When Countries Hurt Each Other

There is a small word for what this part of the book is about, and this book is not allowed to use it. Here is the thing the word means: one country's soldiers and another country's soldiers hurting each other, and not stopping — not that day, not that month, maybe not for years. It is not two people being angry. It is a machine with countries for parts.

How it starts

Often it starts with fear. One country fears another, and pays for more soldiers. The other country sees the soldiers and fears more, and pays for more soldiers as well. Each one says: we do not want to hurt you — we only fear you. And then one day, because of a small thing — a dead man, a piece of ground, a boat — it starts, and no one can say, after, why it had to.

What it does

It is not like the stories. Most of the people it hurts are not soldiers. It burns houses and the plants in the ground. It makes people go from their houses carrying what they can carry. The children who live through it think about it for all their years. The small soldier's men died from the cold and from having no food, not from other soldiers — this is how it often goes.

How it ends

It ends, each time. It ends when one country has no more soldiers or no more money, or when the people say no to their government, or when the two heads sit in one room and write their names on a paper. And after it ends, a thing happens that is hard to think about, a small amount at a time: the people who were hurting each other buy things from each other, and learn each other's words, and, given time, their children marry each other. This has happened many times, and it is good that it can.

Look at a picture of all the countries, with lines between them. Most of the lines are where the hurting stopped, one time or another. The picture of the countries is a picture of where it ended.

Why the biggest countries stopped

The atom has been used to damage places where very many people live two times. From these two times to now, the biggest countries have not hurt each other — not one time. This is not because they became good. Each of them can end the other's biggest places in an hour, and each of them knows that no one wins that. Fear often starts this thing. Now that same fear, turned towards the atom, prevents it — between the biggest countries. Between smaller ones, and inside countries, it goes on now, as you read.

The people who know

The people who know it most say the smallest amount about winning. Ask someone who lived through one: they tell you about the food they did not have, and the people they did not see after that.