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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Robert Merle: The present war, and all the previous wars, and all the wars to come
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Robert Merle
From Weekend at Dunkirk (1949)
Translated by K. Rebillon-Lambley
“I don’t get it.”
“Oh yes you do, and most of the fellows think as I do at heart. They begin by thinking was is absolutely idiotic. Then little by little they come to take the same passionate interest in it as in a football game or a bicycle race. They become keen on it. After all, it’s their own war, you see. The real, the great, the one and only, because they’re fighting it. It’s the war of their lives, in short. That’s how they look on it in the end. But I don’t. For me this war is a war like all those that came before it, and all those that will come after it. Something as absurd and devoid of meaning as a page of dates in a history textbook.”
***
“You’d be happier if you took an interest in the war.”
“Why, damn it all,” said Maillat, “that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to make you understand! Of course I’d be happier if I believed in the war and all the reasons they give me why I should fight. But I just don’t believe in it, that’s all. For me war is absurd. And not such and such a war. All wars. In the absolute. Without exception. In other words, there’s no such thing as a just or sacred war, or a war for a good cause. A war is, by definition, an absurdity.”
***
“And war’s not the only thing,” he went on immediately. “There’s murder, too, and death sentences. It’s always absurd to kill a man.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s nature’s job. Let her do her dirty work herself.”
“I see.”
“That’s not the real reason,” said Maillat. “The real reason is that killing men is absurd because there’s no end to it; once you’ve started you have to go on. That’s why neither side wins. there was a time when I thought that the winners were those who came through alive on both sides. But even that fell short of the truth. Nobody wins, not even the survivors.”
“Yet you can’t say we didn’t win in 1918.”
“Oh yes I can, since we’ve had to start it all over again.
“When you kill a man,” he went on after a moment, “it’s exactly the same thing. There’s only one solution: to go on.”
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