Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration is a statement by Siegfried Sassoon read to the British House of Commons on 30 July 1917 and printed in the London Times. Due to his prominence as a decorated soldier, Sassoon did not face a court-martial and was instead ruled to be mentally ill and sent to Craiglockhart Hospital.
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of agression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. (Read on)