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All too true, and important that we remember it today and every day. But let's not neglect the cost side of the coin:

Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

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 lames; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

I have always liked "Dulce Et," because of the dark images that it paints of war, rather than the glories of it. R.E. Lee said "It is good that war is so terrible, else we would grow to fond of if."

The line, "An ecstasy of fumbling," really hit home with me the first time I ever went through a chemical attack warning...I remember thinking of those lines as I struggled to get my mask and hood on...and how for the first time ever, a poem actually spoke to me. Fortunately, I didn't have to encounter the rest of the hell that Wilfred Owen described, and I count my blessings there.

Anyways, I just wanted to say thanks for posting it.

Bob
USAF, 1984-1994

Ah! Yes...the old lie---Dulce et decorum est From the ode by Horace - It is a sweet and proper thing to give up one's life for one's county...Not. How different that poem is from Rubert Brooke's sentimental poem above. What a difference a few years of war make! When they wrote Owen had seen battle, had spent months in the miserable trenches; Brooke had not. I think too of Sassoon's bitter poems about armchair warriors, of incompetent staff officers, and the pathetic ignorance of those at home wrapped in their cosy notions of heroism.