They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Unconfined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound. Thomas Hardy, Drummer Hodge
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die. Thomas Hardy, In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’ 1915, from Moments of Vision (1917)
War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874
The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art … We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. John Foster Dulles, 1956
War will cease when men refuse to fight. Pacifist slogan from 1936
We shall not be moved. Labor & civil rights song 1931
We shall overcome. Campaign song from before American Civil War
Make love, not war. Student slogan, 1960s
War is like love, it always find a way. Bertolt Brecht
Parvenus who have grown rich through the war are especially detested. Evelyn, Princess Blucher, ‘An English Wife in Berlin’
The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. John Bright, re Crimean war
He knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review 1843
Everlasting peace is a dream, and not even a pleasant one and war is a necessary part of God’s arrangement of the world … Without war the world would deteriorate into materialism. Helmuth von Moltke
War makes thieves and peace hangs them. George Herbert
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. Dwight D Eisenhower
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Dwight D Eisenhower
It is the period between two wars – the long weekend it has been called. E M Forster, The Development of English Prose between 1918 and 1939
War is naughty. Naughty naughty. Spitting Image s2e1, Boy George’s song, ITV 1985
25,880. When we, the Workers all demand: ‘What are WE fighting for?’ … Then, we’ll end that stupid crime, that devil’s madness – War. Robert W Service, Michael, 1932
Oh what a lovely war. Joan Littlewood & Charles Chilton, stage show 1963
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. Henry Emerson Fosdick
War is an ugly thing. But not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worse than war is worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. John Stuart Mill
Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come. Carl Sandburg, ‘The People, Yes’, 1936
Old soldiers never die,
They simply fade away. J Foley, Old Soldiers Never Die, song 1920
In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials counts only for the remaining quarter. Napoleon Bonaparte
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds,
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, –
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. William Shakespeare, Richard III I i 9
War, war, no peace! Peace is to me a war. William Shakespeare, King John III i 39, Constance
There is no sure foundation set on blood,
No certain life achieved by others’ death. ibid. IV ii 104-105, King John to self
So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands far remote ...
The edge of war, like an ill-shethed knife,
No more shall cut his master. William Shakespeare, Henry IV I i 1-4 & 17-18, King Henry
O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention;
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene. William Shakespeare, Henry V chorus
Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt? ibid.
And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord,
That you should fashion, wrest, or bow your reading,
Or nicely charge your understanding soul
With opening titles miscreate, whose right
Suits not in native colours with the truth ...
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war;
We charge you in the name of God take heed.
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops,
And every one a woe, a sore complaint
’Gainst him whose wrongs give edge unto the swords. ibid. I ii 13-17 & 21-27, King Harry to Canterbury et al
Now all the youth of England are on fire,
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies. ibid. II i chorus
For now sits Expectation in the air
And hides a sword from hilts upon the point
With crowns imperial, crowns and coronets,
Promised to Harry and his followers. ibid. II i 8
May I with right and conscience make this claim? ibid. I ii 96, King Harry to Canterbury
Never king of England
Had nobles richer and more loyal subjects,
Whose hearts have left their bodies here in England
And lie pavilion in the fields of France. ibid. I ii 126-129, Westmoreland to King Harry et al
While that the armed hand doth fight abroad,
Th’ advised head defends itself at home. ibid. I ii 178-179, Exeter to King Harry et al
When we have matched our rackets to these balls,
We will in France, by God’s grace, play a set
Shall strike his father’s crown into the hazard,
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturbed
With chases. ibid. V I ii 261-266, King Harry to Exeter et al
And honour’s thought
Reigns solely in the breast of every man ... For now sits expectation in the air ... O England! – model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart. ibid. II prologue
Therefore the fierce tempest is he coming,
In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove. ibid. II iv 99-100, Exeter to King Charles et al