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It was the last time that Sir Lancelot, King Arthur and Queen Guenever were to be together.
War is like a fire, Agnes. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.”
It was Dante’s wind, bearing lost lovers and cranes: sabbathless Satan, toiling and turmoiling.
He had been taught by Merlyn to believe that man was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent than beastly: that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as original sin. He had been forged as a weapon for the aid of man, on the assumption that men were good. He had been forged, by that deluded old teacher, into a sort of Pasteur or Curie or patient discoverer of insulin. The service for which he had been destined had been against Force, the mental illness of humanity. His Table, his idea of Chivalry, his Holy Grail, his devotion to Justice: these had been progressive steps
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Was it the wicked leaders who led innocent populations to slaughter, or was it wicked populations who chose leaders after their own hearts? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely that one Leader could force a million Englishmen against their will.
If this were true, then wars were not calamities into which amiable innocents were led by evil men. They were national movements, deeper, more subtle in origin.
Perhaps wars were fought because people said my kingdom, my wife, my lover, my possessions.
God had told people that they would have to cease to live as individuals.
God had said that it was only the men who could give up their jealous selves, their futile individualities of happiness and sorrow, who would die peacefully and enter the ring. He that would save his life was asked to lose it.
Perhaps wars happened because nations had no confidence in the Word. They were frightened, and so they fought.
How mad the frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly.
