Love Quote by W. L. George

War doesn’t just rearrange borders; it rearranges loyalties, turning the people on your side into the ones you can’t stand. W. L. George’s line lands because it flips the expected moral lesson. We’re trained to think war manufactures hatred for the enemy, a neat story that flatters national purpose. George argues the opposite: the enemy is at least legible. It’s the ally, the supposed partner in righteousness, who becomes intolerable up close.

The subtext is pragmatic and mean in a way only a writer can be: coalition is intimacy without affection. Allies demand compromise, share credit badly, hoard resources, and drag you into their grudges. They also provide the most direct evidence that your own cause is messy. An enemy can be caricatured at a safe distance; an ally shows you the backstage of your propaganda, where ideals get traded for shipments, access, and face-saving.

The intent isn’t pacifist sentimentality. It’s a diagnosis of how war corrodes political trust from the inside. George is pointing at the petty humiliations and strategic resentments that outlast any armistice: who sacrificed more, who arrived late, who profiteered, who expects gratitude. That’s why the line feels uncomfortably contemporary. Modern conflict is rarely a clean duel; it’s a group project run by committees, and nothing breeds bitterness like shared ownership of a disaster. The cruelty of the aphorism is that it treats allied hatred as the real curriculum of war: the lesson you keep living with after the enemy is gone.