Battle cry

A battle cry is a yell or chant taken up in battle, usually by members of the same combatant group. Battle cries are not necessarily articulate, although they often aim to invoke patriotic or religious sentiment. Their purpose is a combination of arousing aggression and esprit de corps on one's own side and causing intimidation on the hostile side. Battle cries are a universal form of display behaviour (i.e., threat display) aiming at competitive advantage, ideally by overstating one's own aggressive potential to a point where the enemy prefers to avoid confrontation altogether and opts to flee. In order to overstate one's potential for aggression, battle cries need to be as loud as possible, and have historically often been amplified by acoustic devices such as horns, drums, conches, carnyxes, bagpipes, bugles, etc. (see also martial music).

Battle cries are closely related to other behavioral patterns of human aggression, such as war dances and taunting, performed during the "warming up" phase preceding the escalation of physical violence. From the Middle Ages, many cries appeared on standards and were adopted as mottoes, an example being the motto "Dieu et mon droit" ("God and my right") of the English kings. It is said that this was Edward III's rallying cry during the Battle of Crécy. The word "slogan" originally derives from sluagh-gairm or sluagh-ghairm (sluagh = "people", "army", and gairm = "call", "proclamation"), the Scottish Gaelic word for "gathering-cry" and in times of war for "battle-cry". The Gaelic word was borrowed into English as slughorn, sluggorne, "slogum", and slogan.

The War Cry

The War Cry is the official news publication of The Salvation Army. Today national versions of it are sold in countries all over the world to raise funds in support of the Army's social work.

History

The first edition of The War Cry was printed on 27 December 1879 in London, England. In 1880, US Salvation Army Commissioner George Scott Railton published the Salvation News, a small newsletter. He published the first US edition of The War Cry in January 1881 in St. Louis, Missouri. Between 1920 and 1970, each U.S. territory published its own individual version of The War Cry. In 1970, the Salvation Army's US National Headquarters started publishing a nationwide version of The War Cry.

Notes and references

External links

  • The War Cry page of The Salvation Army in Canada (now known as Salvationist)
  • The War Cry page of The Salvation Army in Australia
  • The War Cry page of The Salvation Army in the UK and Ireland
  • The War Cry page of The Salvation Army in the USA

  • Podcasts:

    PLAYLIST TIME:

    War Cry

    by: W.A.S.P.

    Oh I, I was marked from the day I was born
    A rebel and I was the one who I am
    My father could not understand the fire in me
    There was, there was times I was crazy for real
    So crazy I just couldn't feel, no, no, no
    Confusion would stand in the door and tell me lies
    But now I stand on my feet so alive
    I'm a metal warrior, I need their cries, War Cry
    I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
    Ah, come take a stand
    Together we'll let out a cry
    I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
    Ah, come take a stand
    Together we'll never say die
    Oh I, I did not choose, the music chose me
    I was christened and destined to be who I am
    The one that they said would be damned
    A hellion child that...?
    I stand at the mirror and sing
    I dare to be different and dream, now I am
    Big thunder that rolls on the land forever wild
    But still, this feeling inside never die
    I'm a metal warrior, I need their cries, War Cry
    I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
    Ah, come take a stand
    Together we'll let out a cry
    I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
    Ah, Come take a stand
    Together we'll never say die
    Raise your fist and support your rebel outlaws
    Cause nobody rides for free
    The freedom we lose today, you lose tomorrow
    Because freedom means something to us...
    I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
    Ah, come take a stand
    Together we'll let out a cry
    I'm a soldier, soldier, a soldier of fortune
    Ah, come take a stand
    Together we'll never say die




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