"History
is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies,
and misfortunes of mankind" ~ Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
"Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
~ George Santayana (1863–1952)
"What
experience and history teach is this – that people and governments
never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles
deduced from it" ~ Georg Hegel (1770–1831)
Writing in
1968, the historian Will Durant, in his The
Lessons of History, remarked that "in the last 3,421
years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war." Unfortunately,
the most recent century was the bloodiest on record.
Operation
Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of
1941, was one of the most horrendous military campaigns, not only
in the twentieth century, but in all of history. As related by
Catherine Merridale in Ivan’s
War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945
(Metropolitan Books, 2006):
By December
1941, six months into the conflict, the Red Army had lost 4.5
million men. The carnage was beyond imagination. Eyewitnesses
described the battlefields as landscapes of charred steel and
ash. The round shapes of lifeless heads caught the late summer
light like potatoes turned up from new-broken soil. The prisoners
were marched off in their multitudes. Even the Germans did not
have the guards, let alone enough barbed wire, to contain the
2.5 million Red Army troops they captured in the first five
months. One single campaign, the defense of Kiev, cost the Soviets
nearly 700,000 killed or missing in a matter of weeks. Almost
the entire army of the pre-war years, the troops that shared
the panic of those first nights back in June, was dead or captured
by the end of 1941. And this process would be repeated as another
generation was called up, crammed into uniform, and killed,
captured, or wounded beyond recovery.
The folly
of war cannot be limited to Germans and Russians; it can also
be seen in the actions of Americans. During World War II, the
Battle
of Peleliu between the United States and Japan was folly on
a grand scale. As part of General MacArthur’s strategy to recapture
the Philippines, it was thought to be necessary to neutralize
the Japanese occupation of the island of Peleliu – 550 miles east
of the Philippines. It wasn’t. After 1,794 U.S. Marines died,
it was determined that the island had no strategic value.
Rather than
being a "good war," World War II was an unnecessary
bloodbath just like most of the previous wars in history.
I suppose
that men have pointed out the folly and wickedness of war for
as long as wars have been fought. But judging from the history
of warfare, I suppose also that they have been in the minority.
Most people,
I suppose, are familiar with the novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910),
the author of War
and Peace and a harsh critic of both war and the state.
Writing in 1894, Tolstoy powerfully described the folly and wickedness
of war:
Every war
… with all its ordinary consequences … the murder with the justifications
of its necessity and justice, the exaltation and glorification
of military exploits, the worship of the flag, the patriotic
sentiments … and so on, does more in one year to pervert men’s
minds than thousands of robberies, murders, and arsons perpetrated
during hundreds of years by individual men under the influence
of passion.
Just think
how many millions of innocent lives could have been spared from
the horrors of both World Wars had the participants listened to
Tolstoy.
But long
before Tolstoy, someone in Britain penned an equally powerful
missive titled "On the Folly and Wickedness of War."
That someone was the preacher and educator Vicesimus Knox (1752–1821),
a tireless advocate of civil liberties and adversary of offensive
war. I have written about Knox previously ("Vicesimus
Knox: Minister of Peace"). My purpose here, however,
is to bring this long-forgotten work of Knox into the public domain.
I recently discovered it in volume
one of Knox’s collected works, and have transcribed it below.
The date of publication of "The Folly and Wickedness of War"
must be around 1800 for it was reprinted, with a few changes,
in The
Hive of Ancient and Modern Literature: A Collection of Essays,
Narratives, Allegories, and Instructive Compositions,
selected by the Solomon Hodgson. The third
edition of this book was issued at Newcastle in 1806. The
first edition is supposed to have been published in
1799, but I have been unable to confirm this.
Here is "On
the Folly and Wickedness and War," circa 1800:
The calamities
attendant on a state of war seem to have prevented the mind
of man from viewing it in the light of an absurdity, and an
object of ridicule as well as pity. But if we could suppose
a superior Being capable of beholding us, miserable mortals,
without compassion, there is, I think, very little doubt but
the variety of military manoeuvres and formalities, the pride,
pomp, and circumstance of war, and all the ingenious contrivances
for the glorious purposes of mutual destruction, which seem
to constitute the business of many whole kingdoms, would furnish
him with an entertainment like that which is received by us
from the exhibition of a farce or puppet-show. But, notwithstanding
the ridiculousness of all these solemnities, we, poor mortals,
are doomed to feel that they are no farce, but the concomitant
circumstances of a most woeful tragedy.
The causes
of war are for the most part such as must disgrace an animal
pretending to rationality. Two poor mortals take offence at
each other, without any reason, or with the very bad one of
wishing for an opportunity of aggrandizing themselves, by making
reciprocal depredations. The creatures of the court, and the
leading men of the nation, who are usually under the influence
of the court, resolve (for it is their interest) to support
their royal master, and are never at a loss to invent some colourable
pretence for engaging the nation in the horrors of war. Taxes
of the most burthensome kind are levied, soldiers are collected
so as to leave a paucity of husbandmen, reviews and encampments
succeed, and at last a hundred thousand men meet on a plain,
and coolly shed each others blood, without the smallest personal
animosity, or the shadow of a provocation. The kings, in the
mean time, and the grandees, who have employed these poor innocent
victims to shoot bullets at each other’s heads, remain quietly
at home, and amuse themselves, in the intervals of balls, hunting
schemes, and pleasures of every species, with reading at the
fire side, over a cup of chocolate, the dispatches from the
army, and the news in the Extraordinary Gazette. Horace very
truly observes, that whatever mad frolics enter into the heads
of kings, it is the common people, that is, the honest artisan,
and the industrious tribes in the middle ranks, unoffended and
unoffending, who chiefly suffer in the evil consequences. If
the old king of Prussia were not at the head of some of the
best troops in the universe, he would be judged more worthy
of being tried, cast, and condemned at the Old Bailey, than
any shedder of blood who ever died by a halter. But he was a
king; but he was a hero; – those names fascinate us, and we
enrol the butcher of mankind among their benefactors.
When one
considers the dreadful circumstances that attend even victories,
one cannot help being a little shocked at the exultation which
they occasion. I have often thought it a laughable scene, if
there were not a little too much of the melancholy in it, when
a circle of eager politicians have met to congratulate each
other on what is called a piece of good news just arrived. Every
eye sparkles with delight; every voice is raised in announcing
the happy event. And what is the cause of all this joy? and
for what are our windows illuminated, bonfires kindled, bells
rung, and feasts celebrated? We have had a successful engagement.
We have left a thousand of the enemy dead on the field of battle,
and only half the number of our countrymen. Charming news! it
was a glorious battle! But before you give a loose to your raptures,
pause a while; and consider, that to every one of these three
thousand, life was no less sweet than it is to you; that to
the far greater part of them there probably were wives, fathers,
mothers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and friends, all
of whom are at this moment bewailing that event which occasions
your foolish and brutal triumph; a triumph perfectly consistent
with the basest cowardice.
The whole
time of war ought to be a time of general mourning, a mourning
in the heart, a mourning much more sincere than on the death
of one of those princes whose cursed ambition is often the sole
cause of war. Indeed that a whole people should tamely submit
to the evils of war, because it is the will of a few vain, selfish,
ignorant, though exalted, individuals, is a phenomenon almost
unaccountable. But they are led away by false glory, by their
passions, by their vices. They reflect not; and indeed, if they
did reflect, and oppose, what would avail the opposition of
unarmed myriads to the mandate of a government supported by
a standing army? Many of the European nations are entirely military;
war is their trade; and when they have no employment at home,
or near it, they blush not to let themselves out to shed any
blood, in any cause of the best paymaster. Ye beasts of the
forest, no longer allow that man is your superior, while there
is found on the face of the earth such degeneracy!
Morality
and religion forbid war in its motives, conduct, and consequences;
but to many rulers and potentates, morality and religion appear
as the inventions of politicians to facilitate subordination.
The principal objects of crowned heads, and their minions, in
countries subject to despotism, are the extension of empire,
the augmentation of a revenue, or the total annihilation of
their subjects’ liberty. Their restraints in the pursuit of
these objects are not those of morality and religion; but solely
reasons of state and political caution. Plausible words are
used, but they are only used to hide the deformity of the real
principles. Wherever war is deemed desirable in an interested
view, a specious pretext never yet remained unfound. Morality
is as little considered in the beginning, as in the prosecution
of war. The most solemn treaties and engagements are violated
by the governing part of the nation, with no more scruple than
oaths and bonds are broken by a cheat and a villain in the walks
of private life. Does the difference of rank and situation make
any difference in the atrocity of crimes? If any, it renders
a thousand times more criminal than that of a thief, the villainy
of them, who, by violating every sacred obligation between nation
and nation, give rise to miseries and mischiefs most dreadful
in their nature; and to which no human power can say, Thus far
shall ye proceed, and no farther. Are not the natural and moral
evils of life sufficient, but they must be rendered more acute,
more numerous, and more imbittered by artificial means? My heart
bleeds over those complicated scenes of woe, for which no epithet
can be found sufficiently descriptive. Language fails in labouring
to express the horrors of war amid private families, who are
so unfortunate as to be situated on the seat of it.
War, however,
it will be said, has always been permitted by Providence. This
is indeed true; but it has been only permitted as a scourge.
Let a spirit and activity be exerted in regulating the morals
of a nation, equal to that with which war, and all its apparatus,
are attended to, and mankind will no longer be scourged, neither
will it be necessary to evacuate an empire of its members, for
none will be superfluous. Let us, according to the advice of
a pious divine of the present age, think less of our fleets
and armies, and more of our faith and practice. While we are
warriors, with all our pretensions to civilization, we are savages.
But be it remembered, that nothing in this essay, or in any
other composition of its author, was ever intended, or could
be fairly understood, to discountenance a truly just and necessary
war is the subject of his reprehension.
Will men
ever learn from history that war is nothing but folly and wickedness?
Will civilized, educated Christian Americans ever learn from history
that war is nothing but folly and wickedness? Judging from the
persistent Christian support for war, the warfare state, and the
military, I am not optimistic.
Knox’s
"On the Folly and Wickedness of War," along with his
other anti-war writings and a biographical preface, are available
in the now updated Vicesimus
Knox on War and Peace.
