SHOULD STATES BE UNSELFISH ?
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—I am sorry if Dr. Bevan thinks that I ignored the point of his article. I answered the points in it which seemed to be relevant to our letter. Dr. Bevan did make considerable play with the abstract distinction between selfishness and unselfishness. The relevance of his remarks about the different duties of States and of individuals depended, I thought, on the play he made—erroneously, as I believe—with that dis- tinction, and I still think so.
No one ever supposed that statesmen should act with a reckless generosity which might be commendable in private persons in certain situations, though recklessness and unselfish- ness are not, even in individuals, the same. Statesmen have responsibilities which private individuals have not : they are by their actions committing not themselves only, but other people, not even their contemporary fellow-citizens alone, but " countless generations yet unborn." They have to think of all their nation may mean to the world. There are values which it is their particular concern to preserve. They are not selfish because they consider them, but they are if, in considering them, they refuse to regard or weigh the claims of other peoples. These facts are elementary and obvious, and I do not see why we should have been supposed to ignore them.
Selfishness and unselfishness are not standards of conduct, but states or attitudes of mind, not easy to define, but easy to recognise. An unselfish spirit may not direct to the same action in a complicated situation such as that which a states- man has to face as it would in a simple situation. Our letter was prompted by the appeals which supporters of the National Government have been making in the last few months to two evil spirits—the spirit of feat and the spirit of selfishness. Both these spirits lead to short-sighted action, and are there- fore far more dangerous and reckless in statesmen, who ought to take long views, than in individuals. Men dominated by fear or by selfishness make bad judgements, and statesmen dominated by fear or by selfishness will make bad judgements for their nation. Perhaps it will be maintained that our Government are not so dominated, but why do they appeal to these passions in us when they want our support?
I cannot follow Dr. Bevan's view that if a statesman is committing his country to a generous action he must get the consent of his people, as he need not if he is committing his country to a narrowly selfish action. The latter may easily be more fatal to his country than the former. Does Dr. Bevan really hold that the rulers of Belgium in 1914, when they rejected a policy which a selfish regard of the interests of their country might have dictated, were wrong because they did not take a plebiscite ; while, if they had accepted the German offer, there would have been no need to consult the people? We are sometimes told by supporters of Munich that we saved Czecho-Slovakia from the fate of Belgium. Ought we to have " saved " Belgium in 1914 by advising her to submit to Germany, and ought we to have kept out of war ourselves in 1914? Were our statesmen in 1914 deluded and foolish in committing us to risk our existence in seeking to defend the rule of law? I hope Dr. Bevan does not mean this, but his arguments seem to imply it.
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