An emetic against war

[SteveShaw]

I bought a book in 1984 that changed the way I thought about war and taught me to question critically all pro-war statements made by politicians and generals and even people in pubs. It was compiled during the so-called "Cold War" at a time when the "two minutes to midnight" scenario seemed all too real, but it remains just as relevant today as we face our (just as so-called) "war against terrorism." It isn't an expensive book and it's still available on both sides of the big water on Amazon and elsewhere. It's called "In A Dark Time" and was edited by Nicholas Humphrey and Robert Jay Lifton. It is essentially an anthology of quotes, prose and poetry, ranging from the egregiously stupid to the divinely wise, mostly short (no risk of boredom I promise), from a wide variety of sources. I must have read it a hundred times.

Steve

[The Weekenders]

Will check the local library for it. I have read a lot of books, but like your example, some stay in your mind for a long while.

[Jack]

I shall also look for this book. I believe war is the purest of evils.

Edited to add that I found a used copy on eBay for $0.21 and bought it forthwith. That's my kind of book price.

Amazon.com also currently has four used copies for under $0.30 each:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... 8&v=glance

Steve, there are no customer reviews of this book on amazon. Perhaps you could submit a brief review explaining why you like the book?

(Chiff and Fipple should start a Book Club. Em could be our Oprah.)

[anniemcu]

Thanks for that recommendation. I, too, shall seek it out.

[SteveShaw]

Steve, there are no customer reviews of this book on amazon. Perhaps you could submit a brief review explaining why you like the book?

Actually I still have the review that attracted me to the book in 1984, written by John Fowles, himself an eminent writer, but I don't have a scanner and, try as I may, I can't find the darn thing anywhere on the internet.

It would be very difficult to give a flavour of the book without reproducing hundreds of quotes. The book is an anthology of quotations, prose, poetry and clips from news reports, stretching right back from the Reagan/Thatcher era in which the book was compiled to pre-Christian times. The whole book makes for very thought-provoking, and at times, painful reading. One thing it is not is proselytising: the compilers simply let the selected quotes speak for themselves, though naturally the selection seen as a single body of work does represent the compilers' "message" to the reader. As it is a compilation of short pieces of writing there is no overall "plot" to lose, though the writings are gathered into nine sections (chapters), each of which has a loose theme which I'll attempt to sum up with a sample quote. It has to be said that the book was written at a time when the nuclear threat, in Cold War terms, seemed very acute: in this respect the book may now seem to be slightly dated, but I personally don't think so.

Section 1 is called "Words." Words can be used by those in power as a distorting medium: "The fundamental power of the universe, the power manifested in the sunshine that has been recognized from the remotest ages as the sustaining force of earthly life, is entrusted at last to human hands." (comment in "The Times" on 7 August 1945 on the Hiroshima bomb).
Section 2 is largely about how we dehumanise our enemies with words: "The man beside me was saying, 'We have a different regard for human life than those monsters do.' He was referring to what he said was the Soviets' belief in winning nuclear war despite casualties that we would find unacceptable. And he added that they were 'godless' monsters. It is this theological defect 'that gives them less regard for humanity or human beings.' The man telling me all this was Ronald Reagan, as I interviewed him on a flight [in 1980] from Birmingham to Orlando." (Robert Scheer, 1982).
Section 3 is "Civilization in Suspense," referring to how war situations can be fantasised about: "It may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it one hundred percent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by that particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now here and there." (Winston Churchill, secret memorandum, 1944).
Section 4 is called "Only part of us is sane." "I have had the happiest possible life, and have always been working for war, and have now got into the biggest in the prime of life for a soldier...Thank God, we are off in an hour. Such a magnificent regiment! Such men, such horses! Within ten days I hope Francis and I will be riding side-by-side straight at the Germans." (Riversdale Grenfell, 1915)
Section 5 is "Nothing, but Who Knows Nothing." "The atomic bomb is a paper tiger which the US reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't." (Mao Tse-tung, 1960).
Section 6 is "There's a nuclear war going on inside me."
"But the children, I think, should not be blotted out,
as I sit listening to the rise and fall
of their pleasures, the sudden change
to bad temper quickly forgotten
by the shift to joy..."
(David Ignatow, "A Meditation on Violence," 1968).
Section 7 is called "Hope Abandoned." "Victims of a nuclear strike in Bognor [a seaside town in southern England] would be given burial at sea, the town's Neighbourhood Council was told. A guest speaker from Felpham Neighbourhood Council said: 'We are very lucky here because we are by the sea, so all the dead people can be taken out in a rowing boat, weighted down, and buried." (Portsmouth Evening News, June 1983).
Section 8 is "Different Drummers." "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." (Henry Thoreau). Could be a great signature, eh!
The last section is "In a Dark Time."
"Some say a cavalry corps,
some infantry, some, again,
will maintain that the swift oars
of our fleet are the finest
sight on dark earth; but I say
that whatever one loves, is."
(Sappho, 7th century BC)

There are hundreds more quotes and the ones I've given are biased towards the short because I'm a very slow typist. I promise that if you read this book you won't come away feeling at all preached at. You ask why I liked the book - I liked it because it made me take a far more critical, "healthily-sceptical" view of the manner in which "the powers that be" present information to me. To use modern parlance, it helped me to see through "spin." Above all, it's an intensely humanitarian document.

Steve

[Walden]

I believe war is the purest of evils.

I'd say it is among the worst, and, as long as men have malice in their hearts one toward another, I don't see it ending.

[amar]

war is the inability to deal, in a rational way, with our natural, negative-vibed emotions.

[djm]

Inability to accept war is pure cowardice. Looking for negotiated peace is always rife with compromises that chafe and fester for years until - gosh! - a war breaks out. It always amuses me to see people arguing against war from the safety and security of the good life that wars have won for them; so easy to forget the sacrifices of previous generations. Where would you be without your War of Independence? Or where would Europe be if the Nazis had gone unchallenged? Even if the Nazis hadn't happened, where would Europe be if Stalin had marched through unopposed? (I include GB and Ireland when I refer to Europe.)

War may not be a good answer, and its not something to look forward to, but it works.

djm

[Walden]

Where would you be without your War of Independence?

We might would be part of Canada.

Or where would Europe be if the Nazis had gone unchallenged?

They started the war. The Allies ended it.

Even if the Nazis hadn't happened, where would Europe be if Stalin had marched through unopposed? (I include GB and Ireland when I refer to Europe.)

Yeah, Stalin's war-making was worth opposing, too.

War may not be a good answer, and its not something to look forward to, but it works.

djm

The Christian theory of just war comes to mind.

[Flyingcursor]

I believe war is the purest of evils.

I'd say it is among the worst, and, as long as men have malice in their hearts one toward another, I don't see it ending.

That, and as long as people try to take by force or subterfuge what others have earned or inherited I don't see it ending.

Why does every generation produce young men with a misguided desire to experience war and forget the experience of their fathers?

[SteveShaw]

Though the book is described as an emetic against war it is a long way from being a pacifist rant. As long as we all recognise that the hopes, fears and aspirations of ordinary human beings are more or less the same the world over, and that ordinary people everywhere are not monsters but just want to get on with their daily lives like you and I, we'll be inclined to take a more measured view of the need for war. It can't be wrong to focus on the experience of individuals in difficult circumstances, which is largely what the book does. I'm no pacifist!

Steve

[mvhplank]

I'm sorry, Steve, but I can't help myself: Don't you mean "polemic" instead of "emetic"?

As long as we're talking about the power of words...

Main Entry: po·lem·ic
Pronunciation: p&-'le-mik
Function: noun
Etymology: French polémique, from Middle French, from polemique controversial, from Greek polemikos warlike, hostile, from polemos war; perhaps akin to Greek pelemizein to shake, Old English ealfelo baleful
1 a : an aggressive attack on or refutation of the opinions or principles of another b : the art or practice of disputation or controversy -- usually used in plural but sing. or plural in constr.
2 : an aggressive controversialist : DISPUTANT
- po·lem·i·cist /-'le-m&-sist/ noun

versus

Main Entry: emet·ic
Pronunciation: i-'me-tik
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin emetica, from Greek emetikE, from feminine of emetikos causing vomiting, from emein to vomit -- more at VOMIT
: an agent that induces vomiting
- emetic adjective
- emet·i·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

Although, I'll grant you, that war, in theory and in application, can function as an emetic.

M

[Flyingcursor]

I'm sorry, Steve, but I can't help myself: Don't you mean "polemic" instead of "emetic"?

Anyone seen vomitbunny lately?

[Pat Cannady]

Don't know if this poem was included in your book, Steve, but this was all the education I ever needed on the realities of combat:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

[dubhlinn]

I'm sorry, Steve, but I can't help myself: Don't you mean "polemic" instead of "emetic"?

Anyone seen vomitbunny lately?

I've noticed him logged on a fair few times recently but he is not posting much these days.

Slan,
D.