‘War is sweet to those who have not tried it’ was one of the adages Erasmus expanded into an essay, and this is its earliest English translation, from the 1530s. He contrasts the gentle nature of man with the madness of armies, mocks the honour given to war, and argues that Christian princes have no excuse for it. J. W. Mackail supplies an introduction.
One of the founding texts of European pacifism, written with Erasmus’s usual irony. Download the free EPUB.