Characters
Try not to start a war before I get home – you know what it does to the traffic.
— Sherlock Holmes ‧ Sherlock
Behind the line May contain spoilers.
Our reading
An editorial interpretation.
The speaker asks someone to avoid starting a war before their return, then supplies an oddly trivial reason: conflict would snarl the traffic. The deadpan humour comes from treating a catastrophe as a commuting inconvenience. It also has a teasing, familiar ring, as if war were a plausible thing the listener might do.
Context reviewed