Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Himself and the Ashram
The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35
Remarks on the World Situation (1933 – 1949)
On World War II [1]
You have said that you have begun to doubt whether it
was the Mother’s war and ask me to make you feel again that it is. I affirm
again to you most strongly that this is the Mother’s war. You should not think
of it as a fight for certain nations against 
others
or even for India; it is a struggle for an ideal that has to establish itself on
earth in the life of humanity, for a Truth that has yet to realise itself fully
and against a darkness and falsehood that are trying to overwhelm the earth and
mankind in the immediate future. It is the forces behind the battle that have to
be seen and not this or that superficial circumstance. It is no use
concentrating on the defects or mistakes of nations; all have defects and commit
serious mistakes; but what matters is on what side they have ranged themselves
in the struggle. It is a struggle for the liberty of mankind to develop, for
conditions in which men have freedom and room to think and act according to the
light in them and grow in the Truth, grow in the Spirit. There cannot be the
slightest doubt that if one side wins, there will be an end of all such freedom
and hope of light and truth and the work that has to be done will be subjected
to conditions which would make it humanly impossible; there would be a reign of
falsehood and darkness, a cruel oppression and degradation for most of the human
race such as people in this country do not dream of and cannot yet at all
realise. If the other side that has declared itself for the free future of
humanity triumphs, this terrible danger will have been averted and conditions
will have been created in which there will be a chance for the Ideal to grow,
for the Divine Work to be done, for the spiritual Truth for which we stand to
establish itself on the earth. Those who fight for this cause are fighting for
the Divine and against the threatened reign of the {{0}}Asura.[[This letter
and the one that follows were later revised and issued as messages, first to the
members of the Ashram, then to the general public. They are published, as
revised, in Autobiographical Notes and Other Writings of Historical Interest,
volume 36 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo,
pp. 463–68. In the present volume they are published as originally written. —
Ed.]]
29 July 1942