The author here has deliberately used their knowledge of historical events to portray Birling as arrogant, ignorant and conceited. We know this because the book was written in 1940-1943 which would mean the author would have knowledge of all events which were mentioned. “you’ll hear some people say war is inevitable. And to that i say Fiddlesticks!” this is an opportunity where his arrogance and ignorance is displayed as a strong opinion which comes to be extremely wrong. The author has used Dramatic irony here as this play was first viewed in October 1946 which would have been right after the second world war and the subject of war with the Germans would not only be a controversial topic but a well known one.