“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to
kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against
them. They are ‘only doing their duty’, as the saying goes. Most of them,
I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream
of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them
succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never
sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the
power to absolve him from evil.”
The Lion and the Unicorn, Socialism and the English Genius
George Orwell writes this during the blitz, as England stands alone against Nazi Germany. I feel this one paragraph highlights perfectly the hypocrisy of war, that you can be excused of murder just because it’s for your country.