How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
[. . .] it stands to reason you've got to have a war. Not because anybody wants it, of course, but because there's an army. An army here and an army there and armies all over the shop. Armies is for wars and wars is for armies. That's only plain common sense.'
'War's finished,' said Tristram. 'War's outlawed. There hasn't been any war for years and years and years.'
'All the more reason why there's got to be a war,' said the driver, 'if we've been such a long time without one.' (4.8.13-15)
According to The Wanting Seed, why is it that people are so willing to accept the necessity of war?
Quote #5
'But,' said Tristram, agitated, 'you've got no conception what war was like. I've read books about the old wars. They were terrible, terrible. There were poison gases that turned your blood to water and bacteria that killed the seed of whole nations and bombs that smashed cities in a split second. All that's over. It's got to be over. We can't have all that again. I've seen photographs.' (4.8.16)
As a history teacher, and someone who considers himself to be a fairly serious historian, Tristram has factual knowledge of what war was really like before the Perpetual Peace. This knowledge helps him to resist being taken in by romantic, nationalistic notions of war, and by the "plain common sense" of the lorry driver.
Quote #6
'I didn't mean that sort, mister. I meant, you know, fighting. Armies. One lot having a bash at another lot, if you see what I mean. One army facing another army, like it might be two teams. And then one lot shoots at another lot, and they go on shooting till somebody blows the whistle and they say, "This lot's won and this lot's lost." Then they dish out leave and medals and the tarts are all lined up waiting at the station. That's the sort of war I mean, mister.' (4.8.17)
Unlike Tristram, the lorry driver has a romantic notion of war. He imagines it as an honorable enterprise, where men do battle just as if they were playing a game—a game, mind you, with clear rules for right and wrong, and in which no one ever cheats or does anything underhanded or despicable.