…O Lord our God, help us 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 their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst…
This is a brief excerpt from The War Prayer, a short story by Mark Twain. I hadn’t heard of it until recently, in spite of having taken a university course that supposedly covered Twain’s short fiction. I found that interesting, though perhaps it’s well known generally and I just missed it. It wasn’t published during Twain’s lifetime, as he feared being branded as unpatriotic. Isn’t that always the way, though? “Don’t call attention to the horror and inhumanity of war or you won’t be supporting our brave troops who are living it.”
—2p