If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the

Hear, O seekers of wisdom, the ironic yet piercing words of Dorothy L. Sayers, who declared: “If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.” In this sharp paradox, she captures the strange duality of human experience in times of conflict: the unsettling truth that war, while it shatters lives and nations, can also reorder society in ways that unexpectedly favor individuals—especially those who were overlooked or confined in times of peace. It is both lament and revelation, for in the fire of destruction some discover freedoms they had long been denied.

Sayers, a writer and thinker in the early twentieth century, lived through the chaos of the Second World War. Like many women of her generation, she witnessed a society shaken to its roots. Men went off to the front, leaving roles and opportunities unfilled. Women, long kept in the shadows of domesticity, were called into offices, factories, and institutions, their talents recognized out of necessity. For some, including Sayers, this shift created space to thrive in public and professional life. Thus, the bitter irony of her words: if only the suffering of war could be stripped away, its side effects—the opportunities, the reordering, the recognition of overlooked gifts—might have been welcomed.

This paradox was seen far beyond Sayers herself. Consider the women who built the planes, ships, and weapons in Britain and America, the iconic “Rosie the Riveter” figures who proved their strength in industry. For them, the war broke open doors that had long been locked. The same was true for intellectuals and artists whose voices, once marginal, were now urgently needed to speak to a society in upheaval. Yet always, behind the new opportunities, lay the shadow of loss: bombed cities, rationed bread, the dead never returning home.

The irony Sayers voices is one found throughout history. In the French Revolution, the collapse of monarchy brought blood and terror, yet it also ignited ideas of liberty and equality that reshaped the world. In the American Civil War, unimaginable suffering coexisted with the birth of emancipation. War, though a scourge, often forces societies to transform, sometimes granting new freedoms or accelerating justice—but always at a cost too heavy to rejoice in without bitterness.

Sayers’s words are thus both sardonic and mournful. She knew that war is never to be desired, for its essence is destruction. Yet she also recognized the hypocrisy of a society that only under pressure grants to women and the marginalized the roles they should have possessed all along. Her statement is a subtle rebuke: why must humanity wait for calamity to see the worth of those it neglects? Why should the gifts of half the population only be valued when the world is burning?

The lesson here is twofold. First, it is a warning against romanticizing war: though it may bring change, it does so through suffering that no good can ever justify. Second, it is a call to courage and justice in times of peace: to grant recognition, opportunity, and dignity without waiting for crisis to force our hands. The freedoms glimpsed in war should not vanish when peace returns; rather, they should be made permanent, woven into the new fabric of society.

Therefore, O children of tomorrow, let this be your wisdom: do not wait for calamity to force change. Do not let justice, equality, and creativity be born only in fire and loss. Learn from Sayers’s paradoxical lament, and build in peace what others had to wrestle from war. For if war creates opportunities, it is only because peace was blind; and if we would honor the fallen, we must ensure their sacrifices bring forth a world where such blindness need never return.