Following Seán O’Conaill’s article on “The Myth of Redemptive Violence”, Pádraig McCarthy urges us to read “The War Prayer” by Mark Twain

Mark Twain (1835-1910) addressed the “myth of redemptive violence” in “The War Prayer”, written probably in 1904-1905, in response to the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. It was rejected by his publisher. It was first published after his death, in 1923.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue, gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half-dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front the church was filled the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams – visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded a war chapter from the Old Testament was read the first prayer was said it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation – “God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!”

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory.

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghostliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting.

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock. If the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and shall grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so!

“You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary.

“When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer.

He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them!

With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.

O Lord our God, help us to 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 unbefriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it.

For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love,
and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset
and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen.”

(After a pause)

“Ye have prayed it. If ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

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2 Comments

  1. Pádraig McCarthy says:

    The hymn Mark Twain quotes: “God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!” – This was a well-known hymn by Henry F Chorley (1842), used satirically. It has five stanzas. The first four end with the line, “Give us peace in our time, O Lord.” The fifth ends: “Thou wilt give peace in thy time, O Lord.”

  2. Sean O'Conaill says:

    So many thanks for this Pádraig. Mark Twain is next to Dickens in my list of favourite authors. ‘Tom Sawyer’ especially foreshadows the ascent of American capitalism in Tom’s feigning absolute satisfaction in whitewashing his Aunt Polly’s fence – to persuade his friends to part with their valuables, including vouchers for their knowledge of bible verses – just for the privilege of wielding his brush. As for Huckleberry Finn – nobody should miss reading that for Huck’s development of a conscience re the runaway slave, Jim. As for Twain’s drawing on the classic family feud between the Hatfields and McCoys for another episode in that novel – that foreshadows the absurdist self-destructive polarisation in US politics right now.

    I hadn’t known of the above piece on the US’s ‘neo-imperial’ wars in 1904/5 – and of course it was prescient of what would again happen in Europe in 1914 – dooming Christendom finally – the four Christian empires plunging the world into the war ‘to end war’.

    Twain (Sam Clemens) also sent up his own participation in the US Civil War of 1861-65, capturing the heroic posturing that tends to break out when wars loom – and I once remember reading with pleasure ‘A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur’ too, an experiment in science fiction and time travel. What literary treasures are missed now by younger generations with the ascendancy of visual fiction!

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