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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
American writers on peace and against war
Frank Stockton: The Great War Syndicate: “On to Canada!”
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Frank Stockton
From The Great War Syndicate (1889)
No time was lost by the respective Governments of Great Britain and the United States in ratifying the
peace made through the Syndicate, and in concluding a military and naval alliance, the basis of which should be the use by these two nations…
The desire to evolve that power which should render opposition useless had long led men from one warlike invention to another. Every one who had constructed a new kind of gun, a new kind of armour, or a new explosive, thought that he had solved the problem, or was on his way to do so…
The treaty provided that all subjects concerning hostilities between either or both of the contracting powers and other nations should be referred to a Joint High Commission, appointed by the two powers; and if war should be considered necessary, it should be prosecuted and conducted by the Anglo-American War Syndicate…
Throughout all classes in sympathy with the Administrative parties of Great Britain and the United
States there was a feeling of jubilant elation on account of the alliance and the adoption by the two
nations of the means of prohibitive warfare. This public sentiment acted even upon the opposition; and the majority of army and navy officers in the two countries felt bound to admit that the arts of war in which they had been educated were things of the past…
Hereafter, if battles must be fought, they would be battles of annihilation.
This is the history of the Great Syndicate War. Whether or not the Anglo-American Syndicate was ever called upon to make war, it is not to be stated here. But certain it is that after the formation of this Syndicate all the nations of the world began to teach English in their schools…
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