Liberté, etc.
John H Meyers
http://www.google.com/images/Title_Bastille.gif
"Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé ...
Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons, marchons, ...
Amour sacré de la patrie ..."
- Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle (1760-1836)
http://www.acronet.net/~robokopp/french/lamarsei.htm
http://www.franceconsulatny.org/1marseil.htm
"La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, was composed in one night
during the French Revolution (April 24, 1792) by Claude-Joseph Rouget
de Lisle, a captain of the engineers and amateur musician stationed
in Strasbourg in 1792. It was played at a patriotic banquet at
Marseilles, and printed copies were given to the revolutionary forces
then marching on Paris. They entered Paris singing this song,
and to it they marched to the Tuileries on August 10th."
"Ironically, Rouget de Lisle was himself a royalist and refused
to take the oath of allegiance to the new constitution.
He was imprisoned and barely escaped the guillotine.."
- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/marseill.html
"And the rockets' red glare,
the bombs bursting in air, ..."
- Francis Scott Key, "The Star-Spangled Banner"
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/uc05112x.jpg
Composed during the night of September 13, 1814, as the British
bombed Fort McHenry, the last remaining barrier to the city of
Baltimore, during the War of 1812 (also involving France);
Key adapted his lyrics to the tune of a popular drinking song.
"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. --
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: 'Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.' "
- Wilfred Owen (1893-1918, killed in the World War)
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Sargent.html
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Owen2.html
http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/sept97/mika.htm
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Seaman.html
http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/B37.html
http://www.grandsballets.qc.ca/english/the_green_table__1932_.html
http://desert.net/tw/10-08-98/review3.htm
"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense
that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
- Albert Einstein
"War doesn't enoble men. It turns them into dogs
and poisons their souls." - from "The Thin Red Line"
[the following is included, not in reference to the past, but
in reference to the present, and to all countries, to all
politics, etc., for "plus ca change, plus c’est la même chose"
(the more things change, the more they are still the same)]
"When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle
at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it.
The wild gas, the fixed air, is plainly broke loose; but we ought
to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little
subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something
deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface.
I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate
men upon a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery
corrupts both the receiver and the giver, and adulation is not
of more service to the people than to kings. I should, therefore,
suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France until I was
informed how it had been combined with government, with public force,
with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the collection of
an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality and religion,
with the solidity of property, with peace and order, with civil and
social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too,
and without them liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts,
and is not likely to continue long.
The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they
please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we
risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.
Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate, insulated,
private men, but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power.
Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe
the use which is made of power, and particularly of so trying a
thing as new power in new persons of whose principles, tempers, and
dispositions they have little or no experience, and in situations
where those who appear the most stirring in the scene
may possibly not be the real movers."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
http://knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509/works/burke/reflections/reflections.html
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/B/eburke/burke.htm
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1800/paine/ROM/rofm04.htm
France: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité !
Suisse: Un pour tous, tous pour un !
- http://www3.itu.ch/Consulate/France/gazhymne.htm
USA: In God we trust
http://www.iso.gmu.edu/~gbrown6/links.html
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/french/french.html
http://www.txdirect.net/users/rrichard/napoleo1.htm
"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
- Teilhard de Chardin
Vive la France; Joie de Vivre.
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