In "The Once and Future King," T.H. White writes in a way that is apposed to war and violence. The novel maintains an anti-war perspective, which is contrary to the traditional Arthurian beliefs. White was a conscientious objector during WWII, the period when he wrote the majority of this novel. White seeks to illustrate that war is neither heroic nor chivalrous. Rather than seeing war as a heroic sport he sees war as a very barbaric and inhumane action of violence. Once Arthur is king he has to be convinced that might is not always right. In the way that just because you are bigger and stronger than some one else it doesn’t mean that you should go kill them. Arthur’s belief that all of the kings and knights before did the right thing has to change. Merlyn comes into the story to lead Arthur to do the right thing and try to cut down on the violence. Merlyn, like T.H. White, views war a horrible act of violence that kills many innocent people. Merlyn views are shown to Arthur on many different occasions. One point that Merlyn made about war was that fighting never solved a problem. When Arthur is changed into each animal, in some way he is shown the effects of war. Arthur is shown how some groups can have a pure hatred of another group when he is change into an ant. As a goose Arthur is taught to not kill within the same species, and to also not kill without reason. In the story when Arthur is King he ends up fighting a war, even though it goes against all that Merlyn believes Merlyn helps Arthur to win the war. Toward the end of the story Arthur starts to realize that in order to be a successful king he would have to do something different. During Arthur’s young life war played a main roll in everyday life. As a boy Arthur thought that war reflected a persons strength, and Arthur wanted to be a powerful knight. Little did he know he would become the King, and he would be the person that dealt with the casualties of war. As King