ABSTRACT
We live in an age where the relative security brought to men by a certain technical domination over nature is largely offset by the dangers of ruins and massacres that conflicts between human groups create. When there is a struggle around a well-defined stake, each one can weigh up the value of this stake and the probable cost of the struggle and decide to what extent it will be worth making the effort; it is not in general too difficult to find a compromise that is worth more for each of the opposing parties, than even a victorious battle. For those who know how to see, there is today no more worrisome symptom than the unreal character of most emerging conflicts. They have even less reality than the conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans.
