from The Functions of Literature in War-Time
by E. M. Forster

        Let me begin by anticipating an objection. It is generally said that war is not the time for reading books: we ought to be doing something else—either serving at the front or fighting that other battle against poverty on which our existence as a nation equally depends. With that objection I agree. War is not a time for reading books, and I am not suggesting that anyone should read them. I am going to justify literature along another line, and suggest that we should not read, but remember what we've read, re-think, re-feel. . . .

        The books we have read in the past influence life in two ways—directly and indirectly. The direct influence is not important. You can, of course, extract a code of behavior from the books you read, and have your favorite quotations and favorite characters. There is no harm in doing this, but you are getting nothing that you did not possess before. If you seek peace, you can find arguments in books for peace, and if you seek not peace but a sword, you can find arguments for the sword. . . .

        It is otherwise with the indirect influence. That can be immense, and I would appeal to it now. Indirectly, literature can help us to be noble and gentle and brave, and this not by any particular passage, but by its general impression. To take an example. At the conclusion of Othello what impression remains? A sense of fine poetry? Partly. A sense of pity for Desdemona, and of indignation against Iago? Partly. But much more a general sense that we have been in a world much greater than our own. A world of greatness, the world of the spirit, that helps us to endure danger and ingratitude and answer a lie with the truth; the world that we look for also in religion—that is what literature offers to those who have read her aright; that is her indirect influence upon life. It matters not what our favorite writers are. I should begin my own list with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Dostoevsky, but it doesn't matter. Whatever we have read, the general sense of greatness remains, and it was never more needed than it is today.

        In the first place it helps us not to hate the Germans too much. Literature does not teach us that war is either right or wrong—these are questions outside her competence—but she does teach us that hatred and revenge are wrong, because they cloud the spirit. It is not easy to love one's enemies—for my own part I find it impossible—but one needn't be proud of not loving them, and she does exhort us to that much. Love is an emotion, hatred an excitement, and she is against excitement all along the line. If war were only death, there would be little to say against it, for we must all die, and preferably die young; but war is also hatred, a narrowing of the spirit. The soldier seldom hates; his job doesn't give him the time, and he has, from the technical point of view, an interest and even a sympathy with the fellow opposite; the soldier can come out of his trench on Christmas Day. But though the soldier does not hate, the stay-at-home does. From the clubs and drawing-rooms, and, above all, from the press pours a torrent of hatred which scarcely any eminent man has had the courage to rebuke. Literature does rebuke it. Her position is impregnable. She is neither pro-German nor anti-German, because the great men who built her up all died before this world-trouble began, and have become our spiritual trustees. Her thousand voices—the voice of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dostoevsky, and of whomever else you will—blend into one voice which says, "Do not hate: hatred clouds the spirit." And I can't see why we should be the worse Englishmen for listening to this, or why, if we must hate, we should not at least be a bit ashamed of doing it. I know it has been said, "Only a good hater knows how to love," but the man who said this, wherever and whenever he lived, was a German professor. It's the voice of pedantry speaking—not literature.

        After hatred, fear. There never has been a time when one's own little life and one's own little income were of less importance, and yet there never was a time when the gusts of ignoble fear blew harder. Ten nations are at war, with misery certain for the poor in all of them, whoever wins: the young men who ought to be the fathers of the next generation are killing one another all over Europe; and yet I can find time to be afraid whether my dividends will pay or whether a bomb from a Zeppelin will hit me. Probably other Old Students have never been thus afraid, and if they have I am sure that they have found an effective reply. In my own case I have replied by thinking of the immensity of man's soul as embodied in literature—an immensity that armies cannot embody and cannot destroy. It then seems to me not so much shameful to be a coward as silly. The real thing existed before I came into the world, and will continue after my important departure. Then what is there to be afraid of? You may remember how Lord Tennyson cured himself of fear. He used to be shy and timid, especially when entering a drawing-room, and he cured himself by thinking of the great star nebula in the constellation of Orion. My remedy is analogous. By another route, it recalls us to the contemplation of greatness, and, that once achieved, there is no room for fear; you go on with your job instead.

        So much for hatred and fear. A third point. Literature is detached. As soon as a writer dies, he ceases to have an axe to grind. All that is temporary and selfish, all that is excitable in his work, becomes meaningless and is forgotten, and the pure emotion survives. To his contemporaries he may have been a jingo or a pacifist, an Anglo-Saxon or a Teuton, a Parthian, or Mede, or Elamite, or dweller in Mesopotamia; but to us he only shows forth the wonderful works of God. The Germans have tried to annex Shakespeare. I applaud the attempt—it does credit to their taste—but they might as well annex the great nebula in Orion, for Shakespeare lives neither in Germany nor in England now, but in the heart of any person who care for him. Again, we at the outbreak of war tried to banish Beethoven and Wagner from our concert halls. We could do that, but we could not stop them from playing inside our heads whenever some chance sound reawoke their immortality. Literature is the commerce of immortals with mortals, and it is on this side that it connects with religion. You know as well as I do how, in a war like this, there is always a danger we should degrade our conceptions of the Divine, and lower it into a merely national deity—in fact, into a tribal god. We can see this danger at work all through history from the Jews onward; its worst exhibition was lately, in the Kaiser's celebrated telegram about the Crown Prince—"Our good German God has supported him magnificently." We in England haven't gone as far as the Kaiser yet; we haven't spoken of "our good British God," and I pray we never may. But even in England tribal religion is a real danger, and literature is a useful corrective against it. Literature knows nothing of a Chosen Race, that disastrous fallacy that has produced so much self-righteousness and cruelty. The individual writer may believe that his race is the chosen, but literature—the voice into which the thousand voices blend, the voice I am asking you to listen for now—declares that beauty and truth and goodness exist apart from the tribe, apart even from the nation, and that their only earthly dwelling is the soul of man.

        Such seem to me her three main functions in war-time. She helps us to abstain from fear, from hatred, from tribal religion. As far as our passions permit, let us do this. Let us not brood over German atrocities, or squeal about spies, real and imaginary. There are atrocities, there are spies. Nobody doubts it. But let us not concentrate lovingly and persistently on these subjects. It is true the Jugend has published the "Hymn of Hate," but that is no excuse for quoting it in English pulpits. It is true that German professors have fabricated an absurd abstraction that they call England, but we shall not right things by getting English professors to fabricate another abstraction and call it Germany. Against all such hysteria the voice of the immortal dead protests, their personal yearnings are stilled and so they can help us, as the living cannot; their hatreds and fears are over, their lust for possessions quelled, they have become one with Urania, the Muse of the Divine Song, who has given them—not happiness, but peace; not Germany or England, but an empire beyond the grave.

1.	CONTEMPORARY ISSUES Forster implies that war and poverty are the greatest threats to England as a nation. Do you believe these two problems are among the greatest threats to the United States today? Why or why not?
2.	BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE Based on what you have read in your textbook and elsewhere, why was World War I a time when a "general sense of greatness" was badly needed in Britain?
3.	ANALYZE EVIDENCE Does Forster back up his argument with factual evidence or emotional reasoning? On what does he base his conclusion?
4.	ASSUMPTIONS What assumption does Forster make about the ability of a German professor to draw conclusions about life?
5.	COMPARE AND CONTRAST What is the effect of this comparison between the men at war and Forster's personal concerns?
6.	AUTHOR'S PURPOSE What is Forster's goal in this paragraph?
7.	ANALYZE EVIDENCE Forster's argument is not based on clear factual evidence. Even so, do you believe his reasoning is persuasive?
8.	AUTHOR'S PURPOSE Why does Forster warn against "tribal" religion?
9.	ANALYZE STRUCTURE Is the structure of this essay effective? Why or why not?
10.	CONTEMPORARY ISSUES Forster expressed his concerns over the ways in which war affected the nation during World War I. Which of the issues he discussed in this essay still exist today?