“It would be a crime to exhibit the fine side of war, even if there were one!”
murmured one of the somber soldiers.
The first man continued. "They'll say those things to us by way of paying us with glory, and to pay themselves, too, for what they haven't done. But military glory — it isn't even true for us common soldiers. It's for some, but outside those elect the soldier's glory is a lie, like every other fine-looking thing in war. In reality, the soldier's sacrifice is obscurely concealed. The multitudes that make up the waves of attack have no reward. They run to hurl themselves into a frightful inglorious nothing. You cannot even heap up their names, their poor little names of nobodies."
Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
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Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935Related quotes
“It would be a fine thing if war could be conducted as a game where no lives were lost.”
Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 28
Context: It would be a fine thing if war could be conducted as a game where no lives were lost. At the end of a battle combatants could meet [... ] and drink and talk.
Source: Empire of the Sun (1984), p. 6
Context: Real war was the thousands of Chinese refugees dying of cholera in the sealed stockades at Pootung, and the bloody heads of Communist soldiers mounted on pikes along the Bund. In a real war no one knew which side he was on, and there were no flags or commentators or winners. In a real war there were no enemies.
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Source: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
“Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.”
Les querelles ne dureraient pas longtemps, si le tort n'était que d'un côté.
Maxim 496.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
"President Truman Did Not Understand" http://www.peak.org/~danneng/decision/usnews.html in U.S. News & World Report (15 August 1960)
Variant: If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them.
As quoted in The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (1996) by Dennis Wainstock, p. 122
Context: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?
But, again, don't misunderstand me. The only conclusion we can draw is that governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.
“I would go to war with Dhoni by my side.”
Gary Kirsten https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/
“The curious crime, the fine
Felicity and flower of wickedness.”
Book X: The Pope, line 590.
The Ring and the Book (1868-69)