Hemingway on the Costs of War and Inflation
A selection of quotes from Ernest Hemingway's "Notes on the Next War: A Serious Topical Letter" first published in Esquire (September 1935):
- "War is no longer made by simply analysed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule."
- "We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the pre-meditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes."
- "They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. [Horace's statement: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori] But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason".
- "No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough."
- "The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."
Comments (8)
Don't forget that Hemingway cannot be used in order to support, surreptitiously, a current concern of our preferred ideology. Or if one does, one should add that Hemingway, also, was NO pacifist.
He made two war wars, was wounded, got medals, and fought the spanish civil war. You're not quoting a pacifist. You're quoting a man who knew war firsthand. This makes his words ring truer, but you ought not to omit that when a war had to be fought, Hemingway FOUGHT it.
Alberto
Published: November 3, 2007 9:01 PM
"But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason".
Too true.
Published: November 3, 2007 9:22 PM
Again Hemingway on war can be read here, in the line with the quotations reported in this blog entry:
http://www.fullposter.com/snippets.php?snippet=172
It is "Wings Always over Africa: An Ornithological Letter"
Published: November 4, 2007 11:05 AM
Weird, I was just listening to "In Dulce Decorum" by The Damned when I started reading these Hemingway quotes.
Can someone provide a translation of that Horace statement?
Published: November 4, 2007 5:23 PM
Vanmind,
"It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."
Published: November 4, 2007 6:49 PM
Greetings from "Hemingway On Stage".
In researching my Hemingway plays, I was fascinated by the WW I and the Spanish Civil War periods and wrote dramatizations of both periods. I am currently working on Hemingway's involvement in WW II.
Two of my favourite lines are (forgive me if I do not quote perfectly from memory):
"All war, no matter how justifed nor how necessary, is still a criminal act."
"There is no such thing as a good war. There is only war and it only destroys."
For further information on my Hemingway plays, I invite you to visit my website:
www.briangordonsinclair.com
Salud !
Brian Gordon Sinclair
Published: November 5, 2007 8:03 AM
"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. ..."
I studied Hemingway in a High School class called : American Literature. In a way public school isn't all that bad.
Published: November 6, 2007 10:45 AM
thanks
Published: November 10, 2007 9:06 PM