Various - "Stories of Comedy"

Alexandre Dumas - "Le Capitaine Arena"

John Nichol - "Thomas Carlyle"

Henry Beam Piper - "Ministry of Disturbance"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Defenders of Democracy

U >> Unknown >> The Defenders of Democracy




Never saw anything to equal the kindness of those poor peasants.
They gave the clothes from their bodies; the blankets from their
beds. And took nothing. Not a thing. "We're all in this," they
said. "We're doing our best. It's little enough." That's what
they sayd. Pretty find the Irish of Queenstown. Eh?

(Dartrey nods. He does not trust himself to speak)

A monument. That's what the Irish peasants of Queenstown should
have. A monument. Never slept, some of them. Wrapped the soaking
woman in their shawls--and the little children. Took off their
wet things and gave them dry, warm ones. Fed them with broths they
cooked themselves. Spent their poor savings on brandy for them.
Stripped the clothes off their own backs for them to travel in when
they were well enough to go. And wouldn't take a thing. Great
people the Irish of Queenstown. Nothing much the matter with them.
A monument. That's what they should have. And poetry.

(Thinks for a while, then goes on)

Laid out the bodies too; just as reverently as if they were their
own people. They laid her out. And prayed over her. And watched
with me over her until she was put into the--. Such a tiny shell
it was, too. She had no father or mother or brother or sisters.
I was all she had. That's why I buried her here. Kensal Green.
She'll rest easy there.

(He walks about distractedly. Suddenly he stops and with his hands
extended upwards as if in prayer, he cries)

Out of my depths I cry to Thee. I call on you to curse them.
Curse the Prussian brutes made in Your likeness, but with hearts
as the lowest of beasts. Curse them. May their hopes wither. May
everything they set their hearts on rot. Send them pestilence,
disease and every foul torture they have visited on Your people.
Send the Angel of Death to rid the earth of them. May their souls
burn in hell for all eternity.

(Quickly to Dartrey)

and if there is a god they will. But is there a good God that such
things can be and yet no sign from Him? Listen. I didn't believe
in war. I reasoned against it. I shouted for Peace. And thousands of
cravens like me. I thought God was using this universal slaughter
for a purpose. When His end was accomplished He would cry to
the warring peoples "Stop!" It was His will, I thought, that out
of much evil might come permanent good. That was my faith. It
has gone. How can there be a good God to look down on His people
tortured and maimed and butchered? The women whose lives were devoted
to Him, defiled. His temples looted, filled with the filth of the
soldiery, and then destroyed. And yet no sign. Oh, no. My faith
is gone. Now I want to murder and torture and massacre the foul
brutes.... I'm going out, Dartrey. In any way. Just a private.
I'll dig, carry my load, eat their rations. Vermin: mud: ache
in the cold and scorch in the heat. I will welcome it. Anything
to stop the gnawing here, and the throbbing here.

(Beating at his head and heart)

Anything to find vent for my hatred.

(Moving restlessly about)

I'm going through Ireland first. Every town and village. It's
our work now. It's Irishmen's work. All the Catholics will be in
now. No more "conscientious-objecting." They can't. It's a war
on women and little children. All right. No Irish-Catholic will
rest easy; eat, sleep and go his days round after this. The call
has gone out. America too. She'll come in. You watch. She can't
stay out. She's founded on Liberty. She'll fight for it. You
see. It's clean against unclean. Red blood against black filth.
Carrion. Beasts. Swine.

(Drops into a chair mumbling incoherently. Takes a long breath;
looks at Dartrey)

I'm selling out everything back home.

DARTREY

Why?

GILRUTH

I'm not going back. I'm bringing everything over here. England,
France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia--they can have it. All of it.
They've suffered. Only now do I know how much. Only now.

(Fiercely) I want to tear them--tear them as they've torn me. As
they mangled her.

(Grits his teeth and claws with his fingers) Tear them--that's
what I want to do. May I live to do it. May the war never end
until every dirty Prussian is rotting in his grave. Then a quick
end for me, too. I've nothing now. Nothing.

(Gets up again wearily and dejectedly; all the blazing passion
burnt out momentarily)

This was to have been my wedding-day; our wedding-day. Now she's
lying there, done to death by Huns. A few days ago all youth and
freshness and courage and love. Lying disfigured in her little coffin.
I know what you meant now by wanting to go back for a third time.
I couldn't understand it the other day. It seemed that every one
should hate war. But you've seen them. You know them. And you
want to destroy them. That's it. Destroy.... The call is all
over the world by now. Civilization will be in arms.... To hell
with your Pacifists. It's another name for cowards. They'd lose
those nearest them: the honor of their women; the liberty of their
people--and never strike a blow. To hell with them. It's where
they should be. I was one of them. No more. Wherever I meet them
I'll spit in their faces. They disgrace the women they were born
of; the country they claim.... To hell with them.

DARTREY

(Tries to soothe him) You must try and get some grip on yourself.

GILRUTH

(His fingers ceaselessly locking and unlocking) I'll be all right.
It's a relief to talk to you. (Sees the preparations for Dartrey's
departure) Are you off?

DARTREY

Yes. To-night.

GILRUTH

I envy you now. I wish I were going. But I will soon. Ireland
first. I must have my say there. What will the "Sinn Feiners"
say to the LUSITANIA murder? I want to meet some of them. What
are our wrongs of generations to this horror? All humanity is at
stake here. I'll talk to them. I must. They'll have to do something
now or go down branded through the generations as Pro-German. Can
a man have a worse epitaph? No decent Irishman will bear that;
every loyal Irishman must loathe them.... I'll talk to them--soul
to soul.... Sorry, Dartrey. You have your own sorrow.... Good
of you to put up with me. Now I'll go....

(Goes to the door, stops, takes out wallet)

Just one thing. If it won't bother you.

(Tapping some papers)

I've mentioned you here.... If I don't come through--see to a few
things for me. Will you? They're not much. Will you?

DARTREY

Of course I will.

GILRUTH

(Simply) Thank you. You've always been decent to me.... Dartrey.
To-day! You would have been my best man--and she's--

DARTREY

(Shaking him by the shoulders) Come, my man. Pull up.

GILRUTH

I will. I'll be all right. In a little while I'll be along out
there. I hope I server under you. (Grips his hand) Good-by.

DARTREY

Keep in touch with me.

GILRUTH

All right.

(Passes out, opens and closes the outer door behind him and disappears
in the street. Dartrey resumes his preparations)


The End of the Play

[signed]J. Hartley Manners





To France




For the third time in history it has fallen to the lot of France to
stem the Barbarian tide. Once before upon the Marne, Aetius with
a Gallic Army stopped the Hun under Attila. Three hundred years
later Charles Martel at Tours saved Europe from becoming Saracen,
just as in September, 1914, more than eleven centuries later,
General Joffre with the citizen soldiery of France upon that same
Marne saved Europe from the heel of the Prussianized Teuton, the
reign of brute force and the religion of the Moloch State. These
were among the world's "check battles." Yet the flood of barbarism
was only checked at the Marne, not broken; again the flood arose
and pressed on to be stopped once more at Verdun--the Gateway of
France--in the greatest of human conflicts yet seen.

America was a spectator, but not an indifferent one. Once again
mere momentary material interest counseled abstention; precedent
was invoked to justify isolation and indifference. The timid,
the ignorant, the disloyal, those to whom physical life was more
precious than the dictates of conscience, counseled "peace and
prosperity." Many began to wonder if America had a soul and was
indeed worth saving as the policy of "Terrorism" on land followed
that of "Terrorism" on the high seas seemed to leave us indifferent.
Yet the same spirit, as of yore, dominated the nation. The people
of America at last understood that it was not any particular rule
of law, but the existence of law itself, divine and human, that
was involved in the Fate of France.

The task confronting this nation is a stupendous one. Let there
be no illusion. The war may well be long and painful, beyond
expression, but the past few weeks have taught us that the nation
will bear the strain with that same courage and enduring perseverance
as in the past, following the example of the Fathers and inspired by
the traditions of the American Revolution, this people will stand
like a stone wall with our splendid Ally of old and of to-day--France--and
from Great Britain from whence came our institutions, to end forever
the Hohenzollern system of blood and iron so that a better future
may come to Europe and America, one in which peace may be builded upon
a guaranty of justice and law--a world order in which fundamental
moral postulates and human rights may never again be set at defiance at
the behest of mere material force, however scientifically organized.

To France has fallen the honor of checking, to Britain the burden
of containing by sea and land, to America now comes the duty of
finally overthrowing that common enemy of democratic institutions
and ordered liberty, the foe whose morality knows no truth, whose
philosophy admits no check upon the "will to power."

In France the traveler passing along the roads to the northeast
leading to Lorraine may see at every cross-road a great index
finger pointing to the single word VERDUN. To many thousands,
nay, hundreds of thousands of men passing over these roads in the
five fateful months of critical battle, these six letters spelled
mutilation and death, yet the word was an inspiration to heroism
in every home of France, and from every corner of the land men
followed that great index finger pointing, as it did indeed, to
the modern Calvary.

To-day at every cross-road must we here in America set up a great
index hand with the words "TO FRANCE." To France, land of suffering
humanity, in whose devastated fields again must be saved the same
principles for which Americans fought at Bunker Hill, at Saratoga,
at Yorktown, at Gettysburg and in the Wilderness; to France, where
the fate of the world is still pending; to France, which has again
checked the Huns of the modern world as it did those of the ancient;
to France, the manhood of this nation must now be directed, to
save the heritage of the American Revolution and the Civil War, to
preserve the dearest conquests of the Christian civilization; to
France will our men go by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, if
need be by the million, to prove that the soul of America is more
completely intent upon battling for the right than ever before,
intent that slavery in another but far subtler and more dangerous
form may not prevail upon the earth.

It was Washington who gave as the watchword of the day in those
soul-trying hours that preceded the birth of our nation the immortal
and prophetic phrase, "America and France--United Forever."

[signed]Frederick Coudert THE END.





Ce Que Disent Nos Morts




Il n'est pas besoin de rappeler le souvenir de ceux qui nous furent
chers et ne sont plus, a notre peuple qui passe, non sans raison,
pour celebrer avec ferveur le culte des morts. N'est-ce pas
en France, au dix-neuvieme siecle, qu'est nee cette philosophie
qui met au rang des premiers devoirs de l'homme la reconnaissance
envers les generations qui nous ont precedes dans la tombe, en nous
laissant le fruit de leurs pensees et de leurs travaux? Certes la
religion des ancetres est de tous les temps et de tous les climats;
elle est meme chez certains peuples orientaux la religion unique;
mais en quel pas les liens entre les morts et les vivants sont-ils
plus forts qu'en France, les deuils plus solennels a la fois et plus
intimes? Chez nous, d'ordinaire, les defunts aimes et veneres ne
quittent pas tout entiers le foyer ou ils vecu; ils y respirent
dans le coeur de ceux qui demeurent; ils y sont imites, consultes,
ecoutes.

Je me rappelle trop confusement pour en faire usage ici une scene
tres belle d'une vieille chanson de geste, GIRART DE ROUSILLON,
je crois, ou l'on voit une fille de roi contempler, la nuit, apres
une bataille, la plaine ou gisent les guerriers innombrables tomber
pour sa querelle. "Elle eut voulu, dit le poete, les embrasser
tous." Et, du fond de mes tres lointains souvenirs, cette royale
fille m'apparait comme une image de notre France pleurant aujourd'hui
la fleur de sa race abondamment moissonnee.

Aussi n'est-ce pas pour exhorter mes concitoyens a commemorer en ce
jour nos morts selon un usage immemorial, que j'ecris ces lignes,
mais pour honorer avec notre peuple tout entier ceux qui lui ont
sacrifie leur vie at pour mediter la lecon qu'ils nous donnent du
fond de leur demeures profondes.

Et tout d'abord, a la memoire des notres, associons pieusement la
memoire des braves qui ont verse leur sang sous tous les etendards
de l'Alliance, depuis les canaux de l'Yser jusqu'aux rives de la
Vistule, depuis les montagnes du Frioul jusqu'aux defiles de la
Morava, et sur les vastes mers.

Puis, offrons les fleurs les plus nobles palmes aux innocentes
victimes d'une atroce cruaute, aux femmes, aux enfants martyrs, a
cette jeune infirmiere anglaise, coupable seulement de generosite
et dont l'assassinat a souleve d'indignation tout l'univers.

Et nos morts, nos morts bien aimes! Que la patrie reconnaissante
ouvre assez grand son coeur pour les contenir tous, les plus humbles
comme les plus illustres, les heros tombes avec gloire a qui l'on
prepare des monuments de marbre et de bronze et qui vivront dans
l'histoire, et les simples qui rendirent leur dernier souffle en
pensant au champ paternel.

Que tous ceux dont le sang coula pour la patrie soient benis!
Ils n'ont pas fait en vain le sacrifice de leur vie. Glorieusement
frappes en Artois, en Champagne, en Argonne, ils ont arrete l'envahisseur
qui n'a pu faire un pas de plus en avant sur la terre sacree qui
les recouvre. Quelques-uns les pleurent, tous les admirent, plus
d'un les envie. Ecoutons les. Tendons l'oreille: ils parlent.
Penchons-nous sur cette terre bouleversee par la mitraille ou
beaucoup d'entre eux dorment dans leurs vetements ensanglantes.
Agenouillons-nous dans le cimetiere, au bords des tombes fleuries
de ceux qui sont revenus dans le doux pays, et la, entendons le
souffle imperceptible et puissant qu'ils melent, la nuit, au murmure
du vent et au bruissement des feuilles qui tombent. Efforcons-nous
de comprendre leur parole sainte. Ils disent:

FRERES, vivez, combattez, achevez notre ouvrage. Apportez la victoire
et la paix a nos ombres consolees. Chassez l'etranger qui a deja
recule devant nous, et ramenez vos charrues dans les champs qui
nous avons imbibes de notre sang.

Ainsi parlent nos morts. Et ils disent encore:

FRANCAIS, aimez-vous les uns les autres d'un amour fraternal et,
pour prevaloir contre l'ennemi, mettez en commun vos biens et vos
pensees. Que parmi vous les plus grands et les plus forts soient
les serviteurs des faibles. Ne marchandez pas plus vos richesses
que votre sang a la patrie. Soyez tous egaux par la bonne volonte.
Vous le devez a vos morts.

VOUS nous devez d'assurer, a notre exemple, par le sacrifice de
vous-memes, le triomphe de la plus sainte des causes. Freres, pour
payer votre dette envers nous, il vous faut vaincre, et il vous
faut faire plus encore: il vois faut meriter de vaincre.

Nos morts nous ordonnent de vivre et de combattre en citoyens d'un
peuple libre, de marcher resolument dans l'ouragan de fer vers la
paix qui se levera comme une belle aurore sur l'Europe affranchie
des menaces de ses tyrans, et verra renaetre, faibles et timides
encore, la JUSTICE et L'HUMANITE etouffees par le crime de l'Allemagne.

Voila ce qu'inspirent nos morts a un Francais que le detachement
des vanites et le progres de l'age rapprochent d'eux.

[signed]Anatole France





What our Dead Say to Us




There is no need to recall to the minds of our people those who
were dear to us and have passed hence, for they are celebrating--and
with good cause--the anniversaries of their deaths. Was it not in
France, in the 19th century, that there was born that philosophy
which placed in the rank of the foremost duties of mankind gratitude
towards those generations who have preceded us to the grave, and
have left us the fruits of their thoughts and of their labors?
Indeed, ancestral worship prevails in all climes and at all periods;
in fact, with certain Oriental nations it is the only religion.
But in what country is the link between the dead and the living
so strong as it is in France--the rites at the same time so solemn
and so intimate? With us, as a rule, our dead, beloved and venerated,
never entirely depart from the homes in which they have dwelt, but
take up their abode in the hearts of the living who imitate them,
consult them, pay heed to them.

I recollect, too vaguely to make full use of it here, a beautiful
scene from the heroic song, "Girart de Roussillon," I think it
is, where one is shown a king's daughter, one night after a battle
gazing across the battlefield where lay the innumerable warriors
who had fallen in the fight. "She felt a desire," said the poet,
"to embrace them all." And from the depths of my far-away memories
this apparition of the daughter of a royal house arises before me
as an image of our France to-day, weeping for the flower of our
race so abundantly cut down.

My object in writing these lines is not to exhort my fellow-citizens
to commemorate to-day our noble dead, according to immemorial
custom, but to honor as a united people those who have sacrificed
their lives for their country and to meditate upon the lesson that
comes to us from their scattered burial places.

First, with the memory of our own, let us with all piety associate
the memory of those brave ones who have shed their blood under all
the Allies' standards, from the streams of the Yser to the banks
of the Vistule; from the mountains of Frioul to the defiles of
Morava, and on the vast seas.

Then, let us offer our choicest flowers of memory to the innocent
victims of an atrocious cruelty, to the women, the child martyrs,
to that young English nurse, guilty only of generosity, whose
assassination aroused the indignation of the entire universe.

And our dead, our beloved dead! May a grateful country open wide
enough its great heart to contain them all, the humblest as well
as the most illustrious, the heroes fallen with glory to whom
have been erected monuments of bronze and marble, who will live in
history, and those simple ones who drew their last breath thinking
of the green fields of home.

Blessed be all those whose blood has been shed for their country!
Not in vain have they sacrificed their lives. At the glorious
encounter at Artois, Champagne, and Argonne they repulsed the
invader who could not advance one step farther on the ground made
sacred by their fallen bodies. Some weep for them, all admire them,
more than one envies them. Let us listen to them. They speak.
Let us make every effort to hear them. Let us prostrate ourselves
on this ground, torn up by shot and shell, where many of them sleep
in their blood-dyed garments. Let us kneel in the cemetery at the
foot of the flower-strewn graves of those who were brought back to
their country, and there listen to the whispers, scarcely audible
but powerful, which mingle through the night with the murmur of
the breeze and the rustle of the falling leaves. Let us make every
effort to understand their inspired words. They say:

BROTHERS, live, fight, accomplish our work. Win victory and peace
for the sake of your dead. Drive out the intruder who has already
retreated before us, and bring back your plows into the fields now
saturated with our blood.

Thus speak our dead. And they say, further:

FRENCHMEN, love one another with brotherly love, and, in order
that you may prevail against the enemy, put into common use your
possessions and your ideas. Let the greatest and strongest among
you serve the weak. Be as willing to give your money as your blood
for your country. Be willing that perfect equality shall exist
amongst you. You owe this to your dead. Because of our example,
you owe us the assurance that by your self-sacrifice ours will be
the triumph in this holiest of all causes. Brothers, in order to
pay your debt to us you must conquer, and you must do still more:
you must deserve to conquer.

Our dead demand that we shall live and fight as citizens of a free
country; that we shall march resolutely through the hurricane of
steel toward Peace, which shall arise like a beautiful aurora over
Europe freed from the menace of her tyrants, and shall see reborn,
though weak and timid, Justice and Humanity, for the time being
crushed through the crime of Germany.

Thus are the French, detached from the vanities and progress of
the age, drawn nearer to our dead and inspired by them.

Anatole France Translation by E. M. Pope.





The Transports




Poetical version of Sully Prud'homme's "Les Berceaux"


The long tide lifts each might boat Asleep and nodding on the dock,
Of the little cradles they take no note Which the tender-hearted
mothers rock.

But time brings round the Day of Good-Byes For it's women's fate
to weep and endure, While curious men attempt the skies And follow
wherever horizons lure.

Yet the mighty boats on that morning tide When they flee away
from the dwindling lands Will feel the clutch of mother hands And
the soul of the far-off cradleside.

[signed]Robert Hughes





La Priere Du Poilu




(Written in the Trenches, before Verdun, December, 1915)


Et alors, le poilu, levant la tete derriere son parapet, se mit,
dans la nuit froide de decembre, a fixer une etoile qui brillait au
ciel d'un feu etrange. Son cerveau commenca a remeur de lointaines
pensees; son coeur se fit plus leger, comme s'il voulait monter
vers l'astre; ses levres fremirent doucement pour laisser passer
une priere:

"O Etoile, murmura-t-il, je n'ai pas besoin de ta lueur, car je
connais ma route! Elle a pu me paraitre sombre au debut, quand mes
yeux n'etaient point accoutumes a ses rudes contours; mais, depuis
un an, elle est pour moi eblouissante de clarte. On a beau me
l'allonger chaque jour, on n'arrivera pas a me l'obscurcir. On a
beau y multiplier les ronces et les pierres, apres lesquelles je
laisse de ma chair et de mon sang, on n'arrivera pas a m'y arreter.
Je sais que j'irai jusqu'au bout. Je vois devant moi la victoire....
Mais, la-bas, derriere moi, il y a une foule qui parfois s'inquiete
dans les tenebres. Au moment ou la vieille anne va tourner sur ses
gonds vermoulus, elle repasse en son esprit agite les evenements
qui la marquerent. Elle songe aux peuplades barbares d'Orient que
le Germain a entraenees derriere son char: Turcs et Bulgares, Kurdes
et Malissores, et elle oublie les grandes nations qui s'enrolerent
sous la banniere de la civilisation. Elle songe aux territoires
que foule la lorde botte tudesque, et elle oublie les empires que
nous detenons en gages: ici, l'ouest et l'est Africains, grands
comme quatre fois toute l'Allemagne, avec leurs 5000 kilometres de
voies ferrees et leurs mines de diamants; la, ces eles d'Oceanie et
cette forteresse d'Asie: Kiao-Tcheou, que le kaiser avait proclame
la perle de ses colonies. Elle s'alarme de toutes les pailles que,
dans sa course desordonnee, ramasse l'Allemagne et ne voit pas les
poutres enormes qui soutiennent la France.... Nous autres, qui
sommes la poutre, nous savons mieux, nous voyons mieux.

"O Etoile, apprends a ceux qui ne sont pas dans la tranchee la
confiance!...

"Le passe est la qui enseigne l'avenir. Chaque fois qu'une armee
quelconque, prise de la folie de l'espace, a voulu s'enfoncer dans
les terres lointaines et abandonner le berceau ou elle puisait sa
force et ses vivres, elle est morte de langueur et d'epuisement,
elle s'est effritee comme la pierre qu'on arrache de l'assemblage
solide des maisons, elle n'est pas plus revenue que ne reviennent
les grains de poussiere qu'emporte le vent.... Voici plus d'un
siecle que des legions ont tente la conquete de l'Egypte et ces
legions etaient les plus magnifiques du monde. Elles avaient des
chefs qui s'appelaient Desaix, Kleber et Bonaparte; mais elles
n'avaient pas la maitrise de la mer et rien ne revint des sables
brulants du desert. Voici un siecle aussi qu'une armee la plus
formidable d'Europe, conduite par le plus fameux conquerant qu'ait
connu l'univers, tenta de submerger l'immense empire russe; mais
l'empire etait trop grand pour la grande armee et rien ne revint
des solitudes glacees de la steppe.... Puisse, de meme, aller
loin, toujours plus loin, l'armee allemande deja decimee, haletante,
epuisee! Puisse-t-elle pousser jusqu'au Tigre, jusqu'a l'Euphrate,
jusqu'a l'Inde!...

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