Still true, 85 years later

No one, in our time, believes in any sanction greater than military power; no one believes that it is possible to overcome force except by greater force. There is no “law,” there is only power. I am not saying that that is a true belief, merely that it is the belief which all modern men do actually hold. Those who pretend otherwise are either intellectual cowards, or power-worshippers under a thin disguise, or have simply not caught up with the age they are living in. Kipling’s outlook is pre-Fascist. He still believes that pride comes before a fall and that the gods punish hubris. He does not foresee the tank, the bombing plane, the radio and the secret police, or their psychological results.—George Orwell, A Collection of Essays, 118