At War with War Read online

  For Pam, Eve and Paula

  Copyright © 2017 by Seymour Chwast

  Introduction © 2017 by Victor Navasky

  Art and design by Seymour Chwast

  Camille Murphy, associate designer

  A PUSHPIN EDITIONS BOOK

  Steven Heller/Seymour Chwast

  SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  www.sevenstories.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  College professors may order examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles for free.

  To order, visit www.sevenstories.com/​textbook or send a fax on school letterhead to (212) 226-1411.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Chwast, Seymour, cartoonist. | Container of (expression): Sunzi, active 6th century B.C. Sunzi bing fa. English. | Container of (expression): Erasmus, Desiderius, –1536 Querela pacis. English. | Container of (expression): Bourne, Randolph Silliman, 1886–1918. War is the health of the state.

  Title: At war with war / Seymour Chwast.

  Description: New York : Seven Stories Press, 2017.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017001833 (print) | LCCN 2017010733 (ebook) | ISBN 9781609807795 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781609807801 (E-book)

  Subjects: LCSH: War—Philosophy—Comic books, strips, etc. | Military art and science—Comic books, strips, etc. | BISAC: COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS / Nonfiction. | HISTORY / Military / General. | HISTORY / World.

  Classification: LCC U21.2 .A7375 2017 (print) | LCC U21.2 (ebook) | DDC 355.0201—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017001833

  Ebook ISBN 9781609807801

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Introduction by Victor Navasky

  Epigraph

  War Timeline

  The Art of War by Sun Tzu

  War Timeline

  The Complaint of Peace by Desiderius Erasmus

  War Timeline

  “War is the Health of the State” by Randolph Bourne

  War Timeline

  Introduction

  Victor Navasky

  The power of cartoons and caricatures shouldn’t be underestimated. For centuries, tyrants have had their perpetrators censored, imprisoned and otherwise inconvenienced. Nevertheless, most people still regard cartoons as trivia, an example of what Sir Ernst Gombrich, the Austrian art historian, has called “the low medium of illustration.” But comes now Seymour Chwast, who makes clear in the following pages just how cartoons and illustrations can be deployed to transmit a message that educates and informs, even as it incites; a message qualitatively beyond anything possible by words alone.

  Seymour Chwast, co-founder in 1954, with Edward Sorel and Milton Glaser, of the legendary Push Pin Studios, which revolutionized the world of design, is, at age 85, still deploying his art to give peace a chance.

  But the award-winning designer/artist/illustrator harbors no illusions that his graphic timeline depicting wars, conquests, invasions and terrorist attacks dating from 3300 BCE, will put an end to war. “What I do hope is to arouse awareness. To expose war’s stupidity. In 5000 years we haven’t learned anything. We haven’t found a way to avoid destruction and killing. That amazes me.”

  It also has caused him, with the help of Kickstarter, to give birth to this book.

  At War With War, is a sequel to his earlier A Book of Battles. It mobilizes black-and-white cartoons to reveal the irrelevance, futility, brutality and absurdity of war. For this peace activist, maybe the times they are a-changin’, but as Chwast’s images illustrate, “the arrows have turned into H-bombs but that’s the only change. The idea of war is as it has always been – to kill people.”

  To make his point, Chwast has gone out of his way not to give us beautiful or “artistic” pictures. Instead, we get stark black-and-white drawings. “I did not want to make this pretty,” he says. “War isn’t pretty.” As his former Push Pin colleague Milton Glaser notes, his black-and-white images are in the anti-war tradition of German expressionists like Käthe Kollwitz, who worked with drawing, etching and woodcuts. The drawings he has chosen need no elaboration. They are self-explanatory. By making the case against the futility of war in visual terms, Chwast has performed an invaluable service.

  His images are simple and, as former Push Pin partner Ed Sorel puts it, “tasteful.” (And they complement what Milton Glaser has called “the left-brain logic” of Chwast’s anti-war activism by speaking in “the right-brain language of creativity.”) Says Chwast: “I end it in 2015 with no happy ending. There is no ending. That seems to be the downside to this book.”

  And yet Chwast’s drawings starkly raise the question: can it really be true that there is no end to war? Abraham Lincoln, who understood the power of images (he once called the Civil War cartoonist Thomas Nast “my number one recruiting sergeant”), said, “we must disenthrall ourselves” from the culture of violence and guns, and then “we shall save our country.”

  Seymour Chwast, activist, artist, warrior against war, is a world-class disenthraller.

  O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain…in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

  Excerpt from “The War Prayer”

  Mark Twain

  BCE

  3300 King Menes, the conqueror, unites Egypt

  2154 Gutians overrun southern Mesopotamia

  1763 Hammurabi of Babylon conquers Sumer

  1595 Hittites sack Babylon

  1285 Hittites battle Egyptians at Kadesh

  1116 War between Israelites and Philistines

  1100 Dorian invasion of southern Greece

  945 Libyan prince takes control of the Egyptian delta

  745 Tiglath Pileser III conquers Babylon, founds New Assyrian Empire

  716 Spartan conquest of Messinia

  689 Assyrian king, Sennacherib, conquers Babylon and Judah, threatens Jerusalem

  669 Assyrian king, Esarhaddon, conquers northern Egypt

  612 Medes and Chaldeans destroy Ninevah

  586 Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem

  540 Cyrus the Great captures Babylon

  525 Cambyses II of Persia conquers Egypt

  496 Battle of Lake Regillus; Rome defeats Latins

  490 Greeks defeat Persia at Marathon

  480 Xerxes invades Greece

  431 Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta begins

  396 Rome captures Etruscan city of Veii

  371 Theban victory over Sparta

  334 Alexander rules Asia Minor

  331 Alexander attacks and defeats Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela

  330 Second Samnite War in Italy. Samnites defeat Romans

  327 Alexander conquers Bactria and Sogdiana

  326 Alexander defeats Porus’ 34,000-man army

  321 Samnites beat Romans. The Battle of the Caudine Forks

  300 Ireland is invaded by Gaelic-speaking Celts

  280 Battle of Heraclea. Romans defeat Greeks

  274 First Syrian War between Ptolemy II and Antiochus I

  260 Battle
of Mylae. Romans destroy 50 Carthaginian ships

  264 During the Punic Wars, Rome begins the defeat of Carthage and expansion of the Roman Empire

  255 Roman invasion of northern Africa fails

  254 Seleucids and Ptolemies fight a six-year war

  225 Roman legions defeat Gallic tribes

  205 Ptolemy V loses Judea to Syria

  202 Battle of Zama marks the end of the Second Punic War

  165 Judas Maccabeus takes Jerusalem

  148 Rome is victor in Fourth Macedonian War

  112 Numidia at war with Romans

  111 Chinese Han empire conquers northern Vietnam

  108 Chinese Han takes military control of the Korean peninsula

  106 Roman conquest of Numidia

  63 Jerusalem taken by Pompeii

  58 Caesar’s conquest of Gaul

  49 War between Rome and Pompeii

  48 Caesar defeats Pompeii at the Battle of Pharsalus, Greece

  37 Herod captures Jerusalem

  31 The Battle of Actium; Octavian defeats forces of Antony and Cleopatra

  12 Germans conquered by Rome

  CE

  9 Germans destroy three Roman legions

  43 Romans invade Britain with 20,000 troops. Claudius arrives with elephants and heavy artillery

  50 Kingdom of Garamantes in the Sahara defeated by Rome

  70 Jerusalem destroyed by Titus

  101 Trojans war against Dacians (Romania)

  115 Jews rebel against Romans

  166 Germans invade northern Italy

  197 At the Battle of Lugdunum, Septimius defeats Clodius Albinus

  200 Third Punic War. Rome destroys Carthage and annexes it.

  205 Ptolemy V loses Judea to Syria

  216 Romans invade Parthia and attack Arbela

  230 Persians invade Roman Empire

  251 Decius defeated by Goths at Abrittus

  253 Sassanians, of Persian heritage, defeat Romans and occupy Antioch

  287 Carausius occupies Britain and northern Gaul

  296 Sassanians occupy Armenia and defeat Roman emperor, Galerius

  312 Constantine I defeats Maxentius in Battle of Milvian Bridge

  348 Battle of Singara. Persians and Romans end fighting in a draw

  350 Huns invade Persia and India

  360 Persians capture Mesopotamia from Romans

  371 Theban victory over Sparta

  378 In the Battle of Adrianople, Gothic rebels defeat Romans

  393 Japanese invaders capture Silla and Paekche in Korea

  401 Alaric, king of the Visigoths, invades Italy

  415 Visigoths defeat Siling Vandals

  439 Vandals take Carthage

  447 Attila the Hun invades Italy but is unable to take Rome. He is unable to take Constantinople as well

  451 In the Battle of Catalaunian Fields, Romans and Goths defeat Attila the Hun

  454 Defeat of Athenians in Egypt

  455 Vandals, under King Gaiseric, sack Rome

  467 Hephthalite Huns capture most of western India

  486 Franks conquer Gaul

  493 Ostrogoths conquer Italy. Theodoric becomes king

  533 Justinian conquers Vandal kingdom in North Africa

  535 Byzantines invade southern Italy

  614 Persians capture Jerusalem and Asia Minor

  628 Byzantines recapture Jerusalem

  634 Muslims take Syria in the Battle of Yarmouk

  642 Arabs capture Alexandria

  650 Khazars conquer Bulgarian empire in southern Russia

  663 Byzantine emperor Constantine II invades Italy and sacks Rome

  668 Tang forces conquer Koguryo in Korea

  711 Arabs invade Spain, defeat Visigoths and Christians

  732 Frankish leader, Charles Martel, halts Muslim advance in Battle of Tours

  749 Battle of the Zab in Syria. Abbasids control most of the Muslims

  778 Byzantines defeat Arabs in the Battle of Germania, Asia Minor

  837 Muslims conquer Sicily from Byzantines

  885 Saxons recapture London from Vikings

  885 Vikings begin siege of Paris

  898 Magyars invade Italy and sack Paris

  926 Northern Mongols invade northern China, defeat King P’o-Hai

  996 Byzantine emperor, Basil II, begins war with Bulgaria

  1013 Danish, led by Sweyn I, conquer England

  1040 Turks conquer Afghanistan and eastern Persian

  1060 Norman invasion of Sicily begins

  1063 Seljuk Turks capture Baghdad

  1066 Norman conquest of England with the Battle of Hastings

  Sun Tzu

  The Art of War

  This excerpt, from a 2500-year-old treatise, was translated by Lionel Giles.

  I. Laying Plans

  1. Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State.

  2. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

  3. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.

  4. These are: (1) The Moral Law; (2) Heaven; (3) Earth; (4) The Commander; (5) Method and Discipline.

  5, 6. The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.

  7. Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, times and seasons.

  8. Earth comprises distances, great and small; danger and security; open ground and narrow passes; the chances of life and death.

  9. The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerity, benevolence, courage and strictness.

  10. By Method and Discipline are to be understood the marshaling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army and the control of military expenditure.

  11. These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail.

  12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:

  13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral Law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

  14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.

  15. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: let such a one be dismissed!

  16. While heading the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules.

  17. According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans.

  18. All warfare is based on deception.

  19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

  20. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.

  21. If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him.

  22. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

  23. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them.

  24. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.

  25. These military devices, leading to vict
ory, must not be divulged beforehand.

  26. Now, the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

  II. Waging War

  1. Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand li (333 miles), the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.

  2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

  3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

  4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

  5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

  6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

  7. It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.

  8. The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice.

  9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.

  10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.