When your chaplain asked me whether I should like to talk to you on the morality of war, I had to tell him that there was nothing I should like to talk about less. I can think of no less cosy subject for a Sunday morning chat in this year of grace 1949.

The trouble, of course, is not just that it is such a complex moral issue in the abstract, but rather because war is so real, so imminent, so possible, so probable.