Sri Aurobindo
Autobiographical Notes
and Other Writings of Historical Interest
Part Three. On Indian and World Events 1940–1950
1. Public Statements, Messages, Letters and Telegrams
On the Second World War 1940–1943
On the War: Private Letters That Were Made Public [1]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 will 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 Asura.
July 29th, 1942.
Sri Aurobindo
1 29 July 1942. This letter or extract from a letter was published in a leaflet and in two or more pamphlets that also contain the war fund letter of 1940. The leaflet and pamphlets were headed “For Sri Aurobindo’s Sadhakas Only”. This piece, piece [2] and the 19 September 1940 letter on the war fund contribution were subsequently brought out in a booklet entitled On the War: Letters of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother (Calcutta: Arya Publishing House, 1944).