# XXV: The So-Called Greatest War explained — The Absolute at Large

> Chapter companion for The Absolute at Large by Karel Čapek.

## What happens

The chronicler reflects on humanity's tendency to take pride in superlative suffering, and describes the vast, chaotic global war from 1944 to 1953, focusing on absurd and fragmented events rather than grand military strategy, ultimately noting that even greater wars will come.

## Themes in this chapter

### The Absurdity of Absolutes

The chronicler mocks the human need to label the war as 'the greatest' and reduces vast suffering to absurd statistics and trivial anecdotes.

### Human Nature and Morality

Explores humanity's pride in superlative destruction and the indifference to individual lives lost in the chaos.

### Religious Conflict and War

Mentions shifting religious authorities in St. Vitus Cathedral and the persecution of Catholics under Chinese rule.

## Character check-ins

### Toni Bobinet

Emperor Bobinet leads victorious regiments across India to China, later disappears in the Amazon region.

### Sergei Nikolayevich Zlocin

Establishes a short-lived Czardom in North Africa before being murdered.

## Key lines

> It is a foible of our human nature that when we have an extremely unpleasant experience, it gives us a peculiar satisfaction if it is 'the biggest' of its disagreeable kind that has happened since the world began.

People take strange pride in enduring the worst possible version of a bad event, like a record heatwave or the bloodiest war.

_Opens the chapter with a cynical observation about human psychology._

> 198,000,000 men took part in the fighting, and all but thirteen of them fell.

Nearly every soldier died in the war, leaving only thirteen survivors out of 198 million.

_Hyperbolic statistic emphasizing the absurd scale of destruction._

> Therefore I say: Do not rob the people of that time of their only boast—that what they went through was the Greatest War. We, however, know that in a few decades we shall succeed in arranging an even greater war, for in this respect also the human race is progressing ever upward and on.

Let the survivors keep their claim to having lived through the worst war ever, but humanity will inevitably surpass it with an even greater one.

_Closing irony about progress leading to ever-larger conflicts._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_absolute_at_large_se/chapters/xxv-the-so-called-greatest-war
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_absolute_at_large_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_absolute_at_large_se/chapters