Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.