Mark Twain's War Prayer

Mark Twain's lambasting of phony, war-mongering patriotism reinterpreted by one of our finest contemporary illustrators. Written in 1910 in his 70th year, Mark Twain, having lived through fourteen wars waged just by his own country on others, declined to publish this poetic despairing reproof against patriotism. His regular illustrator Daniel Beard even urged Twain to issue the piece, to which the author replied, "No, I have told the whole truth in that, and only dead men can tell the truth in this world. It can be published after I am dead."