the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another,
and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not
fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group
against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or
prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society
intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would
probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to
exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the
Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been
replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if
the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to
live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in
that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever
from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly
permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast
majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the
inner meaning of the Party slogan: War is peace.

Winston stopped reading for a moment. Somewhere in remote distance a
rocket bomb thundered. The blissful feeling of being alone with the
forbidden book, in a room with no telescreen, had not wo