Victory for the Slain

Victory for the Slain is an anti-war poem written by children’s author Hugh Lofting, creator of the Dr. Dolittle series. Published in 1942, the poem is based on Lofting’s experiences during World War I and one of the strongest literary expressions of his pacifism. It was Lofting’s second book of verse but the only work written by him for adults.

Lofting was a pacifist and was often frustrated at the quickness in which governments resorted to armed conflict to resolve international issues. Lofting would often mock the reoccurring “latest war to end all wars” mentality and the martial ardor that often pervaded children’s literature. While the theme of the poem is no different from those in the Dr. Dolittle series, the “meaningless and folly of war” as one commentator put it, it is presented in a manner more dark and grim than his children’s literature.

That Lofting was consistent in his views is not surprising, having witnessed the horrors of war in Flanders during the First World War. In 1918 he was wounded by shrapnel from a hand grenade in the upper thigh, an injury that would plague him the rest of his life because of the doctor’s inability to remove the metal fragments. Soon after his injury he left active service and moved to the United States where he wrote his popular children’s series about a country physician who learned to communicate with animals. Lofting wrote his Dr. Dolittle series in order to give the animals he saw in World War I a voice they didn't have. In a larger sense, however, it was clear from the start that the Dr. Dolittle series was about the cruelty of war itself and the hope that Lofting saw from peace and cooperation.

As early as 1924, Lofting was editorializing about the negative effects of war on children. In an article written for The Nation, Lofting railed against what he called “tin-soldierism,” a state of mind common at the time that glorified war and “heroic deaths”. He attacked the so-called children’s classics about heroes galloping across battlefields. “That kind of battlefield has gone for good,” he wrote, “it is still bloody, but you don’t gallop. And since that kind of battlefield has gone, that kind of book—for children—should go too.”

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