Friday, July 15, 2005

The War Prayer

In my search for images to reflect this month's peace theme on The Blue Voice, I came across this poster featuring the words from "The War Prayer" by Mark Twain.

The words were venomous, the imagery it evoked intense. I had to find out more.

Apparently, it's an excerpt from a short story Mark Twain wrote as a scathing indictment of the Spanish-American War and the patriotic and religious hysteria that accompanied it.

In the story, patriots ardently pray for God to protect the troops and grant them victory in war. A mysterious man claiming to be a heavenly messenger appears and recites the unspoken part of their supplication, which is for God to strike their enemies with the full force of his divine might:


O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle--be Thou near 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 us to tear their soldiers to bloody 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 us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us 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 winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, 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.
The story was not published until after Mark Twain's death, as both his publisher and family discouraged him from doing so during his lifetime. Of this the author reportedly stated, "none but the dead are permitted to tell the truth".

War is hell. It is not a source of jubilation or righteousness, no matter how just the cause, because innocent people will inevitably die. Even less so for an unjustified and illegal war like Iraq.

• Image by phineas x. jones from brushstroke.tv.

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