to the winner the potatoes ... "Suppose you a field of potatoes and two hungry tribes. The potatoes only come to feed one of the tribes that thus acquires the strength to cross the mountain and to go to the other slope, where there are potatoes in abundance; but if the two tribes share the potatoes of the country in peace, they do not sufficiently nourish themselves and die of starvation. Peace in this case is destruction; war is conservation. One of the tribes exterminates the other and collects the spoils. Hence the joy of victory, the hymns, acclaims, public rewards and all the other deeds of warfare. If war were not so, such demonstrations would not take place, for the real reason that man only celebrates and loves what is pleasurable or advantageous to him, and for the rational reason that no person canonizes an action that virtually destroys it . To the vanquished, hatred or compassion; to the winner, the potatoes. "