"Look at you in war -- what mutton you are, and how
ridiculous! . . . There has never been a just one, never
an honorable one -- on the part of the instigator of the
war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will
never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The
loud little handful -- as usual -- will shout for the
war. The pulpit will -- warily and cautiously -- object
-- at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation
will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there
should be a war, and will say, earnestly and
indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there
is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout
louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and
reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first
will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not
last long; those others will outshout them, and
presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose
popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing:
the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech
strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret
hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -- as
earlier -- but do not dare to say so. And now the whole
nation -- pulpit and all -- will take up the war-cry,
and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who
ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths
will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap
lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is
attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study
them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and
thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is
just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys
after this process of grotesque self-deception."

From "The Mysterious Stranger" by Mark Twain, Harper &
Brothers, New York, 1916, Chapter 9. The full text is
available at http://tinyurl.com/7u3r