“War is simply a reversal of civilised life, its motto is “Evil be thou my good”, and so much of the good of modern life is actually evil that it is questionable whether on balance war does harm.”
It occurs to me that GO was simply noting that war causes the foundations of a culture to be reconsidered and, finding so much in his (1940) present culture in dire need of reconsideration, he likely felt that the ultimate benefit would be if society were redirected … that more lives would ultimately be saved by war having altered the course of culture than lost in the altering.
Consider how little it would take to alter the course of GMOs.
The American Civil War ultimately proved its worth in the Civil Rights acts of 1963 and 1965 yet, at the time, what a blood-filled exercise!
(I’m not a dunce; I know that freeing slaves was way down on the priority list of reasons for fighting that war.)