New Year’s Resolution

January 1, 2022 (218 words)

“A wonderful New Year’s resolution for the men who run the world: Get to know the people who only live in it.”

This tidbit comes to us courtesy of Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998), and American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20^th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career.

Ms. Gellhorn and her 1959 collection of essays, The Face of War, was recently described by contemporary writer Judith Mackrell this way:

“Gellhorn was a pioneer, a woman who challenged the prejudices of a misogynist military (as well as the ego of her husband, Ernest Hemingway) to claim her position as a frontline journalist. But Gellhorn was also a supremely humane writer. In her coverage of World War II, no less than in her reports from Spain and Vietnam, she wrote with heart-wrenching directness about the courage of individual soldiers and the catastrophic suffering of civilians.

“A fierce, fastidious stylist, Gellhorn still has the power to shock, not least in the unflinching account she gives of the sights, smells, and sensations of war. An even fiercer moralist, her work continues to drive home the message that wars are far less often fought on grounds of ideology than on cynicism and greed.”

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr
January 1, 2022