– PEACEFUL LIFE –
By 1945 Pacifism was the accepted policy of the whole country. This was because, and only because, the destruction of so many lives, of so much beauty, in our own fortress, had blasted, for all and for ever, the old conventional beliefs.
But there were still a few in the world who believed that war could be used profitably for their own purposes. They were not to be found among the common people; nor in those countries whose Governments were chosen by the common people; but only in those countries where the common people are oppressed and silent, and where a few fools, a few criminals, can still falsify the conclusions of humanity. Fortunately for the rest of the world humanity now has the atom bomb, and on the subject of war the atom bomb will speak the last word.
The atom bomb is the final proof of what Norman Angell called the Great Illusion. He proved to the conviction of some of us in 1910 – a conviction which two World Wars have so enormously sustained and enlarged – the simple truth that a victorious war brings in no material dividends. This did not prove, of course, that there was nothing to be won by an aggressive war; for there are other gains in a Dictator’s mind than economic ones. But all the aesthetic pleasure of a triumphal victory march across Europe, Hammer and Sickle waving with the cohorts in the van, and Grand Inquisitors trotting up behind with the baggage-train, would be lost in the knowledge that there was no
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