"Olaf Stapledon - Last And First Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stapledon Olaf)

extravagant than any that had occurred even in the war against Germany. The
British air force, all too well equipped and prepared, was ordered to Paris.
Meanwhile in France the militaristic government had fallen, and the
party of peace was now in control. While the streets were still thronged by
its vociferous supporters, the first bomb fell. By Monday morning Paris was
obliterated. There followed a few days of strife between the opposing
armaments, and of butchery committed upon the civilian populations. In spite
of French gallantry, the superior organization, mechanical efficiency, and
more cautious courage of the British Air Force soon made it impossible for a
French plane to leave the ground. But if France was broken, England was too
crippled to pursue her advantage. Every city of the two countries was
completely disorganized. Famine, riot, looting, and above all the rapidly
accelerating and quite uncontrollable spread of disease, disintegrated both
States, and brought war to a standstill.
Indeed, not only did hostilities cease, but also both nations were too
shattered even to continue hating one another. The energies of each were for a
while wholly occupied in trying to prevent complete annihilation by famine and
pestilence. In the work of reconstruction they had to depend very largely on
help from outside. The management of each country was taken over, for the
time, by the League of Nations.
It is significant to compare the mood of Europe at this time with that
which followed the European War. Formerly, though there had been a real effort
toward unity, hate and suspicion continued to find expression in national
policies. There was much wrangling about indemnities, reparations, securities;
and the division of the whole continent into two hostile camps persisted,
though by then it was purely artificial and sentimental. But after the
Anglo-French war, a very different mood prevailed. There was no mention of
reparations, no possibility of seeking security by alliances. Patriotism
simply faded out, for the time, under the influence of extreme disaster. The
two enemy peoples co-operated with the League in the work of reconstructing
not only each one itself, but each one the other. This change of heart was due
partly to the temporary collapse of the whole national organization, partly to
the speedy dominance of each nation by pacifist and anti-nationalist Labour,
partly to the fact that the League was powerful enough to inquire into and
publish the whole story of the origins of the war, and expose each combatant
to itself and to the world in a sorry light.
We have now observed in some detail the incident which stands out in
man's history as perhaps the most dramatic example of petty cause and mighty
effect. For consider. Through some miscalculation, or a mere defect in his
instruments, a French airman went astray, and came to grief in London after
the sending of the peace message. Had this not happened, England and France
would not have been wrecked. And, had the war been nipped at the outset, as it
almost was, the party of sanity throughout the world would have been very
greatly strengthened; the precarious will to unity would have gained the
conviction which it lacked, would have dominated man not merely during the
terrified revulsion after each spasm of national strife, but as a permanent
policy based on mutual trust. Indeed so delicately balanced were man's
primitive and developed impulses at this time, that but for this trivial
accident, the movement which was started by England's peace message might have
proceeded steadily and rapidly toward the unification of the race. It might,