1984 - Planet eBook

order of importance. Motives which were already presentto some small extent in the great wars of the early twentiethcentuury have now become dominant and are consciouslyrecognized and acted upon.To understand the nature of the present war—for in spiteof the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is alwaysthe same war—one must realize in the first place thatit is impossible for it to be decisive. None of the three super-statescould be definitively conquered even by the othertwo in combination. They are too evenly matched, and theirnatural defences are too formidable. Eurasia is protected byits vast land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlanticand the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and indus triousnessof its inhabitants. Secondly, there is no longer, ina material sense, anything to fight about. With the establishmentof self-contained economies, in which productionand consumption are geared to one another, the scramblefor markets which was a main cause of previous wars hascome to an end, while the competition for raw materials isno longer a matter of life and death. In any case each of thethree super-states is so vast that it can obtain almost all thematerials that it needs within its own boundaries. In so faras the war has a direct economic purpose, it is a war for labourpower. Between the frontiers of the super-states, andnot permanently in the possession of any of them, there liesa rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville,Darwin, and Hong Kong, containing within it abouta fifth of the population of the earth. It is for the possessionof these thickly-populated regions, and of the northern