Mark Twain wrote an article, "The War Prayer," for Harper’s Bazaar in 1905 on outrage at the United States’ intevention in the Phillipines. Unsuitable for a women’s magazine, so the editors said, Twain’s article went unpublished until 1923, 13 years after his death. Harper & Brothers had exclusive rights to Twain, and he told a friend after the 1905 rejection, "I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth."
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 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 their 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 the desolated land in rags and
hunger and thirst.
Mark Twain, "The War Prayer," 1905
Via Dilip D’Souza. Read the full text here.
