Tribune, 4 DECEMBER 1944
V2 (I am told that you can now mention it in print so long as you just call it V2 and don’t describe it too minutely) supplies another instance of the contrariness of human nature. People are complaining of the sudden unexpected wallop with which these things go off. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if you got a bit of warning,’ is the usual formula. There is even a tendency to talk nostalgically of the days of V1. The good old doodlebug did at least give you time to get under the table, etc., etc. Whereas, in fact, when the doodlebugs were actually dropping, the usual subject of complaint was the uncomfortable waiting period before they went off. Some people are never satisfied. Personally, I am no lover of V2, especially at this moment when the house still seems to be rocking from a recent explosion, but what most depresses me about these things is the way they set people talking about the next war. Every time one goes off I hear gloomy references to ‘next time,’ and the reflection: ‘I suppose they’ll be able to shoot them across the Atlantic by that time.’ But if you ask who will be fighting whom when this universally expected war breaks out, you get no clear answer. It is just war in the abstract—the notion that human beings could ever behave sanely having apparently faded out of many people’s memories.