Herman Hesse was one of the greatest literary figures of the German-speaking world. His deep humanity and searching philosophy were developed in such masterly works as Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and Narcissus and Goldmund, which together with his poems and a number of critical works (including If the War Goes On . . .) won him a leading place among contemporary thinkers. In 1946 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1962 shortly after his eighty-fifth birthday.
Also by Hermann Hesse
Fiction
Demian
Steppenwolf
Narcissus and Goldmund
The Glass Bead Game
Siddhartha
Gertrude
Journey to the East
The Prodigy
Peter Camenzind
Rosshalde
Klingsor’s Last Summer
Knulp
Strange News from Another Star
Stories of Five Decades
Pictor’s Metamorphoses
In the Old Sun
Non-Fiction
Wandering
Autobiographical Writings
My Belief
Poetry
Poems
Crisis
Hours in the Garden
This Canons edition first published in Great Britain in 2018 by
Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books
First published in Great Britain in 1972 by Jonathan Cape Ltd
First published in German in 1946 under the title Krieg und Frieden: Betrachtungen zu Krieg and Politik seit dem Jahr 1914 Copyright © Fretz & Wasmuth Verlag AG, Zurich 1946 Contents included in Gesammelte Schriften, Copyright © Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin and Frankfurt 1957 Translation © Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, Inc. 1970, 1971
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 445 8
eISBN 978 1 78689 446 5
Typeset in Goudy Old Style 11/14 pt by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Romain Rolland
CONTENTS
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! (September 1914)
To a Cabinet Minister (August 1917)
If the War Goes On Another Two Years (End of 1917)
Shall There Be Peace? (December 1917)
If the War Goes On Another Five Years (Early in 1918)
The Path of Love (December 1918)
Letter to a Young German (1919)
End of the Rigi-Journal (August 1945)
Message to the Nobel Prize Banquet (1946)
Words of Moralising Thanks (1946)
To a Young Colleague in Japan (1947)
An Attempt at Justification (1948)
Foreword to the 1946 Edition
Compiling this book has not been a happy