War Primer. Bertolt Brecht
banners flying!
Teutonic myth of swastika-crusaders dying!
Till all objectives were reduced to one:
To find yourself some cover. There was none.
Our masters fight to have you, lovely creature
They race to seize you in their headlong course.
Each feels most fit to bleed you white in future –
Most justified in taking you by force.
Statesmen at work: Chairman Sol Bloom of the House Foreign Affairs Committee debates with isolationist Holden Tinkham. Behind them: Hamilton Fish.
Behold us here, antagonists. See how
Each angry look is like a poisoned dagger.
A world of difference lies between us now.
The quarrel is: whose share’s to be the bigger.
Here’s what we sent, we people of Spokane
With a brassière to help support our Congress
In gratitude for their devoted service.
They asked for it. They’ll know just what we mean.
Jane Wyman shows her medals, adorning an ‘R A F. blue’ dress designed by a Hollywood patriot who says girls ‘should go military in a feminine way.’ These are reproductions of old war medals and were not pinned on Jane for anything she did.
A breast curves through her military cut
Her parts are hung with old war decorations:
It’s Hollywood v. Hitler. Here we’ve got
Semen for blood, and pus for perspiration.
O voice of sorrow from the double choir
Of gunmen and the victims of the gun!
The Son of Heaven needed Singapore
And no one but yourself needed your son.
An American and the Jap he killed. Pfc Wally Wakeman says: “I was walking down the trail when I saw two fellow talking. They grinned and I grinned. One pulled a gun. I pulled mine. I killed him. It was just like in the movies.”
We saw each other – it happened very fast –
I smiled, and both of them smiled back at me.
And so at first we stood and smiled, all three.
One pulled his gun. And then I shot him dead.
So you may have what you’ve been pining for
This sexy carrot might bring satisfaction.
A pinup for your tent on distant shores!
They say such pictures rouse the dead to action!
Woman of Thailand (Siam) peers out of a crude bomb shelter in Sichiengmai at American bomber from French Indo-China come to bomb border hovels.
Hoping to keep concealed throughout the fighting
While would-be rulers wrestled in the air
The frightened people looked for holes to hide in
And watched their masters battling from down there.
Back from the battlefront near Buna in New Guinea comes a blinded Australian infantryman helped by a kindly Papuan native. Both men are barefoot.
And when the bitter fight grew less intense
The man who helped me back was kind to me
And in his silence I began to sense
No understanding, but some sympathy.
Alas, poor Yorick of the burnt-out tank!
Upon an axle-shaft your head is set.
Your death by fire was for the Domei Bank
To whom your parents still remain in debt.
In school we learned of an Avenger who
Would punish all injustice here on earth.
We went to kill, and met with Death. Now you
Must punish those whose orders sent us forth.
Best take your enemy’s little lost brother
Out of the battle line that you’ve defended.
That he and your son live to tell each other
Just how it was that wars like this were ended.
German bombs await use under olive trees.
Workers polishing torpedo cylinders.
O olive tree, spreading your kindly leaves
To screen my brother’s killers from the sun
You’re like those women stooping, heads in scarves
To shape torpedoes for the common man.
An American soldier stands over a dying Jap who he has just been forced to shoot. The Jap had been hiding in the landing barge, shooting at US troops.
And with their blood they were to colour red
A shore that neither owned. I hear it said
That they were forced to kill each other. True.
My only question is: who forced them to?
REFUGEES WITHOUT REFUGE: This Jewish mother and child were picked out of the sea, along with 180 others who sought refuge in Palestine. But 200 were drowned when the Salvator smashed on the rocky coast of Turkey. And the Salvator wasn’t the first. The Patria exploded with 1771 aboard. The Penttcho foundered on an isle off Italy with 500. The Pacific was forced to sail from Palestine with 1062 and the Milos with 710. Then there is the Odyssey of the 500 Jews on a ship for four months, shunted from port to port. They come from all over Europe, packed like cattle in unseaworthy vessels. Where can they go, these 7,000,000 European Jews? Palestine’s quota is 12,000 a year. The freighters and cattleboats carry a new kind of cargo—a new kind of human bootleg. Last year 26,000 were smuggled into Palestine. But what of the 7,000,000? The baby can play with his foot—for he’s home in his mother’s arms. He doesn’t