Chapter XXV
The So-Called Greatest War
It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives up a peculiar satisfaction if it is "the biggest" of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began. During a heat wave, for instance, we are very pleased if the papers announce that it is "the highest temperature reached since the year 1881," and we feel a little resentment towards the year 1881 for having gone us one better. Or if our ears are frozen till all the skin peels off, it fills us with a certain happiness to learn that "it was the hardest frost recorded since 1786." It is just the same with wars. The war in progress is either the most righteous or the bloodiest, or the most successful, or the longest, since such and such a time; any superlative whatever always affords us the proud satisfaction of having been through something extraordinary and record-breaking.
Well, the war which lasted from February 12, 1944, to the autumn of 1953, was in all truthfulness and without exaggeration (on my honour!) the Greatest War. Do not let us rob those who lived
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