ABSTRACT
It is a conventional wisdom that war never solves problems. That is not entirely true. It may be that war does not always solve the problem it is meant to solve; but more often than not it solves some problems-and inevitably creates others. Even if it were true that war did not ‘solve’ anything, it does not mean that war is necessarily avoidable. The fact that war ‘creates problems’ does not demonstrate that war is pointless. All human action creates ‘problems’ in one form or another. Even if war does cause problems it very often prevents other, perhaps more serious, problems from arising. The problems that war prevents can only be speculated about-they can never be proved. There is a school of thought which suggests that Britain did not have to declare war on Germany when she did. There were indications that Hitler did not really want to take on Britain and Britain certainly did not declare war because she was under direct military threat. The ultimate reason that Britain declared war on Germany when she did was not because of an immediate threat but to forestall a future threat; a situation in which Germany had conquered Europe leaving Britain looking across the channel to a continent which was dominated by a single power against whom she would be very vulnerable. In this case the best form of pre-empting such a situation was to become involved in war sooner rather than later.
