THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
15
very little room is left to chance. Secondly, it presupposes an equality
of knowledge and know-how among those who are at war. Thus, a
chess game between two equally experienced players will end with
one of them conceding defeat or with both agreeing on a stalemate
long before all the moves leading to it have been made. The compari–
son of war with chess is old and has never been true, because the
outcome depended to a high degree on chance and on personal
factors-such as troop morale and military strategy. Technical war–
fare has eliminated these factors to such an extent that the old
simile may unexpectedly acquire its measure of truth. Or, to put this
another way, mutual recognition of the results of a cold war which
actually is a war would not imply a change in human nature; the
demonstration of the A-bomb would have
forced
the enemy into un–
conditional surrender, it would not have
persuaded
him. For the
experts, the results of the tests could be as conclusive and as com–
pelling evidence for victory and defeat as the battlefield, the con–
quest of territory, the calculation of losses, etc. have been for the
generals on either side in hot wars.
4. The trouble with these reflections is the same as with other
discussions of the war question: they are idle, there
is
little we can
do about the whole business one way or another. Even clarifications
and attempts at understanding, though always tempting and, perhaps,
necessary for the sake of human dignity, can hardly have any practi–
calor even theoretical results. It is precisely a sense of futility which
seems to haunt us whenever we approach this matter.
The same
is
not at all true for the other great issue confronting
us, the issue of revolution. This issue can be clarified in the light of
past and present experience, and such clarification is not likely to
be futile. Its first prerequisite is to recognize and to understand
what seems to be so obvious that no one
is
willing to talk about it,
namely, that the inherent aim of revolution has always been freedom
and nothing else. The chief obstacles to such .an understanding are of
course the various ideologies-Capitalism, Socialism, Communism–
all of which owe their existence to the nineteenth century and to social
and economic conditions which were utterly unlike our own. We are
in no position today to foretell what kind of economic system may
eventually prove to be the best under the rapidly changing technical
and scientific circumstances all over the world. But we can say even
