– PEACEFUL LIFE –
not for ‘pairing’ with the enemy in war, but to prevent war. To be prepared so to use it demands courage: the courage Samson showed when he pulled down the pillars of the temple. Samson sacrificed himself by making it perfectly clear now that the next war will be an atomic war: that, without regard to the atom bombs Russia may have, or her intention, or lack of intention, to use them, at the first movement of Communist troops against any country in the West, Moscow will be wiped out: we shall take the risk of sacrificing ourselves. It is a small risk compared with the certainty of war otherwise; a cheaply-bought risk for those of us who would far sooner die under an atom bomb than live under the Kremlin.
Unfortunately there are many good people, both in Britain and, more importantly, in America, who cannot bring themselves to accept the atom bomb as within the limits of what they call ‘legitimate warfare’. Perhaps because I became a Pacifist on impersonal grounds, before I had experienced the horrors or even the discomforts of war, I consider all war, from the wars of the Israelites onwards, to be horrible, and all weapons of war, from the sword and the club and the spear onwards, to be barbarous. Every distinction between weapons of war as legitimate and illegitimate, as acceptable by, or repugnant to, humanity, is one more admission that war itself is acceptable and legitimate, so long as it is conducted in some fashion hallowed by previous exercise. If war is to be abolished, it
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