The history of our civilization has been one of regular war.
In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, grown powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.
Though the power moved from one country to another, the general pattern of the political and economic structure has suffered no radical change.
The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion.
The destruction of the false gods of the enemy, which threaten the true religion, has always justified propaganda of fear and hatred to overcome the natural reluctance of soldiers to kill their fellowmen with whom indeed they had no trouble.
Some wars have been due to the lust of rulers for power and glory, or to revenge to wipe out the humiliation of a former defeat.
Most however have had an economic basis: the conquest of foreign territory in the interest of trade, or of land with rich agricultural or other resources.
At the present time the control of oil-bearing land is an important factor in the foreign policy of some governments.
Science has produced such powerful weapons that in a war between great powers there would be neither victor nor vanquished. Both would be overwhelmed in destruction.
Our civilization is now in the transition stage between the age of warring empires and a new age of World unity and peace.
Science has advanced more than in the 2,000 previous years and given mankind greater powers over the forces of nature than the ancients ascribed to their gods.
The invention of the thunderbolt was a nothing compared to the atomic bomb; Mercury, the messenger of the gods with wings on his heels, a slow coach compared to the radio.
The magic flying carpet of the fairy tale, a crude method of travel compared to a transatlantic air liner.
The atomic bomb will kill ten to twenty millions in a month, and the enemy also will have some skill in the new art of wholesale murder.
There is an atomic bomb a thousand times as powerful as the one that fell on Hiroshima.
Biological weapons are much more efficient instruments of death than the atomic bomb. They can kill more than fifty percent of the population in the area against which they are directed.
We have been warned that a war with these weapons would leave us with a World in which civilization could not continue.
Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope. The only restraint is the fear of reprisals.
In the last war the U.S.A., which had no fear of reprisals, did use it. In another war those in power, will not hesitate in a last desperate effort to throw in every weapon in their power. A limited war is an impossibility.