War according to Tolstoy

“War is not a polite recreation, but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.

We ought to accept it sternly and solemnly as a fearful necessity. It all comes to this: have done with lying, and if it's war, then its war and not a game, or else warfare is simply the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous. …

The military is the most honoured calling. And what is war, what is needed for success in war, what are the morals of the military world?

The object of warfare is murder; the means employed in warfare—spying, treachery, and the encouragement of it, the ruin of a country, the plundering of its inhabitants and robbery for the maintenance of the army, trickery and lying, which are called military strategy; the morals of the military class—absence of all independence, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness.

And in spite of all that, it is the highest class, respected by every one. All sovereigns wear a military uniform, and give the greatest rewards to the man who succeeds in killing the most people… They meet together to murder one another, as we shall do tomorrow; they slaughter and mutilate tens of thousands of men, and then offer up thanksgiving services for the number of men they have killed (and even add to it in the telling), and glorify the victory, supposing that the more men have been slaughtered the greater the achievement. How God can look down from above and hear them!”
 
Prince Andrey Bolkonsky on the eve of the Battle of Borodino, from Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace

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