Here in the United States it is Memorial Day, a day set aside (in theory) to honor fallen soldiers. In that spirit, I have reached on my shelf for a slender volume by the German anarchist and pacifist Ernst Friedrich (1894 -1967) who, in a small volume called WAR against WAR! (1924), collected some shocking images to show the real nature of the First World War. It seems appropriate this year, just a few weeks after the last known combat veteran of that huge conflict has finally passed into the blessed calm of nonexistence, to show some of his work.
It is great fodder for pessimists.
A soldier, “a serious typhoid patient who would die ‘in any case’ was simply given nothing to eat so that he starved to death in utter misery.”
Men being hanged by the Austrian army (which hanged several thousand in the course of the war).
A non-commissioned officer wounded in 1915. “Treatment not yet completed.”
A soldier still living, but missing a part.
I first saw these photographs when I was nineteen and they have been nightmare fuel ever since.
I present them as the sovereign antidote to fools who think that life is basically good.
One Response to “Memorial Day post”
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There is an absolutely unthinkable amount of suffering in this world. Not just for humans, but for all life.