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September
21, 2001
A War Prayer
By Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting
excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every
breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating,
the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers
hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding
and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness
of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched
down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the
proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering
them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by;
nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot
oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which
they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause,
the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches
the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked
the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring
of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
It was indeed a glad and gracious
time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove
of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway
got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's
sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in
that way.
Sunday morning came-next day
the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled;
the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions
of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge,
the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping
smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!-then home from the
war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas
of glory!
With the volunteers sat their
dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends
who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor,
there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble
deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament
was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ
burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house
rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that
tremendous invocation -- "God the all-terrible! Thou who
ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"
Then came the "long"
prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading
and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication
was that an ever--merciful and benignant Father of us all would
watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage
them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His
mighty hand, 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 -
An aged stranger entered and
moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes
fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that
reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending
in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally
pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and
wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended
to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.
With shut lids the preacher,
unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and
at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless
our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector
of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm,
motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did
-- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound
audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then
in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne-bearing
a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house
with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention.
"He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and
grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger,
shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full
import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that
it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he
pause and think.
"God's servant and yours
has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it
one prayer? No, it is two- one uttered, the other not. Both have
reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken
and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in mind. If you beseech
a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke
a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the
blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you
are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which
may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's
prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put
into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and
also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly
and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words:
'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The
whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words.
Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory
you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must
follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit
of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer.
He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our
young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to 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 their 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 Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge
and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble
and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause)
"Ye have prayed it; if
ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."
It was believed afterward that
the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he
said.
[Written by Twain during the
American military's brutal and senseless crackdown on the Philippines
(1899-1902), which resulted in the deaths of 4,600 Americans
and 272,000 Filipinos. Twain told his friend and biographer Alfred
Bigelow Payne that he had been warned not to publish it. "I
have told the whole truth in that, and
only dead mean can tell the truth in this world," Twain
told Bigelow. "It can be published after I am dead."
And it wasn't. Bigelow printed excerpts from The War Prayer in
his 1912 biography of Twain. But the full story didn't see print
until 1916, when it appeared in Harper's as a protest against
the rampages of World War I.-JSC]
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