frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the
Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. In the
centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of
consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may
cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed its character. More
exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of
importance. Motives which were already present to some small extent in the
great wars of the early twentieth centuury have now become dominant and are
consciously recognized and acted upon.
To understand the nature of the present war -- for in spite of the
regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war -- one
must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be
decisive. None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered
even by the other two in combination. They are too evenly matched, and
their natural defences are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by its vast
land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia
by the fecundity and indus triousness of its inhabitants. Secondly, there
is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about. With the
establishment of self-contained economies, in which production and
consumption are geared to one another, the scramble for markets which was a
main cause of previous wars has come to an end, while the competition for
raw materials is no longer a matter of life and death. In any case each of
the three super-states is so vast that it can obtain almost all the
materials that it needs within its own boundaries. In so far as the war has
a direct economic purpose, it is