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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Arthur Schnitzler: Cannot praise war in general and oppose individual wars
Arthur Schnitzler: Political reaction is the consequence of victorious wars; revolution the consequence of lost ones
Arthur Schnitzler: Remold the structure of government so that war becomes impossible
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Arthur Schnitzler
From Some Day Peace Will Return (Und einmal wird der Friede wiederkommen)
Translated by Robert O. Weiss
1916
In realty, we are all without compassion. What do we care about the hundred thousand who are killed in an earthquake in Australia? What do we care about twenty thousand enemies killed? What – if we are to be quite honest – do we care about ten thousand fallen countrymen of ours, countrymen whom we do not know, who mean nothing to us? The range of our hearts’ vision is barely ten feet.
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What we must remember now, however, is that a tremendous majority of mankind is virtually insensitive so far as the weal and woe of all is concerned, that by far the greatest number of human beings are prepared at any moment to permit – for the sake of honor, for fame, for the advancement of their career, for a decoration, for an opportunity to make money – thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of people perish in the most pitiable manner, as long as they themselves are not among the victims.
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The argument that there will always be wars because human beings will not change within the foreseeable future is untenable. One could have advanced the same argument with reference to the Inquisition, the burning of witches, the practice of torture…
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War has never actually been waged for an idea; neither for a national nor for a religious one. (That can be proved not only with regard to this war.) Ideas are always used as a pretense – they are, so to speak, carried ahead as a banner, as the flags of the soul…Never has war been waged for the sake of an idea. Never has it been a matter of anything but a struggle for power. But ideas – whether believed or not – have always been indispensable as pretexts…Not only can it be proved that the ideas for the sake of which wars have been waged were fraudulently presented to the peoples or the armies concerned, but it can also be proved that the leaders, those who themselves unleashed the wars, disbelieved in the ideas which they claimed they were fighting for, or that they were monomaniacs.
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The hate against people who enrich themselves through war and derive their livelihood from it has permitted the aversion against those who base their livelihoods upon the possibility, the expectation, the continuous taking into account the possibility of war – the military and the diplomats – to recede all too far into the background. It is they who always poison peace by thoughts of war.
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They say he died the glorious death of a hero. Why do they never say he suffered the magnificent mutilation of a hero? They say he has given his life for his country. Why do they never say he has had both legs amputated for his country?
(The semantics of those in power!)
The terminology of war has been coined by the diplomats, the military, and those in power. It should be revised by those who have come back from the war, by the widows, the orphans, the physicians, and the poets.
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[T]he men who are working toward world peace, even toward eternal peace, or, rather, toward making war impossible, must not be thwarted in their work by the domination of the dogma of war: War is inevitable, decreed by fate; it is rooted in the organization of human nature. This dogma is false. War is inherent not in human nature, but in the way nations are formed and in the way individual nations relate to each other. The individual as such never wants war…War, even if it ends in victory, is always in the interest only of an infinitesimal minority.
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So long as even one person exists to whom war can bring an advantage, and this one person has sufficient power and influence to unleash this war, any fight against war is in vain.
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There are tremendous difficulties, but they are all cancelled out by the one incontestable fact that nowhere in the world does the overwhelming majority want war and this majority must prevail in the end against the small minority that either wants it or needs it.
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“Great times” are those during which the discoveries and inventions made in “little times” are exploited for the killing and mutilation of people as well as for the destruction of the values and works that originated during the “little times.”
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So long as war is considered a possibility at all – i.e., so long as there are professions based on the possibility of war, and even so long as there is just one person who can acquire wealth or increase it by means of war, and that person be one who has the power or the influence to bring about war – just so long there will be war.
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The individual as a soldier subject to compulsory military service never wants war, for if he wanted it, there would be no need for compulsory military service.
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Stroke of genius of kings: Money is not always at our disposal, but we do have power. Therefore, let us invent something new – compulsory military service. That comes cheaper for us. Let us make the citizens finance our soldiers, the fathers pay wages to their sons whom we sent to their deaths.
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The military can easily exist without war. They would get along quite well with maneuvers. Only the diplomats are in urgent need of it.
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