"The War Prayer"
By TDB
"My curmudgeonly grandpappy, who reveres Mark Twain and George Carlin and H.L. Mencken and people of that lovable cynic variety – or however you would characterize their philosophical disposition – put me onto "The War Prayer" back in the day. This was in the days of innocence before 9/11 and the subsequent War of Terror, and so whatever lack of an impression it made on me at the time was remedied shortly thereafter by apropos events in the real world.
Twain, in his later years when his family had died and the cynicism became more malignant, would often write fiction in which a cynical protagonist would serve as a proxy for himself. This is one such story; the “aged stranger” is Twain. Via Virginia Commonwealth University:
"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… on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun… 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 outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.
Sunday morning came - next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams - visions of the 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 heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said …
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…
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… he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting.
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!
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 Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this - keep it in mind. If you would 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 of 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!’ 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 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 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 the 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."
- Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
Twain reportedly caved to pressure not to publish the short story, as it was regarded by his family and publisher as too inflammatory for public consumption. Asked if he had plans to publish it, Twain answered: "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead." At any rate, for whatever reason, it remained unpublished until after his death.
War is an ugly business, fraught with moral pitfalls – not to mention existential implications in the nuclear age. It might be necessary at times, but so are limb amputations. Both should be undertaken with all due discretion. I’ll choose my own wars, not the ones the government or MSNBC or the ADL tells me to."
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