Not on the socialist and pioneer alone did the hammer-stroke fall. Nor
was the sword always wielded by those without a cause, to the detriment
of the noble and just. This struggle, this convulsion of wills, was a
human reality, and therefore complex.
Like and yet unlike so many wars before it, this conflict, neither
large nor glorious, was fought on a myriad of battlefields, where
reasons were often lost, and morals obscured. The constraints of
civilization had been removed, freeing men, both good and evil, to
commune once more with their darker nature. That was all. And that
was more than enough.
There was but a single unifying link among the sprawl of planets and
peoples caught up, involved, willingly or not, in this unraveling: all
those who transgressed were filled with the desire to take, at the
expense and death of others, and those who were transgressed upon,
fought with all they had not to yield up the pebbles of home, seeds of
family, and grains of meaning they had found. And whether right or
wrong, wise, brave or foolish, they bled.