MOST of the verses in this little volume were conceived and written, if not quite finished, at the time of Cronje's surrender at Paardeberg. A certain doubt, however, as to any message of theirs, though modestly set off by a belief in their polemic and literary value, has, I think now, unduly delayed their advent into the crowded world of print; and, though the present juncture of a heralded, but, by no means, perfected peace, be perhaps not a very opportune moment for their publication, I have yet thought well to give them forth; the more, since what so be the outcome of the negotiations pending, and whichsoever be the motive of the stronger party thereto-whether a bitter, though slowly realized necessity, or, a trick of pure heart, or, say, tardy insight and charity, both-be this as it may-the long, though fruitless attempt on England's part to compel a surrender by the South African republics of their political existence, illustrating and upholding, as no modern exhibition of this kind has done, how rampant is still in Man, and collective Man especially, ......

MOST of the verses in this little volume were conceived and written, if not quite finished, at the time of Gen. Cronje’s surrender at Paardeberg (February 1900 - Note: Paardeberg translates as “Horse Mountain” and Cronje is pronounced Kron-yee.) The publication of these lyrics was delayed until late 1902 due to the uncertain nature of the earlier, but imperfect, peace accord. And well the delay was, for peace was not achieved until 1902. During apartheid-era South Africa, the Boer War formed an important part of most South African children’s history lessons. What was not taught was that volumes of poetry had been written on the subject. Even Thomas Hardy famously wrote several poems about this war. This small volume is but a sliver of the work published on the subject. One only has to browse the internet to find more volumes of prose and verse associated with this forgotten conflict. But we shouldn’t be surprised at this for soldiers have been writing poetry about conflicts since before Alexander the Great. Now almost a tradition, the trend continues to this day with poems still being written about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. HISTORICAL NOTE: The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State. It ended with a British victory and the annexation of both republics by the British Empire; both would eventually be incorporated into the Union of South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire, in 1910. Forces in this war were called upon from all corners of the, then, British Empire. On the British side, participating countries were United Kingdom, the South African Colonies of the Cape and Natal, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The Boer republics of South Africa and the Orange Free State were by no means alone in their stand against the Empire. Volunteer contingents from the German Empire, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands swelled the Boer ranks. Smaller volunteer contingents were received from Belgium, France, the USA, Italy, Russia, Poland and Denmark. The mobilisation of these armies from the around world, and the logistics which always accompany such mobilisations, was but a dress rehearsal for the impending 1st World War.

The accepted canon of war poetry usually includes only those underlining patriotic or nationalistic views. This study opens up the view of war poetry with the inclusion of such material as Nazi poetry and song, and the poetry of the atomic bomb.

Until now, scholars have portrayed America's antiwar literature as an outgrowth of World War I, manifested in the works of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. But in War No More, Cynthia Wachtell corrects the record by tracing the steady and inexorable rise of antiwar writing in American literature from the Civil War to the eve of World War I. Beginning with an examination of three very different renderings of the chaotic Battle of Chickamauga -- a diary entry by a northern infantry officer, a poem romanticizing war authored by a young southerner a few months later, and a gruesome story penned by the veteran Ambrose Bierce -- Wachtell traces the gradual shift in the late nineteenth century away from highly idealized depictions of the Civil War. Even as the war was under way, she shows, certain writers -- including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, John William De Forest, and Nathaniel Hawthorne -- quietly questioned the meaning and morality of the conflict. As Wachtell demonstrates, antiwar writing made steady gains in public acceptance and popularity in the final years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth, especially during the Spanish-American War and the war in the Philippines. While much of the era's war writing continued the long tradition of glorifying battle, works by Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, William James, and others increasingly presented war as immoral and the modernization and mechanization of combat as something to be deeply feared. Wachtell also explores, through the works of Theodore Roosevelt and others, the resistance that the antiwar impulse met. Drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources, including letters, diaries, essays, poems, short stories, novels, memoirs, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, and religious tracts, Wachtell makes strikingly clear that pacifism had never been more popular than in the years preceding World War I. War No More concludes by charting the development of antiwar literature from World War I to the present, thus offering the first comprehensive overview of one hundred and fifty years of American antiwar writing.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.