Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/55

Rh war conducted a war of colonisation against the Bulgarians; throughout a certain territory which they intended to occupy they killed all the men, and carried off all the women. But in such cases the only possible justification fails, since there is no evidence of superior civilisation on the side of the conquerors.

In spite of the fact that wars of colonisation belong to the past, men's feelings and beliefs about war are still those appropriate to the extinct conditions which rendered such wars possible. When the present war began, many people in England imagined that if the Allies were victorious Germany would cease to exist: Germany was to be "destroyed" or "smashed," and since these phrases sounded vigorous and cheering, people failed to see that they were totally devoid of meaning. There are some seventy million Germans; with great good fortune we might, in a successful war, succeed in killing two millions of them. There would then still be sixty-eight million Germans, and in a few years the loss of the population due to the war would be made good. Germany is not merely a State, but a nation, bound together by a common language, common traditions, and common ideals. Whatever the outcome of the war, this nation will still exist at the end of it, and its strength cannot be permanently impaired. But imagination in what pertains to war is still dominated by Homer and the Old Testament; men who cannot see that circumstances have changed since those works were composed are called "practical" men, and are said to be free from illusions, while those who have some understanding of the modern world, and some capacity for freeing their minds from the influence of phrases, are called dreamy