"Sweet Land of Liberty, Of Thee I Sing"

I learned a parody of “My Country, Tis of Thee” from my fellow grade schoolers during World War Two.  It started this way:

“My country’s up a tree,
My home is Germany.
My name is Fritz.”

A teenager in our little rural school suggested a name for a patriotic club the high school kids were organizing: “Anti-Slant-Eye,” a slap at Japan, another nation the United States was battling.  Their teacher-advisor led them to find another name.

By definition, there’s always an enemy nation in a war.  So the best way to show loyalty to your own country is to put another country down.  Or so it seems.
The sad irony is that, after a decade or two, the country we learned to hate in one war becomes an ally in the next.
George Orwell, Robert Southey, and Mark Twain come to mind as writers who have addressed the futility of war:

Orwell's novel, 1984,  pictures how Big Brother manipulates loyalties among the people in Oceania.  At the proverbial drop of a hat, Winston Smith and his fellow citizens turn against Eurasia and support Eastasia.  Later, they turn against Eastasia and support Eurasia.


In Southey’s 1798 poem, “The Battle of Blenheim,” Wilhelmine and Peterkin listen as their grandfather Kaspar extols the great victory in that battle.  France and Bavaria lost to the allied forces of England, Austria, and the United Provinces in 1704. After the children find skulls in their garden, they ask for an explanation:

  "It was the English," Kaspar cried,

     "Who put the French to rout;

  But what they fought each other for,

     I could not well make out;

  But everybody said," quoth he,

     "That 'twas a famous victory.”

Learning of the war in which “many thousand bodies here/Lay rotting in the sun," Wilhelmine calls it “a very wicked thing.” But Kaspar corrects her.  Then the poem ends with this exchange between the lad and his grandfather:

"But what good came of it at last?"

     Quoth little Peterkin.

  "Why that I cannot tell," said he,

     "But 'twas a famous victory."

Twain’s “The War Prayer” pictures an anonymous war:  

"The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering .  .  ."

On Sunday morning, in a full church, the preacher offered a prayer ---

"that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --"

A stranger went to the pulpit, motioned the minister to step aside, and prayed the underside of what had just been prayed:

"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 to 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 the 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 little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

Happy Fourth of July.