Like trying to nominate "the world's greatest folk singer" or "the best guitarist in the galaxy," I take a dim view of most attempts at picking a "greatest" when it comes to songs or performers. [Now, "World's Most Abyssmal Idiot Elected to High Political Office," I could venture some strong opinions, but that's for another thread, and one below the line.]   However, as to very powerful anti-war songs, yes, I'd say there are some good ones.

Sometimes it's not the song itself, but how it's sung. One of the most powerful anti-war songs I've ever heard is the well-known Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye—as Walt Robertson sang it. He sang what I later learned was a somewhat abbreviated version. He certainly knew the other verses, but he sometimes invoked "minstrel's prerogative" and made choices, to better express his own feelings about a matter. These were the words and the verses that he sang :

Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye

With their guns and drums and drums and guns, hurroo, hurroo;
With their guns and drums and drums and guns, hurroo, hurroo;
With their guns and drums and drums and guns,
The enemy nearly slew ye.
My darling dear, ye look so queer.
Oh, Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Where are your eyes that used to smile, hurroo, hurroo?
Where are your eyes that used to smile, hurroo, hurroo?
Where are your eyes that used to smile
When my poor heart you so beguiled?
How could you run from me and the child?
Oh, Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo?
Where are your legs that used to run, hurroo, hurroo?
Where are your legs that used to run,
When you ran off to carry a gun?
I fear your dancing days are done.
Oh, Johnny, I hardly knew ye

I'm happy for to see ye home, hurroo, hurroo;
I'm happy for to see ye home, hurroo, hurroo;
I'm happy for to see ye home,
But darlin' dear, you look so wan;
So lean in flesh and high in bone.
Oh, Johnny, I hardly knew ye.

No "While goin' the road to sweet Athy" (removing it from a third-person narrative and bringing it right home and making it very personal);   no anatomical assessment of the damage ("Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg") and the rest of the bitterness in that verse;   and no idealistically angry vows about "They'll never take our sons again."

The way Walt sang it (which is the way I also sing it), it depicts a deeply personal tragedy in one family—which, by implication, is a situation possible for any family that has someone off in the wars. Rather than an angry—let's face it—propaganda song, it brings it home, and says, "This could be you" when you first see your soldier returned from the wars.

For a touch of bitterness in an anti-war song, it would be had to beat Eric Bogle's And the Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda' (the line, ". . . and I asked myself the same question."). He seems to have a real knack for packing a lot of communicable emotion into a song. Or even a single line.

To me, one of the most powerful anti-war songs I've ever heard (and just recently learned) is his The Green Fields of France (or No Man's Land).

Both songs from my notebook of song-sheets (both on disk and hard-copy):

The Green Fields of France (No Man's Land)
by Eric Bogle

How do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916,
I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

CHO:
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly?
Did they sound the dead march as they lowered you down?
Did the band play "The Last Post" in chorus?
Did the pipes play the "Flowers of the Forest?"

Did you leave a young wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
In that faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or were you a stranger without even a name,
And closed in forever behind a glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame? CHO:

The sun shines bright on the green fields of France;
The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land.
The countless white crosses are mute where they stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man,
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned. CHO:

I can't help but wonder, young Willie McBride,
Do those who lie here really know why they died?
Did they believe when they answered the call?
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
The sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the shame;
The killing, the dying, were all done in vain,
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again. CHO (2):

© Eric Bogle

Don Firth