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BURDEN OF “TROJAN WOMEN” NOW FALLEN UPON OTHERSProf. Gilbert Murray Declares Allies Cannot and Will Not Crush Germany.Professor Gilbert Murray, the English scholar who made the translations of The Trojan Women” andIphigenia in Tauris”, which Granville Barker will use when he presents these plays here on June II and 12, wrote, as an additional preface to the new addition of the plays which is being printed, the following article upon the present war, pointing out the similarity of conditions existing now and in the time of Euripides. This preface unfortunately arrived too late to be included in the new edition, but the Princettonian is able to give the following extracts from it:Not Peace but a Sword:—The burden of The Trojan Women now has fallen upon others, upon Belgian women, French women, upon the women of Poland and Serbia: God grant that the discipline of the Allies may hold firm, and that mankind may not have to add to that tragic list the names of German and Magyar Women!Horrors of the Far East.“Some twelve years ago when I was steeped in this drama of Euripides I felt that, vivid as it was, the things it depicted belonged to the horrors of the far. past. War might come again, even among civilized nations: but it could never again be this kind of war. Mankind had advanced since the days of Troy or Melos; there were rules of honorable warfare firmly established, pathetic efforts made by man in his gentler moments to ensure that, even in his fury, he should not sink utterly below the brutes. Women and children were safe, prisoners were safe, the iwounded were safe. So much seemed certain: and yet the very reverse was true. The next war was to be baser and crueller than the old wars, just as it was vaster in extent.Present Situation Unbelievable. *Other things too are strange. We could scarcely have believed that, if war could come, the first step would be the deliberate massacre of a small and unconcerned nation, as innocent as Melos and as far removed from the quarrels of its great neighbors. We could have scarcely believed that, with almost all Europe eager to preserve peace, with Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Serbia, day by day and almost hour by hour offering to accept any form of arbitration, mediation, conference or even delay, one Power would have taken on herself the responsibility of saying: No Ican have arbitration, but I prefer war. It is by war that I shall gain the most.We offered her justice, but she preferred organized murder. It seems incredible, and yet it is the oldest of old stories. By that sin fell the angels! Other nations, great and fine nations, have gone mad before, and almost always with this same madness. ‘Hubris’ the Greeks called it, the ancient sin of pride which must needs come to a fall if any balance is to be maintained in human life.Do Not “Crush German/’.Reasonable men in Great Britain do not need to be warned against the folly of any desire to ‘crush Germany’. Such a thing cannot be done, and if it could it would be a disaster. We do not need to be warned against deliberately setting ourselves to ‘hate Germany’. But before peace can come the world must set its seal upon three great lessons: That public right stilllives between nations; that the freedom of a civilized people shall not be violated with impunity; and that those who are swift to make war for the sake of gain shall find in their wars not profit but bitter loss.”
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Princeton Daily Princetonian
Princeton, New Jersey, US
Thu, May 27, 1915
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GB 20 Dec 2018
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