Level 7

SEPTEMBER 19

The news from Level 5 is confused and confusing. They seem to be playing politics right to the end. No wonder, I suppose, with so many politicians there, along with the top level of the élite—the cream of the cream.

But no more speeches from the retired general. He does not feel well enough. His place as ‘head of the government’ (whatever that may mean now) has been taken by a retired Air Force commander.

He made a speech this morning, one very much like the general’s. He spoke warmly of wars fought by pilots in conventional aircraft. “As long as there were pilots flying the planes,” he said, “it made no essential difference whether the planes were screw-propelled or jets, whether they flew at 200 m.p.h. or at supersonic speeds. But the moment those guided missiles appeared—especially those devilish ground-to-ground intercontinental rockets—civilisation was doomed. No more glory for men, no more brave combats in the air, no more bombing of cities and installations by men who knew what they were about. But dehumanised war, automatic war, and its inevitable result: the end of civilisation.”

This speaker was as eloquent as his predecessor, but he had to stop even before he arrived at ‘Long live the Air Force’—stopped by an attack of nausea, we were told.

Oddly enough, until now I have never devoted much thought to the problem of war. Though war was my business, and though I underwent many tests and extensive training, or what appeared to be training, before I qualified as a pushbutton officer, I never thought beyond those buttons.

Was it the same with the soldier who drove a tank or pulled the trigger of a rifle? And what about the men who swung swords against an enemy they could actually grapple with?

I do not think I could be a swordsman. I could not kill with a club or a bayonet or a knife, let alone with my bare hands. But pushing a button—that was a different matter.

It has become so easy to destroy and kill. With a pushbutton a child, an innocent baby, could do it. In a sense, I suppose, the idea that the present disaster happened because war became dehumanised may have something in it.

But not more than something. For if it is wicked to destroy the world and wipe out the whole of humanity, thousands of millions, why is it good to kill ten million people and destroy just some parts of the world, as those old-style soldiers and airmen did?

Or is it good to kill with bows and arrows, because it is evil to kill with atomic bombs?

Surely not. Either it is good to kill, and then to kill off humanity is good; or it is evil to kill, in which case killing with any weapons is wrong.

It might well be that as the technology of war progressed a different type of person did the killing. The head-hunter might have made a bad button-pusher, and the button-pusher a poor infantryman. But killing is killing, whatever way it is done. Once you allow the death of one person, the way is open for the massacre of a million.

And yet, and yet—the development of the atomic rocket did make a difference. A merely technical difference, perhaps, but with results… results which go far beyond technology.

There is a difference between limited destruction and total annihilation.