ENDS.AND MEANS
because men wish it to exist; and we know, as a matter of
historical fact, that the intensity of that wish has varied
from absolute zero to a frenzied maximum. The wish for
war in the contemporary world is widespread and of high
intensity. But our wills are to some extent free; we can
wish otherwise than we actually do. It is enormously
difficult for us to change our wishes in this matter; but
the enormously difficult is not the impossible. We must
be grateful for even the smallest crumbs of comfort.
II. Causes of War
War exists because people wish it to exist. They wish
it to exist for a variety of reasons.
(i) Many people like war because they find their peace-
time occupations either positively humiliating and frustra-
ting, or just negatively boring. In their studies on suicide
Durkheim and, more recently, Halbwachs have shown that
the suicide rate among non-combatants tends to fall during
war-time to about two-thirds of its normal figure. This
decline must be put down to the following causes: to the
simplification of life during war-time (it is in complex and
highly developed societies that the suicide rate is highest);
to the intensification of nationalist sentiment to a point
where most individuals are living in a state of chronic
enthusiasm; to the fact that life during war-time takes on
significance and purposefulness, so that even the most
intrinsically boring job is ennobled as * war-work'; to the
artificial prosperity induced, at any rate for a time, by the
expansion of war industies; to the increased sexual freedom
• which is always claimed by societies, all or some of whose
members live under the menace of sudden death. Add to
this the fact that life in war-time is (or at least was in
previous wars) extremely interesting, at least during the
first years of the war. Rumour runs riot, and the papers
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