THE AFTERMATH OF WAR
95
nineteenth century affiliation to rival groups of powers did not, in
the majority of cases, involve basic issues of political loyalty, today
every such move is fraught with consequences of the most far–
reaching kind. In this sense it is true to say that we are living in
an age of world revolution. Not only is the disturbance global
in
scope, but the nature of the upheaval renders genuine neutrality
impossible. The totalitarian reorganization of society unsuccessfully
attempted by Germany in 1933-45, and currently undertaken on a
vastly greater scale by the Communist powers, is so radical as to
tum every political issue into a life-or-death matter. It is not surpris–
ing that, in the face of such a challenge, talk of peaceful co-existence
should sound hollow. Yet the technical developments which have ac–
companied, and to some extent caused, this situation are themselves
so startling and unprecedented that all traditional notions of legiti–
mate self-defense will have to be devised.
If
it is unrealistic to suppose
that East and West can at present dwell peacefully side by side, it
is dangerous, to say the least, to fashion policy on the tacit assump–
tion that all-out war is a suitable way of resolving the issue. For it
takes no great effort of the imagination to realize that, were such
a catastrophe to occur, it would make an end of civilization as we
have hitherto known it, and in the face of such a virtual certainty
even the issue of global hegemony for one or the other side begins to
look a trifle old-fashioned.
Moreover, it is by no means certain, or even likely, that the
issue can in fact be settled, even at the cost of destroying the world's
centers of civilization. On the contrary, there is good ground for
thinking that there exist no military means of breaking the funda–
mental deadlock, and that even a war waged with the latest weapons
would merely result in a somewhat different kind of stalemate. The
"cold war" remains cold precisely because neither side believes that
the results to be expected from "hot" war would warrant the risks.
It does not follow that this state of affairs will last. Quite likely the
deadlock will at some point be broken. What should be clearly
envisaged even now is the kind of world likely to emerge from an
atomic "test of strength." In all probability it would be a world not
differing fundamentally from that
in
which we are now living–
except that it would be a great deal poorer and more savage. The
thought of an atomic conflict which may flatten most of the world's
