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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
British writers on peace and war
Robert Burton: Hypocrites who make the trumpet of the gospel the trumpet of war
Robert Burton: We hate the hawk because it is always at war
Robert Burton: What fury first brought so devilish, so brutish a thing as war into men’s minds?
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Robert Burton
From Anatomy of Melancholy
Besides private miseries, we live in perpetual fear and danger of common enemies: we have Bellona’s whips, and pitiful outcries, for epithalamiums; for pleasant music, that fearful noise of ordnance, drums, and warlike trumpets still sounding in our ears; instead of nuptial torches, we have firing of towns and cities; for triumphs, lamentations; for joy, tears.
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Thou shalt perceive that verified of Samuel to Agag (1 Sam. xv, 33): “Thy sword hath made many women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women.” It shall be done to them as they have done to others…[Let] them march on with ensigns displayed, let drums beat on, trumpets sound taratantarra, let them sack cities, take the spoil of countries, murder infants, deflower virgins, destroy, burn, persecute, and tyrannize, they shall be fully rewarded at last in the same measure, they and theirs, and that to their desert.
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