As Through a Glass, Darkly

I want to take up here two difficult and related matters, forced on the attention of some of us at the outset of the Second World War, matters which, from the spring of 1940, we found we would have to confront again and again. And since what was at issue during those years must still in some form or other remain before us, I shall try to go back and forth between the beginning of the Second World War—even to a few years before that—and the present time.

There were two problems those of us interested in politics found difficult to deal with—intellectually and morally. The first had to do
with the use of force so as to prevent or to forestall the use of force against us by others; the second with the need we felt to supp...