Rada Monologue from Rada: A Belgian Christmas Eve

From Rada: A Belgian Christmas Eve by Alfred Noyes

male · dark · 1:24 min

There is one woman here, One woman and a child.... And war, they tell me, is a noble thing. It is the mother of heroic deeds, The nurse of honour, manhood. (SECOND SOLDIER: God, a speech! NANKO. Certainly, Rada! You will not deny That life's a battle.) You hear, drunk as you are, Up to your necks in blood, you hear this fool, This poor old fool, piping his dreary cry. And through his lips, and through his softening brain, The men that use you, cheat you, drive you out To slaughter and be slaughtered, teach the world That this black vampire, sucking at our breasts, Is good. Men! Men! The pestilence of your dead Is murdering you by legions. All the trains Of quicklime that your Emperor sends behind you Can never eat its way through all that flesh-- Three hundred miles of dead! Your dead! (FIRST SOLDIER: Hoch! Hoch! A speech!) I do not hate! I pity you all. I tell you, you are doing it in a dream. You are drugged. You are not awake.

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