"T. H. White - The Once and Future King" - читать интересную книгу автора (White T.H)

He scratched his chin again, and became wrathful.
"I never could stomach these nationalists," he exclaimed. 'The destiny of Man is to unite, not to divide.

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If you keep on dividing you end up as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of
separate trees."
"All the same," said the King, "there seems to have been a good deal of provocation. Perhaps I ought not
to fight?"
"And give in?" asked Kay, more in amusement than dismay.
"I could abdicate."
They looked at Merlyn, who refused to meet their eyes. He rode on, staring straight in front of him,
munching his beard.
"Ought I to give in?"
"You are the King," said the old man stubbornly. "Nobody can say anything if you do."
Later on, he began to speak in a gentler tone
"Did you know," he asked rather wistfully, "that I was one of the Old Ones myself? My father was a
demon, they say, but my mother was a Gael. The only human blood I have comes from the Old Ones.
Yet here I am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians would call a traitorтАФ
because, by calling names, they can score the cheap debating points. And do you know another thing,
Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds."


4
The hay was safe and the corn would be ripe in a week. They sat in the shade at the edge of a cornfield,
watching the dark brown people with their white teeth who were aimlessly busy in the sunlight,
rehanging their scythes, sharpening their sickles and generally getting ready for the end of farm year. It
was peaceful in the fields which were close to the castle, and no arrows needed to be apprehended.
While they watched the harvesters, they stripped the half-ripe heads of corn with their fingers and bit the
grain daintily, tasting the furry milkiness of the wheat, and the husky, less generous flesh of the oats.
The pearly taste of barley would have been strange to them, for it had not yet come to Gramarye.
Merlyn was still explaining.
"When I was a young man," he said, "there was a general idea that it was wrong to fight in wars of any
sort. Quite a lot of people in those days declared that they would never fight for anything whatever."
"Perhaps they were right," said the King.
"No. There is one fairly good reason for fightingтАФand that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars

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are a wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they
must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time
when you might have a sort of duty to stop him."
"But both sides always say that the other side started them."
"Of course they do, and it is a good thing that it should be so. At least, it shows that both sides are
conscious, inside thelmselves, that the wicked thing about a war is its beginning."
"But the reasons," protested Arthur. "If one side was starving the other by some means or otherтАФsome