“It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.” – Mark Twain (476)

Introduction
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, traveled the world and got to know imperialistic endeavors from many different nations. After he returned to America on 15 October 1900, he joined the “Anti-Imperialist League” and actively opposed policies of the United States and Great Britain (William D. Howells and Mark Twain 723). In 1905, Mark Twain composed the short story The War Prayer in an effort to open the eyes to patriotic, war-loving people.
This term paper will be a close-reading on Twain’s short story The War Prayer. The focus will not be on what was said about this short story by other authors, but rather give an explanation and deeper understanding on its satirical criticism on people’s patriotism and their glorification of war.

The First Paragraph
“It was a time of great and exalting excitement” (Twain 652). After reading these first nine words in Mark Twain’s The War Prayer one expects the time of “great and exalting excitement” to be one of technological advances or economic strength, or at least having to do with another peaceful connotation. Twain diverts these associations with his satirical competence by writing “The country was up in arms, the war was on . . .” Therefore, a “time of great and exalting excitement” is when this country is at war. The first befuddlement of this statement is quickly resolved, when Twain gives to the reader already an explanation on why this country is indeed so excited to go to war: “The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism, . . .”
Patriotism is absurdly exaggerated in The War Prayer. The aforementioned sentence continues with what is a very long sentence, divided by many commas and semicolons, implying excitement through the absence of pauses. This passage reads like a little excited kid would tell the story of the “young volunteers” with their “proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts” who are “choked with happy emotion.” “[T]he impression it delivers,“ according to Allen Gribben, is that “of a likable persona's actual speech, daringly punctuated with semicolons and structured around parallel phrases, then artfully frozen in print“ (32-33).

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 sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. (652)

Hyperbolism is another method of Twain. The “voices” are not “filled” with happy emotion, they are “choked;” the soldiers did not “march by,” they “swing by.” Also, the expressions of “deepest deeps of their hearts” and “cyclones of applause” add to the infantile use of language.
Twain has chosen this style in order to ridicule patriotic people, for their celebrations and their entirety in The War Prayer are overly ridiculous. To Twain in As Regards Patriotism “Patriotism is merely a religion – love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare” (476). Also, a patriot is “newspaper-and-politician-manufactured” to him. In The War Prayer he found a way to express his disdain towards these people. Ironic is also their description of God as a God of Battles. This is the first religious statement and should be kept in mind, especially the expression “His aid for our good cause.”
In the next sentence it is reminded that “”[i]t was indeed a glad and gracious time,” but a “half dozen rash spirits” have “ventured to disapprove of the war.” This is the first time not everything is “perfect,” at least according to the patriots’ standards. With only a number of six people, these “rash spirits” are definitely the minority of all the people present here. They dared to “cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway” but are met with “such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight.” Here, criticism is not simply ignored or frowned upon, but subdued so heavily that they “[offend] no more in that way.” The majority of the people will not hear a word about what interferes with their view of patriotism. Twain wrote “[t]he Patriot did not know just how or when or where he got his opinions, neither did he care, so long as he was with what seemed the majority – which was the main thing, the safe thing, the comfortable thing” (477). The people supporting the war in The War Prayer feel also “safe” and “comfortable” in their patriotism, especially if verified through the means of a prayer.
The Prayers
The rest of the story takes place at a Sunday in church, one day before the battalions will depart. The volunteers attend the sermon and their “young faces” were “alight with martial dreams.” These dreams are described with visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! – then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! (652)
This conception of war has a naivety about them which can only stem from someone, who has never fought in a war. A description from a battle-ridden veteran would sound very different. These young soldiers would not voluntarily rush into a war if they knew what was going to await them, with the confrontation of death being the ultimate threat.
Death, or rather the loss of their beloved young volunteer, does not seem to occur to the “proud mothers and fathers and sisters and sweethearts.” The volunteers’ ”dear ones” sit next to them in church, “proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the nobles of noble deaths.” This sentence suggests that everyone sitting in church is well aware of the possibility of death, but the cause of war is still not questioned, for when “failing,” they will have died the “noblest of noble deaths” (652)
The service proceeds with a short prayer. This prayer was “followed by an organ-burst that shook the building,” which is a rather interesting description for a cried out ‘Amen.’ Twain could have written “and everyone in church shouted Amen,” but his choice of words has a much more fanatical character. In the very same sentence the attendees, too, have fanatical traits as in “with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts and poured out that tremendous invocation—
God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword! (653)
Everyone seems to fully acknowledge again without the hint of a doubt that God is the “all-terrible.”
The war-chapter from the Old Testament is followed by the long prayer. It is described with “passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language.” Twain excerpts a part of its content and again he accomplishes to stir emotion in the reader through his choice of words. The prayer starts normal, but gets more extreme the longer it lasts and suggests a preacher who gets louder by the minute:
The burden of its supplication was 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 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-- (653)
In the beginning God is supposed to merely “watch over” and “aid” them, later to “make them strong and invincible” and to “help them crush their foe.” To ask the “ever-merciful and benignant Father” to help “crush the foe” is a contortion of Christianity, which principles are founded on forgiveness and love.

The Messenger
The “aged stranger” enters, moves “slow and noiseless” along the main aisle towards the minister, who is so self-absorbed in his prayer that he does not take notice of the approach (653). The aged man will shortly reveal himself as a messenger of God, but first he is described to the reader as a tall man “clothed in a robe that reached to his feet,” with a bare head and “white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders.” His face is “unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness.” This portrayal of God’s messenger is similar to one of a prophet.
What stands out is the imperfection of this prophet-like character. Up until this point of the story, with the exception of the half dozen critics of the war, everything was seemingly perfect. With the introduction of the messenger in the third paragraph comes a crass contrast towards everything that has happened; it introduces the cut towards what is to come.
The messenger does not introduce himself, but tells the people in the church “I come from the Throne – bearing a message from the Almighty God!” These words “smote the house with a shock,” therefore we know the people take him seriously. This is the last what we can read about the attendees, except for the very last sentence of The War Prayer. Therefore, we can assume that all of the people present pay close attention to what he has to say, up until the end. It is direct speech from here on onwards.
God, according to this messenger, will grant these people their wish, but only after he has explained “its full import.” He tells them that many prayers of men ask “for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think” (654). This short expression implies that everyone present here has not paused and thought about what they pray for. The messenger even hopes that they prayed “ignorantly and unthinkingly” for victory (“God grant it was so!”), for it would mark them only as a stupid people, but not a cruel and murderous one. “Is it one prayer? No, it is two.” The messenger tries to explain what this “unspoken” prayer is by first bringing up a metaphor: “If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.” To pray for victory means that they “have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it.” After having tried to explain that these people should think about their prayer and putting in words that there are more things to victory than just the victory itself, the aged man delivers God’s message.
Mark Twain had had some quarrels with Christianity. It is not that he did not believe in God, but what is said about Him in the bible: “I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody or delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to mortal eyes at any time in any place” (Albert Bigelow Paine 1583). Even if Christ were to show his face again, Twain preferred if he did not, for “he made trouble enough before“ (Howells and Twain, 716). Despite his disdain of Christianity, Twain used a popular Christian figure to convey his message.

The Message
The “unspoken part of the prayer” is an atrocious description of what these people sitting in church want from their God. The prayer contains phrases like “God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells” or “help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain.” Never is a prayer of protection uttered but always a desire for destruction. The rhetorical method used is again a run-on sentence, but because of the heavy vocabulary this does not read as easily as before. This list of atrocities bears a resemblance to what Twain wrote three years earlier in a North American Review article, which reads “we have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out of doors (Paine, 1164). Mark Twain writes in this article about US aggression towards the Philippines, the main factor that influenced him to write The War Prayer.
This second to last paragraph is more a description of what horrible things will await the volunteers in a war, even if it is victorious. It opposes the romantic view of the volunteers we have on the first page. The messenger defines “the fierce pursuit” and “the surrender” with “make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!” He puts into words what the preacher cannot: How it is to take away the life of people, who have also “fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts.”
A hint even suggests that soldiers on both sides are nearly the same. The messenger speaks words that “our young patriots” have asked God the following: “help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead.” The other soldiers of the war have patriots, too, who probably also pray for victory. In the war between South Africa and England, Twain wrote in a letter that he “notice[s] that God is on both sides in this war; thus history repeats itself. But I am the only person who has noticed this; everybody here thinks He is playing the game for this side, & for this side only” (Paine 1097). In The War Prayer, the volunteers in church are thinking just as much about God being on their side.
The decisive difference between both sides is that the war takes place in the enemy’s country. Through phrases like “their smiling fields,” “help us to lay waste their humble homes,” or “turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst” the reader gets to know that these soldiers are not defending their country, but invading another one. This is another jab against imperialism.
The last part of the message is a remainder of what God is in fact about. With their supplication of victory, the young volunteers have asked Him “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” to commit heinous acts against other human beings (655). They asked him to dedicate himself to something he usually opposes.
In The War Prayer, God is depicted as being the Source of Love, but in reality Twain did not think of him that way at all. Quite the contrary: The bible “is a portrait of a man, if one can imagine a man with evil impulses far beyond the human limit” (Paine 1354). Furthermore, he describes Him of being “unjust, ungenerous, pitiless, and revengeful, punishing innocent children for the misdeeds of their parents, punishing unoffending people for the sins of their rulers” (Paine 1354).
After having explained to the people that they wish for much more than a simple victory, namely horrible and dreadful things of someone “Who is the Source of Love,” the messenger still leaves them a choice: “Ye have prayed it, if ye still desire it, speak! – The messenger of the Most High waits.” They may have prayed “ignorantly and unthinkingly,” but God, through His messenger, appeals to the people’s common sense. There is truth in His message which cannot be denied, only be ignored. And indeed, it will be.
The people’s answer is never known. The War Prayer ends with “[i]t was believed afterwards, that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.” This adds to the comedic value of this short story, but also puts a stress on people’s ignorance and stupidity. What the messenger said made sense to the reader, all of it. If both sides in a war would pray for victory, and God would grant one side their wish, the other would suffer tremendously. This last sentence mirrors what is wrong with civilization, the civilization Twain despises so much. Towards the very end of the nineteenth century, Twain writes in a letter to William D. Howells about “the usual depravities and basenesses & hypocricies & cruelties that make up Civilization, & cause me to put in the rest of the day pleading for the damnation of the human race” (Howells and Twain 691). But people do not want to listen to the truth, only to what makes them happy and justifies their cause.

Conclusion
Mark Twain once said “I believe I have received moral laws only from man – none whatever from God” (Paine 1584). The War Prayer is Twain’s endeavor to tell people to stop and think about what they pray for, not to simply devour what is fed to them by politicians and the church. The majority in this short story think the war is justified, but just as the messenger wants the volunteers to “pause and think,” Twain wants the reader to think about if a war is really justified, even if everyone says it is.
It should be mentioned that it is never revealed in which country this story takes place. The attitude towards patriotism and the focus on the country’s flag could hint to the country being the United States of America (and many would read it as such), but we have to be careful to not jump to assumptions Twain never lost a word about. Indeed this story could be critically read in any patriotic, war-loving country. Mark Twain was a well-traveled man who got to know a lot of different, imperialistic-driven governments. John M. Durham Jr. writes “the center of his indictment of most governments was Twains hatred of imperialism” (67). The War Prayer should not be read as a criticism towards American politics, but on imperialistic endeavors altogether. A country’s people are the only ones who can truly stop their government’s imperialistic tendencies, but if the glorify a war and support it fully by being under the influence of patriotism, there will be no one left to fight against it. Patriotism is the cause why wars can still be fought by modern civilizations today and also why The War Prayer was only released years after Samuel L. Clemens had passed away.

“I have told the truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world.” – Mark Twain (Paine 1234)

Bibliography
Primary Sources:
Howells, William D. and Mark Twain. Mark Twain – Howells Letters: The
Correspondence of Samuel L. Clemens and William D. Howells 1872 - 1910. Ed. Henry Nash Smith and William M. Gibson. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1960.

Twain, Mark. “The War Prayer.” Mark Twain - Collected Tales, Sketches,
Speeches, & Essays 1891 – 1910. Ed. Louis J. Budd. New York: California UP, 1993. 652-655.

Twain, Mark. “As Regards Patriotism.” Mark Twain - Collected Tales,
Sketches, Speeches, & Essays 1891 – 1910. Ed. Louis J. Budd. New York: California UP, 1993. 476-478.

Secondary Sources:

Durham Jr., John M. “Mark Twain and Imperialism.” Revista de Letras 6
(1965): 67-80.

Paine, Albert Bigelow. Mark Twain – A Biography. 3 vols. New York &
London: Harper & Brothers, 1912.

Gribben, Allen. “The Importance of Mark Twain.” American Quarterly
37.1 (Spring 1985): 30-49.