Mark Twain's The War Prayer

Though Twain clearly values non-conformist spirit, he recognizes the strong and overbearing hold of societal pressure and conformity make his desire of an ideal society hard to achieve. In The War Prayer he illustrates that those who recognize the existence of these illusionary barriers and dare to challenge the existing norms face roadblocks. As the church members pray to God to “crush the foe” and “grant to [the. . . ] country imperishable honor and glory,” few seem to care that their prayer, should it be answered, would result in the annihilation of other individuals (“Prayer” 682). Even those who do step forward to question the war’s merit receive “such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly [shrink] out of sight

The War Prayer was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper’s Bazaar rejected it as not quite suited to a woman’s magazine. Similarly, Twain wrote As Regards Patriotism in about 1900, but it was not published until 1923, 10 years after Twain's death. Having long since experienced, financially and politically the dominant culture’s rejection of his stance, having even been called a traitor for undercutting the national mythology, he was unbowed- “the nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors and no one can tell which from which,”-but when it came to criticizing war-supporting Americans who found it a natural thing to seek the favor of God in their nation’s earthly struggles, Twain knew he was aiming his words squarely at an audience that was bound to reject them (“Twain” 683). After facing this censorship, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the stories, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth (“Twain”