Peace at a Price

Mars His Idiot. By H. M. Tomlinson. (Heinemann. 7s. 6a.) THE importance of this book is not only its denunciation of war (though that is quite terrific) but its raising of a question which must soon become—is, indeed, already becoming— one of the dividing lines in public affairs. True.the book could stand merely as denunciation ; few have brought to that task

the power of Mr. Tomlinson. He is one fiery rush of controlled passion and savage irony :

" The old battlegrounds in Prance looked as if our earth were dead. It was exposing to the sky the ulcerations of the foul disease which had rotted it. Sprawled everywhere in that livid desolation, and sloughing into it, were the anonymous shapes of men ' whose names shall live for evermore.' "

Or again :

" There was a year when the. progress of the Guards • in their scarlet and bearskins, marching to stately music, would bring me to a halt, Once, though, I saw them, not in fine array, and without martial strains, digging new works in the Somme morass, and uncovering and throwing out their comrades who had fallen in battle a few months before ; men were vomiting. My blood does not sing now when I hear their stately music. I know the smell it leads to."

But, as Mr. Tomlinson also knows, no account of the past. horrors can restrain a younger generation ; rather it may stimulate them, challenge them to try their own mettle. So he will leave nothing of that either. " War is silly." Less, far less, than in the last war (and there was little enough then) is there going to be any gallant battling. " Machines do the dirty work, at long range, under our direction, and personal valour counts little more in war than a flannel shirt." " There are no battle-flelds now. . . . An expectant mother is as likely to meet a splendid death as a general. . . . Heroes may full at the moment of victory, but children also drop dead at their porridge." What happens to would-be heroes ia that they " are thrust in at one end of the viewless destroyer,

and emerge at the other as unknown bones." Moreover we know, and every fresh volume of war memoirs proves it afresh, that modern war is a colossal nightmare of sheer muddle. The next will be no better, for no human being can really foresee the next, All that the more or less conscientious gentlemen at Aldershot and Salisbury Plain and elsewhere, who will be responsible ,for millions of lives, can. do is what they are so diligently doing=learning how they might have fought the last war better. Even as I was reading this book air eminent soldier's voice,over the wireless was speaking of " the great abiding principles governing the art of war." Art of war—abiding principles—with the noise that is everywhere in our skies

Denunciation has, indeed, left nothing of war but the gap- toothed skull in a shrapnel helmet which is on the dust cover of Mr. Tomlinson's book. And we know what it is grinning at. As Mrs Tomlinson puts it, in a phraSe that sticks in the head : Fear, which always haunts those who trust in force, is the

Principal member of the Cabinet." And not of the Cabinet

Only. "'The anxious cry of many good people for what they call. Isolation is proof enough that they guess the earth has

unified into one sensitive ball, and dread the responsibility and the peril of it while disruptive nationaliszns still endanger the planet." Fear is the principal member of the Isolationist group too. • So we are forced on to what must become the deep dividing line. We must all make common cause, and " we " does not Mean our governments. " Our world is no worse than the

form and substance of common desire. We will it., and there it is. We are like that. It can dissolve into a fairer prospect

When a better opinion is influential enough." • But what opinion ? Mr. Tomlinson will have nothing of force, even for a common cause. " Guns jeopardise the security of man's tenure of the earth. That is what guns are for." He is more aware than most writers of what Sir Evelyn

Wrench was putting to readers of The Spectator a few weeks ago—that British policy does not present itself to other

People in the light in which we see it :

" The proximity of a big fellow well armed (and the British hmpire is more than a six-footer) known to everybody as -a prompt Maker of difficulties on invitation, quick on the trigger and withal a proud man touchy on a point of honour, does not put other rieople at their ease. No matter how bland and gracious he may be, and conscious of his good intent, his companions are apt to sit on the edges of their- chairs, ready to rise. He makes- them uneasy and wary. He seems friendly and says he is a lover of peace. Then why that bulge at his hip-pocket ?

And our attitude to Japan and Italy is seen as resentment of those " who have sallied out into the field to play the old game after the whistle has blown to signal the end of it," and blown because we have had enough. • So we come out on the other side of the deep diViding line of the immediate future :

" We do not want war , as things are. We would be ransomed from it. • Then we must be prepared to pay the price. The price will mean a serious surrender. Fear of -war is not enough. Great Powers must give up their sovereignty. They must bring about a world order to replace their destructive rivalries. An essential Condition of peace and order is that sovereignty and special interests have to go."

R. GRETTON.