My case is that war is not something
that is inevitable, but is the result of
certain man-made circumstances ; that
man can abolish them, as he abolished
the circumstances in which the plague
flourished
NEW REVISED EDITION
C. E. M. Joad
C. E. M. Joad, M.A., D.Lit., was born
in 1 891 , educated at BlundelPs School,
Tiverton, and Balliol College, Oxford,
and entered the Civil Service in
August 1914. He was in the Ministry
of Labour from 1914 to 1930. He
then resigned and became Head of
the Department of Philosophy and
Psychology at Birkbeck College,
University of London. He is the
author of numerous original books
of philosophy, having chiefly estab-
lished his reputation as an interpreter
of philosophy for the general public.
His Guide to Philosophy, published in
1936, has been reprinted nine times.
Is also the author of two unusual
autobiographical books, the Book of
Joad and the Testament of Joad.
Finally, he is well known as a pacifist.
He is a keen rider, a great walker,
plays hockey and tennis.
WHY WAR?
by
C. E. M. JOAD
AUTHOR OF
Guide to Philosophy
Guide to the Philosophy of Morals and Politics
The Book of Joad
Guide to Modern Thought, etc.
PUBLISHED AS A PENGUIN SPECIAL' BY
PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
HARMONDSWORTH MIDDLESEX ENGLAND
First published 1939
Reprinted September 1939
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR PENGUIN'^BOOKSIlIMITED
BY PURNELL AND SONS, LTD., PAULTON (SOMERSET)*AND LONDON
WHY WAR?
CHAPTER I
THE CRISIS REHASHED
INTRODUCTORY
The Author's Background.
For most of my life I have been a Socialist ; my opinions
and convictions are those of a man of the Left. When
at the end of last September we felt the breath of war,
most of those who share my political views, whose
hopes are mine, who, as individuals acknowledge the
same values, and as reformers desire the same changes
in society as I do, and with whom, therefore, I am in
the habit of discussing public affairs — in a word, the
great majority of my friends and acquaintances, were
urgent that we should "take a firm stand" with France
and Russia against "Fascist aggression". We were to
intimate to Hitler in plain language that, if he persisted
in his designs for the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia,
we would fight him.
They did not believe that this "stand" would in fact
result in war, for faced by a combination of England,
France, Russia, and Czechoslovakia, with only Italy
as a doubtful ally, Hitler must, they thought, inevitably
withdraw. His bluff would be called, his prestige dimmed,
his power shaken ; but should he, in spite of these con-
siderations, nevertheless persist, then we were to fight.
I found myself unable to agree with this reasoning,
or, subscribe to the course of policy which it recom-
mended. I am by tradition and conviction a pacifist.
7
26 WHY WAR?
arguments which I summarized earlier in the Chapter,
Fascism is incurably aggressive; it must continue to
expand. Sooner or later a conflict with the British
Empire sprawling defencelessly across the face of the
world is inevitable. The longer it is put off, the weaker
we shall be. Therefore we must take the risk of war
now in order to avoid the certainty of war later. In
other words, we should offer war in order to preserve
peace.
CHAPTER V
THE CASE AGAINST WAR P/^V
Summary of the Argument
If you are not proposing to fight a war, it is foolish to
prepare tor it, since your preparations will be interprete d^
^by your neighbours as a threat. Therefore the arguments
which, in the discussion that follows, are used to estab-
lish the case against war are, with unimportant excep-
tions, equally relevant to the case against armaments.
In this chapter and the next, I shall treat the two cases
as if they were the same. I shall argue :
(I) That preparedness for fighting and willingness to
fight do not give security to the nation which is prepared
and willing. Armaments, in fact, do not give safety in
the short run.
(II) That the disposition to achieve its ends by violence
is not a characteristic that promotes survival either in
an organism or in a community. Belligerence, in fact,
has no survival value in the long run.
(III) That nations who go to war do not, even if
victorious, succeed under modern conditions in achieving
the aims for which they were ostensibly fighting, and
that the effects of war are in general other than those
which are either wished or intended.
(IV) That this generalization is convincingly illustrated
by the results of the last war.
(V) That it will be illustrated even more convincingly
by the results of the next.
Finally, I shall try to show that war is irrational and
amoral ; that it promotes stupidity, puts a premium upon
vice, discourages intelligence and diminishes virtue ; that,
64
70 WHY WAR?
Europe's Suicide Race.
The process of out-arming your supposedly dangerous
neighbour, and so provoking him to defend himself by
out-arming you, has been the outstanding characteristic
of the history of post-war Europe. We fought the last
war because we believed ourselves to be threatened by
the German army. We won and, having won, we pro-
ceeded to disarm Germany, sinking her navy and reduc-
ing her army to a mere hundred thousand men. Observ-
ing that the allies did not keep their promise to disarm,
and finding her attempts to conciliate them unsuccessful,
Germany starts to rearm herself, at first secretly and
presently openly. She introduces conscription and
builds an air force which is superior to that of any other
power. Terrified by this resurgence of her old enemy,
the English, who have never in any single year since
the last war spent less than £100 million on preparations
for the next, begin themselves to rearm in earnest. As
the years pass, the pace grows hotter. A short time ago
the British Prime Minister announced a programme of
£1,500 million to be spent on armaments over a period
of five years. In the year of writing (1938) we have
spent £370 million, but it is now generally recognized
that this is not enough. In 1939 we are to spend more,
far more than we spent in 1938.
And, inevitably, our preparations start the sequence of
cause and effect which I have described. During the
week in which these paragraphs are being written, the
accelerated pace of our rearmament has been unfavour-
ably commented upon by Hitler. Why, he asks, if we
are peacefully inclined, do we require these burdensome
armaments ? To him, at least, it is not clear. What is
clear, is that Germany cannot allow herself to be out-
done. She has had a start in the race and she must keep
it. And so Germany is rearming more feverishly than
THE CASE AGAINST WAR 71
ever and, calling the foundries of the newly acquired
Sudeten German territory and the chemical works at
Aussig to her assistance, bends her back to the shoul-
dering of new burdens.
Mr. Churchill and Sir Norman Angell VYim^ « '/ y
*>»•*•
The process, it is obvious, is not one that makes for
security. One does not, if one is wise, insure oneself
against fire by devoting all one's savings to the storing
up of explosives. Apart from the vested interest in war
of the armament makers, the professional interest in
war of young men trained in the use of modern weapons
and anxious to exhibit their technical skill, is it not
obvious that those nations which possess great arma-
ments will, sooner or later, use them as surely as children
will use elaborate and exciting toys ? The most con-
vincing comment that I have heard on the whole lunatic
business was made at a meeting which I attended as an
undergraduate at Oxford in the year before the war.
The meeting was addressed by a Cabinet Minister.
"There is," he said, "just one way in which you can
make your country secure and have peace, and that is
to be so much stronger than any prospective enemy that
he dare not attack you, and this is, I submit to you,
gentlemen, a self-evident proposition." A small man
got up at the back of the hall and asked him whether
the advice he had just given was the advice he would
give to Germany. A faint titter ran through the meeting —
— the audience was, I suppose, above the average in
political intelligence — but there was no applause.
Presently, the time came for speeches by the audience.
In a speech equally devastating to the Cabinet Minister,
and convincing to me, the questioner proceeded to drive
home the moral which his question had implied. "Here,"
he pointed out, "are two nations or groups of nations
likely to quarrel. How shall each be secure and keep
f 72 WHY WAR? f
j the peace ? Our Cabinet Minister tells us in the pro-
fundity of his wisdom, that both will be secure, both
will keep the peace when each is stronger than the
other. And this, he thinks, is a self-evident proposi-
tion." This time there was loud applause. It remains
to add that the Cabinet Minister was Winston Churchill,
1 his questioner Sir Norman Angell.
The Gapers at the Guns.
And what of the peoples who not only rely upon the
possession of the instruments of destruction to protect
them from their neighbours, but even appear to take a
pride in their possession ?
Four-fifths of the news-reels visited by me on the day
on which these words were written were devoted to an
exhibition of the activities of instruments of slaughter,
to cannons firing, mines exploding, torpedoes torpedoing,
tanks breaking through hedges and knocking down
houses, aeroplanes bombing. At the end the announcer,
thinking, perhaps, that this display might have disquieted
those members of the audience who were not entirely
destitute of the power to connect, delivered himself as
follows: "If, as seems to be the case, we are all going
to be bombed in the next war, we may as well be bombed
by first-class bombers which can fly at over 400 miles
per hour."
| In H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come there |
is an account of the future destruction of the penguins.
As the guns mowed fines of dead in the serried ranks of
birds standing on the beach, observers noted with interest
that the penguins showed no sign either of fright or of
resistance. With a mild and unsuspicious curiosity
they watched the preparations for their own destruction,
watched the slaughter of their fellows, went on watching
until their own end came. Foolish imbecile birds,
defective in intelligence ? Certainly ! But what of
88 WHY WAR?
These truths are again vividly exemplified by the effects
of the last war, effects to which it seems equally impos-
sible to assign a termination in point of time or a limit
in point of evil. Surveying the contemporary European
and Asiatic scene, it is difficult to discern a single unde-
sirable feature which cannot be plausibly regarded as a
long-term product of the last war. Arabs are fighting
with Jews in Palestine, a country claimed by both.
" Why ? In war statesmen make promises to whomsoever
they think may be induced to support them. Sometimes
these promises are inconsistent. Thus Lord Balfour ,
promised Palestine as a national home Tor the Jews ;
"Trat in order to obtain their support against the Turks~
Colonel Lawrence made promises to the Arabs, the "
implications of which were inconsistent with those of
Balfour's promise to the Jews, _ 1jt\ty£ *tiy$*$llf
Italy is an aggressive nation and aims at the hegemdily
of the Mediterranean. Why ? In order to induce Italy
to "come in" on their side, the allies made promises
involving the cession to Italy of German and Austrian
territory. These promises were insufficiently fulfilled,
and Italy, finding that she had done badly out of the
war, has entertained a grievance ever since. Her sense of
grievance has induced a mood of aggressive belligerence,
and has led her to seek compensation by obtaining
an empire in Africa and achieving the hegemony of the
Mediterranean. The desire for empire in Africa was
responsible for the Abyssinian affair and the collapse of
the League ; the ambition to achieve the hegemony of the
Mediterranean, for the constant friction with England.
But the clearest illustration of the impossibility of
setting bounds to the evil generated by war is once
again afforded by the case of Germany. I have already
referred to the treatment meted out to Germany at the
end of the war ; let us follow the course of events a little
further.
THE CASE AGAINST WAR 89
The Post- War Generation in Germany. ~ p &&* i
Germany was made to subscribe to a grossly unfair
clause saddling her with the whole responsibility for the
war; her colonies were taken away from her, and out-
lying parts of the Fatherland shorn off; a wedge of
alien territory was driven through her eastern provinces
by the Polish Corridor; her representatives were sub-
jected to continuous humiliation at Geneva. At long
last, and with infinite reluctance, she was admitted into
the League. Meanwhile the allies, having starved her
people by a blockade protracted without mercy and
beyond reason for months after the signing of the
Armistice, had failed to fulfil their moral promise to
disarm. They had extracted grossly extortionate sums
by way of reparations, and had continued to occupy the
Rhineland with troops for twelve years after the war was
over. As if this were not enough, the Ruhr was occupied
by the French till 1923, and black troops were billeted
on German households. In 1924 the mark depreciated
so catastrophically that middle-class savings were utterly
destroyed. In 1929 the economic blizzard descended
with such force upon Germany that it was the exception
and not the rule for a young man of the middle class to
find work. Unemployment stalked the streets and
presently broke out into the political brawling which
became continuous in the three years preceding the Nazi
revolution. What a chapter of misery and suffering ! What
an atmosphere in which to bring up the rising generation !
Oppressed by guilt, overcome with shame, poor and
without hope of careers, the war-born generation in
Germany came to maturity. The results are visibly
before us in a brutality and savagery which have made
the contemporary Nazi a by-word among the nations.
Demanding a scape-goat for Germany's supposed guilt,
he persecutes and tortures the Jews ; seeking compensa-
90 WHY WAR?
tion for her supposed inferiority, he boasts of her ruth-
lessness and prates of her power ; determined to remedy
the weakness which he deems responsible for her
humiliation, he has helped her to build a military force
so prodigious that his country has become the terror
of Europe and a menace to the world. The horrors
that have disgraced Nazi Germany have been per-
petrated very largely by young men. It is the young
men of the post-war generation, the young men born
of suffering and shame, who have baited and flogged
and tortured the men who went through the war. No,
it is not possible to assign a limit to the evils which the
war has wrought.
The Special Nemesis that Overtakes Wars for Ideal Ends.
It seems scarcely necessary to add that wars for ideal
ends are not, under modern conditions, even if they are
victorious, more successful in their results than wars for
power, wealth or territory. Whatever the motives of
the governments who declare them, the motives of the
men who fight wars are often honourable. It was
impossible for those who knew the men who volun-
teered to fight Germany in 1914 not to recognize that
they were good men doing what they believed to be
the right thing. It is one of the tragedies of war, as
Sir Norman Angell has well said, that it is fought not
by bad men knowing themselves to be wrong, but by
good men passionately convinced that they are right.
Many of the 1914 volunteers were animated by high
ideals. It wa,s not merely that they wished to protect
hearth and home, to defend their country, to fight for
freedom, to preserve democracy. These ends no doubt
were admirable. But for some the response to the call
was even more disinterested. They sought to establish
the rule of right in the world and to free men once and
for all from the domination of force. It was the belief
THE CASE AGAINST WAR 91
fostered by press, platform and pulpit, encouraged in
the home and the school, engendered by a thousand
speeches, instilled by a hundred sermons, the belief that
they were to free the world from, the rule of force, that
gave men strength and hope, the strength to endure,
the hope which sustained, during the appalling suffering
and boredom of those four years.
Never again, was the exclamation of the men who
won the war. Never again ! It was not so much a cry
wrung from them by their agony, as an assertion based
upon their conviction that by winning the war they
would put an end to war for ever. And now, it turns
out that the belief was false, the hope a delusion, the
conviction without foundation.
If we ask why the sufferings of the war were wasted, why
the hopes of the sufferers were betrayed, we are often
told that it was because of the wickedness of politicians,
who after the soldiers had won the war, betrayed the
peace. The explanation is, I suggest, totally inadequate.
Why The Fruits of War are Bitter.
The reason lies deeper, and is to be found in the
character of war itself which determines also the
character of its results. It has happened before in
history that wars have been begun for the sake of ideals ;
it has happened before that they have been succeeded
by disillusion and frustration. Why is this? War
engenders an atmosphere in which hatred and bitterness
flourish and ideals are forgotten. It throws into promin-
ence and elevates to positions of power a managing and
executive type of man very different from the young
idealists who, in the early days, flock so eagerly to
the standards to fight for honourable ends. When the
end of the war is reached, the executives are found to
be in control and the idealists, if any survive, are derided
and ignored. Moreover, the fruits of victory are not
92 WHY WAR?
those which the idealists desired and for which they
fought. They are such as appeal to the hard-faced men
by whose efforts victory has been won. They are power,
wealth, pride of place and humiliation of the enemy by
revenge. Can anyone doubt that another war fought in
defence of democracy, to arrest Fascist aggression, to
re-establish the authority of the League, to preserve
liberty, to introduce Socialism, or in response to any
one of the appeals to idealism by which good men are
induced to further the schemes of cynical statesmen,
would fail in its object as lamentably as the wars of the
past? Reflecting on this past record of war, one is driven
to the conclusion that it cannot be right to use human
beings as food for cannon, even if the motives which
lead to the declaration of war are good. But, as I have
tried to show, however good the motives from which war
springs, the ends which war achieves are not good, but
bad. Men have hoped to get many things by war, power and
wealth for themselves, glory and honour for their country,
and freedom and happiness for mankind. All that they
have succeeded in getting are, to quote an eighteenth-
century wit, "widows, taxes, wooden legs and debt".
(V) THAT THE RESULTS OF THE NEXT WAR WILL NOT BE
DIFFERENT EXCEPT IN SO FAR AS THEY ARE WORSE THAN
THE RESULTS OF PAST WARS
In the light of the results achieved by wars in the
recent past, it is difficult to deny oneself the pleasure
of asking those who would have us wage another, why
it is that they imagine that its results will be different.
As we saw in Chapter II, there was, in September, 1938,
a strong body of opinion in favour of "standing up"
to Hitler, even at the risk of war. This same opinion
would now have us increase our armaments, in order
that we may "stand up" to Hitler with greater effect
THE CASE AGAINST WAR 93
at some future date. ^ Standing up" to Hitler means
being prepared to figftt a war wnose~ object would,
presumably, be to preserve liberty and democracy, to
overthrow fascism and — we must, I supposeTadd — to
lay the foundations of a l asti ng peace. History, as I
have tried to showTaffords no war rant for supposing
^hat the wa r would have any such" results. But while
"It is impossible to predici ihe ultim ate results of a modern
war, those which .seem reason abl y probableT include the"
destruction of most of what goes byAthe na me of
ci vilization in the conte mp orary wo rld. \
The Char acter of the Next Wa r. y^^EPcFT'
Theliorrors with which the invention" or L the bombing
aeroplane has invested war are by now familiar, but
few of us, in spite of the crisis through which we lived
in September, 1938, have any conception of the nature
and effects of the large-scale bombing of London.
It is not merely that gas and explosive bombs will
Rill civilians and""destroy houses; it i s not m erely the
"horror of the direct hit upon the hospita l full of wounded ,
or of the thermite bomb That sets fir e to the asylum.
Scarcely less harrowing, though I think, less generally
regarded, is the prospect of the destruction of the
lighting and heating systems of London with the resultant
dark streets and unwar med houses, of the .ventilating
apparatus that operates In the t ubes by the bombing of
the power stations with the resultant suffocation ot those
who have taken refuge in the tunne ls,"of the smashing
oi the draIns~to let loose into the streets thelfTJurderT
of sewage laden with the "g er ms of dTs^ e^toJcom^
plete the destruction wroug ht by men, of~the3am™
ming of tie roads leading fro m Londorno^ThTcountry
by hordes of panic-stricken ~fugitiyes. fleeing from the
terrorjnjhe LSSL t ^|t|^2it^etrdLfor their cars, witEout
Tood, without shelter, of the crowds of starving men
94 WHY WAR?
who, presently, will spread over the countryside, looting
and plundering. ... I have read a number of books
on this subject and the weight of opinion seems to be
decisively in favour of the view that whatever protection
we may devise for civilians, we cannot preserve the
fabric of the civilization in which we live. Water, gas
and light mains, sewers, roads, transport offices, fac-
tories, homes, railway stations, telephone exchanges,
standing crops, cattle — all are vulnerable.
We must, then, it is clear, face the possibility of
the breakdown of the social services, the cutting of
the nerves which keep our social system alive, and the
relapse of society into a chaos of panic-stricken individuals
fighting each for his own hand, save on one condition,
the establishment of a military dictatorship which
imposes upon the country an iron discipline, suppresses
the right of criticism, stifles grievances and shoots
grumblers and dissidents at sight. Such is the most
probable result of a war fought under modern conditions
for idealistic ends. In a word, all the liberties that we
now cherish and would be fighting to preserve would
disappear. Through sheer pressure of circumstances,
the war to save democracy would kill democracy within
twenty-four hours of its declaration.
The Necessity to Maintain Chilian Morale.
It is, of course, maintained that the suppression of
liberty which would follow the outbreak of war would be
temporary only. We should be deprived of our liberty
only "for the duration of the war". "After all," it is said,
"our liberties were restored to us after the last war."
Were they restored wholly and fully? I think that
they were not. Even in England, the history of the last
twenty years has been a history of the continual erosion
of liberty, the Official Secrets Act and the Incitement
to Disaffection Act being only two of the more out-
THE CASE AGAINST WAR 95
standing straws to show which way the wind is blowing. 1
On the continent, the effects of the last war for liberty
have been so disastrous that a nineteenth century
Victorian dropped from the womb of time into con-
temporary Germany would inevitably suppose that it
was into the fifteenth and not into the twentieth century
that he had strayed. A more serious objection to the
view that the loss of liberty would be temporary is that
it fails to take fully into account the distinctive character
of the next war. I have argued that because the target
of attack will be the civilian population, because, in
other words, the great cities will be in the front line,
a dictatorship will be necessary in order to prevent
panic. If civilians are so unfortunate as to find them-
selves in the positions of danger and discomfort hitherto
occupied only by armies, they will have to be disciplined
as armies are disciplined, or else they will run away,
"rat", revolt, lynch the members of the government,
do anything and everything to put an end to their
intolerable sufferings. Hence the stress which is already
beginning to be laid upon civilian morale, which may
be defined as the willingness to die and to suffer quietly
without lynching the government.
With a view to the establishment of such morale, the
activities of the government will be all-pervasive and
all-embracing. It will regulate the individual's actions
and control his utterances. Nothing will be permitted
in speech, writing or act, which will tend to the dis-
couragement of fellow citizens or to the discrediting of
the government, or in any way hasten the end of the
war. For in war time nothing can be permitted to
hasten the end of the war. In the middle of the last
war two men were fined £100 or two months' imprison-
ment for publishing a leaflet demanding peace by
1 1 would recommend those who wish to know how far the loss
of liberty has gone to read Kingsley Martin's admirably informative
pamphlet, Fascism, Democracy and the Press.
96 WHY WAR?
negotiation. At the trial the Crown Prosecutor (Mr.*
Bodkin) said that "war would become impossible if the
view that war was wrong and it was wrong to support
the carrying on of war was held generally". "War
would become impossible !" What a terrible thought !
To prevent such an appalling consummation, the
government, to use the language of its own politicians,
would leave "no stone unturned". Assuredly it would
not hesitate to assume dictatorial powers extending over
the whole civilian population.
No Warrant in History for Supposing that Dictatorial
Powers will be Voluntarily Abandoned.
Now what warrant does history give for supposing
that such powers once assumed will be voluntarily
abandoned ? Of all human appetites, the appetite for
power grows most with what it feeds on. The conten-
tion which we are examining would have us suppose
that after a dictatorial government has during a period
of years made the deliberate suppression of liberty part
of its policy, it will, at a given point in time, deliberately
reverse its policy and restore the liberty which has
hitherto been withheld, with the result that views dis-
tasteful to the government will suddenly obtain publicity,
and those who have been hitherto immune from criticism
will suddenly find themselves assailed. Is this likely?
Does history afford a single example which would
permit us to regard it as likely ? Have those who have
won power by violence ever been known voluntarily to
relinquish power, those who have been above criticism
voluntarily to permit criticism? Yet the view we are
considering asks us to believe that those whom power
has placed above criticism will by their voluntary and
deliberate action suddenly permit the criticism which
may lead to their relinquishment of power.
On an earlier page, 1 1 gave reasons for the view that
1 See pp. 17-20.
THE CASE AGAINST WAR 97
dictatorships tend as they grow older to become not
less but more extreme, not less but more sensitive to
and impatient of criticism. History supports this view.
Yet the argument which we are here considering main-
tains, and asks us to believe, the opposite — namely,
that at a given moment a dictatorial government can
reverse the engines, relinquish power, declare itself
superfluous, and, having denied liberty, concede it.
Gangsters and Troglodytes.
There is one further possibility. If, as may well be
the case, the next war, or the next war but one, brings
about the destruction of our civilization, it will be
succeeded by a series of governments of the gangster
type envisaged in Mr. Wells's Shape of Things to Come.
In a half-starved world gangs will fight for food and
plunder, and the most successful will become the govern-
ment. What sort of end is this to a war for liberty,
for democracy, and for civilization ? And what sort of
life will our descendants be living after a series of such
wars ? The question shall be answered by Mr. Eden : —
"Unless something can be done, the people of this world
in the latter part of this century are going to live as troglo-
dytes and go back to the days of cave-dwelling. I sometimes
wonder how the world to-day would strike a visitor from
another planet who would find us preparing means for
our own destruction and even exchanging information on
how we are to do it."
Such in brief is the case against a war arising out
of the present international situation and fought in
pursuance of certain concrete objectives. I will call
it the case against war by a European nation in the
contemporary situation. I now come to the more
general case, the case against war waged by any nation
at any time, the case against war as such. This demands
a chapter to itself.
CHAPTER VI
THE DENUNCIATION OF WAR
In this chapter I shall try to exhibit some of the many
beastlinesses of war. The subject is one upon which it
is difficult to write with restraint, but that I may keep
my head as cool and my statement as moderate as I
can, I shall begin quietly with some of the minor
beastlinesses, and only approach the more repulsive
aspects of war gradually and with circumspection.
(a) the lost glamour of war
In the years that have succeeded the Great War,
war has been "debunked". In war plays, war books
and war films, in the stories of soldiers and refugees,
in the contemporary reports of bombings and their
results, the bubble of war's glory has been pricked and
its glamour shorn utterly away. What, indeed, of
glamour or romance, could survive such announcements
as the following ?
"Medals for sale — medals for acts of heroism by
soldiers and sailors all over the world, to be auctioned
on June 10th, at Glendining's, in Argyll Street, W.l."
And what price does glory fetch? "When Bo'sun
Shepherd put off in a punt to blow up Russian battle-
ships sheltering at Sebastopol, his grateful country
awarded him the V.C. It was sold at Glendining's,
London, yesterday, with other decorations he won, for
£96, a little less than was realized when they first came
under the hammer several years ago."
98
120 WHY WAR?
That the Price is always too High.
It is difficult to believe that it is. Even if war achieved
every single one of the aims which it professes to achieve,
even if it conferred every one of the goods which its
apologists claimed for it, if it settled disputes, cleansed
the national life, left the world happier and more
vigorous, restored manliness and courage, gave security
and laid the foundations of a lasting peace — even if it
did all these things, they would not be worth the price
that must be paid for them. In fact, as we have seen,
it does none of them, and the flood of human misery
and boredom which the last war let loose flowed to no
purpose; the men who won the war were betrayed by
the peace, their ideals were derided, their hopes mocked,
their sufferings wasted.
I would go further and maintain that, even if the
suffering that war involves were enormously and in-
credibly diminished, so that it fined itself down to the
sufferings of a few, a very few people, of one family
even, that still those things for the sake of which the
suffering was endured would not be worth the endurance.
The Idol Who Exacts the Sacrifice.
The ends for which wars are fought are not concrete
but abstract; they are such ends as national prestige,
national honour, national security, ends begotten of
pride and born of fear. And the nations whose prestige
must be flattered, whose honour must be safeguarded,
whose security must be guaranteed, are not real things
but figments. They are the embodiments of a philo-
sophical theory which holds that the State is an entity
possessed of a personality, and that its well-being is more
important than that of its individual citizens. To it
individuals must be subordinated, and to its alleged
welfare men and women sacrificed.
CHAPTER XI
A QUESTION OF FAITH :
THE FAITH OF THE PACIFIST
There is one matter which I have left to the end. It
is not a matter of immediate political concern and
does not, therefore, form part of the body of the book ;
nor is it a matter which can be explored by the method
of argument which I have tried hitherto to follow.
Nevertheless, it does in a very real sense belong to the
book, since, because of it, the book has been written,
and without it, it could not have been written. The
matter is one that touches on a question of faith. It is,
I think, clear that the arguments I have used, the position
I have adopted, the methods I have recommended, fall
within a certain framework of belief, spring, if you
will, from a philosophy, are inspired, if you prefer it
put that way, by a faith.
It is, in the first, place, a faith in regard to ends. I
believe that it is men and women and not States who
have value, and that it is the sole business of the State
to promote their happiness. This belief has been
developed in an earlier chapter. Secondly, it is a faith
in regard to means. I believe that human beings are at
bottom reasonable andrbelieving this7 1 believe in the
efficacy of reason as a means of persuasion, and of argu-
ment as a means of conyjgjjmv This belief belongs,
and must of necessity belong, tcfahe category of personal
avowal. It is, I repeat, a matteA of faith rather than of
argument. One may hope that oWs avowal may strike
a chord of sympathetic response\in one's reader, but
229 \A^t tfiTLefiiit
■M ■' — * *#
230 WHY WAR?
one cannot hope to convince him if it does not. Never-
theless, as this faith in means informs the opinions, and
dictates, at least in part, the arguments of this book,
some account of it is necessary to its completion.
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The Belief in Human Reasonableness. r&0& L*>G) U(
The faith, then, which, as a pacifist, I hold, is in the
last resort a faith in the ultimate reasonableness of
mankind; I would have said once, in the ultimate
goodness of mankind, but I have come of recent years
to believe in the doctrine of man's natural wickedness,
and to doubt whether evil can ever be eradicated from
human nature so long as it remains human. But though
I think men are wicked as well as stupid, it has been
my contention throughout this book that war is the
result of man's stupidity rather than of his wickedness ;
it is born of thick heads rather than of hard hearts.
Hence to believe that man is in essence reasonable in
the sense that he can be made ultimately to see reason,
is to believe that war may one day be banished from
his life.
The belief in human reasonableness was common
enough in the nineteenth century. Our fathers, taking
an optimistic view of themselves, as of the world,
believed that they were reasonable beings. This belief
involved two corollaries. In the first place, reason was
free. Its deliverances might be, and no doubt in practice
frequently were, biased by prejudice and distorted by
desire; but the fact that reason could be deflected by
these influences was a temporary defect due to man's
incomplete evolution. It was, indeed, a basic assumption
of the age that reason in theory could, and in practice
often did, operate freely. It could arrive at an impartial
and "reasoned" choice between alternative courses of
action ; it could take a disinterested survey of evidence
