Quoth the Layman

The thing is, the way I see it, these days there's a war on, right? And ages ago there wasn't a war on, right? So, there must have been a moment when there not being a war on went away, right... and there being a war on came along. So, what I want to know is... how did we get from one case of affairs to the other case of affairs?

Do you mean... how did the war start?

Yeah.

And here I thought I was the master of indirect speech....