Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
writer editor born-again horse girl

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State of the Union

January 25, 2007

Out for a walk the other night Rhodry and I met a neighbor and her dog; none of us were home watching the president's State of the Union speech. (Even if I had a TV, a walk in the frosty outdoors would have been far preferable.) The next morning I ran into another neighbor: she'd started watching it then fallen asleep. We agreed that if GDubya were reeling around our neighborhood, we'd do our best to get him into rehab.

Meanwhile, about two thirds of the way through War and Peace, of which I'm copyediting a new and wonderful translation, I came to this passage: Prince Andrei on the eve of the battle of Borodino. I won't quote the manuscript version because it's not published yet, but I found this one at http://tolstoy.thefreelibrary.com/War-and-Peace/10-25. Prince Andrei has seen quite a bit of war up to this point and come to the conclusion that wars shouldn't be fought merely because "Pavel Ivanych offended Mikhail Ivanych"; that the only war worth fighting is the one to defend one's own homeland and people. Maybe someday we'll get a State of the Union speech that makes this much sense.

"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the highest rewards.

"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number), and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look at them and hear them?" . . .

 

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