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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Roger Martin du Gard: Selections on war
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Roger Martin du Gard
From Summer 1914 (1936)
Translated by Stuart Gilbert
A sudden hush fell on the tumult.
“War! War is at our gates. Within twenty-four hours all Europe may be plunged into a terrible war. You want to hear the truth? Well, you shall have it. Before a month is over, you who stand beside me, every one of you, may be lying dead on the battlefield.”
Furiously he thrust back a lock of hair that had fallen over his left eye.
“You don’t want a war, do you? Well, they want it. And they’ll force it on you. You’ll bear the brunt of it, but you’ll bear the blame for it as well. Because, if you choose, you can stop this war…I can see what you’re thinking. Each of you is asking himself: What’s to be done? And that’s why you came here tonight. Well, I’ve an answer for you. There is something to be done. There’s still a way to save the situation. One way only: for all of us to band together like one man – and to say ‘No!’”
More calmly, strangely self-possessed, forcing his voice, rapping out each word so as to make sure of being heard, he went on after a moment’s pause: “They say to you: ‘What makes war possible is capitalism, competition between imperialist powers, high finance, the armaments manufacturers.’ And it’s all quite true. Only – stop and think! What is war really? Is it only a conflict of interests? Unhappily, no! It’s a conflict of living men, of flesh and blood. War means nations under arms, butchering each other. And all the statesmen, bankers, high financiers and armaments manufacturers in the world couldn’t start a war if the peoples of all nations refused to let themselves be mobilized, refused to fight. Guns and rifles don’t go off of their own accord. Soldiers are needed to make a war. And who are these soldiers on whom capitalists rely to carry out their money-making schemes, at the cost of their lives? Who but ourselves, the rank and file? No legal authority, no mobilization order, can have the least effect unless we choose to submit to it. We hold the trump cards, we are the masters of our fate, for we are the greatest number, and the greatest power on earth.”
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“Everywhere the newspapers are in the pay of nationalism. To whitewash their sordid ambitions, every government maintains a venal horde of newspapers whose task is to gull the public; to urge them into the shambles; to convince them that the men who fall are heroically sacrificing their lives in a holy war, for the defence of their native soil, for the triumph of right, of freedom, civilization, justice. As if there could ever be just wars! As if it could be just to doom millions of innocent victims to suffering and death.”
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