“Democracy don’t rule the world
You better get that through your head
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that’s better left unsaid.”
–Bob Dylan
One of Ernest Hemingway’s first jobs was serving as an ambulance driver in WWI. The job often entailed Hemingway loading dead bodies into the meat wagon. A grim gig for any 19-year old. A far cry from modern day spoiled citizenry advocating the killing of people from behind the safety of a Chinese-built iPhone.
Hemingway’s By-Line contains 77 articles written as a journalist between 1920 and 1956. William White wrote this in the book’s introduction: “Some readers will no doubt view the material as rounding out the Hemingway record; others, it is to be hoped, will regard it simply as among the best newspaper and magazine reporting in our troubled times.”
This collection includes WWI and WWII dispatches Hemingway wrote from Spain, Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey (Constantinople), Bulgaria, Japan, Cuba, Africa, the United States, England and China.
Some of the strongest pieces preserve a sharp perspective into world history, culture, politics and war such as “American Bohemians in Paris”, “German Inflation”, “Mussolini: Biggest Bluff in Europe”, “The First Glimpses of War”, “Shelling of Madrid”, “A New Kind of War”, “A Brush with Death”, “The Flight of Refugees”, “A Program for U.S. Realism”, “The G.I and the General” and “London Fights the Robots”. Some of the best advice for any young writer can be discovered in “Monologue to the Maestro: A High Seas Letter”.
This Hemingway book mirrors these eerie times with stark accounts of unprovoked war, brutal stories of killing innocent people, and warnings involving deranged fascists. In other words, if someone’s opinion makes you feel unsafe or offended–no safe spaces exist in this world. Good people suffer under brutal governments. Raping women and slaughtering infants is bad press in any era of civilization…
Throughout history, murderers and sociopaths always blame their victims. In a 1941 article, Hemingway wrote: “No country which is at war remains a democracy for long. War always brings a temporary dictatorship.”
Go prepared.