And Micromegas said:

“O intelligent atoms in whom the Eternal Being has been pleased to manifest his dexterity and his might, the joys you taste on your globe are doubtless very pure, for as you are so immaterial and seem to be all spirit, your lives must be passed in Love and in Thought.  That indeed is the true life of spirits.  Nowhere yet have I found real happiness, but that you have it here I cannot doubt.”

At these words all the philosophers shook their heads and one of them, more frank than the rest, candidly admitted that apart from a small number of people who were held in little esteem, the rest of the inhabitants of the world were a crowd of madmen, miscreants, and unfortunates.  “If evil is a property of matter,” he said, “we have more matter than is necessary for the doing of much evil, and too much spirit if evil be a property of the spirit.  Do you realize, for instance, that at this moment there are a hundred thousand madmen of our species wearing hats, killing or being killed by a hundred thousand other animals wearing turbans, and that over almost the whole face of the earth this has been the custom from time immemorial?”

The Sirian shuddered and asked what could be the ground for these horrible quarrels between such puny beasts.

“The matter at issue,” replied the philosopher, “is some mud-heap as large as your heel.  It is not that any single man of all these millions who slaughter each other claims one straw on the mud-heap.  The point is: shall the mud-heap belong to a certain man called the Sultan, or to another called Caesar?  I know not why.  Neither of them has ever seen or will ever see the little bit of land in dispute, and barely one of these animals which slaughter each other has ever seen the animal for which he is slaughtered.”

“Wretches!” cried the Sirian indignantly.  “Such a riot of mad fury is inconceivable!  I am tempted to take three steps and with three blows of my foot crush out of existence this ant-hill of absurd cut-throats.”

“Do not trouble yourself,” answered the philosopher.  “They wreak their own ruin.  Know that after ten years not a hundredth part of these miscreants is ever left.  Know that even when they have not drawn the sword, hunger, exhaustion, or debauchery carries them nearly all off.  Besides, it is not they who should be punished, but the stay-at-home barbarians who, after a good meal, order from their remote closets the massacre of a million men, and then have solemn prayers of gratitude for the event offered up to God.”  Voltaire

The folly of modern wars is excused on grounds of dynastic interests, nationality, European equilibrium, and honor.  This last is perhaps the most extravagant excuse of all, for there is not a nation in the world that has not polluted itself by all sorts of crimes and shameful actions, nor is there one that has not experienced every possible humiliation.  If indeed there still exists a sense of honor among nations, it is strange to support it by making war – that is, by committing all the crimes by which a private person dishonors himself: arson, rape, outrage, murder…  Anatole France

The savage instinct of murder-in-war has very deep roots in the human brain, because it has been carefully encouraged and cultivated for thousands of years.  One likes to hope that a humanity superior to ours will succeed in correcting this original vice, but what will it then think of this civilization calling itself refined and of which we are so proud?  Even now, at one and the same time, we think of ancient Mexico and of its cannibalism as pious, warlike, and bestial.  Charles Letourneau

Sometimes one ruler attacks another out of fear in order that the latter should not fall upon him.  Sometimes war is begun because the foe is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak.  Sometimes our neighbors desire our possessions, or they possess what we want.  Then begins war, which lasts until they seize what they may require or surrender the possession that is demanded by us.  Jonathan Swift

Something incomprehensible and impossible in its cruelty, falsehood, and stupidity is taking place.  The Russian Czar, the very man who summoned all the nations to peace,[3] publicly announces that, despite his efforts to maintain the peace so dear to his heart (efforts expressed by the seizure of other peoples’ lands, and the strengthening of the army for the defense of these stolen lands), in consequence of attacks by the Japanese, he is compelled to order the same to be done to them as they have begun doing to the Russians, that is, that they should be killed.  In announcing this call to murder he mentions God, evoking a Divine blessing on the most dreadful crime in the world.  The Japanese Emperor has proclaimed the same thing in regard to the Russians.

Learned jurists, Messieurs Muravev and Martens, are assiduous in demonstrating that, because other peoples’ lands have been seized, there is no contradiction at all between the former general call to universal peace and the present incitement to war.  Diplomats publish and send out circulars in the refined French language, proving circumstantially and diligently (though they know that no one believes them) that after all its efforts to establish peaceful relations (in reality after all its efforts to deceive other countries) the Russian government has been compelled to have recourse to the only means for a rational solution of the question: the murder of men.  And the Japanese diplomats write the same thing.  Learned men for their part, comparing the present with the past and deducing profound conclusions from these comparisons, argue interminably about the laws of the movements of nations, about the relation of the yellow to the white race, and about Buddhism and Christianity.  On the basis of these deductions and reflections they justify the slaughter of the yellow race by Christians.  And in the same way the Japanese learned men and philosophers justify the slaughter of the white race.  Journalists, with unconcealed joy, trying to outdo one another and not stopping at any falsehood however impudent and transparent, prove in various ways that the Russians alone are right and strong and good in every respect, that all the Japanese are wrong and weak and bad in every respect, and that all those who are inimical or who may become inimical towards the Russians (the English and the Americans) are bad too.  And the Japanese and their supporters prove just the same regarding the Russians.

Quite apart from the military people whose profession it is to prepare for murder, crowds of supposedly enlightened people – professors, social reformers, students, gentry, and merchants – of their own accord express the most bitter and contemptuous feelings towards the Japanese, the English, and the Americans, towards whom only yesterday they were well disposed or indifferent.   And of their own accord they express most abject and servile feelings towards the Czar (to whom they are completely indifferent, to say the least), assuring him of their unbounded love and readiness to sacrifice their lives for him.

And that unfortunate and entangled young man, acknowledged as ruler of a hundred and thirty million people, continually deceived and obliged to contradict himself, believes all this, and thanks and blesses for slaughter the troops he calls his, in defense of lands he has even less right to call his.  They all present hideous icons to one another (in which no enlightened people now believe and which even uneducated peasants are beginning to abandon) and they all bow to the ground before these icons, kiss them, and pronounce pompous and false speeches which nobody believes.

Wealthy people contribute insignificant portions of their immorally acquired riches to this cause of murder, or to the organization of assistance in the work of murder, while the poor, from whom the government annually collects two billion rubles, deem it necessary to do likewise, offering their mites also.  The government incites and encourages crowds of idlers who walk about the streets with the Czar’s portrait, singing and shouting hurrah and committing all kinds of excesses under pretext of patriotism.  All over Russia, from the capital to the remotest village, the priests in the churches, calling themselves Christians, appeal to the God who enjoined love of one’s enemies, the God of love, for help in the devil’s work: the slaughter of men.

And stupefied by prayers, sermons, exhortations, processions, pictures, and newspapers, the cannon-fodder – hundreds of thousands of men dressed alike and carrying various lethal weapons – leave their parents, wives, and children.  With agony at heart and a show of bravado, they go where, at the risk of their own lives, they will commit the most dreadful action: killing men whom they do not know and who have done them no harm.  And in their wake go doctors and nurses who, for some reason, suppose that they cannot serve the simple, peaceful, suffering people at home, but can serve only those who are engaged in slaughtering one another.  Those who remain behind rejoice at the news of the murder of men, and when they learn that a great many Japanese have been killed they thank someone whom they call God.

And not only is all this considered a manifestation of elevated feeling, but those who refrain from such manifestations and attempt to bring people to reason are considered traitors and enemies to their nation, and are in danger of being abused and beaten by a brutalized crowd that possesses no other weapon but brute force in defense of its insanity and cruelty.

[3] Translator’s note – This refers to the Hague Conference of 1899, organized at the instance of Nicholas II, and aiming at an agreement not to increase the armed forces that then existed.