Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling

Bertha Von Suttner

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(4.5 stars; 2 reviews)

Die Waffen Nieder, in English: Lay Down Your Arms is a fictional biography, which describes four wars from the perspective of a soldier's wife. The response to the book was worldwide; it became popular, and it can be described as the beginning of the peace movements of our times. Von Suttner received the Nobel Peace Prize - she was a candidate since the first award-ceremony (according to Alfred Nobel himself). She foresaw and watched the rise of the First World War, was warning and campaigning against it; but died before the beginning of WW1. Her friend for years, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Alfred Fried, passed on her last words - they were the title of this book and a plea: „Die Waffen nieder! Sag’s vielen... vielen“ “Lay down the arms! Tell it to many... many” - Summary by schrm

"Apart from its value as a work of fiction—great as that is—the book has a transcendent interest for the Society with which I am connected from its bearing on the question of war in general and of the present state of Europe in particular. We (...) are apt to forget how terribly the remembrance of such calamities, and the constant threat of their recurrence, haunt the lives of our Continental brethren. Madame Suttner’s vivid pages will enable those of us who have not seen anything of the ravages of war, or felt the griefs and anxieties of non-combatants, to realise..." Quoted from "translator's preface to the first edition" (Timothy Holmes). (16 hr 54 min)