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07 Oct 01 - 07:41 PM (#567080) Subject: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Helen someone sent this classic Mark Twain piece into the e-mail harplist. the eternal paradox. Helen The story relates a patriotic church service held to usher the young men of a town off to war. The minister begins with the invocation: God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder, Thy clarion, and lightning, Thy sword! The service continues with a "long prayer" for the victory of the country's military. As the prayer closes, an "aged stranger" enters the church and walks up the aisle to the front of the church where the minister is standing. Motioning the startled minister aside, he begins to relate the "unmentioned results" that "follow victory -- must follow it, cannot help but follow it." I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!... He has heard the prayer of His servant, your shepherd, & will grant it if such shall be your desire after I His messenger shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause & think. "God's servant & yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused & taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken & the unspoken.... "You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed, silently. And ignorantly & unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is completed into those pregnant words. "Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen! "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 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 their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags & hunger & thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer & the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave & 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 of one who is the Spirit of love & who is the ever-faithful refuge & friend of all that are sore beset, & seek His aid with humble & contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord & Thine shall be the praise & honor & glory now & ever, Amen." (After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! -- the messenger of the Most High waits." http://www.boondocksnet.com/twain/war_prayer.html ................................................. Mark Twain wrote "The War Prayer" during the Philippine-American War. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper's Bazaar rejected it as "not quite suited to a woman's magazine." Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, "I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth." His editor was "responsible to his Company," he explained, "and should not permit laughs which could injure its business." In his private notebook, Twain expanded his thoughts about the rejection of the story into a series of maxims about freedom of speech: None but the dead have free speech. None but the dead are permitted to speak truth. In America -- as elsewhere -- free speech is confined to the dead. The minority is always in the right. When the country is drifting toward Philippine robber-raid henroost raid, do not shirk your duty, do not fail of loyalty, lest you win and deserve the reproach of being a "patriot." The majority is always in the wrong. Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. |
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07 Oct 01 - 08:13 PM (#567096) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Donuel THank you, Thank you so much |
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07 Oct 01 - 10:42 PM (#567157) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: katlaughing Some of the greatest truths ever spoken. Thank you very much, Helen. kat |
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07 Oct 01 - 11:06 PM (#567164) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Jim Dixon Spaw posted this back on 12-Sep: Praying For Revenge--The War Prayer. |
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07 Oct 01 - 11:08 PM (#567165) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Bob Bolton G'day Helen, Actually, Catspaw49 posted this, 12 September 2001, at War Prayer. It is well worth the repeating! Regards, Bob Bolton |
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07 Oct 01 - 11:09 PM (#567166) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Paul from Hull Potent stuff... thanks, Helen |
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07 Oct 01 - 11:11 PM (#567167) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Bob Bolton Er... G'day Jim, I see we were working on the same reference ... I have to polish up my Blicky access skills! Regard(les)s, Bob Bolton |
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07 Oct 01 - 11:16 PM (#567171) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Bob Bolton G'day again, I think it is significant that Spaw's original post only attracted 20 replies ... over a 5½ hour span ... then dropped off the list. Perhaps we are now ready to read the message ... especially after seeing how gleefully the world's fascists are turning America's agony to electoral advantage. Regards, Bob Bolton |
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08 Oct 01 - 01:01 AM (#567217) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: catspaw49 Greg F. was good enough to post it first in it's entirety on another thread and I had always thought it was a brilliant piece of work, perhaps his best. Clements was a fantastic storyteller but in the War Prayer he speaks into the heart and from it. Glad to see Helen bring it back yet again and thanks to both Jim and Bob for linking the other thread. Spaw |
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08 Oct 01 - 01:09 AM (#567225) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: GUEST,TripleM I will share it with all I love. |
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09 Nov 02 - 11:59 PM (#822573) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull |
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10 Nov 02 - 12:15 AM (#822581) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: mg yes thank you for bringing this up at this particular time. |
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10 Nov 02 - 11:29 AM (#822682) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Bobert I was not around last year when this thread was started but I find it very appropriate during these times. With them desensitizing of people to the absolute violence of war and the suffering it brings it is good to remind folks that it isn't a viseo-game of movie where the actors go home to their families, because they either don't or only a part of them returns. Mark Twain was a pacifist and vocal in his oppositon to Teddy Roosevelt's, et al, uncomphrehensible thirst for blood. Bobert |
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10 Nov 02 - 12:29 PM (#822734) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Don Firth It needs to be repeated and repeated like a mantra until it eventually sinks in. Don Firth |
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10 Nov 02 - 12:58 PM (#822748) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: mg No this is not a good day for it. Wait until November 12 if you can summon up the decency. mg |
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10 Nov 02 - 01:43 PM (#822768) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Don Firth ??? Don Firth |
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10 Nov 02 - 05:43 PM (#822890) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: GUEST,Q The BBC "Composer of the week" is Victoria, whose sonorous masses and motets are among the great masterpieces. His "Missa pro Victoria," a "battle" mass in nine voices (making use of two choir units), in celebration of a victory (not himself) is hair-raising in its beauty and complexity. Music fit for Zeus! Mark Twain would love the music but hate the message. Go to BBC Radio 3 on the internet and these programs on the music of Victoria, Morales and the other great Spaniards (Palestrina thrown in with his Mass for Pope Marcellus) who worked in Rome and Spain before and after 1600 can be heard. |
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10 Nov 02 - 08:08 PM (#822971) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Little Hawk Fantastic, amazing words from Mr Mark Twain. Mary - It would be best for veterans to recognize that the people they slew on the battlefield were other young people just like themselves. Some of them do realize it. I know some who do. If they still wish to celebrate and remember, then they should celebrate not victory, but the enduring of common humanity, and the survival of the common hopes and dreams of all the decent people who have been harangued and deluded into going out and killing their brothers and sisters needlessly for these last many thousands of years. What good is patriotism if it denies the humanity of other human souls? - LH |
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11 Nov 02 - 02:06 PM (#823499) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Don Firth Having been chided that making an anti-war statement in proximity to Veteran's Day was "insensitive," I would like to clarify my thoughts on the matter. My father was a veteran—of World War I. "The War to End All Wars." He was on the cutting edge of technology at the time: the newly formed armored cavalry—the tank corps. I had a number of relatives who fought in World War II, including a cousin, Art McGuire, who was in the Marines. Captured in the Philippines early in the war, he spent most of the war in a Japanese prison camp after surviving the infamous Bataan Death March. I have a number of friends who fought in the Korean "police action." For example, Dick Gibbons, who wrote Sully's Pail (in DT and recorded by Tom Paxton), who can describe being nearly hit (a mortar round, if I remember right) and diving into a foxhole with his clothes on fire. One of my closest friends was Buzz Ross, married to another close friend. Buzz became a helicopter pilot and was sent to Vietnam just a few weeks before Christmas. Two weeks after he arrived there, while evacuating a bunch of wounded, Buzz's helicopter was hit. He managed to crash-land the chopper, saving the lives of everyone else on board, but he was hit in the head by a rotor that smashed through the cab. He died a day later. Marcia and I spent a New Year's Eve holding each other and weeping. World War II started when I was ten years old, and it ended when I was fourteen. I followed the war diligently, listening to news reports, reading newspapers and pouring over the pictures in Life Magazine. I was especially fascinated by airplanes, and I could draw a B-25 Mitchell bomber or a P-51 Mustang fighter right down to the last rivet. When I entered the University of Washington in 1949, I soon met a number of men who were somewhat older than the usual run of college students. My new friends were war veterans going to school on the G. I. Bill. I recall sitting in on a couple of what struck me at the time as really bizarre conversations over coffee in the Husky Union Building cafeteria. One of my friends had been in the Air Force. He had been a fighter pilot in Europe. Another was a German student named Rolf Holtzmann, who was attending the U. of W. on a foreign exchange program. He had been a pilot in the Luftwaffe. These two former fighter pilots—former enemies—spent many hours together discussing the war, enthusiastically comparing the characteristics of the P-51 Mustang and the Messerschmitt ME-109, and combing through past missions in an effort to determine if they had ever come close to meeting in the skies over Europe. They shared a lot of experiences. They shared a love of airplanes and flying. They became good friends. Had they actually met in the skies over Europe, each would have done his utmost to kill the other. There's a lesson in that. I honor and respect veterans, whether it is Veteran's Day of not. BUT—rather than eschewing my anti-war stance, I sincerely believe that the greatest honor that I can pay veterans is to do everything in my poor power to attempt to bring about a world in which war veterans no longer exist. And why would war veterans no longer exist? You figure it out. Don Firth |
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11 Nov 02 - 02:39 PM (#823517) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: mg two ways. (1) no more wars (2) no more people. Hope for the best. mg |
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12 Nov 02 - 08:45 AM (#824093) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Charley Noble Thanks for reviving this thread so I could pass it on. And I'll also note that the Vets for Peace marched in the official Veteran's Day parade yesterday in Portland, ME, with their banners flying. Takes courage to do that. Charley Noble |
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12 Nov 02 - 09:14 AM (#824109) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: GUEST,John Gray in Oz Don, as I've mentioned here before I did 2 stints in Vietnam. It qualifies me to be a member of the Returned Servicemen's League of Australia, our veterans organisation. RSL for short. In discussions with other vets regarding the "future" of the RSL I always say that; I hope it doesn't have a future and that I want to be the last man in an organisation that's died out. Some of the reactions I get from others are amazing. JG/FME |
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14 Nov 02 - 11:40 PM (#826561) Subject: RE: BS: Non-music: Mark Twain's War Prayer From: Helen John Gray, I can imagine the reactions you get. Telling the RSL members that you wish there was no more need for the RSL!! You are a brave man! Helen |