Tacitus 'Poisonous Gas'

“A bad peace is worse than no peace at all.” Tacitus’ saying accurately represents the resolution of World War I. At the beginning of the war, there was a world wide sense of pride, with each country striving to be the best. There were many writers that expressed their nationalistic views through literary pieces such as books and poems. But as the war progressed, the traumatising war experience resulted in a loss of motivation and nationalistic views. With the view change, the works of writing changed as well. Writers wrote about the suffering and experience of both the soldiers and the civilians. The end result of the war though was one that the people had not expected, a peace treaty. This action left the people feeling used and their subjects
The war experience of the soldiers was beyond anything that had ever been faced before. A soldier who was attacked by poison gas says that “It seemed as if [his] lungs were gradually shutting up and [his] heart pounded away in [his] ears like the beat of a drum. On looking at the chap next to [him, he] felt sick, for green stuff was oozing from the side of his mouth.” (Pressey, “Poisonous Gas”). After getting attacked, this soldier isn’t only poisoned physically, but is poisoned mentally as he looks at the soldier next to him. He “felt sick” and this would be only one of the deaths that he would witness. As this death is undignified, dying for one’s country in such a manner is undesirable. In his poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, Wilfred Owen writes from the point of view of an unmotivated soldier and says, “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” (Owen, 32-35). The last phrase, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is directly translated to, “it is sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland.” The soldier in the poem registers the flaws in war and notices that, though people say that dying for one’s country is an honorable act, in reality it is not. He says that this “lie”, that dying for one’s country is honorable,
In his poem, “The Children”, Rudyard Kipling, writing from the point of view of one who lost loved one to war, says that “[after they have] senselessly [been] tossed and retossed in stale mutilation / From crater to crater. For that [they] shall take expiation / But who shall return us our children?” (Kipling, 42-44). Kipling expresses his sorrow by mentioning the “stale mutilation” that has damaged both the people and the country as a whole beyond repair. He expresses his willingness to “take expiation” for the sufferings that the citizens have been put through during war, but also asks the melancholy question, “But who shall return us our children?” By concluding with this question, he leaves a lamenting impression of uncertainty about whether the struggle was worth the loss. This uncertainty could have been caused by the adaptation of Woodrow Wilson’s proposal for a peace without victory(Victorine, Making the Peace). After four years of struggling in the war, “a peace without victory” might have been an unsatisfactory turn of events. With any commoners’ initial expectation of success, the many lives that were lost in the war came across as a futile attempt for victory. The reality of this outcome had the population frustrated and in turn, they lost faith in the leadership of their countries, resulting in the collapse of their