The Purport of War (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

"What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From those, by certain 'natural enemies’ of the French, there are successively selected, during the. French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to craft, so that one can weave, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois, nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected, all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into juxtaposition; and thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 'fire’ is given: and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpletons, their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.”

—Carlyle: "Sartor Resartus,"