The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its

The modern prophet of human folly, Aldous Huxley, once declared with piercing clarity: “The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.” In this cry, he strips away the banners, the drums, the speeches of rulers, and reveals the naked truth: war is not waged by nations, but by men—flesh and blood, heart and soul—who are compelled to kill and to die for causes they did not choose.

The origin of these words is bound to the twentieth century, when Huxley witnessed the devastation of two world wars. He saw how the rhetoric of politics and the machinery of states transformed ordinary farmers, laborers, sons, and fathers into the “instruments” of slaughter. They were not tyrants nor kings, not architects of empire, but simple human beings swept into quarrels that belonged to others. The monstrous conventions of politics, as he named them, turned human lives into pawns, and what was most shocking was not only the scale of war, but the blindness with which individuals were sacrificed for abstractions.

History gives us a thousand mirrors of his wisdom. Consider the fate of the Russian and German soldiers at Stalingrad. Men who had never seen each other, who had no personal quarrel, were driven by orders into a furnace of death. They froze in the winter, starved, and killed each other in a wasteland of rubble. For what? For political ambitions, for ideologies, for disputes crafted by rulers who slept far from the battlefield. These men were not born to be enemies; they were made so by the decrees of power. Their humanity was reduced to instruments of destruction.

The ancients knew this tragedy as well. In the wars of kings, the common man was always the fodder. In the Iliad, Achilles himself rages that men must fight and die for the quarrels of rulers, while those rulers sit in safety. Across the centuries, the pattern does not change: those who decide wars rarely fight them, and those who fight them rarely decide them. This is the shocking fact Huxley names—the separation between power and sacrifice, between politics and blood.

Yet his words also awaken us to a deeper truth: each soldier, each victim, is an individual human being, not a number, not a unit, not an instrument. Each has a mother, a child, a dream, a soul. When politics reduces them to tools of war, it commits a crime not only against life, but against individuality itself. The true horror is not only death, but the stripping away of a man’s right to live his own story, forcing him instead into the quarrels of another.

O children of the future, let this lesson pierce your hearts: do not allow the monstrous conventions of politics to blind you to the humanity of others. When you hear rulers speak of “enemies” and “necessary sacrifices,” remember the truth: those enemies are men like yourself, with families, with laughter, with fears. They are not abstractions, but lives. And when war is declared, it is not rulers who bleed first, but the innocent and the ordinary.

Practical wisdom follows: question the wars you are told to fight, and question the hatreds you are told to hold. Seek always the human face beneath the mask of the “enemy.” In your own life, resist being drawn into quarrels not your own, whether among neighbors or among nations. Guard your heart from being made an instrument of another’s ambition. Strive for peace, and when conflict cannot be avoided, remember the dignity of every soul, even those who stand against you.

Thus let Huxley’s words endure: “The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings…” Hold this truth as a shield against the deceptions of politics and the seductions of war. For when you see the humanity in every man, you tear down the false walls that divide, and you build instead the bridges that may one day banish war itself from the earth.