Krieg dem Kriege

The German pacifist Ernst Friedrich wished to enlighten people with this book by demonstrating the horrors of the First World War. The work becomes a "pacifist bible" that rallies the movement under the slogan "no more war".

Following the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words, the book makes use of images of war. One picture shows toys imitating weapons of war, below a caption reads : Do not give these toys to your children ! It denounces the euphemistic language of war propaganda by showing pictures of the front with the appropriate sub-titles. A picture entitled "The field of honour" shows the naked corpse of a soldier dead from typhoid, interred in a hole in the ground. Another shows a mass of bodies collected in a ditch intended to be a mass grave, with the title "The Heroes' Tomb" ' The book shows soldiers and their battlefield mutilations. It shows a bedridden soldier with the mouth and lower jaw completely torn off. Friedrich quotes the marshal Paul Von Hindenburg : War treats me like a spa bath ! Another quotes the words of Count von Moltke : The most noble virtues of people are exposed in war !