War to end (all) war(s)

[Eric Van Tassel 101233.342@xxxxxxxx]

On 7-12-98, Catlyn  wrote (in part)

> ... the date -- December 7, which, in 1941, was the day this
> country, attacked by the Japanese, became active participants in "the
> War to end all Wars." ...

I hope I don't seem unkind to Catlyn (I don't mean to be) if, as a
professional nitpicker, I point out (a) that the phrase in quotes is
misquoted and (b) that it was coined to apply to a different war.

I don't own a reference book (surely there must *be* such a book?) that
identifies the origin or earliest appearance of proverbial or commonplace
phrases, so I can't say who first described World War I (then known as
simply "the World War" or "the Great War") as "the war to end war."

I decided that the phrase was proverbial or commonplace when, after being
unable to find it at all in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, I found it
in Bartlett only in the following passage whose context clearly implies
that long before 1922 the phrase was already in widespread use:

 "The freedom of Europe," "The war to end war," "The overthrow of
militarism,"
 "The cause of civilization" -- most people believe so little now in
anything or
 anyone that they would find it hard to understand the simplicity and
intensity
 of faith with which these phrases were once taken among our troops, or
the
 certitude felt by hundreds of thousands of men who are now dead that if
they
 were killed their monument would be a new Europe not soured or soiled
with
 the hates and creeds of the old.
    -- Charles Edward Montague (1867-1928), _Disenchantment_ [1922],
Chap. 13

The reason why this (extremely frequent) misquotation matters is that "the
X to end *all* Xs" (whatever it may have meant when it was new) has become
a cliche', meaning little more than that X is the biggest or most momentous
example of its kind (the first parallel that pops into my magpie mind is
Stan Kenton's early composition "Concerto to End All Concertos"). But in
"the war to end war" the preposition "to" implied purpose or objective:
according to this conceit, the war was being waged to ensure that there
would *never* be another war.

Cheers
Eric Van Tassel