The War Prayer by Mark Twain

[Ichingcarpenter]

Background:

Mark Twain – anti-imperialist

As U.S. industry expanded at a dizzying pace at the end of the nineteenth century America was using its growing might to challenge its European rivals and conquer markets and territory abroad. In the process, it violated other peoples’ rights to independence and self-determination – the very values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The country’s first efforts to build empire focused on wresting Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spanish control in the Spanish-American War of 1898. The war was portrayed as one to free subject peoples from Spanish tyranny, and this initially confused Twain. But he quickly came around. For Twain, and many others at the time, Americas imperialist expansion violated the expectation that America would be different from the colonial powers of Europe. Twain explained in 1900 how he went from praising to condemning the “American Eagle”:

" (I used to be) a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific ...Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? ... I said to myself, Here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American Constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves."

"But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris , and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem."

" It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land. "

In 1897, Twain published Following the Equator, the unifying theme of which is hatred and condemnation of imperialism of all stripes. He also wrote many pamphlets that were published by the Anti-Imperialist League, which Twain supported after his return from Europe in 1900. The League, which had tens of thousands of members, was organized around opposition to the U.S. slaughter in the Philippines. In The Conquest of the Philippines, Twain describes the massacre of 600 Moros (a Philippine tribe), who were armed only with knifes and clubs and fortified in an extinct volcano crater, by American troops standing at the rim and shooting down on them. The president called this a “brilliant feat of arms.” This is what Twain had to say in his sardonic way:

" The enemy numbered 600 – including women and children – and we abolished them utterly, leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother. This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States. "

A later report revealed that the death toll was even higher, and Twain continued:

"Headline: Death list is now 900. I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now. "

Twain also wrote and spoke with passion against European colonial domination, which he often compared to plantation slavery. He said of Cecil Rhodes, the mastermind of British colonialism:

"He raids and robs and slays and enslaves ... and gets worlds of charter-Christian applause for it. I admire him, I frankly confess it. And when his time comes I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. "



Mark Twain wrote this short story as sardonic piece on the US glorifying war in the Philippines
and using religion to do it..

The War Prayer by Mark Twain

( this is the prayer the other half of the story setting it up is at the link)


"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;

"help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – "

"for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen."


The complete short story is here:

http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.html



Twain apparently dictated it around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine's anthology, Europe and Elsewhere.

[panader0]

1. Great find. Twain has always been one of my faves.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. For further information google Mark Twain and imperialism

His political viewpoints have been watered down over time
for historical connivance by the many.

[XOKCowboy]

2. Ol' Sam Clements had great vision

and a great mind. Thanks for posting this.

[AzDar]

3. Love this ( and all of Sam's work).

:patriot:

[XOKCowboy]

5. I wish Sam and Will Rogers could see what's happening in America today

I'd love to hear their take on the current state of affairs.

[pnorman]

6. "Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War"

That was an EXCELLENT book by James Zwick, with much of the material also appearing on his website. It included "The War Prayer", and MUCH more. Unfortunately, the book is out of print, and the website is no longer on-line. Here's what I got from the author:

"Thanks for your email. There are a couple of reasons I haven't reprinted
the book. Initially, I couldn't find a publisher who would reprint it without
requiring that I remove all of the chapters from it from my site. They get
much more use online than they ever got in print so I wasn't willing to do
that. The book would also be expensive to reprint because many of
Twain's writings included in it are still covered by copyright. The
hardcover edition barely broke even and a paperback edition might not
sell enough to cover the permissions fees."

I located a used copy of that book by web-search, and immediately ordered it. If you can't find that book in the public library, try to do likewise. It's that good!

pnorman

[malaise]

7. Thanks for this

I adore Mark Twain. My favorite is still Letters from Earth.