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
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
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.