Summary: Johnson makes the point well by depicting the Pride of Hell.<br> O War. O War.<br> ⁓The Voice before the Void<br> “And the Greatest of These is War”<br> James Weldon Johnson<br> Around the council-board of Hell, with Satan at their head,<br> The Three Great Scourges of humanity sat.<br> Gaunt Famine, with hollow cheek and voice, arose and spoke,—<br> “O, Prince, I have stalked the earth,<br> And my victims by ten thousands I have slain,<br> I have smitten old and young.<br> Mouths of the helpless old moaning for bread, I have filled with dust;<br> And I have laughed to see a crying babe tug at the shriveling breast<br> Of its mother, dead and cold.<br> I have heard the cries and prayers of men go up to a tearless sky,<br> And fall back upon an earth of ashes;<br> But, heedless, I have gone on with my work.<br> ‘Tis thus, O, Prince, that I have scourged mankind.”<br> And Satan nodded his head.<br> Pale Pestilence, with stenchful breath, then spoke and said,—<br> “Great Prince, my brother, Famine, attacks the poor.<br> He is most terrible against the helpless and the old.<br> But I have made a charnel-house of the mightiest cities of men.<br> When I strike, neither their stores of gold or of grain avail.<br> With a breath I lay low their strongest, and wither up their fairest.<br> I come upon them without warning, lancing invisible death.<br> From me they flee with eyes and mouths distended;<br> I poison the air for which they gasp, and I strike them down fleeing.<br> ‘Tis thus, great Prince, that I have scourged mankind.”<br> And Satan nodded his head.<br> Then the red monster, War, rose up and spoke,—<br> His blood-shot eyes glared ’round him, and his thundering voice<br> Echoed through the murky vaults of Hell.—<br> “O, mighty Prince, my brothers, Famine and Pestilence,<br> Have slain their thousands and ten thousands,—true;<br> But the greater their victories have been,<br> The more have they wakened in Man’s breast<br> The God-like attributes of sympathy, of brotherhood and love<br> And made of him a searcher after wisdom.<br> But I arouse in Man the demon and the brute,<br> I plant black hatred in his heart and red revenge.<br> From the summit of fifty thousand years of upward climb<br> I haul him down to the level of the start, back to the wolf.<br> I give him claws.<br> I set his teeth into his brother’s throat.<br> I make him drunk with his brother’s blood.<br> And I laugh ho! ho! while he destroys himself.<br> O, mighty Prince, not only do I slay,<br> But I draw Man hellward.”<br> And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—<br> “O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief.”<br> And Hell rang with the acclamation of the Fiends.<br>
