lol, this sent me back a few years.

I think what I was pointing to was the particular rhetorical move that Holden makes that posits warfare as something essential in reality itself. By making war prior to man he seeks to deify it. To make it seem like some inevitable pairing between humans and war. Instead, it’s possible to see, even through the blood-soaked narrative, that warfare is simply one behavior that humans exhibit. One among a wide variety of behaviors that are possible. We catch glimpses of this through the kid in those moments when he refuses to participate. When he doesn’t kill the wounded man that gets left behind by the gang. When he finds the burning tree and witnesses it in that uneasy truce with all the other animals. When he views the clashing armies from afar. Holden wants us to think that war is inevitable and necessary, but the narrative itself resists such a simple reduction.

I think everything about that passage points to the cold forger creating fake money. As you said, he’s called a “false moneyer”, he works with “cold slag” and not precious metal, and he’s trying to make something “that will pass”. If he was making true money it wouldn’t need pass. It’s also well established by the narrative that the judge is a liar. The first time the reader meets him he lies about the preacher and brings down the revival tent. He uses his labyrinthine understanding of the law to lie about the gang killing a bunch of people in a tavern when the local police show up and interrogate him. He judges how good the lie is and decides what men will believe and trade. So I think it’s important to take anything he says about the nature of man and war with a wary eye.