4 1984dren: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect
voice of the clock. He settled deeper into the arm-chair and
put his feet up on the fender. It was bliss, it was etemity.
Suddenly, as one sometimes does with a book of which one
knows that one will ultimately read and re-read every word,
he opened it at a different place and found himself at Chap-
ter III. He went on reading:Chapter IIIWar is PeaceThe splitting up of the world into three great super-states
was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen
before the middle of the twentieth century. With the ab-
sorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by
the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia
and Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third,
Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another de-
cade of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three
super-states are in some places arbitrary, and in others they
fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general
they follow geographical lines. Eurasia comprises the whole
of the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass,
from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania comprises the
Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles,
Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa. Eastasia,
smaller than the others and with a less definite western
frontier, comprises China and the countries to the south of