We can’t get away from WW1. Every town and village have a memorial to the fallen during the Great War. What we need is a daily, 5-minute blaring siren to remind us of the futility and unspeakable horror of war. We are listening to G.C. Meyer’s A World Undone as we walk through fields where Generals, experts at war, confident of victory, executed a strategy whose goal was to deplete the other side’s supply of ammunition by marching row after row of soldiers into the maelstrom of well positioned machine guns. The parallels to our present situation are stark: sanctions, blockades, unlimited supply of weapons, grain shortages, spiraling inflation, demonization of the other side, corrupt regimes, domineering egos, humanity abandoned for savagery and more. I Don’t have any answers, but I agree with the old man in Catch-22 who told Nately “It is better to live on your feet than die on your knees.”
Walking the Via Francigena 
Well articulated
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Thank you!
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they did not learn their lesson, they were at it again 25 years later.
glad today the war is about which house produces the best champagne..
enjoy the continuation of the walk.
hugs to both
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The quote has a long history.
Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees. – Emiliano Zapata #quote
— Tim Fargo (@alphabetsuccess) October 22, 2015
That was the quote I got to, but it’s only attributed to to Zapata so far as I know. I started with the quote cited to Franklin Roosevelt’s speech when he got an honorary Doctor of Laws from Oxford in 1941, when Britain badly needed such inspiration to fight on, in a war for freedom in which the U.S. was not yet actively engaged:
We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), upon receiving the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University, June 19, 1941; special convocation ceremony held at Harvard University, with FDR’s remarks delivered by secretary to the President, Major General Edwin M. Watson
One of a set of ten postcards printed by the Spanish Red Cross, the subjects shown, favor the republican cause. | Spanish. | Wolfsonian Exhibit: Library Vestibule Complement to: Revolutionary Tides, the Art of the Political Poster, 1914-1989; February 25 – August 24, 2006.
One of a set of ten postcards printed by the Spanish Red Cross, the subjects shown, favor the republican cause. | Spanish. | Wolfsonian Exhibit: Library Vestibule Complement to: Revolutionary Tides, the Art of the Political Poster, 1914-1989; February 25 – August 24, 2006. [Untranslated from Spanish:] Dolores Ibarruri (Pasionaria): Representante de Asturias en el Parlamento de España y figura destacadísima entre las mujeres de la Revolución; Spain Cruz Roja. | Garcia, A. (illustrator.) | Edit. R. Molero (publisher)
When I checked it in the then-current Bartlett’s Quotations I learned it was a common expression during the Spanish Civil War, and attributed to a radio propagandist on the Republican side. It’s likely FDR and his research aides knew that.
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Dolores Ibårruri, “La Pasionaria” (1895-1989), Speech in Paris, September 3, 1936
Checking that one out, I found a reference to Mexico’s revolutionary Zapata, whose work was likely familiar to the Spanish Republicans.
Mejor morir a pie que vivir en rodillas.
Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
Emiliano Zapata (c. 1877-1919), attributed
I like the reference to Catch -22 and the absurdity of war. If youll indulge me I found this quote from yossarian re “And don’t tell me God works in mysterious ways”, Yossarian continued, hurtling over her objections. “There’s nothing so mysterious about it. He’s not working at all. He’s playing or else He’s forgotten all about us. That’s the kind of God you people talk about—a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did he ever create pain? … Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! [to warn us of danger] Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that. Why couldn’t He? … What a colossal, immortal blunderer! When you consider the opportunity and power He had to really do a job, and then look at the stupid, ugly little mess He made of it instead, His sheer incompetence is almost staggering. …
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Thanks for the in depth analysis. Catch-22 was controversial when it was first published and I doubt it would do better today. The God is dead, there is no meaning in the universe theme has fallen into disfavor. But it’s still one of the funniest books ever written.
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