Twain’s War Prayer, or everything old is new again

As I mentioned in my last post, the bookconscious household spent October packing up, moving, and unpacking. We are so happy to be mostly settled in our new (to us) home, back in New Hampshire. I noodled around a couple of books while in transit — I read most of Out of Africa and some of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Madness.

My mental and physical chaos weren’t conducive to concentrating for long periods of time. And I was having a hard time keeping track of where various books were — we packed you-don’t-want-to-know-how-many book boxes. When I’d reached the zenith of my move discomfort level, on the very last weekend in our small town in Georgia, I went to the library book sale.

We didn’t really need any more books to pack, but I am a book junkie: I absolutely love the little jolt of pleasure that comes with finding a treasure among the trash at book sales. I found a few potential gems, including one book that fit both my state of mind and my need for portable reading material I could slip in my bag: The War Prayer by Mark Twain.

My edition is illustrated by John Groth. Twain wrote the piece and submitted it to Harper’s Bazaar in 1905, when he had become disillusioned by the Spanish American War, specifically the war in the Philippines. The magazine rejected it, and because he had an exclusive contract, he couldn’t sell it elsewhere. He told a friend in a letter, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.” His prediction was accurate, and the prayer remained in his papers until 1923, when it came out in a posthumous collection.

The War Prayer is a short piece, describing the scene in a small town church, where the patriotic congregation has gathered to send their young men off to battle. The pastor prays that they will be successful, imploring God to:” . . . 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 –”

What struck me as I read this first part was that Twain could have been describing a church service in America today, sending a unit off to Iraq or Afghanistan. We’re a long way from 1905, yet some of us are still praying for the destruction of our enemies and we are still sending young people off to battle. Depressing that the pastor’s words, written in another century, could fit the current situation so easily:

“Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

Haven’t you seen or heard the same sort of rhetoric in the past few years? I know we did in rural south Georgia. An alarming (although happily, dwindling) number of people believe that God blesses our troops and is on America’s “side” because as the President insists, “our cause is just.”

Never mind that this is exactly the sort of thing we decry in Islamic extremist propaganda. Ministers and other leaders of churches in our little town either stayed quiet or chimed in with the patriotic blather in 2003. In fact, I ruffled some feathers at our Episcopalian parish by asking why we weren’t discussing, as followers of the Prince of Peace, the moral problems with pre-emptive war.

Brief aside: one reason I love my new neighborhood is that there appears to be, based on an unscientific survey of yard signs, a healthy dose of dissent here, and also, not everyone agrees with each other (yes, I am actually glad for people who don’t necessarily share my own views, as much as I am glad for those who do. A spectrum of ideas is the best thing for developing clear thinking, I believe).

My kids have asked how people who claim God’s approval know what God thinks, and I tell them, honestly, that in my opinion, they don’t know, they believe they know. I particularly struggled with explaining the “just cause” idea when it came up — even a kid can see that when it comes to the Iraq war, it’s a simple case of cognitive dissonance, or, “I chose this, so it is the best choice.” Stay the course.

Another brief aside: today was “Issues in Contemporary Science” at our house — with a nod to a fellow unschooler in Atlanta who I piked the name from, this means that the kids and I sit around the computer and read articles from Science News for Kids and the Science section of the New York Times, which comes out on Tuesdays.

Nothing like sitting in your jammies (the kids), drinking coffee (me), and discussing the latest happenings in the world of science, such as a study that explores cognitive dissonance in monkeys and 4 year old children., suggesting the instinct to believe our choices are superior to the alternatives is primal. When I sat down to write about The War Prayer, the connection came to me. Autodidactism is contagious.

My son was only 9 when America invaded Iraq. He asked our rector at the time whether soldiers who killed someone would go to hell, since he’d learned in Sunday school, “Thou shalt not kill.” When the rector shuffled a bit and said we couldn’t really know but that he felt probably not, my innocent child asked in a skeptical voice whether killing was really wrong, then, after all. Also, he asked me why we weren’t looking for the bad guys who flew those planes into buildings anymore, and what Iraq had to do with anything.

The kid’s a genius, and a lot of adult thinkers have come around to his way of seeing things. Twain was writing about the blinding patriotism that accompanies the rationalization process in wartime, and he really nailed it. When you read the second half of The War Prayer, you see the unpleasant, unavoidable truth. It’s not that the current war is a terrible disaster; all war is a terrible disaster.

As Twain’s minister wraps up, a stranger enters the church and begins his own prayer. He claims to be sent by God to speak the “unspoken” other half of the prayer. He tells the congregation they must “pause and think” about what they’ve asked. And then he lets loose with the flip side of praying for their own young men to enjoy a valiant victory in battle: the pain, suffering, destruction, and loss their answered prayers will cause for people just like them who are the families and friends of the young men on the other side of the fight.

Twain doesn’t mince words, and the second part of the prayer is tough to face: “help us to turn them out roofless with their little children,” and “help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells.” You can read for yourself what the congregation thinks of the strange visitor.

I’d like to send the link to all the presidential candidates, to all of Congress. No need to send it to the President, whose thinking is either the best example of cognitive dissonance I’ve ever heard or has been spun that way by his handlers. The thing is, I’m not sure any of them would act on it, just as the people in the church in The War Prayer are unmoved. Twain wrote his prayer before the worst wars of the twentieth century. It was published prior to the development of nuclear weapons. Generations of people have read it.

And we’re stuck, still rationalizing our bellicose behavior, still praying for victory. What is God thinking? Sometimes I think we’ll be sorry to find out. But I’m heartened that my children can clearly see the moral consequences of war regardless of the actions of the adult leaders in their world. Raising them to resist and respond to cognitive dissonance is at least one part of my own war prayer.

Teaching them that they can be the stranger in the room if they have the courage to keep asking questions is another part. On that note, I will email the link to my elected representatives after all. We’ll talk about it tomorrow during “Active Citizenry 101,” also known as reading and discussing the Concord Monitor over breakfast.