War and Peace

Can this cockpit hold

 

It is a period between two wars—the long week-end it has been called.

 

I am Goya of the bare field, by the enemy’s beak gouged till the craters of my eyes gape I am grief I am the tongue of war, the embers of cities on the snows of the year 1941 I am hunger

 

The dead will think the living are worth it we will know Who we are And we will all enlist again.

 

So all day long the noise of battle roll’d Among the mountains by the winter sea.

 

Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell Rode the six hundred.

 

Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them Volley’d and thunder’d.

 

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” Was there a man dismay’d?

 

Someone had blundered.

 

Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the six hundred.

 

For I dipp’d into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue.

 

Till the war drum throbbed no longer and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

 

Ah! when shall all men’s good Be each man’s rule, and universal peace Lie like a shaft of light across the land, And like a lane of beams athwart the sea, Through all the circle of the golden year?

 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon’s roar— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more.

 

Armed peace.

 

Further, the war—our waiting while the knives sharpen for the operation—has taken away the outer wall of security. . . . We pour to the edgeof a precipice . . . and then? I can’t conceive that there will be a 27th June 1941.

The Real War Will Never Get in the Books . And so good-bye to the war.

Arma virumque cano .

To say that war is madness is like sayingthat sex is madness: true enough, from thestandpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. . . . It is a harnessing of the basic powers of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its powers has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of ademocratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it.

The objections which have been broughtagainst a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government.

[ Of Napoleon’s costly victory at the Battle of Borodino, 1812 :] C’est le commencement de la fin . This is the beginning of the end.

To win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highestexcellence is to subdue the enemy’s armywithout fighting at all.