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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Stefan Heym: Sure it’s a vicious circle, it’s war
Stefan Heym: The whole scene was immersed in the silence of absolute death
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Stefan Heym
From The Crusaders (1948)
“What we have in mind is simple,” Willoughby said. “The destruction brought about by the war, especially in Europe, and the distortion, let me call it, of production, which has come about because our productive capacities are devoted almost exclusively to goods designed for destruction, will result in several years of postwar boom in our industry.”
Yasha rested his bony fingers on his chin. “You certainly pursue a long-range policy,” he commented.
“We do,” said Willoughby, utilizing the Prince’s admission to push further ahead. “Modern industry in America does a bit of planning in its way.”
Yasha nodded approval. “The last years have brought increasing difficulties in maintaining fruitful contacts,” he observed. “I am pleased to learn that, in America, industry has not been lagging.”
Willoughby laughed. “How do you think we ever got into Paris? The war has become a test of strength between the two most advanced, most powerful industrial combines – and we are winning it.”
“Quite,” said Yasha.
For a moment, Willoughby had forgotten that his vis–à–vis probably wanted to belong to neither of the combines and, having been forced to adhere to the one, having just been liberated from allegiance to it, was now being asked to join the other. He corrected himself. “That doesn’t mean that we underestimate the importance, and the future role on the world market, of Delacroix & Cie.”
“Ah, the world market!” Yasha said with a longing which somehow missed being fervent. “When did I last hear that phrase?”
“The world market is no phrase,” Willoughby countered, “it’s our only chance. After the war is won, after we’ve reconverted – what are we going to do with our productive capacity, our money?”
“Make new wars,” said Yasha.
***
“Is there anything smaller, anything more insignificant than man under the wheels of war? And can you run away? The tanks are faster than you, the wagons of destruction…”
***
And out of the quiet it came to Abramovici that the battle was over, it had left him alive; it had been a battle – a battle! You know, where people go out and push little buttons and pull little triggers and figure out targets and aim with the intention to kill, to tear your guts, to blow out your brains, to put great, ragged holes in the body you’ve been taking care of and feeding and washing all your life, holes out of which your blood comes pouring, more blood than you can ever wash off, hold back, stop with all the bandages in the world!
***
In the farmyard was an empty trough where the horses, long gone, had been watered. Somehow, their smell seemed to linger, not strongly enough to be offensive, just sufficiently to make you feel you were in the country, and to make you forget you were in the war, and that in a couple of days you might be breathing the stench of people rotting alive.
***
“What a folly to let ourselves be led into a two-front war! And I don’t mean a two-front war in the ordinary sense, with fighting in the East and in the West simultaneously – we might have been able to manage that. It was really two wars! One, the old-fashioned kind – how slight were the differences of opinion between us and the English and the Americans! What difference did a few markets and sources of raw material make? How easily we could have shared Europe! A little less thunder on our part, a little more conciliation – and we could have got along splendidly, for…we and Western Europe and America belong in the same orbit; we have the same set-up, the same civilization, the same morals.”
***
Like tired flies, people picked their way among the debris. The closer the car came to the working class district, the more thorough appeared the job of the Air Force. Yates drew in his breath sharply. He knew the smell, the smell of the hedgerows in Normandy. Under the rubble were still the dead.
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