Notes on the Next War (1935)
Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 82.
2004, Democratic National Convention speech (July 2004)
“We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?”
Non privatim solum sed publice furimus. Homicidia conpescimus et singulas caedes: quid bella et occisarum gentium gloriosum scelus? Non avaritia, non crudelitas modum novit. Et ista quamdiu furtim et a singulis fiunt minus noxia minusque monstrosa sunt: ex senatus consultis plebisque scitis saeva exercentur et publice iubentur vetata privatim. Quae clam commissa capite luerent, tum quia paludati fecere laudamus. Non pudet homines, mitissimum genus, gaudere sanguine alterno et bella gerere gerendaque liberis tradere, cum inter se etiam mutis ac feris pax sit. Adversus tam potentem explicitumque late furorem operosior philosophia facta est et tantum sibi virium sumpsit quantum iis adversus quae parabatur acceserat.
Letter XCV: On the usefulness of basic principles, lines 30-32.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius)
Context: We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much-vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples? There are no limits to our greed, none to our cruelty. And as long as such crimes are committed by stealth and by individuals, they are less harmful and less portentous; but cruelties are practised in accordance with acts of senate and popular assembly, and the public is bidden to do that which is forbidden to the individual. Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when committed in secret, are praised by us because uniformed generals have carried them out. Man, naturally the gentlest class of being, is not ashamed to revel in the blood of others, to wage war, and to entrust the waging of war to his sons, when even dumb beasts and wild beasts keep the peace with one another. Against this overmastering and widespread madness philosophy has become a matter of greater effort, and has taken on strength in proportion to the strength which is gained by the opposition forces.
Patriotism, or Peace? http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism,_or_Peace%3F (1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
Variant:
I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling – should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked.
What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.
Patriotism and Government http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Government (1900)
Context: Tell people that war is an evil, and they will laugh; for who does not know it? Tell them that patriotism is an evil, and most of them will agree, but with a reservation. "Yes," they will say, "wrong patriotism is an evil; but there is another kind, the kind we hold." But just what this good patriotism is, no one explains.
“They thought war was a game and every defeat only made them more eager to play.”
Philip of Valois, King of France, regarding his more reckless nobles, p. 4
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)
“Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war.”
As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933). Mussolini’s interview was in 1932.
1930s
“So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”
Comment on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, according to Charles Edward Stowe, Lyman Beecher Stowe, "How Mrs. Stowe wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'", McClure's magazine 36:621 http://books.google.com/books?id=biAAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA621&dq=%22little+woman+who+wrote+the+book+that+made+this+great+war%22 (April 1911), with a footnote stating: "Mr. Charles Edward Stowe, one of the authors of this article, accompanied his mother on this visit to Lincoln, and remembers the occasion distinctly."
Annie Fields, "Days with Mrs. Stowe", Atlantic Monthly 7:148 http://books.google.com/books?id=8F0CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA148&dq=%22Is+this+the+little+woman+who+made+the+great+war%22 (August 1896)
Posthumous attributions
Variant: Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made the great war?"
Variant: So you are the little woman who caused this great war!
“Wars were not made by young men, he thought, yet they had to fight them.”
A Tradition of Victory, Cap 14 "The Toast is Victory!"
