How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph.)
Quote #1
Mammy—mammy—mammy gave place to Antland, Antland Over All, and the stream of orders were discontinued in favour of lectures about war, patriotism or the economic situation. The fruity voice said that their beloved country was being encircled by a horde of filthy Other-nesters—at which the wireless chorus sang:
When Other blood spurts from the knife,
Then everything is fine. (S.13.75-76)
Wart's experience in the ant colony shows the truly ugly nature of human tribalism. Antland is a sort of melding of a communist and fascist society (check out how "Antland, Antland Over All" is a spin on "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles"). It's always easy to unite the people against a common enemy—especially if you vilify and demonize the Other and make them into something less than human. They're easier to dispose of that way—they're nothing more than an ant underneath your shoe.
Quote #2
A. We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash.
B. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash. (S.13.81-82)
To the robotic ants, either way war can be justified. The horrific thing that Wart discovers is that humans can be all too antlike in their capacity for war.
Quote #3
"Will you stop about it at once! What a horrible mind you must have! You have no right to say such things. And of course there are sentries. There are the jer-falcons and the peregrines, aren't there: the foxes and the ermines and the humans with their nets? These are natural enemies. But what creature could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood." (S.19.94)
The high-flying geese are the true pacifists in the novel. Lyo-lyok just can't imagine that any species would engage in wholesale slaughter of others of its kind. Their ability to fly so high as not to see boundaries between territories makes them a naturally un-warlike species.
Quote #4
True warfare is what happens between bands of the same species. Out of the hundreds of thousands of species, I can only think of seven which are belligerent. Even Man has a few varieties like the Esquimaux and the Gypsies and the Lapps and certain Nomads in Arabia, who do not do it, because they do not claim boundaries. True warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism. (S.21.131)
Extremely Significant Point Alert! This gets right at the heart of White's beef with war: he thinks it's largely unnatural, and that (maybe) humans can be cured of their drive toward it.
Quote #5
"Personally," said the Wart, "I should have liked to go to war, if I could have been made a knight. I should have liked the banners and the trumpets, the flashing armour and the glorious charges. And oh, I should have liked to do great deeds, and be brave, and conquer my own fears. Don't you have courage in warfare, Badger, and endurance, and comrades whom you love?" (S.21.132)
The wise badger's silence says it all. He merely changes the subject, because he can see that this idea of glory is too ingrained in Wart, and will have to be unlearned.
Quote #6
"But look at the country. Look at the barns burnt, and dead men's legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried, and nobody daring to walk abroad with gold or ornaments on their clothes. That is chivalry nowadays. That is the Uther Pendragon touch. And then you talk about a battle being fun!" (Q.2.72).
Merlyn is here talking to Arthur, and is trying to disabuse the young King of the notion that battle is fun. Plus, just look at all the other horrible violent things that happen during wartime. Dulce et decorum est, and all that...
Quote #7
"Wars are never fought for one reason […] They are fought for dozens of reasons, in a muddle. It is the same with revolts." (Q.3.6).
If you stop to think about the historical context in which The Once and Future King was written—that is, post WWI and WWII—this idea of a "muddle" makes sense. The reasons for these wars (and for any war, really) are many; they are complicated, overlapping, and difficult (if not impossible) to untangle.
Quote #8
"There is one fairly good reason for fighting—and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness, perhaps the greatest wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop him." (Q.4.5).
Merlyn might as well be wearing a sign that says: "T.H. White's Mouthpiece" in blinking red lights. He's talking about the only justifiable war scenario, but still he hedges his bets by describing it as "a sort of duty." He's not even sure that self-defense or protecting others is justification enough to exercise force.
Quote #9
Something of the young man's vision had penetrated to his captains and his soldiers. Something of the new ideal of the Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency—for they knew the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward. They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done what they ought to do in spite of fear—something which wicked people have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but which is glory all the same. (Q.12.10)
What's being described here is the closest thing to a just war that White, the pacifist, can imagine. Arthur envisions a group of men who aren't going to be rewarded with ransoms (the typical outcome of war), or play around with highly choreographed knightly fighting (tournaments and jousts). Instead, their only reward is knowing that they did something because it was the right thing to do. Turns out this is one of the hardest things to do, period.
Quote #10
The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing. It was geography which was the cause—political geography. It was nothing else. [...] The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined. The airborne birds skipped them by nature. How mad the frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly. (C.14.105).
It's the human imagination—seeing those make-believe lines on the map—that causes war. And it's the human imagination that will one day allow us to erase them. Only then will humans be able to metaphorically fly, and finally defeat their instinct for war.