War Prayer

Forgive me if I bring up Gore Vidal in these pages again, but I didn’t want to leave out what came to my mind as I read the news that George W. Bush —with patriotism at its peak— has given US citizens a Christmas message: he will send more soldiers into the battle fields. At least 70,000 soldiers will go to the war in the Middle East over the next two years

Before getting in the car that would take him to a meeting with writers in the Casa de las Americas in Havana, Gore Vidal confessed to me his link with Mark Twain, the celebrated author of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He said that they shared a sense of anti-imperialism, especially the acid criticism of the murder machine the US tuned into after its intervention in Cuba and the Philippines in 1898.

Lingering between us was War Prayer, a short story written by a Mark Twain who was sickened by the US intervention in the war of Spain against its last colonies.

I looked for the prayer and, when I found it, realized in the middle of my astonishment why Gore Vidal insisted so much on the anti-imperialism that links him with Twain. The two appear to be twin brothers, both fed up with religious fanaticism and the blind patriotism used as reasons for war.

The structure of Twain’s story is simple: the press whipped up patriotism and American support for the war against Spain. The drums roll, toy guns are sold like candy, fireworks are shot all over. In a religious ceremony, Americans implore the protection of the troops. Suddenly, a strange and mysterious character comes out of nowhere announcing he is the messenger of God. He explains that he has come to reveal the second part of his prayer, the part that the “people” want but are afraid aloud: the demand for the suffering and destruction of their enemies.

In 1904, Twain offered the story to Harper’s Bazaar, which rejected it because they considered it radical and inappropriate for a women’s magazine. The writer gave instructions to publish the story after his death, because “None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.” And so it was. He died in 1910 and his War Prayer was published, partially, in 1916. Gore Vidal has said that it is so contemporary that it could be considered seditious. And he is completely right. It goes like this:

WAR PRAYER (FRAGMENTS)

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth in 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 little children to wander unfriended 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 He, who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”