Remembering Twain's War Prayer

War is awful, the premise being to inflict so much damage and kill enough of the other side that they have to give up and when you get one side overwhelmingly more powerful than the other, the death toll is horrendous.
What never changes is emotions run high and the rhetoric become absurd so we get the moronic Liz Truss making ridiculous statements that although the British military will not be lining up alongside Ukrainians, she would be happy to back British citizens who want to travel to Ukraine to fight Russia or as the Ukrainian minister put it, 'destroy as many Russian soldiers as we can'.
Regarding the Russia/Ukraine conflict, the only way out of this seems to be if the Russian's rise up and Putin is overthrown and applause must go to the tens of thousands of brave Russians protesting against the war in their name and currently being arrested and dragged to heaven knows what in Russian custody.
Whether it is Ukraine, Britain, America, Russia, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan or anyone, it makes me wince when i hear people saying they want to 'destroy' or 'kill' fellow human beings and the American writer Mark Twain wrote his elegant 'War Prayer' which should be essential reading for anyone not horrified to hear the emotive language of killing.

Twain puts forward two prayers, one uttered, one not, when a patriotic preacher prays for victory over a foe, praying that God watch over their noble young soldiers, bringing aid, comfort, and encouragement in their patriotic work.
An aged stranger appears and announces that he is God's messenger and explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves.

'O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen'.

Yes i get that Ukraine are defending themselves against an aggressor and i also get that Russian's are killing Ukrainian's but it doesn't mean that we have to cheer or will the horrific deaths of young men and women, regardless of what side they are on.