Letters to the Editor
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possible. The most suitable length is rho, of one of our " News of the Week " paray,rophs.—El. SeecrkTo 1.1
IS PEACE POSSIBLE ?
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—My unfortunately-named article on " Why I Believe in War " has raised a hornet's nest about my head, in spite of all its qualifications and reservations. I am receiving angry letters by every post, and I have been attacked in a Socialistic weekly, but not in a way that I care to answer. Many of the letters are also personal and abusive, and all are opposed to my viewpoint. It is some consolation to know that there are so many people in favour of peace, although I cannot bring myself to believe that my correspondents, or my Socialist critic, have thought as deeply as they feel strongly on the subject of war.
But the article by Professor Zimmern in last week's Spectator, and the letters on the subject which you published, are in quite another category. Professor arnmern is not only kind, but he makes out a very good case for his belief in peace. My main comment on his article is that he will not allow that commercial or financial tension is a state of war : to my mind it is as bad to starve a man and his family by throwing him out of employment as it is to bomb •his home. Lancashire 'weavers are undergoing a slower and crueller form of suffering through the Indian boycott than that to which they would be subjected by old-fashioned war.
I am delighted, however, that Professor Zimmern agrees with me that war is not the worst thing that can happen to mankind. To my mind the cowardice and hypocrisy of the Great Powers over the China-Japan dispute is worse than war. I cannot go into that big question here, but surely it must be obvious to everyone that the League of Nations has failed to protect China ; and that the League always will fail in major disputes unless (as the French saw some years ago) it has armed power wherewith to enforce its decisions. Force is necessary in the world as it is : that is what I meant when I wrote my article ; and I hope and think that I made it plain that I did not wish to see the nations actually fighting to-day or to-morrow.
I agree with Professor Zimmern that war between civilized nations would be a useless horror. (Unfortunately, because a thing is horrible it is not impossible.) But what exactly would our pacifists do if the Afridis raided Peshawar ? Would they Summon representatives of the reivcrs and the ravished to air their rival oratories in Geneva ? If not that, what would they do ? I sincerely hope that the Germans and French and Poles and Hungarians and Bulgarians and Italians and Yugoslavians may compose their difficulties without armed conflict. If they were to fight, it would be a poor consolation to say " I told you so " at the cost of a bullet in my skin, or in that of my friends. Yet I cannot believe that either finance, science, or the English- speaking demociacies are going to influence, say, the Balkans to keep the peace to the same extent as, say, the threat of bombing their capitals by an international Air Force. I sincerely hope that Professor Zimmern's prediction of " a period of constitutional development on a world-wide scale" will conk true, but I feel.that it would he as well to be at least prepared for its very opposite. Mr. Isherwood points out that we could. light better things than physical enemies. I agree, and would like to tell him that I wrote an article in your columns some years ago on this very' subject, entitled " What Shall we Fight ? " But your correspondent is on dangerous ground when he disputes the tfse of force in driving the money-changers from the Temple. .
Col. Rogge argues that I do not want war (paragraph 1) and yet that I believe it to have been planned by God (paragraph 9). see no inconsistency in this : I feel the same about death, which I resist, while knowing it will get me in the end, and a good thing too . . .
Miis Adamson says that we have abolished war in the family, tribe, province, nation, and will therefore -do so in the world eventually. But have we abolished war in the family, tribe, &c. ? I think we frankly admit its possibility, and check its outbreak by a police force. That would be the only way to control war in the world, but the potentiality will always exist. If we shut our eyes and believe too implicitly in peace we shall have a rude awakening one day, probably from the East.—
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