B1070 <=> B1072 (BTG XLIII Beelzebub’s opinion of war, p. 1071)

“Knowing their, so to say, ‘ways,’ I am quite sure that they will not occupy themselves with those questions which are within the reach of their understanding.

“They would like to do and really do everything in such a direction that these processes of reciprocal destruction should cease immediately and forever.

“If, indeed, with all their Being they were aware of the whole objective terror of these processes and desired sincerely jointly to eradicate this evil from the surface of their planet, then they would willy-nilly penetrate into the essence of this question and would understand that such an inherency which had become fixed in their psyche during hundreds of centuries can never be decrystallized in the course of a few decades.

“If they understood this, they would not attempt to decide or to actualize anything in this respect for the welfare of their contemporaries, but would direct and use all their attention, all their powers, and all their possibilities, having only the beings of future generations in view.

“For instance, if instead of wiseacring now and as is still said there ‘Don-Quixoting’ with the aim of immediately attaining the total cessation of these processes of theirs, they were to occupy themselves with the eradication of the conviction, which has become fixed in their ordinary process of existence, of the virtue of two notions they have; that is to say, if they would try to attain the abolition of the practice of exalting certain of the participants in these processes to what are called ‘heroes’ and to reward them with honors and what are called ‘orders,’ and also if they would try to attain the abolition even of one of their illustrious ‘sciences’ from among their many ‘Hasnamussian sciences,’ invented by certain pimpled beings among them, in which it is nonchalantly proved that the periodic reciprocal destruction on the Earth is very, very necessary, and that if it did not exist an intolerable overpopulation would result on the Earth, and such economic horrors would ensue that men-beings would begin to eat one another.