"Law is a farce unless there is power to enforce it, and power to enforce international law against great states is impossible while each possesses vast armaments. Great states have, at present, the privilege of killing members of other states whenever they feel so disposed, though this liberty is disguised as the heroic privilege of dying in defense of what is right and just. Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.
War has so long been part of human life that it is difficult for our feelings and imaginations to grasp that the present anarchic national freedoms are likely to result in freedom only for corpses. If institutions could be created which would prevent war, there would be much more freedom in the world than there is at the present, just as there is more freedom owing to the prevention of individual murder"
excerpt taken from Bertrand Russell "Has Man a Future" pg 78-79
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