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VOLTAIRE AGAINST WAR Source: The Advocate of Peace (1837-1845), Vol. 2, No. 8 (SEPTEMBER, 1838), pp. 79-80 Published by: World Affairs Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27886946 . Accessed: 21/04/2013 09:34
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1838.]

Voltaire

against War.

79

dreams of a Minos and a Solon, or themilitary and monkish establishments of a Lycurgus, is trulyan abandonment of all regard to the only legitimate object of government,?the hap In a letter addressed to John Adams after the downfall of " Napoleon, he exclaims, How miserably, how meanly has he closed his inflatedcareer ! What a sample of the bathos will his history present ! Bonaparte was a lion only in the field ; in civil life a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper without a virtue ; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, or civil government. 1 once political economy, supposed him a great man ; but now I set him down as a great scoundrel
only." piness of man." *

VOLTAIRE AGAINST WAR. Voltaire, though a bold and bitter enemy of that gospel on which alone we can rely for the entire abolition of war, has nevertheless filled his writings with strong denunciations of this " custom. " Famine, the plague, and war," he says, are the threemost famous ingredients in themisery of this lowerworld. Under famine may be classed all the noxious kinds of food which want compels us to use, thus shortening our lifewhile we hope to support it. In the plague are included all conta are not less than two or three gious distempers ; and these thousand. These two evils we receive from Providence ; but war, inwhich all these evils are concentrated, we owe to the over the globe fancy of two or three hundred persons scattered under the name of princes and ministers. The most hardened flattererwill allow, thatwar is ever attended with plague and famine, especially if he has seen themilitary hospitals of Ger many, or passed throughvillages where some notable feat of arms has been performed." " When a sovereign wishes to embark inwar, he picks up a multitude of men who have nothing to do, and nothing to lose, clothes themwith coarse blue cloth, puts on them hats bound with coarse white worsted, makes them turn to the right and left, and thus marches them away to glory ! Other princes, on this armament, take part in it to the best of their ability,
* Calumet, vol. I, p. 172.

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80

Voltaire

against War.

[Sept.,

and soon cover a small extent of countrywith more hireling murderers than Jenghiz-Khan, Tamerlane and Bajazet had at at no small distance, on hearing that their heels. People is and if theywould join, there are five or that, afoot, fighting six sous a day for them, immediately divide into two bands like reapers, and go and sell their services to the firstbidder. These multitudes furiouslybutcher one another not only with out having any concern in the quarrel, but without so much as what it is about." knowing " An odd circumstance in this infernalbusiness is, that every has his colors consecrated, and solemnly chief of those ruffians to he before goes to destroy his neighbor. If the God, prays slain in battle do not exceed two or three thousand, the fortu nate commander does not think itworth thanking God for; but if,besides killing ten or twelve thousandmen, he has been so far favored ofHeaven as totally to destroy some remarkable then a verbose hymn is sung." place, " All courtiers pay a certain number of orators to celebrate these sanguinary achievements. They are all very long-winded in theirharangues ; but in not one of all these discourses have they the spirit to animadvert on war, that scourge and crime which includes all others. Put together all the vices of all ages and places ; and never will they come up to themischiefs and enormities of one campaign." " Ye ministers of God ! bungling physicians of the soul ! to bellow for an hour or more against a few flea-bites, but say not a word about that horrid distemperwhich tears us to pieces ! Burn your books, ye moralizing philosophers! Whilst the honor of a few shall make it an act of loyalty to butcher thou sands of our fellow-creatures, the part of mankind devoted to heroism will be themost execrable and destructivemonsters in all nature. Of what avail is humanity, benevolence, modesty, temperance, mildness, discretion, or piety, when half a pound of lead shattersmy body ; when I expire at the age of twenty in agonies unspeakable, and amidst thousands in the same mis erable condition ; when my eyes, in their last opening, see my all in a blaze, and the last sounds I hear are the native town " '" ns of women and children shrift expiring among the
: j's Essay on Peace andWar, No. 25.

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