Kevin Drum brings us Mark Twain's "The War Prayer", an anti-war prose poem he wrote in the aftermath of the Spanish-American and Phillipine-American wars.

His family begged him not to publish it, his friends advised him to bury it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying famously: "None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth."

Washington Monthly's publisher, Markos Kounalakis, made a video of the story for release this Memorial Day. You can watch the video and read the story here. Here is the War Prayer from Twain's story: