LETTERS FROM PARIS
445
The meaning of the "technical surprise"
is
contained
in
the
figures
of war production. Before 1914, the French General Staff anticipated a
daily consumption
in
battle of 13,600 light artillery shells; the number
of workers that were supposed to be needed in the war industries was
calculated at 50,000. In September 1914, the same General Staff was
asking for 50,000 shells.
It
got them in January 1915, when it had al–
ready asked for 80,000. This last figure was attained in September
1915, when the generals were asking for 150,000. In 1917, the number
of workers in the war industries was 1,600,000. The diplomats and the
generals thought that what they had begun was just a war, and after a
few weeks they found themselves confronted with what was to be the
first "total war," a war of attrition and annihjlation, whose real pro–
portions completely and irremediably transcended its original causes
and supposed aims. "The question could no longer be the advancing of
some frontier posts by a few dozen kilometers. Some sublime and vague
principles, like the right of peoplcs to self-determination, or the war to
end all wars, were the only goals that could measure up to such an
amount of violence, sacrifices, and heroism. Technical
hubris
imposed,
little by little, the substitution of ideologies for war aims. On both
sides, men pretended to know
in th e name of what values
the war was
being fought, but nobody could say
for what practical goals.
"Everything happens as if, starting from a certain point, violence
fed on itself. For war, as for fissionable materials, there exists a critical
volume. Since 1914, Europe has been the victim of a chain reaction of
wars." Yet, if the forces at play in modern history are overpowering,
Aron insists, history itself remains, at every moment, "a combination of
logic and accidents." A compromise peace was possible in 1917, before
the Russian Revolution, according to him, and it would have changed the
course of events. Also, in 1936, a chance exjsted that Hitler could be
stopped. Even during the war the Anglo-Americans could have found
a way of conquering Germany without destroying it, thereby creating
a situation quite different from the present one. There is nothing fatal
about the advent of Stalinism, Aron believes.
"It
is the Second World
War which made possible the conquests of the Red Army in Europe,
and the victories of the Communist parties in Asia. Once again, the
decisive cause of Stalin's victories are the wars that have disintegrated
the social and political structures, creating the circumstances in which
a militant sect succeeds in seizing power.... Starting from conscription
and modern industry, war, once unleashed, was bound to become
hyperbolic, unless the statesmen had had the improbable wisdom to
renounce certain potentialities of the system.... As a consequence
