement of controversies, are seen to by war. ”

“ I found in brief that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted in peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace. ”

“ The idea of war altogether made her feel uneasy, uneasy. When men began organized fighting with each other it seemed to her as if the poles of the universe were cracking, and the whole might go tumbling into the bottomless pit. ”

“ My eyes have beheld nought but war in all its horrors—my ears have been assailed by a continued roar of cannon and cracking of musketry, the shouts of multitudes and the lamentations of war's victims. ”

“ Prepare war; muster up all your strength; wake up the mighty men; call them into your service; excite them to vigilance and resolution; let all the men of war draw near. Let them come and enter the lists with Omnipotence if they dare; let them not complain for want of weapons, but let them beat their ploughshares into swords and their pruning-hooks into spears. ”

“ When two civilized nations go to war, each strains every nerve to mow the other down, to cut his throat, to mutilate and kill him,—by fair means or foul,—and when the battle is lost and won, they commiserate and sympathize with them, and grieve to see so many hundreds of their fellowmen writhing in agony on the battlefield. ”

“ Thus ended a war which has covered us with glory—a war we did not invite, but which was forced upon us in the interests of humanity; a war which has taught European nations to respect us as a great power. ”

“ Now we see and feel the horrors of war, and we are unanimous in the wish, if we survive to behold again the balmy sunshine of peace, that neither we nor our posterity may ever more be spectators of or participants in another war. ”

“ Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north, will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? ”

“ Was war one of the universal facts accepted by simple people, to whom life is all reality and almost nothing of speculation and theory? Was it something they knew by instinct to be one of the inevitable tragedies of human existence, like sickness and death, storms and pests? Did all natural people take war this way, neither revolting nor lamenting? ”

“ There comes the question, what is the war about? Each nation has its answer to that question, an answer that could be put into twenty words. But in each country, for many years before the war, millions of prejudices, and beliefs, and customs, and ignorances, and blindnesses, and memories, went to make the war. ”

“ Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men. ”

“ Thy blade of war; and, battled-storied, one
Rejoices in the sheath and hides from light
American I am; would wars were done!
Now westward look, my country bids Good-night,—
Peace to the world from ports without a gun! ”

“ What an awful thing is war! Here lay, almost within cannon-shot of one another, eighty or ninety thousand men—brothers of the same race and nation, many of them [149] blood relations; thousands of them believing in the same Saviour, and worshiping the same God, their prayers meeting that night at the throne of Heavenly Grace;—yet waiting for the light of the holy Sabbath that they may see how most surely to destroy one another! ”

“ Upon reflection, you must, I am persuaded, yourself arrive at the conclusion, that the war is maintained without an object; and what a melancholy prospect, for two great nations to combat merely for the sake of fighting! ”

“ Our gracious Lord hath gathered here in one,
For all your foes and his assembled are,
That one day’s fight may end seven years of war.
XV
“This fight shall bring us many victories,
The danger none, the labor will be small,
Let not the number of your enemies
Dismay your hearts, grant fear no place at all;
For strife and discord through their army flies,
Their bands ill ranked themselves entangle shall,
And few of them to strike or fight shall come,
For some want strength, some heart, some elbow-room. ”

“ Now, when the Russian war is all over, the treaty of peace definitely settled, I thought it would be worth while to examine that matter: for the cloud of battle has lifted up, and we can look back, and learn the causes of the conflict; look round, and see the dead bodies, the remnants of cities burned, of navies sunk; can look forward, and calculate what loss or gain thence accrues to mankind ”

“ Let the general possibility of war be left open, in Heaven's name, for the imagination to dally with. Let the soldiers dream of killing, as the old maids dream of marrying. But organize in every conceivable way the practical machinery for making each successive chance of war abortive. ”

“ And war does not seem all war. You've got to cook and eat, to forage and drink, to mount guard or sleep, just as if you were back in cantonments, and the daily routine soon grows upon a man—at any rate it soon grew upon me. ”

“ Not only where you are—at the heart of affairs and of the world—is the talk all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature—which townsfolk consider characteristic of the country—rumors of war are heard and painfully felt. ”

“ The section through which the grim commander pushed his way to the sea smiles under the application of new and fresher energies. We have discovered that war, horrible as it is, sometimes drags at its bloody tumbril wheel certain fructifying and fertilizing forces. ”

“ And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke among people afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plough-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more. ”

“ It was war from beginning to end: bitter war, till hope and pleasure put an end to it."
"Do you mean actual fighting with weapons?" said I, "or the strikes and lock-outs and starvation of which we have heard?" ”

“ So all the great passions and interests which have moved mankind have found their vent in war,--rough barbaric spoliations, love of glory and political aggrandizement, desire to spread religious ideas, love of liberty, greediness for wealth, unity of nations, jealousy of other powers, even the desire to secure general peace and tranquillity. Most wars have had in view the attainment of great ends, and it is in the ultimate results of them that we see the progress of nations. ”

“ I had before thought war a terrible thing, but the scenes I had lately witnessed impressed me still more forcibly with a horror of its fearful results. What hundreds—what thousands, I might say—of human beings had perished miserably within the last few months! ”

“ Do you realize that one word, 'Go,' from you may send another man to fight for our King and our country? When the war is over and your husband or your son is asked, 'What did you do in the great war?' is he going to hang his head because you would not let him go? ”

“ It's with us only that they make battles. It is we who are the material of war. War is made up of the flesh and the souls of common soldiers only. It is we who make the plains of dead and the rivers of blood, all of us, and each of us is invisible and silent because of the immensity of our numbers. The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us together." ”

“ Presently the latter came to me and said,—
"So there's war, then, in reality, among us at home. The North and the South are fighting against each other."
"What!" I exclaimed, in utter amazement; "what—war? War in the United States, and among ourselves?" ”

“ Armies of marching men told of that blight of nations old or young—war. These, and birds unnamable, and beasts unclassable, with dots and marks and hieroglyphics, recorded the history of a bygone people. ”

“ War, it may be said, and said truly, is a tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human life, and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions. But what is it that produces war? ”

“ War! is the battle cry of a people, who, long suffering and patient, but now, goaded to desperation and thoroughly exasperated, are determined, at all hazards, to protect the rights for which their forefathers fought, bled and died ”

“ For they have discovered that they are engaged in a war—a veritable war—against the rulers of darkness, against ignorance and its twin children, fear and cruelty. Of that war they see neither the end nor even the plan. ”

“ The obvious comment is, "Well, there is a nation organised to win a war—that is the sort of nation which the men in the opposite trenches have behind them. A nation which has organised itself for war, and is already organising itself for peace after the war" ”

“ Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife, War, war is still the cry, 'War even to the knife!'
LXXXVII.
Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife: Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe Can act, is acting there against man's life: From flashing scimitar to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his need— So may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed! ”

“ For the man who should loose me is dead, Fighting with the Duke in Flanders, In a pattern called a war. Christ! What are patterns for? ”