To children ardent for some desperate glory
The old Lie: – Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mory
(It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country)
– Wilfred Owen, Dulce et decorum est (26-27)
The 21st century, fundamentally speaking, is the age of the rise of the individual. It has been caused, to a certain extent, by the democratization and empowerment of social media that has led to our being regularly conditioned to the capitalist idea of brand value, which teaches us to worship person over work. It is, in part, because of this that we are now witnessing, globally, an ever-increasing amount of influence, dominance, and power receding into the hands of cult figures rather than collectives. This change is apparent in the realm of world politics as well, where the ugly brand of nationalism or one-man nation theory of the previous century is being resurrected with pomp and show by leaders who are eulogized in their nations as prophets and messiahs.
Now, this irrational reverence in politics is problematic not only on the ideological scale but also on the practical level, because not only is it leading our world away from its democratic principles, learned over centuries by trial and error, but it is also traumatizing and claiming the lives of millions every year. Therefore, it is not surprising that along with the ascent of jingoism – which is primarily concerned with the display and abrogation of power – the idea of war and violence, as an efficient tool to celebrate and entice nationalistic sentiments and past glories, is also on the rise in the world.
It is evident in Putin justifying his crimes against humanity in Ukraine in the name of “love for the motherland”, or Rishi Sunak’s tweet on the Poppy Appeal 2022, where he wrote –
“There Is No Greater Sacrifice Than That Of Those Who Lay Down Their Lives In Service Of Their Country”
It is sadly fascinating that from Sunak’s very country came Wilfred Owen (a young soldier and the most celebrated poet of World War 1), who chose the utopian title – “Dulce et decorum est” which translates to – It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country – for his anti-war poem; mentioned above. Ironically, Owen adopted it to attack the Romantic idea of war as a precious opportunity to perform duty and sacrifice towards one’s nation. Instead, to upset Horace and Sunak, he presented it for the trivialities, inhumanity, and savagery it truly entails.
True to its core, Owen’s poignant poetry presents bleak materialism, psychological trauma, and the unashamed dog-eat-dog world of war in a realism so direct and unembellished that it shocks and urges us to ponder over our perceptions of war defined by popular political discourses. His works moved the minds of his times and continue to touch hearts even today. One such person riddled with these same questions was Bertolt Brecht, a celebrated playwright who lived in the aftermath of the First World War and witnessed the rise of Hitler’s fascism in his beloved Germany.
Brecht lived and wrote in a world dealing with the meaninglessness and the existential crises with which Owen and countless other innocent soldiers and civilians died and others were living. The themes of capitalistic war, the “Death of God,” the “Sea of Faith” in storms, the dubious morality, and complete distrust in humanity inspired and informed Brecht’s political ideology and urged him to write – Mother Courage and Her Children (1939), a brilliantly witty political satire ridiculing the very ideas of war and religion.
Completed in 1939, this anti-war play charts the wayward travels, for eleven years, of a robust, exciting, and flawed canteen woman – Anna Fierling (a.k.a Mother Courage) who, along with her three kids, follows the Thirty Years’ War waged across the Holy Roman Empire from 1618-1648.
By choosing this vast, historical and potential political setting, Brecht sets the stage to deliver a powerful intellectual assault on the established social institutions of capital warfare, state, and violence. With his clever and witty dialogues, he strikes, unwaveringly, at the high-rise pedestals of power and turns them into smithereens, showing them to be mere hollow showpieces that are tools of “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
Therefore, along the same lines as Owen, Brecht saw no glory or greatness in war. Instead, he critiques how war corrupts and destroys human empathy and brings the worst out of Mankind. The philosophy of war that Brecht ascribes to here is the one of Clausewitz, who said – “War is a continuation of policy by other means”, but Brecht went even further to reflect that – war is a continuation of business by other means.
War is, thus, the politically correct, or acceptable name for “private trading” that strengthens the status quo by feeding on the labour and life of the weak. In fact, the entire play makes us contemplate the idea of violence less romantically and more pragmatically, in terms of being a barbaric time when mothers, pressed by circumstances, are helpless to the extent of not even recognizing the corpses of their sons; when revenge is rewarded; when faith and morality are employed to justify the evil. A time when compassion is deemed too dangerous for the powerful and is shot dead!
It is to admit and comprehend these illicit appropriations of war by the high and mighty in our intolerant times that the naturalistic standpoints of Brecht and Owen gain tremendous resonance for us. They compel us to think about war differently and realistically, and rather than turning it into a quixotic icon for nationalism, present it, in all its forms, for what it was and really is – an organized crime against all humanity!