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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
French writers on war and peace
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Francois Mauriac
From The Bloody Dawn of Peace
Le Figaro
August 11, 1945
The dawn of peace is too bloody for us to celebrate with hymns and apotheosis. May this peace having intervened before the end of the world stir within us the determination to observe attentively and with a critical mind the rivalries between what are called the “great” powers, for there exists but one greatness before which we should consent to bow, the grandeur of empires that will not only give us a precarious peace to mankind overburdened with suffering, but will once again also give us hope. It will revive a hope covered by a thick layer of burning ashes, buried under so much rubble. It will give us, then, reasons to believe that all that was only a nightmare…and that the reign of murderers has ended.
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