10/11/2025
I first heard this poem when I was sixteen, read aloud by my Greek school teacher during Saturday classes. It was originally taught to us in Greek and then translated into English, and it has stayed with me ever since.
I wanted to share it with you all because, even 107 or 108 years after it was written, it still means something — perhaps even more now than it did then.
Wilfred Owen was only in his early twenties when he wrote this in 1917, serving on the front lines of World War I. He was not a distant observer — he was there in the trenches, choking on mud and gas, watching boys barely old enough to shave die in grotesque agony.
He wrote this poem as a witness statement — a spiritual indictment — not against the soldiers, but against the system that romanticised their deaths.
The very title — “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” — comes from Horace’s ancient line, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
But Owen turns it inside out. He ends the poem calling it “The old Lie.”
He was saying:
There is nothing sweet, nothing fitting, nothing noble about it. It is butchery dressed up as honour. It’s not anti-soldier. It’s anti-propaganda.
He honours the boys who fought — and indicts the machinery that used them.
And he was killed in battle just one week before the war ended. His truth cost him his life.
In truth:
There are no “countries” in the soul’s view — only the illusion of separation.
No human being ever truly dies “for their country”; they die for the ambitions of men who rarely step onto the battlefield.
The warrior’s true purpose is not to kill, but to protect life — and we have twisted that into a spectacle of pride.
It’s the same lie we tell in countless forms:
“Us versus them.”
“Worthy versus unworthy.”
“My nation versus yours.”
“My God versus yours.”
As long as we feed on separation, the young will keep dying for causes that mean nothing to the soul. The true battle is within. The only war worth fighting is against ignorance, hatred, and division. It’s about every system that convinces us to give away our humanity in the name of something “greater."