by State charity. But this, too,
entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were
obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how
to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth
of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And
in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human
lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to
pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the
sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too
comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons
of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient
way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be
consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour
that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as
obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with
further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is