Evening star., 1942-05-31
Is This the Last War?
Combat Now Reaching Ultimate Stage, Says Noted Writer


to guard ourselves against the chief ex-
pedients by which the old militarissn,
war Y. struggles to protect itself from
this eliminating transformation, this
gathering onslaught of destructive,
critical thinking.
Foremost among these weapons Of the
expiring war tradition is the hero legend.
an air force. He knows"-that is the
keynote. Trust him. Stop thinking
for what can you know, you poor crea-
ture? Do exactly as he tells you" What
a collection of oddities the heroes of the
last score years would be if you could
stirs the satiric imagination. Poor
senile Petain the hero of Verdun; dod-
dering old Hindenburg, the wooden
idol; crazy Adolf at the top of his voice;
Franco; the poor old forgotten Kaiser,
the 1914 war lord. who slipped out of life
almost unnoticed the other day.
Role of the Lie.
And next to the hero legend comes
the lie, the lie that is told you for your
own good, the organized lies of exag-
gerated patriotism, the lies about your
noble race" the lies about your unique
religion. Shinto or whatever it is, the
preposterous indignation at "blasphemy'
for what sort of religion is it that willis
at laugh?-the romantic loyaltles. de-
signed, even deliberately designed, to
all
little lot are distinct. apart from and
ineffably superior to the foul vile-who-
ever it Is they want you to fight.
Against that mass propaganda the ulti-
mate warfare has to pit thought and
knowledge. All over the world, in books,
newspapers, on the air, in the cinema,
and in the brain of the world, that war
goes on, until at last it ends in
mutually tolerant Federal human unity
But that will not be the end Of war.
It will be its crowning transformation.
Men will be. if anything, more agrees
sive, more disposed for conquest than
ever, more resentful at boredom and
futility. Boredom is the most urgent
of spurs. The worst or best thing about
this present warfare is that it bores
universally 1t is immensely tragic, but
men can stand that; the point is that
it is draggingly tragic.
Never was there such distressful war as
the Y warfare: it is overstrain without
satisfaction, which is why it must GER
tainly give way to the next phase in war
fare, the z war, that lies now openly
within the reach of restless men. They
will set to work on the world OF possible
knowledge. which is the key of power.
They will liquidate ignorance as an in
tolerable nuisance. for mental slums are
more dangerous to mankind than ma
terial ones.
"The Ultimate War"
The men Of the ultimate war will
explore the hidden wealth within our
planet and the secrets of matter. They
will control and increase the harvests
of the sea, they will abolish waste places,
end swamp and jungle, and turn the sur
face of the whole earth into a smiling
garden. They will gain new purchase
upon their own lives; living more stoutly
and longer and with new elatlon. They
will explore their own creative possibili-
ties for a mightier art and more abund-
ant beauty. The world begins anew
if they carry on this last transformation
Of war to it's completion.
This is not what is called idealism;
this is not moral copybook stuff. This
is brutal realism. This is the hard
stuff men have to do and go on doing
If they are not to fall altogether from
the earth. Time is an irreversible
process and reaction is the way OF
death. You cannot sit back and beg
to be excused. The war into which
war is now being transformed will not
tolerate that.
There is no way out of this war. there
has been no way out of any Of the wars
that have preceded it, but to 60 up or to
go down, and no war is worth fighting
when the outcome is certain.
Man may fail in his last war. Many
great and dominant species and classes
of life have failed in the past. For a
time they dominated, and then they
passed. Man may not rise to this ulti-
mate transformation of war. There is
no guarantee whatever that he will.
But he can. To that his whole past
witnesses.
(copyright 1s42. by H. G. wells)