Frederick Palmer Hated
the War

When the American war correspondent Frederick Palmer (1873 – 1958) sat down to write his memoir in the early Twenties (The Folly of Nations) he had seen much of the vulgarity and wastefulness of war on a number of continents and knew the institution better than most. During the First World War, Palmer had been chosen by the King’s government as the only American correspondent to report on the activities of the British Army in Europe, and in the Spring of 1917 he was recruited by the U.S. Army to serve as their press liaison officer and censor (a post which he characterized as that of a simple liar.) The attached article is the review of his 1921 memoir in which he condemned the war:

“Passing on to speak of the moral aspects of war, Palmer asks: ‘What is it to be moral? Is it moral to foul your mind with lies and hates? To plot the killing of fellow human beings? To surrender your freedom of thought to the drill master and the propagandist of war?…If so, the late war was a true promoter of morality; and let us have another, and another…”

Another W.W. I magazine article by Frederick Palmer can be read here…

Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War – none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.

During the Second World War, Palmer reported from both the European and Pacific Theaters. He was a witness to the battle for France: click here to read that article.