GWEN: But, John, if the worst are increasing so much the fastest, things may get worse and worse. JOHN: Of course. GWEN: Then why doesn’t somebody _do_ something! JOHN: For various reasons. GWEN: What? JOHN: Religion doesn’t do anything because it thinks Birth Control wicked. Big Business doesn’t do anything, because it wants cheap Labour; the Governments don’t do anything because they want soldiers for the next war. GWEN: The next war! JOHN: The next war. GWEN: Jacko, do you think there is going to be a next war? JOHN: Who’s going to stop it? We’re all arming again as fast as we can go. Submarines and aeroplanes; blockade and starvation; bombs and poison gas from the air that’ll exterminate whole cities at a go! (_He is speaking with great emphasis._) D’you realise one of the leading scientists of the world has said that the millions of London could be blotted out in three hours! You may say that’s an exaggeration; it may be; but at the rate science is going it won’t be in a few years. “Easy and inexpensive”--that’s what a Cabinet Minister said about poison gas; and they’re all making it; as fast as they can go; and fleets of aeroplanes to drop it. GWEN: Do you mean that the children I may have, or you may have, may be just wiped out in another war, more terrible than the last? JOHN: Why not? When nations are armed to the teeth, the arms go off, sooner or later. It always has been so; there’s no reason why it should be any different now; unless there was a change of spirit; and there’s no sign of that. Why should there be? The old ideas are still in power; all over the world; the very same men mostly; you see, _they_ survive wars! GWEN: But can’t _we_ do something? Why should we have children for that? JOHN: My dear, they laugh at _us_. And at anybody else who suggests they aren’t wisdom incarnate ... unless we ever became effective against them; then they’d find a way of downing us. You’ve only got to read the newspapers: speeches by generals, and admirals--and bishops; threatenings by politicians; in every country; the old financial interests at work under it all; and the great mass of the people, in every country, struggling all day just to exist, absolutely incapable of independent thought, and ready to believe what any newspaper tells them three days running. GWEN: John! ... if it’s like that, what’s the good of anything! It doesn’t seem worth going on, or trying. JOHN: Oh yes, it’s worth it. If the smash comes the few ideals that are left will float upward, and have some influence on what comes next. Something’s got to come next!... Men _could_ free themselves from war. GWEN: Could they? JOHN: And from all the other forces that make them suffer so. They’re not natural forces; they’re forces men have made. GWEN: Then why don’t they? JOHN: ... And it isn’t for want of courage or nobility. GWEN: Then why?