War and Peace in British Liter

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War and Peace in British

LiteratureBritish Literature

Introduction

War and peace wrestle with one another

throughout the pages of human history. If war

is broadly defined as armed conflict between two

conflicting factions, states, or tribes, then one

would have to say that war has always been a

part of human experience and is perhaps even a

defining characteristic of human beings.

Many people have pointed out that peace

presents special difficulties. It is harder to define

than war and it is more difficult to cultivate and

maintain. Aside from being the absence of war,

peace is often understood to include the stable

presence of law, order, and justice. Law, for

instance, is the product of centuries of patient

human experience gained throughout the history

of a given society. Justice is the fruit of reflection

on the way humans relate to one another in

society. A learned sense of justice cannot be

acquired overnight. Social order follows from

understanding, specifically from an awarenessthat reliable, established patterns of behavior

are useful to both individuals and societies.

British literature begins in the twelfth cen-

tury and provides a telling record of Englands

relationship with both war and peace. Early

British texts praise war and the warriors battle

prowess, citing it as an opportunity to show

greatness and valor. This attitude was dominant

through the late nineteenth century, when

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technological advances changed the way war

could be conducted, and therefore, how indivi-

duals responded to war. Imperialistic struggles,

the world wars, and later wars in Vietnam and

Iraq further distanced British literature from its

earlier romantic leanings. Questions about the

causes of war, the sacrifices required, and theend result of war have replaced visions of valor,

bravery, and wartime adventures. The desire for

peace has become as important to British war

literature as war itself.

Premodern Britain

British literature has roots in the early Middle

Ages, the period between the breakdown of the

Roman Empire and the Renaissance. Available

sources of information about this period, from

the fifth century A.D. to the fifteenth century, are

often hard to interpret. They are written in a

premodern form of English, and the cultures

represented in the works are frequently far

removed from modern society.

The first major work of British literature

was Beowulf. This poem is thought to have

been composed in the eighth century A.D., but

nothing is known of its author, and little is

known about how it was written down and

passed from generation to generation. The

poem was probably recorded in something simi-

lar to its present form shortly after 1100 A.D.

The setting of the poem is the northernEurope of Anglo-Saxon, or pre-British,

England. Warfare, especially on the sea, was a

common fact of life. The feudal kingdoms of

Denmark, Norway, and Anglo-Saxon England

struggled to extend and consolidate their terri-

tories. They fought sea battle after sea battle and

undertook expeditions as far as to the eastern

coast of Nova Scotia in North America.

It is telling that the subject of the first piece

of British literature is a warrior hero. Beowulf,

with its glorification of wartime heroism, leader-

ship, and manly courage became the template

for many subsequent British war tales.

Hrothgar, the king in Beowulf, faces a grotesque

monster, Grendel, who is destroying houses and

people. Beowulf is from a different tribal group;

the poem is largely concerned with his efforts to

free Hrothgars kingdom of Grendel and defend

it against Grendels equally terrible mother.

After defeating Grendel, Beowulf is celebrated

as a hero; he became an example of the ideal

warrior for future British tales of war: He was

adventurer most famous, far and wide through

the nations, for deeds of courage . . . his strength

and his courage.

In the middle of the tenth century, the Battle

of Malden became the topic of a major Anglo-

Saxon poem. This poem, like Beowulf, was satu-

rated with military feats, and drew on inherentlypoetic raw material: a dramatic battle fought in

991 among the wheat fields of Essex, an English

county. The attackers were led by the Viking

raider Olaf Tryggvasson with some three thou-

sand fighters. The Vikings made their camp on

an island on the north side of an estuary, while

the leader of the Anglo-Saxon force took a posi-

tion at high tide on the south side of the estuary.

A narrow causeway joined the two sides, and the

Anglo-Saxons would not permit the invaders to

cross to the mainland. The leader of the Anglo-

Saxons eventually agreed to the Vikings request

that they be allowed to cross the causeway and

fight on equal terms. A great battle ensued on

level ground, and the Anglo-Saxons were

defeated. Even though the Anglo-Saxons fought

to the death, the Vikings triumphed.

The Battle of Malden, like the seafaring con-

flicts that form the backdrop to Beowulf, estab-

lished a quarrelsome model for the literature of

the British Isles. In this manner, British culture

was formed from conflict. The decisive influence

of war emerges most clearly in the Battle of

Hastings in 1066, in which the early outline of

modern British culture was formed. At that bat-

tle, the Norman French army, under William the

Conqueror, defeated the Danish/Anglo-Saxon

forces and a French king took over the rule of

the British Isles. It was the last time that an

enemy force would successfully invade Britain.

It was also the plateau on which the classical

British monarchy would establish itself, with all

its dynastic struggles. From that point on, the

English language would move toward its blend

of French/Latin with Anglo-Saxon elements,

initiating the development of what has become

modern English.

Renaissance

Over four hundred years passed between the

Battle of Hastings in 1066 and the next major

war-related text in British literature, Sir Thomas

Malorys Le Morte dArthur (1485). During that

time, Britain was gradually moving toward the

increasingly centralized rule of monarchy and

church, and moving away from feudal

W a r a n d P e a c e i n B r i t i s h L i t e r a t u r e

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institutions loosely scattered over the Isles, in

which lords owned fiefs of land that they then

loaned to vassals. Europe and England were still

predominantly agricultural societies, but the

outlines of seafaring commerce, the growth of

small cities, the creation of larger standing

armies, and dynastic turf wars were slowly mak-ing themselves felt. Such developments, along

with the buildup of an increasingly homo-

geneousor similar throughoutculture,

transformed the rough culture of Beowulf

and Malden into the more familiar world of

fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England.

Sir Thomas Malorys (14051471) Le Morte

dArthur is a tale of medieval romance and chi-

valry that includes the knights of the Round

Table, the search for the Holy Grail, King

Arthurs wars against the Romans, and the

loves and wars of all the participants. However,Le Morte dArthur pursues all these themes from

the perspective of a later age, when the modern

world was rapidly replacing the medieval

world. The work is full of knightly combat and

war, but also of romanticized events, lords and

ladies, and great triumphs. Like Beowulf, King

Arthur is an archetype, or model against which

similar things are measured. He is a warrior hero

whose feats illustrate the connection between

leadership and battle prowess, a theme that was

to persist in British literature for many centuries

to follow.

Sir Arthur turned with his knights, and smote

behind and before, and ever Sir Arthur was in

the foremost press till his horse was slain

underneath him. . . .Then he drew his sword

Excalibur, but it was so bright in his enemies

eyes, that it gave light like thirty torches. And

therewith he put them a-back, and slew much

people.

One hundred and fifty years later, the

focus of British war literature shifted from

the mythical and legendary to the historical.

Samuel Daniel (15621619) wrote in the

Elizabethan England of Shakespeares day.

Daniel studied and worked as a diplomat in

Europe; when his work of praise to James I,

the new king, was published in 1603, he found

himself drawn into court circles. He was thus

a beneficiary of the noble patronage that was

the chief source of revenue for aspiring wri-

ters. Among Daniels works is a long, rhymed

poem about the English Civil Wars that

sprang up between two houses, The Civil

Wars Between the Two Houses of Lancaster

and York. These wars decisively shaped the

British monarchy and helped form the culture

of Elizabethan England. In 1485, as a final

result of this long-lasting Civil War, Henry

VII was chosen as the first Tudor King of

England. In the poem, Daniel depicts the

glory of battle for those destined to win:And with a cheerful voice encouraging / His

well experiencd and adventurous band, /

Brings on his army, eager unto fight; / And

placd the same before the king in sight. It

would not be unusual for an army to be

eager unto fight if they believed they were

fighting under a divinely chosen leader, and

monarchs were commonly believed to have

been appointed by God.

Prior to the War of the Roses, the English

government was embroiled in the so-called

Hundred Years War with the French govern-ment from 13371451. Many of William

Shakespeares (15641616) historical plays

focus on the dynastic struggles of the Hundred

Years War.

Henry V was first produced in 1599 at the

Globe Theater in London. It completes the

retelling of the Rebellion of the House of

Lancaster, which was at the center of the War

of the Roses. The War of the Roses had been

resolved by the House of Tudors accession to

the throne in the late fifteenth century. (In 1485,

Henry VII became king, to be followed byHenry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, who ruled

until 1603). That is, the War of the Roses, and

the struggles of King Henry V, King Henry

VI and King Richard III, occurred almost

a half century before Shakespeares time.

Shakespeares main source of material for his

historical plays was Raphael Holinshed, who

was using fragmentary sources himself. The

result was that Shakespeare was able to draw

on history, but he also reshaped it. In Henry V,

one of the greatest war plays, Shakespeare

depicts Henry as an idealized king, makinghim masculine, generous, and visionary.

In Act Four of the play, the English army is

exhausted and licking its wounds, about to

encounter the robust French army. King

Henrys job is to inspire his troops and to show

his solidarity with them before the Battle of

Agincourt in 1415. Like Daniel, Shakespeare

describes the privilege and pride of fighting for

a noble cause; in Henrys speech, participation in


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and peace. He had ample experience with war; he

was in England during the bloody period when

Cromwell overthrew the monarchy and in

America during various Native American con-

flicts and King Philips war. These experiences,

combined with those of the religiously intolerant

Pilgrim community of Massachusetts Bay thatbanished him, led Williams into his open and

pacifist position.

Andrew Marvell (16211678) was the

Assistant Latin Secretary to the Council of

State, a position in which he was exposed to the

operations of government at the highest level. In

that position, he served as tutor to the son of

one of Cromwells generals. Due to that connec-

tion and, possibly, to genuine belief, Marvell

greatly admired Cromwell. However, because

of Marvells dependency on the leader for his

job, it is hard to know what his true feelingswere. In An Horatian Ode upon Cromwells

Return from Ireland (1650), Marvell praises

Cromwells military vigor in a time when war

and combat were depicted as glamorous and

masculine, leaders were respected for their mili-

tary prowess over their policies and laws, and

peace was a time of boredom: So restless

Cromwell could not cease / In the inglorious

arts of peace, / But through adventurous war /

Urge` d his active star.

Thomas Hobbess (15881679) Leviathan

(1651) reminds readers that even philosophyhas its political consequences. The origins of

his book lie in what Hobbes felt he had discov-

ered. Like the seventeenth-century French

philosopher Descartes, Hobbes was certain that

science and mathematics, especially geometry,

were the proper tools for advancing human

knowledge. Hobbes, a strong supporter of

Charles I, the king who followed James I; as

Hobbes worked to refine his theories, he became

a victim of Oliver Cromwells intolerance. Exiled

to Holland, Hobbes went on to develop a mate-

rialistic and deterministic theory of human nat-

ure. He denied free will and the finer humanemotions such as altruism; he saw self-interest

as the overriding motive guiding human beings.

He espoused a Roman proverb attributed

to Plautus (c. 254 B.C.184 B.C.) homo homini

lupus est (man is a wolf to man). Given this

view of human nature, it followed that an abso-

lute monarch was the only appropriate ruler;

only this kind of absolute power could guaran-

tee the civility essential to society. Perhaps

unsurprisingly, Hobbes had much to say about

war, which he thought was a natural human

instinct. Peace, on the other hand, could only

be achieved and maintained under the power of

an absolute monarch.

Samuel Butler, in Hudibras (1663), wrote

a savage satire on a fictional leading militaryfigure in Cromwells army. Living in a time

when allegiances to leaders were often tempor-

ary or even deadly, Butler was eager to mock

the Puritan rulers under Cromwells reign.

However, given the nations war mentality in a

time of uneasy peace, he could not write a poem

critical of the reigning powers without risking his

life. Hudibras was not published until the

crown was restored and Charles II was king.

This long poem reflects its authors Royalist

and Anglican leaningslike those of Hobbes

and his contempt for the Cromwellians withtheir Presbyterian conviction of predestiny and

fate. The poem is a bitter assault on Cromwells

military leadership: [S]tyld of war, as well as

peace. / (So some rats, of amphibious nature, /

Are either for the land or water.)

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (1638

1706), shared Butlers satirical spirit. After tra-

veling in Europe for a time, he returned to

England shortly before the Restoration of the

monarchy with King Charles II. The Anglo-

Dutch conflict mentioned in Sackvilles Song

(Written at Sea in the First Dutch War, the

night before an Engagement) was a serious

one for the British, involving trading priorities

on the Gold Coast and in the Caribbean. While

Sackville did participate in the conflict, he was

more concerned that the women back home

know that their sailors at sea were trying to

write to them. Then if we write not by each

post, / Think not we are unkind; / Nor yet con-

clude our ships are lost / By Dutchmen or by

wind. This concern and its show of relative

vulnerability is a departure from the traditional

British war literature of noble warriors focused

only on the battle at hand.

One of the greatest of the British poets, John

Milton (16081674) composed two epic poems

that must be considered together, for they deal

with both war and peace. The first of these

poems is Paradise Lost (1667), and the second

is Paradise Regained (1671). In the late 1630s,

Milton traveled throughout Europe, where he

met Galileo and a number of other intellectuals

and writers. His interactions with these people




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deepened his understanding of the world and its

seething conflicts, which he was coming to

understand. He studied the great models of

ancient Greek and Latin poetry, Homers Iliad

and Virgils Aeneid, and in these models, Milton

found visionary narratives devoted to the issues

of war and peace.Paradise Lost, as the title suggests, is about

mans loss of paradise as a result of succumbing

to Satans temptation in the Garden of Eden: the

age-old battle between good and evil, indulgence

and restraint. At the beginning of Book II,

Satan, a fallen angel, is deciding whether to

wage war against Heaven. He is hopeful that

this war will ultimately restore peace: I give

not Heaven for lost: from this descent /

Celestial virtues rising will appear / More glor-

ious and more dread than from no fall. As a

fallen angel, he has rebelled against his creator,and taken with him into rebellion many power-

ful demon leaders. Though his struggle to over-

come God and Heaven is doomed, a vain war

with Heaven, Satan attempts to corrupt Adam

and Eve, the human creations of God. By doing

so, he can still claim victory by destroying his

enemys creations, even though his attack on

Heaven will fail,.

Paradise Regained (1671) concerns Christs

forty-day fast in the wilderness, and is more an

interior narrative than is the action-packed

Paradise Lost. Unlike Adam and Eve in the

Garden of Eden, Christ is able to resist the temp-

tations that Satan offers during his time in the

desert. As opposed to the war-like tone of

Paradise Lost, this poem contains long passages

praising peace in glowing terms and questioning

the advantages of war: They err who count it

glorious to subdue / By conquest far and wide,

to overrun / Large countries, and in field great

battles to win. The poem states that war does

nothing but devastate, and is critical of those

conquerors, who leave behind / Nothing but ruin

wheresoeer they rove, / And all the flourishing

works of peace destroy.

In Annus Mirabilis (Year of Miracles)

(1667), John Dryden (16311700) writes both

about the Dutch War and the rebirth of the city

of London after the disastrous fire of 1666.

Dryden thanks God for the miracle of British

survival and for Londons triumph over terrible

adversity. He echoes earlier writers such as

Daniel and Marvell in his praise of war and

military might, but Drydens praise inspired a

patriotism previously unseen in British war lit-

erature. After a difficult year in which most of

London was affected by the Great Fire, its citi-

zens needed encouraging words as well as a

robust and able national identity. Dryden

reminds readers that Britains naval might is

such that Our trouble now is but to makethem dare, / And not so great to vanquish as to

find. Though domestic troubles may plague the

English people, their soldiers and sailors are so

feared that their enemies hardly dare to engage

them in battle.

A military victory seemed to promise future

wealth to the British nation. In Annus

Mirabilis, Dryden goes on to boast of

Britains trading power, writing That those

who now distain our trade to share, / Shall rob

like pirates on our wealthy coast. This theme of

war as the gateway to commercial developmentwas relatively new in British war literature. The

connection between commerce and imperialism

will reappear as an important theme in works

about Captain Cook and Vancouver at the end

of the eighteenth century.

Thus far, war has been analyzed in terms of

monstrous struggle (Beowulf), military prowess

(Le Morte dArthur), exhortation and nobility of

soul (Henry V), military triumph (Marvells An

Horatian Ode), and the fundamental battles

of the human condition (Paradise Lost). In

Dryden, there is the frank and rousing battle

cry of commercial competition and market

success.

The Earl of Clarendon (16091674) wrote

yet another kind of war literature, a historical

memoir. As an elected member of the House of

Commons in 1640, Clarendon was initially a

strong critic of King Charles I, but eventually

changed his politics and began to support the

Royalists. When Cromwell overthrew the

Royalist forces in 1646, Clarendon went into

exile on the island of Jersey with the king and

the Royalist contingent. After the Restoration,

Clarendon returned to England and served

Charles II as Lord Chancellor. However, in the

course of providing these services, Clarendon

made the mistake of criticizing the kings extra-

vagance, and he was exiled again. While exiled,

he wrote The History of the Rebellion (published

170204). This book, based on conversations

with participants in the Civil War, addresses the

British Civil War in which Charles I was taken

prisoner by Parliament and finally beheaded;




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it also discusses the so-called Roundheads, who

inherited the government of Britain along with

Cromwell.

Period of Revolutions and After:

17701914The century of the British Civil War endedwith revolutions across Europe and North

America; of direct interest to England were

the French Revolution (178999) and the

American Revolution (177476). While the

American Revolution affected British colo-

nies, the British were also concerned about

the French Revolution. The government feared

the precedent set by the taking of the Bastille in

1789 and by the bloody persecutions that fol-

lowed. The resulting massacres, widespread

chaos, and dread in France led British conserva-

tives like Edmund Burke to cry out for restraintand gradualism rather than for immediate and

violent revolution. Burke articulated this view in

his Reflections on the Revolution in France

(1790). Though conservatives criticized the revo-

lution in France, in its earlier stages it was a

source of inspiration for some British writers

because of its focus on freedom and equality.

However, the Reign of Terror that followed the

revolution and the oppression under Napoleon

caused a gradual change in literary opinion.

The poet William Blake (17571827) appre-

ciated the apocalyptic power of a revolution,which overturned old values and promised new

spiritual freedom to humankind. Blake was both

an artist and author; he also claimed to have

experienced numerous visions of the angel

Gabriel, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. As his

poetic career unfolded, his artistic temperament

made him susceptible to the French Revolutions

energy and political momentum, as well as the

larger promise for humankind that it repre-

sented. In this passage from The Marriage of

Heaven and Hell, Blake writes about the Spirit

of Revolutionoften depicted as a womanthat is essential for the birth of a new world.

The term Albion in the poem refers to

England:

1. The Eternal Female groand! it was heard

over all the Earth:

2. Albions coast is sick, silent; the American

meadows faint!

3. Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the

lakes and the rivers andmutter across the

ocean! France rend down thy dungeon!

Not everyone rejoiced at the prospect of war

and revolution that seemed to threaten England

in the wake of the French and American

Revolutions. Romantic poets Samuel Taylor

Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Lord

Byron were greatly worried about a conflict

and war on British soil.Coleridge (17721834), known for his criti-

cism, his poetry, and his associations with the

great figures of English Romantic poetry, was

not enthusiastic about the French Revolution.

In the poem Fears in Solitude (1798), he writes

that it is easy to be a proponent of war when one

is far from the actual battlefields and not feeling

the repercussions: Secure from actual warfare,

we have loved / To swell the war-whoop, passio-

nate for war! / Alas! for ages ignorant of all / Its

ghastlier workings. Coleridge condems the lust

for war in a people who have not yet known thesuffering it will bring.

Wordsworth (17701850) went to France in

1792 and came to admire the French Revolution,

which he saw as a force for freeing mankind from

the shackles of received opinion and class hierar-

chies. In his long autobiographical poem, The

Prelude, which is divided into fourteen books, he

devotes the earlier books to the progress and

glory of freedom. By the time he reaches Book

Ten, which concerns both the French Revolution

and nature, he has significantly modified his ear-

lier views. The revolution in France seemed to

him to be pure danger and folly; he suggests that

its proponents need of lessons from sober, persis-

tent, and steady Nature, the foundation of all

human wisdom. Wordsworth thus joins Burke

in criticizing violent social change, though he

does so from a very different viewpoint. In

response to the Reign of Terror that followed

the revolution, Wordsworth writes Domestic

carnage now filled the whole year . . . all perish,

all, / Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, /

Head after head, and never heads enough / For

those that bade them fall.

George Gordon, Lord Byron (17881824),

was the most flamboyant of the English

Romantic poets and the one who exposed him-

self most extensively to the turbulent new world

of contemporary Europe. In 1816, pursued by

rumors of an incestuous relationship with his

sister and an accumulation of bad debts, Byron

left England for Europe; he was never to return

to his native land. He had published the first part

of his long poem, Childe Harolds Pilgrimage,




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in 1812; through the protagonist of that poem he

expresses and refines his own opinions and atti-

tudes toward current affairs in Europe.

Canto 3 of Childe Harolds Pilgrimage

reveals Byrons attitude toward the Battle of

Waterloo (1815), at which the British decisively

beat the French, and after which Napoleon was

driven into exile. In the poem, Byron refers to

France as Gaul and wonders about the true

outcome of the battle: Fit retribution! Gaul

may champ the bit / And foam in fetters;but

is Earth more free? By the time he completed

Childe Harolds Pilgrimage, Byron was a bit-

ter opponent of war, which wiped away all

achievement; still, throughout his own wander-

ings in Europe he delighted in striking military

poses and participating in conflicts, such as the

one devoted to liberating Greece from the

Ottoman Turks. His relationship to war wascomplex; like many men, Byron was both

repelled by and attracted to conflict.

As Britain developed into a colonial power

around the world, British citizens occupied many

areas across the globe. George Vancouver (1757

1798) joined the Royal Navy at the age of four-

teen. At age fifteen, he sailed with Captain James

Cook during the Captains second and ill-fated

third voyages. Vancouvers Voyage of Discovery

(1798) recounts how the party of sailors reached

the Hawaiian Islands. Due to some local tribal

frictions and a lack of diplomacy on Cooks part,Vancouver was beaten and held captive by the

islanders. This occurred only a day before Cook

was speared to death after a confrontation with

the islanders. Like the explorers of the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries, Vancouverand Cook met

with resistance and violence in their encounters

with native populations. After his experience on

the Hawaiian Islands, Vancouver went on to

further navigation and discovery, leaving his

name as well as his influence on the Northwest

Coast of the Americas. However, Vancouvers

work serves as a reminder that the tensionbetween explorer-settlers and native populations

was not unique to North America and often

resulted in bloody and violent battles.

Thomas Love Peacocks The War Song of

Dinas Vawr (1829) was written at a time when

the British Empire was beginning to consolidate

its international holdings. Peacock (17851866)

entered the service of Britains India Company

in 1819, becoming Chief Examiner of Indian

Correspondence in 1836, and retiring from the

company in 1856. His life experience was thus

professionally bound to the administration of

the British colony of India. The War Song of

Dinas Vawr is a satirical take on the popular

history ballads of the time, rhymes that glorified

war and battle. In historic epic poems such as theIliad and the Aeneid, wars are waged and sacri-

fices made for grand ideas, under the leadership

of men who inspire. In contrast, the men in

Peacocks poem have stolen a herd of sheep

and proceed to slaughter anyone who opposes

their theft, an absurd excuse for combat that

nonetheless results in a frenzy of violence: We

there, in strife bewildering, / Spilt blood enough

to swim in: / We orphand many children / And

widowd many women.

The poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(18091892) coincides with the Victorian age inliterature, a period characterized by concern for

issues such as the Darwins evolutionary discov-

eries, the extension of British Imperialism, the

slave trade, and the social ills generated by the

growing industrialization of the British eco-

nomy. Tennysons poem The Charge of the

Light Brigade (1854) records a suicidal attack

by British light cavalry over open country.

Though there was no hope of victory in the

attack, the soldiers charged at their leaders mis-

taken command, running to their certain death:

Not tho the soldier knew / Someone had blun-

derd. The charge occurred in the Battle ofBalaclava, in the Ukraine, during the Crimean

War (185456). Britain had entered that war to

protect British sea routes in the Dardanelles off

Turkey, joining forces with France and Turkey

against Russia. The battle depicted in The

Charge of the Light Brigade cost the lives of

close to two hundred of the more than six hun-

dred men who fought in the battle. The authors

attitude toward the war and the men of the Light

Brigade is ambiguous: it is difficult to tell

whether he believes the menand the war

itselfto be glorious and heroic or foolish andfatal. Even if Tennyson disapproves of the war,

he blames the leaders rather than the soldiers. Of

the soldiers he writes, Theirs not to make reply,

/ Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do

and die: / Into the valley of Death

Matthew Arnold (18221888) was one of the

great literary and cultural critics of the Victorian

era, and though he was not specifically a poet of

war (or peace), he took part in many of the




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influential events of his time. As a distinguished

Oxford professor, a well-traveled school inspec-

tor, and a frequent visitor to America and the

European continent, Arnold served as a kind of

social conscience of his time. His poem Dover

Beach (1867) reflects this role.

In this poem, Arnold surveys a calm sea,seeing both peace and sadness. He reflects on

the tide of religious faith, which was once full,

but has now receded, leaving mortals sure of

nothing except their love for one another. At

the end of the poem he turns to the world,

which, though it seems / to lie before us like a

world of dreams,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and

flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

As faith recedes and uncertainty takes its

place, human conflict is unchecked. In this

poem, Arnold gives a general and sweeping

indictment of war.

Thomas Hardy (18401928) is best known

as a novelist, the author of books like Far from

the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native,

Tess of the dUrbervilles, and Jude the Obscure.

He was also a poet, and expressed his view of war

as it developed during the Second Boer War

(18991902) and the World War I (19141918).

The Boer War aimed to assure the unimpeded

development of British trade in South Africa and

to guarantee access to South African gold mines.

Hardys poem Drummer Hodge (1902) illus-

trates the bleak fate the Boer War delivered to

British soldiers, many of whom died in a foreign

country without family or friends to bury them:

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest /

Uncoffinedjust as found. Though he died

on lonely foreign soil, Hodge has become a

part of the country he was fighting in: Yet por-

tion of that unknown plain / Will Hodge for ever

be. There is cold comfort in the soldiers death,which Hardy seems to imply will go unnoticed

and unremembered.

Not every Englishman saw the Boer War as

Hardy did. Arthur Conan Doyle (18591930) is

best known for his Sherlock Holmes stories, but

this Scottish eye doctor and spokesman for

British Imperialism also devoted himself to

historical and journalistic efforts. Doyle served

several months as a senior physician in a field

hospital during the Boer War and wrote The

Great Boer War (1901), in which he defended

Englands policy of imperialism and coloniza-

tion. In this work, Doyle trivializes the successes

of the Afrikanersthe enemyin the First Boer

War, which Britain lost. Doyle refers to those

battles as little more than skirmishes and claimthat if Britain had won that war, these Afrikaner

victories would have been forgotten.

World War I and After: 19151939The Crimean War and the Boer War were con-

sequences of British Imperialist ambition. World

War I, which occurred a bit more than a decade

after the Second Boer War, was a different mat-

ter. It was provoked by something that might

have seemed like an isolated incidenta Serbian

nationalist murdering the Austrian Archduke.

However, the war gained a volatile momentumof its own. Serbia drew its ally, Russia, into the

war. Austria invited Germany into an alliance

and Germany quickly accepted, invading

Belgium. The British entered in opposition to

Germany, as England was tied to Belgium in a

defensive alliance. France was bound to Russia

in a mutual defense treaty, and to England in a

looser pact. This sequence of rapidly moving

events collided in 1914, leaving Germany and

the Austro-Hungarian Empire fighting a world

war against the Western Allies and Russia.

The first global conflict in history was theresult. Military strategy and the science to

support it had evolved, making this war, with

its trench warfare, poison gas, and shell shock,

the nastiest on record. Some of the most inno-

vative and introspective literature about war

ever written came out of World War I; the

modernist movement in literature and art was

a response to the devastation of World War I.

The violence and inhumanity of the war pene-

trated throughout it and throughout the coun-

tries involved. Artists and writers felt that

meaningful communication of this horror

required entirely new forms of art and litera-ture. This war generated an outburst of distin-

guished lyric poems, once again reminding

readers of the relationship between war and

creative energies.

Irishman William Butler Yeats (18651939)

was a student of Irish folklore as well as the

supernatural and the occult. He wrote poems

and plays in Dublin, several of which addressed

the Irish struggle for independence from Britain.




10/19

He was elected to the Irish senate in 1922 and

was politically active throughout most of his life.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

In his poem An Irish Airman Foresees His

Death (1918), Yeats articulates the horrible

truth of an airmans reality, the realization that

his death will do nothing for his country and is

essentially a waste. This sentiment echoes the

feeling of alienation and resignation in Hardys

Drummer Hodge. Still, the airman continues

on his mission: Those that I fight I do not hate, /Those that I guard I do not love . . . No likely

end could bring them loss / Or leave them hap-

pier than before. For a brief moment he is

ecstatic in pure identification with his mission,

one with the air, one with the sky. In this sense,

the airman meets a far more ennobling death

than does Drummer Hodge.

In his poem Easter 1916 (1916), Yeats

brings his powerful poetic innovation to bear

on a topic close to his heart: the struggle for

Irish independence. The poem was occasioned

by a small but bloody rebellion in which a gath-

ering of Irish patriots, using weapons supplied

by Germany, plotted to drive out the British

occupiers. In the end, everything went wrong

for the Irish rebellion: their weapon supplies

were intercepted, some of their top leaders were

arrested, and their military strategy proved

immature. In short order the rebels surrendered,

downtown Dublin suffered major damage, andthe rebellion was brought to a halt. This would

apparently have been the end of it, had the

British handled their success carefully.

The British, however, fed the violence of

resistance and the power of Yeatss poem.

Many of the rebellion leaders were executed,

shocking the Irish public. Yeats addresses

the terrible beauty of this turn of events

in Easter 1916, one of literatures most

Soldiers and civilians shoot at each other during the Easter Rebellion, Dublin, Ireland, 1916 Getty Images




11/19

compelling commentaries on power and suffer-

ing in war. After celebrating several of the

beloved Irish individuals who fell victim to the

rebellion, Yeats sums up the mission of his rebel-

lion poem, and extends his praise to those

who fell:

I write it out in a verseMacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

The terrible beauty is the beauty of sacrifice

for the ideal of independence. As in his poem on

the Irish airman, Yeats finds a kind of beauty in

war, a beauty that may depend on its futility.

This profound perspective does not appear in

any of the other texts assembled here.

Poet Rupert Brooke (18871915) joined theBritish forces in World War I, but only served

one day of limited action, during the British

retreat from Antwerp in Belgium. He died in

1915 on his way to fight in the Battle of

Gallipoli, not from war wounds but from blood

poisoning. He was buried on the Greek Island of

Skyros. In contrast to Hardys Drummer Hodge,

whose burial on foreign soil was depicted as

bitter and alienating, the soldier in Brookes

The Soldier (1915) considers falling in a for-

eign country to be a point of pride; it is an honor

to make such a sacrifice for his country: If Ishould die, think this only of me: / That theres

some corner of a foreign field / That is forever

England.

Wilfred Owen (18931918) was killed in

action in France just seven days before the

Armistice that ended World War I. His view of

the war differed greatly from Brookes and more

closely echoes the worries and isolation of

Yeatss Irish airman and Hardys Drummer

Hodge. Owens poem Anthem for Doomed

Youth (1920) speaks to the ultimate fear in the

heart of a soldier: dying anonymously on a bat-

tlefield where men die as cattle. There will be

no funeral, no bell to mark his passing, Only the

monstrous anger of the guns. / Only the stutter-

ing rifles rapid rattle. None of the optimism of

Brookes poem is found here; disillusionment

was becoming an increasingly common theme

in British war literature at this time. Owens

words are a far cry from the praise of war and

the search for valor found in Shakespeares

Henry V.

In her short novel The Return of the Soldier

(1918), Rebecca West (18921983) writes an

intimate war story that flowers into a broad

commentary on World War I, featuring an inter-

esting blend of feminism and conservatism.

In the novel, two women await Captain

Chris Baldrys return from war: his wife, Kitty,and his cousin, Jenny. Jenny, living in the lovely

Thames country house Chris built, yearns to see

her cousin return: [L]ike most Englishwomen of

my time, I was wishing for the return of a soldier.

Disregarding the national interest and every-

thing else . . . I wanted to snatch my Cousin

Christopher from the wars.

Chris returns from the war with amnesia.

Though the year is 1916, he believes he is in the

year 1901, knows nothing of his wife, and recom-

mences wooing Margaret, a pub keepers daugh-

ter whom he had been courting fifteen years

earlier. Though Chriss ailment concerns the

women, they worry that if he recovers, he will

be sent right back to the battlefields. They are

left to agonize over which state is better: illness

and peace, or health and war. He eventually

recovers and is called back to join his unit in

the war, facing a brutal reality which will no

doubt bereave all three of these women. West

feels the world is rotting, and writes with deep

sympathy for the anxiety and sadness of women

waiting for soldiers to return.

David Jones (18951974) enlisted in the war

in 1914, and served extensively in Flanders and

France. From this experience, he drew his extra-

ordinary poetic novel, In Parenthesis (1937).

However, he does not limit his narrative to his

personal experience. Jones draws from Welsh

and Anglo-Saxon myths and legends to create

this epic tale, which follows Private John Balls

company through preparations for battle, the

battle itself, and on to the end of the battle,

which results in the death of Balls entire com-

pany. The use of mythological and religious

sources serves to connect the characters in thiswar poem with the tradition of British epics such

as Beowulf, Le Morte dArthur, and Henry V.

Jones refers to the battlefield as a place of

enchantment, connecting it to Malorys Le

Morte dArthur. He writes that he called his

novel In Parenthesis because he had written it

in a kind of space between . . . the war itself was

a parenthesishow glad we thought we were to

step outside its brackets at the end of 18.




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Frank OConnor (190366), author of

Guests of the Nation (1931), brings readers to

the Irish civil war, the long intractable conflict

between Catholic and Protestant factions on the

island.

In1918two yearsafter YeatssEaster1916

poemOConnor joined the Irish RepublicanArmy (IRA) and took part in actions designed

to do away with British rule. He continued as

an activist, but year by year, his commitment to

writing took precedence. OConnor was at his best

in the short story form, and nowhere does he deal

better with the problem of wartime conflict than

in his story Guests of the Nation.

In the story, the Irish Republican Army has

taken two British military hostages. A friendship

develops between the two hostages and their cap-

tors. Off in the countryside, in a secret location

where the IRA keeps its prisoners, the two pairsplay cards at night, talk politics, and exchange

family news. Then an order comes from the IRA

commandant to execute the two Englishmen. The

storys real import resonates from this point, as

the author takes the reader inside the emotions of

the four major charactersparticularly the two

anguished Irishmen. This fascinating and under-

stated tale leaves a strong impression that the

ideology of war is ultimately deeply inhuman,

whatever its initial purposes.

George Orwell (19031950) lived in the

British territory of Burma from 1922 to 1927,where he worked in Police Administration. In

that position, he experienced firsthand the effects

of British Imperialism. Disgusted with imperialist

policy, Orwell went to Spain in the 1930s to fight

with the United Workers Marxist Party in their

struggle against the dictatorship of Francisco

Franco. Franco was a ruthless Spanish ruler

who espoused the same fascist ideology that was

sweeping Germany and Italy at the time. Orwell

was wounded in the neck while fighting. During

his recuperation, he discovered that he did

not believe in Marxism, a political belief that

the workers of a country should reclaim thewealth that they have created for the ruling

class. Instead, Orwell embraced the milder

forms of British socialism, a political ideology

aimed at creating a classless society, but deter-

mined to overthrow the status quo. Orwells

book Homage Catalonia (1952) grew from these

experiences.

The book describes the northern Spanish

city of Barcelona saturated with the ugly

atmosphere of war, yet full of hope for a coming

revolution. From this revolution, people expect

a new sense of freedom and equality among

human beings. This book, unlike any other sur-

veyed in this essay, is written as the creation of

an intellectual, one testing out ideas, acting

through an ideology. The reader follows thecourse of a mans search for answers about

how to organize society, deliberations carried

out in the heat of a battle that engaged many

Western intellectuals during the period of

Francos regime in Spain. Orwell also shows

that war never serves the ideals of any system

of thought, instead imposing its own vicious

rhythms on what might have initially seemed to

be a struggle for a just cause. War does not exist

to make a point, but to vent frustrations as well

as hostility and to satisfy the craving for new

territory.

Orwells disenchantment with Marxism

underwrites another influential work, one

which is also concerned with the conflicts of his

time. In Animal Farm (1945), Orwell creates a

parable. His story illustrates a moral about ani-

mals who, like the Russian Communists of the

time, take power into their own hands and refuse

to passively submit to the dictates of their human

masters. Major, the prize boar, addresses the

barnyard and incites a revolution during which

the animals take over their farm; no sooner do

they do so than they begin to bicker over power

and find themselves being manipulated by ani-mal rulers that are not very different from their

human masters. Major reminds his comrades

that the single solution to all their problems is

to remove man, the source of overwork and

insufficient food. The animal revolution, how-

ever, ultimately proves a disappointment; it sim-

ply installs a new tyranny, which Orwell suggests

is the inevitable result of revolutionary social

revision.

Orwell strikes a new note in his writing

about the facts of war and social change. While

not without hope, he challenges any convictionthat violent change is the best way to lend force

to valuable and idealistic beliefs.

Fred Thomas, like Orwell and many other

English intellectuals in the thirties, served

in the British anti-tank battery of the 15th

International Brigade in Spain. He was there

to join the battle against Franco. Thomas, too,

went off to war for ideological reasons and soon

found the conflict to be more complex than




13/19

he had anticipated. Thomas was wounded in

action twice, fighting in heavy battles at

Brunete, Teruel, and on the Ebro River, and he

spent long periods recuperating in the hospital.

Furthermore, Thomas, like Orwell, found that,

in practice, the ideology of the anti-Franco

forces was not what he wanted it to be. His

diary of this struggle, To Tilt at Windmills

(1996), offers intimate glimpses of the Spanish

war in the late 1903s. The title of the memoir

recalls Miguel de Cervantess Don Quixote(1605) and its main characters quest for the

romance of war and chivalry in a world where

it no longer existed.

Thomas is less abstract than Orwell and

presents a compelling picture of daily suffering

in the war. He also captures the ultimate frustra-

tion of fighting a war on foreign soil, where one

remains a stranger to the end even though one is

committed to the cause.

World War II: 1940 into the LateTwentieth CenturyThe Spanish Civil War, the growth of the Nazi

ideology in Germany, and the consolidation of

Communist power in the (former) Soviet Union

all cast a shadow over the Western world, a sha-

dow that suggested imminent disaster to many.

The catastrophe came in the form of a Second

World War characterized by a systematic human

brutality that dwarfed that of the First World

War. From the extermination of six million Jewsin the concentration camps to the atomic bombs

dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, World

War II took the horror and destruction of war

to a new level.

In the four novels of The Raj Quartet

(196675), Paul Mark Scott (19201978) takes

readers out of the world of Western wars and into

the military and colonial atmosphere of post-

Independence India. Scott places his extensive

Damaged buildings in Cannon Street in London during the Blitz of World War II, May 29, 1941 Getty Images




14/19

fictions in this setting; he also uses it to frame his

broad understanding of cultural differences and

the intricacies of colonialism, so much of which

derives from the simple exercise of military

power.

In The Raj Quartet, Scott carefully analyze

the social tensions in military and administrativecircles in India during the last five years of the

British colonial occupation (194247). This per-

iod of occupation was commonly called the Raj.

The theme of these long novels is the way British

power in India was stifled by obstacles such as the

powerful resistance headed by Mahatma Gandhi.

Scott examines life in military circles and

studies the last stages of an Empire motivated

by economic concerns and a quest for military

dominance. Scotts theme in that context is the

failure of the British Empires civilizing mis-

sion in India. In Scotts novels, that missionaimed to bring peace and economic development

to an undeveloped country. That intention went

astray because its execution was fundamentally

paternalistic, like that of a parent overseeing a

child. Because of this overbearing attitude on the

part of the British, the Indians were not properly

prepared for life after the Empire.

Peace was elusive in Britain, as well. Dame

Edith Sitwell (18871964) played a prominent

role in the London art scene. One of her most

successful poems, Still Falls the Rain (1942),

draws on her experiences during the Germanblitz over London. Her perspective was that of

a woman living in a war zone and suffering the

devastating effects of constant attack; she thus

presents a new facet of British war literature.

Works such as Sitwells remind the reader that

the casualties of war do not occur only on the

battlefield. She likens the dark rain that fell dur-

ing Christs crucifixion to that which is falling

over the world during war; both events, she con-

tends, involve the murder and sacrifice of inno-

cents. War, then, is essentially sacrilegious, an

action against God: Then sounds the voice of

One who like the heart of man / Was once a childwho among beasts has lain / Still do I love,

still shed my innocent light, my Blood, for thee.

Like Sitwell, Elizabeth Bowen (18991973)

wrote about the German bombing of London in

her novel The Heat of the Day (1945). Her text

explodes with descriptions of terrifying daylight

bombing raids as experienced by average peo-

ple. Passages of chilling violencewalls falling,

bottles tipped upside down, street pavements

crackinginsert themselves into scenes from

ordinary British lives: housewives preparing

dinner, husbands hurrying back on the tube

from a day of work, and lovers furtively joining.

The last is of particular relevance to the story,

which concentrates on the way strong personal

emotions co-exist with a virtually disintegratingpublic life.

By showing lovers subjected to searing

wartime attacks, Bowen makes it clear that life

goes on, even in wartime. Life in wartime is none-

theless totally transformed by challenges and dis-

coveries absent from the calmer climate of peace.

The horrors of war are vividly presented here, yet

Bowen also illustrates the strange fascinations of

a world turned upside down by conflict.

W. H. Auden (19071973) was another

writer who went to Spain in support of the

opposition to Franco; unlike Orwell, he wasnot appreciated, for he was not a member of

the Communist Party. As a result, by the late

1930s Audens tone was less politically radical

than it had been in the previous decade,

although he remained an intense foe of totali-

tarianism, a regime in which the state controls

almost all aspects of public and private life.

During World War II, Auden worked with the

American Army, surveying German civilians

psychological reactions to bombing. From this

direct experience of the damage wrought by

war, Auden brought forth texts like The

Shield of Achilles (1955), a modernization of

Homers famous shield description at the end of

the Iliad. Like Milton and many other of the

greatest British writers, Auden drew inspiration

from one of the greatest epic war poems in world

literature.

In Greek mythology, Achilles loses his

shield after loaning it to a friend who dies in

battle during the Trojan War. This is a particu-

larly significant event in Homers version of

myth and war. Achilles mother goes to the

god of fire, Hephaestus, and asks him to forge

a new shield for her son. On the shield created

by the craftsman god are depictions of bucolic

landscapes and images of war and peace. In

Audens poem, however, all images of peace

on the shield have been lost and replaced with

horrible images of war, including the concen-

tration camps where they were small / and

could not hope for help and no help came: /

What their foes liked to do was done, their

shame / Was all the worst could wish. The




15/19

modern form of brutish, dehumanizing warfare

is thus denied any connection to the noble wars

of antiquity.

The poet Henry Reed (19141986) was in

the British Army from 1941 to 1942. His early

poetry dealt with political events that occurred

before and during World War II. His perspectiveon the war experience in Lessons of the War is

ironic and fresh, contrasting the protocol and

bureaucracy of preparation for war with the

messy and lethal experience of the battlefield.

Lessons of the War (1941) was based on the

words of Reeds drill instructor, and throughout

the poem, young soldiers are given instructions

on weaponry, the science of judging distances,

and strategies for carrying out unarmed hand-

to-hand combat. Despite all their technical train-

ing, the narrator emphasizes a different weapon:

While awaiting a proper issue, we must learnthat lesson / Of the ever-important question of

human balance. / It is courage that counts.

Reeds Lessons of War is reminiscent of

American novelist Stephen Cranes The Red

Badge of Courage (1895), which raises the funda-

mental problem of courage: soldiers ask, Am I

brave enough? Reed refuses military posturing

and reduces the military enterprise to a simple

emotional level, refusing to imply scorn for the

coward or to be taken in by the posturing of the

hero.

James Fentons (1949 ) poem A German

Requiem was written thirty-six years after the

end of World War II, and serves as a reminder

that war does not end when the fighting stops. In

this poem, Fenton is engaged with the issues of

historical guilt, memory, and imagination as

they play out in the minds of victims and survi-

vors of wars such as the one that engulfed Nazi

Germany. World War II haunts its survivors and

fills them with horrible memories that they can-

not forget. Yet the things they can no longer

remember cause the most terrible pain: joy, per-

sonal recollections, and life before the war.

It is not what theybuilt. It is whattheyknocked

down.

It is not the houses. It is the space between the

houses.

It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets

that no longer exist.

It is not your memories which haunt you.

It is not what you have written down.

It is what you have forgotten, what you must

forget.

Many cite World War II as a war waged with

moral certainty. In other words, the evil in the

situationHitler, the Nazis, the concentration

camps, the bombing of Pearl Harborwas easily

and clearly identified. It was easy to define the

roles in us versus them, a division at the heart of

all successful warfare. Most Allied soldiers andcitizens (French, British, and American) believed

that World War II was just and essential to end-

ing unrestrained oppression and genocide. The

wars that followed in the twentieth century, how-

ever, often lacked that feeling of moral certainty.

The Vietnam War is a prime example of this

difficulty. The United States entered a war on

vague terms and fought an enemy that blended

seamlessly with civilians. The U.S. government

concealed information; thousands of soldiers

lost their lives in a cause that became increasingly

unclear; and the war became known as a quag-

mire, a situation from which there was no easyexit. To be defeated in war, as the United States

was, also brought home to the nation the precar-

ious nature of military conflict.

Throughout the world, people protested

Americas military presence in Vietnam. Poet

Adrian Mitchell (1932 ) wrote the poem To

Whom It May Concern (1965) as a protest

against the war, which would last for another

ten years after the poem was written. I smell

something burning, hope its just my brains. /

Theyre only dropping peppermints and daisy-

chains / So stuff my nose with garlic / [. . .

] / Tellme lies about Vietnam.

Mitchells poem explores the distrust that

many felt toward the U.S. governments official

version of events in Vietnam. The something

that Mitchell smells burning is napalm, a gaso-

line-based weapon that developed during World

War II and used extensively on military and

civilian targets during the Vietnam War. The

reference in the next line to peppermints and

daisy-chains satirizes the way the government

justified their actions, claiming that their pre-

sence in Vietnam was almost a positive one,bringing gifts to the Vietnamese people.

Mitchell finds those claims so implausible that

he asks to have his senses taken away so that he

can believe these lies about the Vietnam War.

Laurie Lee (19141997) wrote a trilogy of

autobiographical works: Cider with Rosie (1959),

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969),

and A Moment of War: A Memoir of the Spanish

Civil War (1991). The second volume covers Lees




16/19

departure from home in the 1930s and his wander-

ings through Europe. It ends with Lees being

evacuated from Spain by a British ship, then

returning to Europe and entering Spain through

the Pyrenees mountains to join the Republican

anti-Franco forces, the same forces Orwell and

Thomas joined. The third volume in the trilogy

claims to be an eyewitness account of the war

itself, with a full discussion of Lees difficult

quest to enroll in the International Brigade. The

book appeared in the United States in 1993 and

was praised for its extraordinary power and

honesty.

In 1998, British newspapers reported star-

tling news from Bill Alexander, secretary of the

Association of the International Brigade, the

foreign volunteer fighters in the Spanish Civil

War. Alexander had evidence that Lee had not

participated in the war, and that his memoir was

fictional. This news, apparently, was not a sur-

prise to everyone; as early as 1991, Lees book

had been described as fiction.

Lees fictional autobiography signals aninteresting change in war literature: a rekind-

ling of the desire to be associated with the glory

and romance of war. For hundreds of years,

much war literature had favored reality over

romance, focusing on the devastation and

search for meaning that war ignites. This was

a shift from the glorification and romance of

war depicted in ancient texts such as the Iliad,

Beowulf, and Le Morte dArthur. Perhaps Lee

RHETORIC OFWAR

There is a threshold above which common poli-

tical speech shifts into the moving realm of ora-

tory. Abraham Lincoln achieved this kind of

breakthrough in his Second Inaugural Address,

as did the ancient Greeks and Romans, who

were attuned to the importance of great rhetoric.

Modern readers still study Pericles funeral ora-

tion, a product of Athens in the fifth century

B.C.; we also still read Ciceros Orations against

the Catilinarian Conspiracy, made in Rome dur-

ing the first century B.C.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill

(18741965) and American President Franklin

D. Roosevelt (18821945) are part of this

grand tradition. External circumstances drove

these men to harness the rhetorical power of

speech; as a result, they have left their mark on

history.

World War II presented huge challenges to

the civilized world as Nazi Germany and

Imperial Japan threatened the Western demo-

cratic tradition. Though this challenge had

been building for several decades, the Axis

powers threat exploded into every aspect of the

Allies public life in the late 1930s. Military,

social, and economic life were all focused ondefeating Hitler and the Japanese. World War

II commanded global attention from 1939 to

1945, from Pearl Harbor and the German inva-

sion of Poland to the atom bomb over Nagasaki.

By the end of the war, a fatal split emerged

between the former Allies as Russia followed

its own path into a kind of communism and the

Western Allies attempted to reconstruct their

badly defeated former enemies. In this devastat-

ing setting, Roosevelt and Churchill were called

upon to articulate their power, sympathy, and

resolve. Whole peoples needed to be inspired and

encouraged.

Roosevelt described December 7, 1941

when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harboras

a date that will live in infamy. Roosevelt

addressed the nation on December 8, 1941,

in a famous speech rallying Americans and

calling for a declaration of war. The Japanese

had been carrying on various diplomatic

negotiations with the U.S. government while

preparing these attacks. In the face of their

unprovoked and dastardly attack, the

President spoke on behalf of the nation: The

people of the United States have already

formed their opinions and well understand

the implications to the very life and safety ofour nation.




17/19

wanted to link himself with the valor and brav-

ery associated with World War IIera battles

against fascist aggression, just as the ancients

wrote to connect themselves with great battles

and leaders.

ConclusionOver time, the portrayal of war and peace has

changed in British literature. Patterns emerge

during the historical development of these war

stories, and the texts surveyed here display a

variety of attitudes toward war. When one ana-

lyzes how these attitudes have evolved, several

trends become evident.

The concept of warfare in Beowulf, The

Battle of Malden, and Le Morte dArthur seems

premodern to contemporary readers. These texts

describe war as an exercise in prowess and victi-

mization, an opportunity for glory and mascu-

line feats, and an open struggle in a time when

death was a stronger presence in human affairs.

When war is a rough fact of life, little literary

attention is paid to the specifics of peace.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth cen-

tury, there are occasional notes of lyrical patri-

otism or military enthusiasm. Samuel Daniel

praises Henry VII, the first Tudor King, for his

prowess in battle; Shakespeare, in Henry V, gives

brilliant expression to British patriotism; and

Andrew Marvell, in his Horatian Ode on

Cromwells victory. This kind of patriotism is

not much in style today, but earlier writers

Roosevelts Infamy speech is an impas-

sioned request for Congress to declare war on

Japan, but its brevity belies the gravity of its

impact: Hostilities exist. There is no blinking

at the fact that our people, our territory and our

interests are in grave danger. The speech has a

simple and forceful unity, appropriate to crisis,

but still calm and determined: With confidence

in our armed forceswith the unbounded deter-

mination of our peoplewe will gain the inevi-

table triumph. The nation was inspired by

Roosevelts words and went willingly into battle.

In contrast, Churchills Iron Curtain speech

in 1946 was a long, reflective, and almost scholarly

response to events after World War II. His speech

addresses the gradual origins of the cold war

between the West and the Soviet Union and for-

mulates the dangers of these anxious and baffling

times. This speech that coined the term iron

curtain, which described the division of Eastern

and Western Europe that lasted until 1989.

There are several masterful touches in

Churchills speech, and they all spring from his

rhetorical skill. The image of the iron curtain

summed up the eras dilemma. It described the

situation, but it also provided language that

would endure into the futurefor example the

lifting of the Iron Curtain symbolized by the fall

of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He reminds the

United States that its role as a world power

makes it necessary that the constancy of mind,

persistency of purpose, and the grand simplicity

of decision shall guide the conduct of English-

speaking peoples in peace as they did in war. He

also expresses his hope that the pain and suffer-

ing of World War II will make it possible to

guard the homes of the common people from

the horrors and miseries of another war.

Churchills Iron Curtain speech is per-

haps his best known oration. Its rhetorical

strength derives from the way it marks off a

specific geographical area and lists the captive

cities of the region, each of them dignified and

noble, but still part of the Soviet sphere.

The embedded warning about the increasing

measure of control puts Moscow on notice

that further encroachment will not be toler-

ated, yet Churchill still allows for the possibi-

lity of negotiation. These are small points in a

long and artful speech, but they show the

finesse which Churchill achieved time and

again during the pregnant military-economic

moment that characterized Western democra-

cies in the era of the World War II.




18/19

expressed less ambiguous attitudes toward war

and military victory. Consider a World War I

poem like Rupert Brookes The Soldier. The

patriotism of that poem will sound naive and

insincere to readers brought up with the

Vietnam, Korean, and Iraq wars.

By the nineteenth century and on throughWorld War I, compassion for the ordinary sol-

dier becomes an important literary theme. This

note is more elegiac and less strident than the

full-scale assaults on war which will emerge in

the novels of World War II. Consider

Tennysons Charge of the Light Brigade,

Hardys Drummer Hodge, and Wilfred

Owens Anthem for Doomed Youth. These

texts are sad and compassionate, reflecting the

sentimentality that was a defining element of the

Victorian Era in England.

There is a sharp contrast between these sen-timental views and the attitudes expressed by

World War II and Vietnam-era writers such as

Mitchell, Fenton, or Auden. War as they knew it

is almost devoid of humanity; as a result, the

soldiers fighting it were cut back to the bone of

mere existence.

In the last century, some writers have turned

to reflection on war, sometimes engaging in war

as part of an ideology. Traces of the intellectua-

lization of the military enterprise appeared long

before this time, but its strength as a theme

shines forth in this period. Vancouver, Hardy,

Scott, and Doyle were all involved in Englandscolonial endeavors, and Orwell and Thomas

foughtand wrotefor the cause of the Spanish

Civil War.

War and peace are facets of humanity; as

such, they will always find a place in literature.

The evolution of British attitudes toward war will

continue in the face of future conflicts. Englands

war literatureand increasingly, peace literat-

urewill change as well, recording the countrys

shifting perspective on these subjects.

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ChurchillIronCurtain.hmtl (September 9, 2005), origin-

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March 5, 1946.

Roosevelt, Franklin D., Infamy Speech, The University

of Oklahoma Law Center, www.law.ou.edu/hist/

infamy.html (September 9, 2005), originally presented

to Congress on December 8, 1941.

Arnold, Matthew, Dover Beach, in Vol. 2 of The

Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed., edited

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Auden, W. H., The Shield of Achilles, in Vol. 2 of The

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Butler, Samuel, Hudibras, in Vol. 1 of The Norton

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Documents

War and Peace in British Liter