War and Please: Great Books That Never Were 🪖

War and Please the novel

Of course, we’ve all read the masterpiece that is War and Peas. But did you know there’s a different book with a similar title? Enter the fray, War and Please!

This is a long, rambling rumination over the nature of manners and hellish warfare. 1,345 pages of whinging about traditional values and why politeness is in decline because of communism.

It’s a boring old book, one that’s (thankfully) enlivened by various passages written when the author was clearly very drunk. Hurray!

War and Please: A Novel of Chaos and Politeness

“One must be cunning and wicked in this world. Please.”

This work is packed to the brim with surface level politeness.

The type of thing where, if you reel off a thousands “excuse me”s you can convince yourself you’re a decent person. Even if you hold the most morally reprehensible of views (such as disliking Marmite or thinking it’s great to drink orange juice after you’ve just brushed your teeth).

To be precise, War and Please contains the following phrases:

Excuse me: Used 135,123 times
Thank you: Used 130,102 times
Please: Used 435,214 times
I beg your pardon: Used 75,651 times
Could you…: Used 13 times
I was wondering if…: Used twice
If you don’t mind: Used once
If it’s okay with you: Unused
If I may say so: Used 1,000,000 times
If it’ll help: Used 10 times

War and Please launched in September 2024. The author, Boris McTory, is under the belief society is in decline due to progressive values. Thus, this tome is there to TEACH SOCIETY SOME MANNERS as, remember, being polite totally overrides personal foibles such as being an obnoxious bigot in every other area of your life.

We caught up with McTory to discuss why “if I may say so” was used a million times. He told us:

“If I may say so, I believe ‘if I may say so’ to be the greatest politeism in the history of mankind. Its power is great enough to overcome demonic forces and banish Marxism back into the depths of Hell. Additionally, if I may say so, I enjoy kippers for breakfast.”

We’re not sure where the kippers thing came from, but then McTory was pretty wasted when we interviewed him. That may explain why he kept brandishing kippers at us, whilst smelling of kippers (and booze), before calling us a “bunch of commie bastards” and passing out.

What a nice, polite gentlemen! We really learnt a thing or two from him and his thesis of “politeisms“.

Notes on Politeisms

Huge swathes of War and Please deal with the notion of politeisms. McTory argues that, even in war, one must remain polite. He notes:

“If I may say so, even while one skewers a dreaded commie through the skull with one’s bayonet, screaming into his face, ‘Die, you commie bastard!’ over and over, one must add in the refrain of, ‘please’ or, preferably, ‘if I may say so’. This elucidates the situation favourably, allowing one a reprieve from the inevitable PTSD and feelings of despicable evil further down the road. When that hits, one can take tremendous solace in the knowledge one was polite about things while murdering that demonic fellow.”

McTory notes politeisms shouldn’t be restricted to hellish warfare.

In fact, it’s highly desirable to take your manners into day-to-day life with you. The writer states you can apply various phrases into situations such as: