And in a hopeful atonement, let me offer this rejoinder from my dear friend Mark Twain:

Minister: “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord and God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

Stranger: “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, and 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 your neighbor at the same time. “

Stranger: “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!”

*“Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into 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 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 in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in 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 pilgrimmage, 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.”

Comment: For some reason, this story reminds me of the fervor that attended America’s entry into World War I. Yet,this story was written well before 1917. Mark Twain died in 1910, after all. Despite that, the fever pitch of Americanism is all over it. The song Over There by George M. Cohan includes this line “And we won’t be back, until it’s over over there” We won’t come back [here], until the war and kill is finished [over there]. You know, because we fight OVER THERE so the bad [stuff] doesn’t make it over HERE. I spent a year in Switzerland, and 30 years since, feeling some kind of solidarity for a European mindset. World Wars I and II, and Korea, and Vietnam, and Iraq, and Afghanistan, and wherever is next. They all meant Americans went over there to wage war on THEIR SOIL and kill the OTHER GUYS, and so forth. The brutal calculation is still true. People who’ve seen and dealt in war are the ones most hesitant to put anyone else through it. And the wars keep coming…

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