Sitting by the surprisingly
empty BGU swimming pool and reading the concluding pages of The
Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965, on page 1025 I came across this Churchill quote taken from Parliamentary debate concerning the hydrogen
bomb (Nov
3, 1953):
It may be that this rule may have a novel application and that when
the advance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everybody else
nobody will want to kill anyone at all. At any rate, it seems pretty safe to
say that a war which begins by both sides suffering what they dread most—and
that is undoubtedly the case at present—is less likely to occur than one which
dangles the lurid prizes of former ages before ambitious eyes.
The times have changed and
Churchill may well be wrong on this one.
