JANUS

OR
THE CONQUEST OF WAR

WILLIAM McDOUGALL

JANUS :
THE CONQUEST OF WAR

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

For a full list of this Series see the end
of this Book

JANUS :

THE CONQUEST OF WAR
A Psychological Inquiry

BY

WILLIAM McDOUGALL, F.R.S.

Author of Social Psychology, Outline of Psychology
Normal and Abnormal, etc.

,

LONDON

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
NEW YORK : E. P. DUTTON & Co.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS, LTD., HERTFORD

CONTENTS

CHAP.

FOREWORD

I. LESSONS
WAR

OF THE GREAT

II. THE CAUSES OF WAR .

III. PREVENTIVES OF WAR .

IV. PREVENTIVES OF WAR

(continued)

V. THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE
PEACE AND THE USE OF
FORCE IN INTERNATIONAL
AFFAIRS ....

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V .

PAGE

7

15
32
35

71

96
114

VI. INTERNATIONAL AIR FORCE

AS A PREVENTIVE OF WAR 122

[5]

FOREWORD

In the year 1914 two men, the one a
Frenchman, the other a German, met
face to face. Both were highly educated
sensitive men, cultivated citizens of the
world. Both carried arms. The French-
man had the better luck and plunged
his bayonet into the belly of the German.
The German stood erect and, holding
in both hands his bleeding bowels as
they gushed out through the gaping
wound, said in excellent French, " See
what you have done to me." The French
soldier, who related this incident to me
shortly after its occurrence, expected to
bear with him to the grave the horror
and remorse of that moment. It is
unlikely that he long survived his victim,
and perhaps he would not have desired
to do so. Let the reader as he turns
these pages, especially if he be an
American citizen, lapped in comfort
and security such as no other people
has ever known, bear in mind the image
of this encounter. Let him try to imagine
it repeated a million times, and he will
have some faint and inadequate conception
of the horrors of war.

[7]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

On a lovely morning in the year 1915,
I walk through a lane rich with the
touching beauties of an English spring.
I approach a sombre grey stone building.
Its windows are heavily barred. I can
almost see upon its front the words,
" Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
I am admitted and the heavy door is
locked behind me. I pass through to
a yard surrounded by high walls. In
this yard saunters a crowd of men of
many nationalities, clothed in strange
garments ; some are cripples, some are
bound about with bandages, and all are
mad, made mad by war. They mumble,
gibber, grimace ; some approach with
menacing cries and gestures, but are
kept at a distance by stern men in
uniform. The imagination of Dante
never depicted a more grotesque and
horrible inferno than this ; yet above
us are the tender blue sky and fleecy
cloudlets of the English spring. I return
to the building and enter a neat closely
barred room where three men, in the
uniforms of officers of three European
armies, stand to attention ; all three
are defiant, sullen, sad and outwardly
respectful, and all are mad. One has a
petition to make. He is a German
aristocrat from East Prussia, but he can
hardly utter his native speech. A
shrapnel-bullet has carried away a piece
of his skull and a small piece of his brain ;

[8]

FOREWORD

and every day he suffers terrible
convulsions, each of which takes away
a little more of what intellect and self-
control are left to him. With difficulty
I make out, as I watch his struggling lips,
and the beads of anguish on his pale face,
his pitiful petition. It is that somehow
we shall make known to his wife and four
children, waiting and longing with hope
deferred on the far Prussian plain, that
he still lives.

Before daybreak on a February
morning, the gloom of which is deepened
by the booming guns and the fitful
gleaming of starshells along the line of
the trenches, I enter an improvised
hospital bearing one end of a stretcher.
On it lies a handsome stalwart young
Frenchman from the sunny south. We
lay the stretcher among many others
on the muddy floor. Our man murmurs
without ceasing. Again and again I
catch the words, " Marie, je t'adore." He
is talking to his sweetheart, far away
in the south of France. A beautiful
French girl falls on her knees beside him.
She holds his hand, whispering words of
encouragement ; she kisses his brow ;
but he pays no heed and murmurs on.
The case is urgent and soon we carry
him into a narrow little room and lay
him on the operating table. Two surgeons,
stern and silent, begin to work upon him.
His feet and legs as far as the knees

[9]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

are merely masses of torn flesh and
broken bits of bone. A terrible mess
for the surgeons to clean up. But before
they can finish their job, life gives up the
painful struggle and goes out of the
strong frame. Marie's adoring lover has
passed away.

In a hospital ward lies a big fierce
gentle Irishman in the prime of his
vigorous manhood. He has been the
trusted leader of a troop of bombers,
all Irishmen from his own small town.
He had led them in many a fierce fight,
exalting in their prowess. " They were
great boys." He repeats it over and
over again. But at last he had led them
into a trap, from which he alone escaped,
unscathed in body. But his mind is
deeply scarred. All day he lies upon his
bed, seeing upon the ceiling scene after
scene of the fierce contest. Every morning
at daybreak he rises to bathe himself
religiously ; for he feels that the sins of
all those comrades, hurled to death with-
out absolution, are upon him. He will
not go home on furlough, for everyone
will ask him, " Where are the boys who
went with you ? " And he has recently
married a young girl, and if he goes home
and has to leave her again, " Mary's
heart will break." So every day he begs
me in his soft Irish accents to send him
back to the front, that he may finish
his work.

[10]

FOREWORD

A young man of stalwart build stands
before me, haggard and emaciated, his
legs trembling violently with a tremor
which he has tried in vain to control
during the many weeks since he was sent
down from the front. Before the war
he was an industrious artisan, happily
married, steady, earnest, patriotic,
religious. The war has made him a killer
of men. He had enlisted voluntarily,
and for two years he has fought fiercely ;
of those who enlisted with him few
survive, and the officer to whom he had
become devoted has fallen by his side.
He begs me to send him back to the
fighting front, in order that he may kill
more Germans, and so bring nearer the
day of their defeat. He has one other
consuming desire that has become a
fixed resolution. He has learnt that,
during his absence at the front while
he risked his life every day and endured
the utmost horrors of modern war, men
who called themselves his friends have
debauched his young wife ; and he is
determined to kill them as soon as he
shall be released from military service.
Patient inquiry at length discovers a
more deeply hidden secret. During an
advance on an enemy position, in wild
excitement and exasperated by seeing
his beloved captain fall shattered beside
him, he had leapt into an enemy trench,
and found crouching there three wounded

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

Germans. He had rushed upon them
and, in spite of their cries for mercy, he
had thrust his bayonet through each
of them. Now, after many months, he
still sees their faces wild with terror and
hears their piteous last cries. That sound,
he says, will never leave him ; it breaks
through the stillness of the night and
wakes him from his short and fevered
sleep.

Multiply these scenes and these figures
a millionfold, add the tears and terrors
of a hundred million women and children,
and you still have an inadequate picture
of the Great War. No wonder that multi-
tudes have exclaimed, " It shall not be
again. War must cease ! " No wonder
that the voice of the militarist is stilled,
and even professional soldiers are crying
aloud for the abolition of war. The masses
of the people in all countries demand
peace : a multitude of organizations all
the world over are preaching peace,
discussing how to prevent war, offering
peace-prizes, denouncing war, devising
world-wide organizations to render war
impossible. Yet the next great war
draws nearer, and the most famous
living pacifist at the head of a Socialist
government, representing the labouring
masses of a Great Empire, finds himself
driven to build new warships, to plan
a great development of the air forces,
and to refuse to cut down the Army.

[12]

CHAPTER I
LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

" Universal Peace is a dream and not
even a beautiful dream." In these words
the German philosopher Treitsche
expressed concisely an opinion which
during the nineteenth century and up
to the outbreak of the Great War, was
widely held. Those who proclaimed the
necessity and the virtue of war, asserted
that war is the great antiseptic of national
life, that the need for self-defence is a
bracing tonic influence without which
nations must become relaxed in moral tone,
their populations given over to the pursuit
of comfort, luxury, and pleasure, both
physical and mental. They argued
therefore that assured and long -continued
peace between nations must bring about
universal decay of morals and of manners.
It was argued further that war was the
great instrument of natural selection
among States and Nations ; that, just
as the progressive evolution of higher
types of organisms has been due to the
harsh struggle for existence between
individual organisms, so the further
evolution of national organisms or States
[13]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

can be effected only by a similar struggle
for existence between them, a struggle
in which war must continue to be an
essential factor, the indispensable arbitra-
ment, the fierce crucible in which
alone the virtue, the moral fibre of
nations, their fitness to survive, must
be proved.

Pacifists have usually brushed aside
these arguments as unworthy of a
moment's consideration. It is wiser to
admit that they have a certain force,
that they contain an element of truth.
William James had this wisdom when
in a famous essay he showed that, if
war is to be abolished, we shall need
" A Moral Equivalent for War ". Let
us admit that in bygone ages war may have
served as an instrument of progress ;
that, perhaps, the subjugation and partial
substitution through war of one people
by another has in some cases made for
the evolution of human qualities and the
progress of civilization ; that the Anglo-
Saxons were, perhaps, better men than
the Britons whom they conquered and
partially destroyed ; that the Spaniards
were better men than the Indians of
Mexico and Peru ; that the Pilgrim
Fathers and the settlers of Virginia
were more capable than the Red men of
developing a great civilization in the area
of the earth best adapted by climate and
natural resources to be the headquarters

[14]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

of Western civilization. Let us also
recognize unreservedly the moral truth
which Theodore Roosevelt repeatedly
preached to the American nation. " A
just war is in the long run far better
for a nation's soul than the most prosperous
peace obtained by acquiescence in wrong
or in injustice." Admitting all this,
admitting also the tonic influence of the
need for national self-defence, we must
recognize, nevertheless, that even before
the Great War the argument against war
was already strong, the need for its
restriction or abolition already urgent.
Countless writers have bemoaned the
economic burdens imposed by preparations
for war and the still greater economic
penalties of war itself ; and some, like
Mr. Norman Angell, had laboured with
some success to show that, in the modern
world, war can never again be profitable
even to the victors. Others, more far-
seeing, had insisted upon the destructive
effect of war upon the qualities of the
human race. In the good old days when
the victor slew the conquered males
and led to his tent the women of the van-
quished host, war may have done something
to improve the qualities of the conquered
populations. But, even then, such ruth-
less assertion of the rights of the conqueror
may more generally have led in the long
run to the degradation of the conquering
race by immixture of the blood of the
[15]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

conquered; as when the Hindu conquerors,
in spite of their elaboration of the caste
system, gradually absorbed the blood of
the Dravidians and other negroid aborigines
of India ; or as when the Arabs, mating
freely with multitudinous converts made
by the force of their arms, sowed the seeds
of rapid decay in their brilliant civilization.
And in the modern period, as has often
been pointed out, the biological effects
of war are less equivocal ; they are
wholly and disastrously harmful to the
race ; for the burden of military service
falls upon the strongest males, forcing
them to postpone marriage ; while in
war itself the fittest to survive and to
propagate the race, the flower of the
the young manhood of the warring nations,
are destroyed, leaving the world forever
poorer because deprived, not merely
of the contributions to art and science
and social betterment which they would
have made, but also of its greatest and
irreplaceable treasures, the strains of
vigorous quality of mind and heart cut
off forever in the mud and blood and
agony of the fields of War.

If the arguments against war, the
economic, the biological, the humanitarian
arguments, were already very strong
in the opening years of the twentieth
century, the recent developments of the
art of war, forced and illustrated on a
vast scale in the years 1914-1918, have
[16]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

rendered them infinitely stronger. Until
August 4th, 1914, the world believed
that the extreme horrors of the war-
fare of earlier ages were abolished for ever ;
that war henceforth would remain a
scientific duel between highly disciplined
troops, in which, no doubt, many strong
young men might have to endure some
hardships and sufferings and even death,
but sufferings greatly mitigated by efficient
medical services and the world-wide
efforts of the Red Cross societies. The
developments of the arts of destruction,
combined with the ruthless disregard
of all the conventions of war initiated
by the Germans, and then reluctantly
accepted by their adversaries under the
pressure of necessity, these developments
have shown that this picture of modern
war, as a fierce yet chivalrous game under
strict rules that would confine its horrors
to the battlefields, was but a pleasing
dream. These developments, and especially
the development of aircraft, of the
explosive bomb and of the poison gases,
have made it only too clear that in the
next Great War the civilian populations,
and especially the populations of the
great cities, will be the first and greatest
sufferers, that wounds, mutilation and
death, terror and famine, will be broadcast
among them with awful impartiality ;
that no woman, no family, no little child,
no church, no treasury of art, no museum

[17] c

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

of priceless antiquities, no shrine of
learning and science will be immune ;
but that in a few days or hours great
cities may be levelled with the dust, while
their surviving inhabitants scrape for
crusts amid mangled bodies of fair
women and the ruins of the monuments
of art and science. In the light of this
experience, all the civilized peoples,
all intelligent men and women in all
countries, are agreed that war must if
possible be prevented, that the prevention
of war has become the most urgent need
of our common civilization, the prime
concern of statesmen and of the common
people, the indispensable condition of
all human welfare and of all that con-
tributes towards it.

The horrors of the Great War, the
vast sum of human suffering caused by
it ; the immense destruction of the
flower of our manhood ; the terrors and
hardships and sorrows imposed upon
hundreds of millions of civilians ; the
enormous economic destruction, recovery
from which is now seen to require the
labours and the sacrifices of several genera-
tions, the almost total lack of the
redeeming features of some earlier wars ;
all these have combined to convince
mankind that modern war has become an
unmitigated horror to be avoided at
well-nigh any cost. This then is one,
perhaps the only, good result of the
[18]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

Great War, namely, a well-nigh universal
Will to Peace.

This dominant Will to Peace, rooted
both in the strongest emotional reactions
against i the horrors of war and in the
calmest and most rational calculations
of economists and statesmen, has generated
and is maintaining a vast amount of
public discussion, of writing and lecturing,
has brought into existence many associa-
tions for the prevention of war, and has
stimulated many others into renewed
and greater activity. Yet we are told
by those who are in the best position to
form an opinion, and indeed the fact
is only too obvious to all of us, that war
clouds are gathering darkly over Europe,
and that civilization itself is threatened
as never before with destruction by war,
a war which, if it shall break out, will
far surpass in horror and suffering and
destructiveness even the Great War of
1914-1918.1

1 This paragraph was written towards the
end of 1924. Since that date the outlook has
improved in some degree. The understandings
reached at Locarno, the entrance of Germany
into the League of Nations, the international
industrial agreements recently set in train, the
diminution of tension between France and
Great Britain, all these are changes for the
better. But it would be foolish to allow these
recent improvements of the international
situation to blind us to the fundamental truth,
developed in the following chapter ; namely,
that hitherto we have no guarantee against

[19]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

Throughout the nineteenth century
many proposals were made for the
mitigation and the abolition of war ;
and, as the burden of armaments increased
and as it was found that the increasing
intercourse of nations and the spread
of education and of popular government,
far from rendering war a more remote
possibility, as had been so confidently
anticipated, were producing a tremendous
growth and spread of the nationalist
spirit, were rendering war more imminent
and more terrible, and were magnifying
the economic burdens of national defence
in time of peace, many attempts were
made to substitute arbitration for war
and to lighten the burden of preparation
for war by international agreements for
the limitation of armaments. I shall not
delay to review these attempts. Those
of the former kind, the arbitration agree-
ments, achieved some measure of success.
The latter, in spite of their very modest
nature (proposals for naval holidays,
for the restriction of the size and number
of battleships, and of the calibre of guns,
for reduction of armies by so much per
cent., for the proportioning of armies
to the numbers of the population of each
country), all these and a hundred other
similar proposals, made in some cases by

sudden national aggression and that such
guarantee is the prime need of the world at
the present time.

[20]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

statesmen controlling the affairs of the
most powerful nations, all these achieved
no appreciable alleviation of the burden
under which all agreed that the peoples
of Europe were groaning. The vast
conflagration of 1914 should have made
clear to all the world that such partial
and timid steps towards the prevention
of war and the amelioration of peace were
almost wholly futile then ; and the present
efforts along similar lines appear as the
ridiculous and puny gestures of a civiliza-
tion impotent to arrest its suicidal course.
For the outbreak of the Great War
showed that the efforts of sincere and
democratic statesmen, the vows of serried
masses of socialists, the intimate economic
relations of industrial nations, the votes
of fully enfranchized democracies, the
prayers of the Churches, the education
of the masses, the softening of manners,
the internationalization of culture, all
these great and good influences of the
modern world, were as unavailing as the
arbitration treaties and the Hague
conferences to prevent or long to postpone
the dreaded outbreak. The Great War
showed us also the futility of another form
of international agreement. The leading
nations of the world had maintained
by mutual consent the agreeable fiction
that there existed a body of international
law governing their relations and their
conduct towards one another ; and they
[21]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

had for many years subscribed to certain
conventions made at Geneva and the
Hague, conventions designed to mitigate
the horrors of war, to proscribe the more
horrible practices of earlier ages, and to
protect the lives and property and
liberties of civilian populations. But the
Germans were out for Weltherrschaft oder
Niedergang ; and a hundred years of
intensive education of all classes had
made the mass of the people capable
of seeing that it would be folly to let
any weak scruples about inflicting a little
extra suffering or about the breaking of
international conventions prevent them
from asserting their moral and intellectual
superiority over all other peoples and
from bringing the blessings of Kultur to
all the world. In any case the so-called
international laws would not and could not
be enforced ; for there was no effective
sanction behind them, no organized power
to prevent or punish the breach of them.
The conventions of Geneva and of the
Hague were merely polite gestures, harm-
less amenities of peace time ; and to risk
defeat through the observance of them
would have been a crime against Kultur.

And so international laws and conven-
tions for the regulation of war were shown
to be utterly futile unless backed by
organized power and organized will
o use that power.

Before proceeding to develop the
[22]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

argument let me re-enforce what has been
said in this chapter by citing the words
of a statesman whose abilities and intimate
knowledge of the conduct of war and peace
must give to his utterances an unrivalled
authority. Mr. Winston Churchill, half
American, half English by parentage,
has served with distinction both as soldier
and war-correspondent. He was First
Lord of the British Admiralty when the
Great War broke out ; he has been
Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State
for War and Secretary of State for Air,
and now is Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In a recent article from his pen, entitled
" Shall we Commit Suicide ? ", occur the
following passages.1

After briefly reviewing the peculiar
horrors of modern warfare as illustrated
by the Great War, Mr. Churchill wrote
as follows : —

" WHAT WAR IN 1919 WOULD HAVE
MEANT "

" But all that happened in the four
years of the Great War was only a prelude
to what was preparing for the fifth year.
The campaign of the year 1919 would
have witnessed an immense accession

1 The article was published in Nash's Pall
Matt Magazine, September, 1924, i.e. at a time
when the League of Nations had been at work
for several years, and was a plea for the support
of the League.

[23]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

to the power of destruction. Had the
Germans retained the moral to make good
their retreat to the Rhine, they would
have been assaulted in the summer of
1919 with forces and by methods incom-
parably more prodigious than any yet
employed. Thousands of aeroplanes would
have shattered their cities. Scores of
thousands of cannon would have blasted
their front. Arrangements were being
made to carry simultaneously a quarter
of a million men, together with all their
requirements, continuously forward across
country in mechanical vehicles moving
ten or fifteen miles each day. Poison
gases of incredible malignity, against
which only a secret mask (which the
Germans could not obtain in time) was
proof, would have stifled all resistance
and paralyzed all life on the hostile front
subjected to attack. No doubt the
Germans too had their plans. But the
hour of wrath had passed, the signal
of relief was given, and the horrors of
1919 remain buried in the archives of
the great antagonists.

" The War stopped as suddenly and as
universally as it had begun. The world
lifted its head, surveyed the scene of ruin,
and victors and vanquished alike drew
breath. In a hundred laboratories, in a
thousand arsenals, factories, and bureaus,
men pulled themselves up with a jerk,
turned from the task in which they had
[24]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

been absorbed. Their projects were put
aside unfinished, unexecuted ; but their
knowledge was preserved; their data,
calculations, and discoveries were hastily
bundled together and docketed ' for future
reference ' by the War Offices in every
country. The campaign of 1919 was
never fought ; but its ideas go march-
ing along. In every Army they are
being explored, elaborated, refined under
the surface of peace, and should war come
again to the world it is not with the
weapons and agencies prepared for 1919
that it will be fought, but with develop-
ments and extensions of these which will
be incomparably more formidable and
fatal. . . .

" Certain sombre facts emerge solid,
inexorable, like the shapes of mountains
from drifting mist. It is established
that henceforward whole populations
will take part in war, all doing their
utmost, all subjected to the fury of the
enemy. It is established that nations
who believe their life is at stake will not
be restrained from using any means
to secure their existence. It is probable —
nay, certain — that among the means which
will next time be at their disposal will be
agencies and processes of destruction
wholesale, unlimited, and, perhaps, once
launched, uncontrollable.

" Mankind has never been in this
position before. Without having improved
[25]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser
guidance, it has got into its hands for the
first time the tools by which it can
unfailingly accomplish its own extermina-
tion. That is the point in human destinies
to which all the glories and toils of men
have at last led them. They would do well
to pause and ponder upon their new
responsibilities. Death stands at atten-
tion, obedient, expectant, ready to serve,
ready to shear away the peoples en masse ;
ready, if called on, to pulverize, without
hope of repair, what is left of civilization.
He awaits only the word of command. He
awaits it from a frail, bewildered being,
long his victim, now — for one occasion
only — his Master.

" THE NEW CRISIS

" Let it not be thought for a moment
that the danger of another explosion in
Europe is passed. For the time being the
stupor and the collapse which followed the
World War ensured a sullen passivity,
and the horror of war, its carnage and
its tyrannies, have sunk into the soul, have
dominated the mind of every class and in
every race. But the causes of war have
been in no way removed ; indeed they are
in some respects aggravated by the
so-called Peace Treaty and the reactions
following thereupon. Two mighty
branches of the European family will never
rest content with their existing situation.
[26]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

Russia, stripped of her Baltic Provinces,
will, as the years pass by, brood incessantly
upon the wars of Peter the Great. From
one end of Germany to the other an
intense hatred of France unites the whole
population. This passion is fanned con-
tinuously by the action of the French
Government. The enormous contingents
of German youth growing to military
manhood year by year are inspired by the
fiercest sentiments, and the soul of
Germany smoulders with dreams of a War
of Liberation or Revenge. These ideas
are restrained at the present moment only
by physical impotence. France is armed
to the teeth. Germany has been to a great
extent disarmed and her military system
broken up. The French hope to preserve
this situation by their technical military
apparatus, by their black troops, and by a
system of alliances with the smaller
States of Europe ; and for the present
at any rate overwhelming force is on
their side. But physical force alone,
unsustained by world opinion, affords
no durable foundation for security.
Germany is a far stronger entity than
France, and cannot be kept in permanent
subjugation. . . .

" Might not a bomb no bigger than
an orange be found to possess a secret
power to destroy a whole block of buildings
—nay, to concentrate the force of a
thousand tons of cordite and blast a
[27]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

township at a stroke ? Could not
explosives even of the existing type be
guided automatically in flying machines
by wireless or other rays, without a
human pilot, in ceaseless procession upon
a hostile city, arsenal, camp, or dockyard ?
" As for Poison Gas and Chemical
Warfare in all its forms, only the first
chapter has been written of a terrible book.
Certainly every one of these new avenues
to destruction is being studied on both
sides of the Rhine, with all the science
and patience of which man is capable.
And why should it be supposed that these
resources will be limited to Inorganic
Chemistry ? A study of Disease — of
Pestilences methodically prepared and
deliberately launched upon man and
beast — is certainly being pursued in the
laboratories of more than one great
country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax
to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison
not armies only but whole districts — such
are the lines along which military science
is remorselessly advancing.

" NEW PERILS TO LIBERTY

" It is evident that whereas an equally
contested war under such conditions
might work the ruin of the world and cause
an immeasureable diminution of the
human race, the possession by one side
of some overwhelming scientific advantage
[28]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

would lead to the complete enslavement
of the unwary party. Not only are the
powers now in the hand of man capable
of destroying the life of nations, but for the
first time they afford to one group of
civilized men the opportunity of reducing
their opponents to absolute helplessness.

" In barbarous times superior martial
virtues — physical strength, courage, skill,
discipline — were required to secure such a
supremacy ; and in the hard evolution of
mankind the best and fittest stocks came to
the fore. But no such saving guarantee
exists to-day. There is no reason why a
base, degenerate, immoral race should not
make an enemy far above them in quality
the prostrate subject of their caprice or
tyranny, simply because they happened to
be possessed at a given moment of some
new death-dealing or terror-working
process and were ruthless in its employ-
ment. The liberties of men are no longer
to be guarded by their natural qualities,
but by their dodges ; and superior
virtue and valour may fall an easy prey
to the latest diabolical tricks. . . . All the
hideousness of the Explosive era will
continue, and to it will surely be added
the gruesome complications of Poison
and of Pestilence scientifically applied.

" Such, then, is the peril with which
mankind menaces itself. Means of destruc-
tion incalculable in their effects, wholesale
and frightful in their character, and
[29]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

unrelated to any form of human merit :
the march of Science unfolding ever more
appalling possibilities ; and the fires
of hatred burning deep in the hearts of
some of the greatest peoples of the world,
fanned by continual provocation and
unceasing fear and fed by the deepest
sense of national wrong or national danger !
On the other hand, there is the blessed
respite of exhaustion, offering to the nations
a final chance to control their destinies
and avert what may well be a general
doom. Surely if a sense of self-preserva-
tion still exists among men, if the will to
live resides not merely in individuals
or nations but in humanity as a whole,
the prevention of the supreme catastrophe
ought to be the paramount object of all
endeavour."

Recognizing that we are all pacifists
nowadays, it is my purpose to expound
in this little book a plan for the prevention
of \Var, which, after much consideration,
I believe to be a practicable plan and
indeed the only practicable plan. This
plan has been very briefly sketched in
a former publication.1 I have no evidence
that the proposal has evoked the faintest
interest or provoked discussion of it in

1 Appendix to my Ethics and Some Modern
World Problems, Putnam's Sons, New York,
1924, and also in an article " Psychology, Dis-
armament, and Peace " in the North American
Review for November, 1924.

[30]

LESSONS OF THE GREAT WAR

any quarter. Nevertheless, I wish to set
it forth rather more fully, to modify it
in a way to render it more acceptable, to
examine the objections and difficulties
in its way, and, by examining very briefly
the principal alternative proposals now
before the public, to justify the claim
that it is the only practicable plan.

Before launching out on the argument,
let us take notice of the views of certain
soldiers which may seem to run counter
to the view expressed in this chapter.
These soldiers,1 tell us that, in future, war
will be conducted by " mechanized "
armies and by air-planes dropping gas-
bombs ; and, assuming that some gas
which will produce a temporary general
paralysis or sleep will alone be used,
and drawing a veil over the procedures of
the army of tanks, they manage to make
it seem that in the future war will be
once more a great game for gentlemen.
They seem to assume that the peoples
attacked by their ingeniously designed
armies will at once with one consent
throw up their hands and cry " Kamerad".
I venture to suggest that this is merely
one more of those fancy pictures with
which we are apt to delude ourselves
when we take no account of the nature
of man and scornfully ignore psychology.

1 Notably Col. J. T. C. Fuller, who has been
called " the foremost military prophet of the
day ", and Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart.

[31]

CHAPTER II
THE CAUSES OF WAR

The world is sick with a terrible inter-
mittent fever, and we who are living now
in one of the periods of intermittence are
vastly concerned to find some effective
remedy before the next recurrence of
the fever ; for the next attack may well
prove fatal. And, like a sick man
surrounded by anxious friends, we -hear
a multitude of counsellors, prescribing
prayers and phylacteries, repentance and
good resolutions, pills and plasters,
douches hot or cold. But, if the sick man
is to choose wisely among the clamours
of his counsellors, he must know some-
thing of the causes of his disease, must be
able to distinguish the underlying causes
from mere symptoms and aggravating
circumstances.

The parallel goes further and deeper.
The sickness of the world is primarily a
functional and mental disorder. The
individual sufferer from such disorder,
even if he seeks the advice of learned
doctors, is all too likely to be treated
as though his trouble were the effect of
material causes. Just so the learned
doctors of international disorders belong
[32]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

for the most part to the materialistic
school ; they have learned to accept
the economic interpretation of history,
to see only economic causes behind the
world's disorder, and, forgetting that man
does not live by bread alone, to prescribe
only economic remedies.

If the individual sufferer turns from
such materialistic advice to his spiritual
adviser, to the man whose function is the
cure of souls, he is too likely to receive
only moral exhortation, exhortations
that are perfectly futile, because he who
gives them does not understand the nature
of the disorder and cannot put his finger
on the cause. So, also, when the World
turns from its economic specialists, weary
of their superficial and impracticable
prescriptions, to its accepted moral guides,
it receives merely moral exhortation and
impotent denouncements of its wicked-
ness and wrongdoings.

THE WICKEDNESS OF MAN

Let us dwell a moment on the diagnosis
of the spiritual advisers. This is a
numerous group which flourishes
especially in the United States. It includes
many, perhaps most, of the extreme
" pacifists " or peace-at-any-price people.
They are in the main somewhat naive
and ignorant persons. Firmly convinced
of their righteousness and of the good
intentions of themselves and their circle of
[33] D

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

like-minded people, they believe that war,
like most other evils of the world, is due
simply to the wickedness of a large part
of mankind. These imaginary wicked
people, whom they call variously soldiers,
militarists, imperialists, aristocrats,
monarchs, or predatory rulers, they
conceive to be constituted very differently
from themselves, somewhat after the
pattern of an ever-hungry wolf of
peculiarly vicious disposition that con-
stantly rights from sheer "cussedness".
Or they imagine that a large part of their
fellow men are thirsting for military
glory and the fun and excitement of
killing other men, that, in fact, for some
large part of the human race war is a
highly esteemed sport pursued by these
men by reason of their bloodthirsty nature,
utterly regardless of the sufferings they
may inflict or endure.

These good people remind me of a
middle-aged spinster of my acquaintance
who seriously believes that all women
are born good and all men born bad.
They have been taught to divide all
mankind into sheep and goats, into the
saved and the damned ; and they apply
this simple philosophy when they discuss
the problems of war and peace.

There is a small element of truth in this

view. To some primitive peoples war

has been a sport ; and there still exist

a few such tribes (as, for example, the

[34]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

Sea Dayaks of Borneo) and a few such
men among the civilized nations. But their
influence is negligible in the present age.
Modern nations do not go to war without
believing that they have some more
serious reason for it than the sporting
reasons, without some other and more
powerful motive.

Some of the " pacifists " are rather closer
to reality when they assert that certain
groups of individuals, more especially
armament-makers and certain financial and
business groups, make war for the sake
of the profiteering they hope to indulge
in, or, more vaguely, for the sake of
fishing in troubled waters. These (who form
a transition to the group of ecomomic
interpreters) grossly exaggerate the
influence of such persons. It is absurd
to suppose that those who desire peace
(including as they do the vast majority
of the populations, the politicians and
the statesmen of the world) can be led
willy-nilly to the slaughter by the sub-
terranean influence of these few goats.

This view has lately been elaborated
by a man who must command a respectful
hearing by reason of his abilities and
experience and also because he brings to
bear on the problem a psychology rather
less crude than that of other exponents
of this view ; for, as I have implied
in the sub-title to this little volume,
the problem of war and peace is wholly
[35]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

a psychological problem. Mr. Arthur
Ponsonby,1 who has sat many years in the
House of Commons and has served as
Under Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, places the responsibility for war
on what he calls " Authority ". And
by " Authority " he means the influence
of the holders of official and semi-official
positions in the nation, those who, largely
by reason of their well-recognized positions,
are the main supporters of the customary
and traditional attitudes in public affairs,
and who in the main lead and form public
opinion on all questions concerning the
life of the nation. He does not charge
these persons with sheer delight in war-
fare, with a special dose of original sin
or anything of that sort. He regards
them rather as led into the support of
war and of preparations for war, and
especially into maintaining and cultivating
in the people at large a mental and moral
readiness for war, by the momentum of the
traditions within which they are brought
up, traditions to whose influence they are
peculiarly susceptible in virtue of their
positions within the hierarchy of official-
dom. The influence of traditional ways
of thinking and feeling (especially the
traditional belief that war must inevitably
recur) upon many of these persons is
re-enforced by self-interest, as in the case
of the soldier whose career is made one
1 Now is the Time, London, 1925.
[36]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

of quicker advancement, of more vivid
interest and of greater consideration,
by wars and rumours of war. Although,
then, deliberate self-seeking and malignity
may play but a minor part in the whole
working of Authority,1 Mr. Ponsonby
charges it with maintaining perennially
" The Great Conspiracy ", by which he
means a more or less concerted effort to
keep public opinion tuned up for war,
an effort which takes the form of exalta-
tion on all occasions of the military
function, its heroism, its glamour, its
services to the nation in the past, its
indispensability in the future

Allied to the good people who attribute
all war to the wickedness of the goats,
are those who bring a more general
indictment against human nature and
find a sufficient explanation of all war
in the fact that man is a pugnacious beast,
that the human species is endowed with
an instinct of pugnacity. They are apt
to take a fatalistic line and to assert with
resignation that this fact of natural history
renders it useless to try to prevent war.
Or, if they are less resigned, they join

1 " No greater mistake," he writes, " can be
made than to suppose that international war
is caused by the fundamental viciousness of
mankind." And again : "I prefer to think
that most people admit the terrible nature of
war but regard it as a hideous necessity and
. . .* believe that periodically it is inevitable."

[37]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

with the " pacifists " proper in hoping
to prevent war by exhortation, by educa-
tion, by more intensive preaching of
the principles of Christianity. Many of
them assert that war is due to hate, the
hate of one nation for another. These
seem commonly to assume that hate
springs unbidden in the human breast.
They neglect to inquire into the nature
and causes of hatred. If they should so
inquire, they would find that hatred is
always a blend of anger and fear, that
both the anger and the fear have their
grounds, and that the fear of international
hate is the fear of aggression.

ARMAMENTS

It is widely asserted that the existence
of standing armies and navies is, in the
modern age, the main cause of war. It
is said that the possession of vast arma-
ments and of great numbers of armed men
induces in a nation a desire to use those
forces, develops in it a pride of power,
a desire for military glory, and the
indifference of a well-armed bully to the
rights and sensibilities of other nations.
And it is further said that the vast
mechanism of a modern war-machine,
when once it has been set in motion,
has a momentum which renders it
impossible to arrest its movement before
it has shed blood and engendered new
floods of hatred.

[38]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

There is some truth in these assertions ;
but it is clear that the existence of great
armed forces is but one of the proximate
causes of war. If there were no deeper
lying cause, if nations had no grounds for
preparing for war, they would not maintain
great armed forces. And the existence
of each great military machine adds to
the danger of the international situation
and engenders an exhausting rivalry
in armaments and military preparations
of all kinds, because and in so far as it
excites in other nations the fear that they,
if unarmed, may be made its victims.

THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

The economic interpreters of war are
a more influential if less numerous group
than the good sheep who attribute all
war to the goats. Among them are many
influential writers, including most of the
Socialists and of the falsely named " inter-
nationalists ", the " internationalists "
of the red variety. The latter are all
for bloody class-wars ; while they
denounce all other war as the work of
selfish capitalists. Thus they agree with
the more sober economic materialists
who assert with untroubled dogmatism
that " All war is at bottom caused by
economic rivalry ".

The supporters of this proposition
point to the undoubted fact of com-
petition between industrial nations for
[39]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

and in the markets of the world, and to
measures such as tariffs taken to secure
advantages in such competitions. They
point to the hunt for " concessions "
from the rulers of undeveloped territories,
and especially to the rivalry of nations
in the search for the raw materials of
industry. They make out a stronger
case in so far as they bring into the picture
the pressure of expanding populations
seeking territories in which they may
support life with fewer hardships than in
their own overcrowded areas.

If we leave aside this last factor, it
may safely be asserted that direct
economic rivalry alone, though it may
cause some international friction, has not
been in recent years and is not likely in
the future to be a serious factor in
provoking war between great nations.
As Mr. Norman Angell has shown, no
nation in the present or in the future
can hope that the economic gains to be
made by war against another nation
of approximately equal power will balance
the enormous losses which war must bring,
the vast expenditure on materials of war,
the loss of life, the withdrawing of great
numbers of workers from economic produc-
tion, the high probability of destruction
of whole cities, the financial disturbance,
the suspension of profitable trade. In the
war of 1870 the Germans did profit
economically by their success in war,
[40]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

But since that date many developments
have combined to render such profiting
impossible or wildly improbable : the
increased scale of international relations
in finance and trade ; the enormous
cost of the material equipment for modern
war ; the greatly increased destructive
power of the weapons of offence, especially
of the submarine and of aircraft ; and
the liability to destruction of cities and
civilian populations far behind the lines
of battle.

But, though economic rivalry is no
longer likely to work as a direct cause of
war between nations of equal rank, there
remains the less serious but hardly less
regrettable possibility that powerful
nations may be tempted to use their
armed power to compel economic con-
cessions from the minor powers. This
is the chief source of danger to peace
involved in what is called economic
imperialism. For, though the threatened
small power would, if it stood alone,
hardly venture to resist, yet it may find
among the larger powers one or more that
is willing to espouse its cause on grounds
of racial or national affinities and with a
view to the maintenance of its own
prestige and a share in the desired
economic possibilities of the threatened
country.

The economic competition, then, in so
far as it operates as a cause of war, does
[41]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

so in the main by maintaining and
intensifying in various States the fear
of armed aggression by more powerful
States.

THE PRESSURE OF POPULATION

The one quasi -economic factor which
still may operate as a serious and direct
cause of war is the rapid increase of
population in certain countries already
overcrowded. This factor certainly played
an important part in bringing on the war
of 1914 ; though it did not operate
strictly as an economic factor. The
population of Germany was dense and
rapidly increasing. But, thanks to the
high industrial organization, and great
natural resources, especially of coal and
potash, the general standard of life was
maintained at a good level. There was
no immediate demand for outlet for the
increasing population. Emigration had
diminished and indeed had been dis-
couraged by the government. Even to
Germany's own colonies there was very
little emigration. The rapid and steady
increase of population acted chiefly by
way of encouraging in the masses and in
the leaders their consciousness of being
a great and powerful nation that had the
right and the power to cut a great figure
in the world. It was, that is to say,
through the stimulation of national
[42]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

pride and ambition that the increase of
Germany's population made for war.

But, though in this instance increase
of population did not operate directly
as an economic incentive to war, it can
hardly be doubted that it may so operate
in the future. Japan illustrates this
danger most vividly. When some half
century ago Japan, having been forced
by naval power to open her gates, began
to westernize herself, her population
was already dense in proportion to her
very restricted area of fertile soil. As
in all other countries, the application of
the earth's reserve of energy to the
development of mechanical power and
machine-driven industry led to an increase
in the birth-rate ; and, at the same time,
the adoption of the methods of Western
hygiene and medicine produced a fall
in the death-rate. Therefore the popula-
tion has increased rapidly and since,
unlike Germany, Japan seems to have no
great reserves of coal, oil or other natural
resources, the standard of life of the masses
remains at a low level. Japan consequently
desires to secure outlets for large numbers
of emigrants, and casts longing eyes on
Australia, California and other areas of
temperate climate, fertile soil, and low
density of population.

All such areas are already occupied
by peoples of European stock ; and,
though Japanese immigrants, on account
[43]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

of their excellent qualities, would be
welcome in most of those areas, if their
numbers could be safely and surely
restricted, the inhabitants of those areas
believe that such immigration, if it be
not severely restricted, will in the course
of a few years bring in very large numbers
of Japanese, most of whom will retain
not only their Eastern outlook on life,
but also their honourable devotion to
the interests of the Japanese Empire.
They believe therefore on good grounds
that unrestricted immigration of Japanese
into their area will inevitably lead to
internal friction between the racial groups
that will remain distinct for an indefinite
period, and only too probably to the
desire of Japan to intervene in the
domestic affairs of their country, a
desire which might prompt her to support
the cause of her emigrants with armed
force.

The case of Japan is only the most
urgent and strikingly clear example of a
tendency which is growing stronger and
affecting an increasing number of
countries. Signer Mussolini has voiced
similar desires and claims on behalf of
Italy. The peoples of British India are
beginning to create insoluble problems
for the British Commonwealth by their
desire to spread freely into Africa,
Australia and Canada ; and if India were
an independent State of developed military
[44]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

resources her pressure towards the open
spaces would be a very serious matter.
The whole surface of the earth is now
mapped out as the territories of the
various existing States. And all these
areas are being rapidly exploited ; their
fertile parts tilled, their natural resources
worked intensively. Competition for
fertile soil and the other natural resources
is destined to grow keener, until all peoples
shall have learnt to adjust their fecundity
to the territories available to them.1

1 Professor E. M. East (Mankind at the Cross-
roads) has recently shown good reason to believe
that by the end of the present century the
possibilities of further increase of the world's
population will be exhausted, or, at least,
that further increase will be possible only at
the cost of serious detriment to the standard of
life of the great masses of the civilized peoples.
Many resolute optimists have pooh-poohed this
forecast, pointing to the possibilities of raising
great herds of reindeer within the Arctic circle,
of extending Canada's wheatfields far to the
north, and of cultivating more intensively the
areas already developed. But though it may be
true that the earth can be made to yield a
vastly greater mass of food for the human race
than hitherto, it seems true that the world is
near the point of diminishing returns in this
respect. And, if that is the case, further
multiplication of population and of food supply
means a lowering of the standard of living for
the masses of mankind and an increasingly
acute competition for the available resources.
It is worth noting in this connexion that the
Canadian wheatfields have already been extended
northwards beyond the climatic zone in which
men willingly settle down to make their homes.

[45]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

The increase of the populations of
various countries is, then, a serious factor
making for war. It works in part only
as a direct economic incentive to war.
It is, in the main, because and in so far
as the swelling populations are nationals
of powerful States, that this factor
operates. For any such State is reluctant
to see its emigrants lose their attachment
to their mother country. It is under
strong temptation to regard them as a
means of spreading its own influence,
of increasing its strength and prestige
as a world-power ; in fact to be led into
aggressive action against other States on
the plea of a maternal interest in the
welfare of its emigrants.

The increase of populations tends to
maintain armaments and to add to the
risks of war by maintaining and intensifying
the fear of aggression.

THE SPIRIT OF NATIONALITY — PATRIOTISM
AND CHAUVINISM — THE WILL TO POWER

Very many writers on War have seen in
the fact of nationality and in the spirit of
patriotism or devotion to the nation
the main causes of war.

There is a certain truth in this view.
War is the conflict of politically organized
groups.

In past ages when political power
was in the hands of monarchs and
[46]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

oligarchs, States were often plunged into
war by the personal ambitions and
rivalries of these politically powerful
persons. But in the present age, when
all countries are organized and governed
more or less democratically, i.e. more or
less in accord with the public opinion of
their populations, no great State-action
and especially no war can be undertaken
without the uncoerced support of a large
proportion of the population.

Now such popular consent to and
support of war or of aggressive policy
leading to war is given to governments
only in virtue of the spirit of nationality
that pervades the people. If in the mass
of the people there were no attachment
to their own nation, to the national
organism with its traditional institutions
and government, if the people did not
regard themselves as members of apolitical
entity deserving of their attachment or
devotion, an entity or organism that plays
some beneficent part in their lives,
they would hardly support the government
in war. If they asked from government
only civil order and administration,
police and public services, they would
recognize that one government is not so
much worse than another as to justify
the evils and sufferings of warfare for
the sake of preventing the substitution
of one by another. They would be content
to live under any administration that was
[47]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

reasonably efficient and not too despotic.
But the spirit of nationality is something
much more positive and active than a
mere acceptance of a government of
a particular form, or government by a
particular person or group of persons.
It is a positive preference for the
traditional forms and institutions of one's
political group, a preference which is rooted
in a very complex system of sentiments,
sentiments of love for the land itself,
of pride in the past history of the nation,
of devotion and gratitude to its institutions
and great men, and of aspiration for its
future. Such a system of sentiments
is what we call patriotism. Patriotism
is, like all our loves and devotions, in
large measure irrational, that is to say,
independent of any possibility of rational
demonstration of the superiority of that
which we love to other similar objects.
And it is the root of a multitude of
preferences or prejudices in favour of
whatever is native to one's own land
as against what is foreign, from table-
manners and modes of dress to language,
literature, and religion. During the last
century or two the spirit of nationality
has grown in extent and intensity with
constant acceleration. It has been the
main shaping force of European history
throughout the nineteenth century, and
is now become almost world wide ; it
dominates almost every political State,
[48]'

THE CAUSES OF WAR

even many in which a few generations
ago it was hardly at all manifested ; and
in most States it is now a burning passion
diffused throughout the mass of the
people. Each national group, in so far
as it enjoys Statehood, desires strongly
to maintain and to strengthen itself as a
national State, a self-contained, self-
governing political organism ; and, in
so far as it has not achieved independent
Statehood, it aspires to do so. This
state of affairs is in the main the direct
consequence of the spread of knowledge
and understanding through educational
processes among the masses of mankind.
A pure and intense patriotism is entirely
compatible with a spirit of goodwill
towards and friendly co-operation with
other nations. But, unfortunately, like
all other strong sentiments of love or
devotion, it is very liable to assume in
many men a perverted form in which
envy and dislike of other nations become
as powerful for evil as love of country
is powerful for good, that perverted
form properly called Chauvinism. And
even in the absence of any positive
dislike towards other nations, patriotism,
like self-love, may become dangerous
through excessive development of the
will-to-power. Nations, like individuals,
love power and glory for their own sakes,
quite apart from any economic benefits
that may accrue through them ; indeed
[49]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

they are willing to make great economic
sacrifices in the pursuit of power and glory.
And they are touchy in questions of
national honour and reputation, ready to
resort to armed force as a means of
asserting the national honour or of
resenting any offence against it. For,
in the eyes of the world at large, honour
and power go together. The lust for
power, which too often goes with
patriotism as an ingredient of the spirit
of Nationalism, is then a real and serious
factor making for war. It plays its part
in maintaining great armed forces and,
perhaps more than any other one factor,
renders nations liable to throw such
forces against one another upon slight
occasions ; and thus it quickens and keeps
constantly vivid in each nation the fear of
armed aggression upon its territory.

FEAR OF ARMED AGGRESSION

We have concisely reviewed all the
great latent causes of war, and we have
found that all of them, in so far as they
are real and potent, conspire to produce
in each nation the fear of aggression by
other nations. Such fear impels all
nations to maintain their armed forces
at the greatest possible strength and
efficiency, ready to strike at a moment's
notice. Under modern conditions this
fear is peculiarly great and potent ; for
[50]

THE CAUSES OF WAR

the rapidity with which great forces
can be moved into action, and the
immense advantage in modern warfare
of a lead of a few days or hours over the
enemy in taking action, combine to render
every State acutely aware that it may
find itself attacked before it has had time
to assume the defensive attitude. And
the coming of aerial warfare has immensely
accentuated both this rapidity and this
advantage, and has thus intensified this
universal fear of sudden overwhelming
aggression.

The fear of sudden overwhelming
aggression has thus become a factor
through which all other causes of war
are magnified, are rendered indefinitely
more powerful to provoke war and to
impel the nations to make vast expenditure
on preparations for war. Towards this
fear they all converge ; through it they
all obtain their leverage, their influence
over the masses and the statesmen.
It is this fear which renders unavailing
all the pleadings of the pacifists, all the
moral exhortations against war, all the
most wisely directed efforts towards
disarmament. It may confidently be said
that in the absence of this fear, many,
perhaps all, nations would be glad to
reduce their armaments to a minimum.

If this fear can be removed, all the
other causes of war will be reduced to
manageable proportions ; reason, good-
[51]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

will and good sense will prevail, and
the risk of war between civilized nations
will become remote. In considering
measures proposed for the prevention
of war, the fear of aggression must be
kept steadily in the centre of the picture.
The more directly any proposed measure
may tend to allay this fear, the greater
its value ; the more remote its contribu-
tion towards this end, the less likely
is it to be effective.

And it is to be noted that in order
to allay this fear it is not sufficient to
make nations reasonably secure against
aggression. In order to render war
improbable, it is necessary rather to
enable nations to feel secure, to provide
security against aggression that shall be
as nearly as possible absolute and of such
a kind as will appeal to the popular
imagination.

Before briefly reviewing the measures
proposed for the prevention of war, let
me re-enforce what has been said above-
by citing the statements of some
authoritative voices.

In an essay entitled " Utopia or Hell ",
the late Theodore Roosevelt wrote as
follows : —

"I do not for one moment believe
that the men who follow Treitschke in
his hatred of and contempt for all non-
Germans, and Bernhardi in his contempt
for international morality, are a majority
[52] '

THE CAUSES OF WAR

of the German people or even a very
large minority. I think that the great
majority of the Germans, who approved
Germany's action toward Belgium, have
been influenced by the feeling that it was
a vital necessity in order to save Germany
from destruction and subjugation by
France and Russia, perhaps assisted
by England. Fear of national destruction
will prompt men to do almost anything,
and the proper remedy for outsiders to
work for is the removal of fear}- If Germany
were absolutely freed from the danger of
aggression on her eastern and western
frontiers, I believe that German public
sentiment would refuse to sanction such
acts as those against Belgium."

Lord Cecil has made a profound study
of the means to prevent war and has
proved himself perhaps the most assiduous
and effective of all workers for peace.
In an address to the Foreign Policy
Association,2 he is reported to have said :

" There is no use to hope that there is any
real security for permanent peace so long
as the nations stand on one side or the
other of their borders armed to the teeth
for aggressive warfare. Everyone agrees
to that, not only in this country but
practically all over the world. . . . There
are still some armament maniacs left
among the nations of the world. . . .

1 Italics mine.

2 New York, April, 1923. Italics mine.

[53]

TIIK CON« 01 WAR

\v .irmamri •
tiling and one tiling onl\
und suspicion of (he tuitions for one

of tlu- trouble

vow get
aggression, you get rid of ii

>Mi>t tint i a .vouhi

j>t tin- ' tinn <»f

1 of the '
I ot tli.it \vhirh is
by far the IIIM,( po\\.-it'ul d .ill inthu |

CHAPTER III

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

The measures proposed for the prevention
of war and the efforts directed to that end
naturally fall into a number of classes
or types corresponding to the alleged
main causes of war. I propose to examine
each type, asking in respect of each
three questions : Is it in itself desirable
or permissible ? Is it practicable ? Is
it, if permissible and practicable, likely
to be effective ? Before we can rationally
advocate any such measure we must be
able to give a very clear affirmative answer
to each of these questions as applied to it.

EDUCATION AND EXHORTATION AND THE
ENLIGHTENING OF PUBLIC OPINION

Many of those who hold to the theory
of the goats, who believe that war is
wholly or mainly due to the wickedness
of wicked men, would confine preventive
efforts to moral education and exhortation.
Many of them see, as it is only too easy
to see, that such efforts cannot hope
to influence profoundly the existing breed
of men. But they maintain that, if such
[55]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

efforts be steadily and intensively applied
to the rising generations, to the children,
then we may hope to engender in them
so strong a hatred of war that, when they
come to manhood, war will cease. As to
the mode in which these citizens of the
future are to render effective their moral
sentiments against war, there seem to be
two schools of opinion. According to the
more naive, we must hope to make our
moral education so effective and so
world- wide that nowhere in the world
will any considerable body of people
consent to participate in war under any
circumstances, under any provocation,
in the defence of any rights, for the
redress of any wrongs. This is the form
of pacificism which good Christians who
live narrow and sheltered lives, remote
from the seat of probable war, are
naturally inclined to advocate. It has
a great body of exponents in the United
States. For a great part of the inhabitants
of that fortunate land, the Great War
was little more than a vast national
picnic ; they condescended to take part
in it only because the rest of the world
was so mad and bad that something had
to be done to bring it to its senses, to
arrest the orgy of mutual extermination
and give the combatants time to cool
down and come to their right minds.
And now all that remains to be done,
it seems to them, is to bring the rest of the
[56]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

world by example and precept to the same
state of prosperous contentment as they
themselves enj oy . It is this attitude which
finds expression in the public declarations
of many Americans, among whom are many
young men, that under no circumstances
will they lift a finger to contribute in
any way to the conduct of war.

This attitude of resolute non-participa-
tion is often defended by a very simple
argument. All use of force in human affairs
is wrong ; war is the use of force and there-
fore is wrong ; I will not countenance or
participate in wrong-doing. Such people
do not see that they have no right to the
advantages of civilization ; that, in
enjoying the freedom and protection
afforded to all men by a civilized State, they
are meanly accepting the benefits only
procured and maintained by organized
and beneficently directed force, while
throwing upon others the responsibility
for using that force. Their attitude
amounts to this : We will have nothing
to do with any human institution that
falls short of perfection, we will participate
in no activity that is not ideal — let others
do the dirty work of the world necessary
for our comfort, we will not soil our hands
and make ourselves odious with sweat
and grime.

It is, perhaps, unnecessary to expound
the weaknesses of this position. It may
suffice to point out that, at the most
[57]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

hopeful estimate, many years, let us
optimistically say one hundred years,
must elapse before this programme can
become effective. In the meantime
all higher civilization, including that of
the United States, may have been swept
away in some world-wide holocaust such
as Mr. Winston Churchill has depicted.1
We may also ask the advocates of this
measure to dwell in imagination upon
the position of those young men who shall
have made this solemn declaration, if
and when their country shall have become
involved in a life and death struggle ;
or to consider the position of America
if and when a large proportion of her young
men, say a large minority of them including
many of the educated class, shall have
bound themselves in the most solemn
way to refuse all co-operation in the
defence of their country.

Let them reflect that the civilized
part of mankind is still but a small part ;
that in former ages civilization has been
wellnigh overwhelmed and destroyed
by hordes of barbarians ; that such security
as civilization at present enjoys against
new waves of barbaric force rests wholly
upon its superiority in the arts of war
and its readiness to apply those arts ;
that, but for this superiority, the whole
Moslem world, from Morocco to Borneo,
would quickly unite its efforts, and, led
1 p. 23.
[58]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

by the Turks, the Afghans, and the Arabs,
with religious fervour would trample
Christian civilization in dust and blood.
Let them remember also that in Russia,
in China, in Africa are many millions of
men well suited to become the tools of
a new Attila, a new Tamerlane, a new
Ganghis Khan, or a new Napoleon.

We may confidently assert that this
all too simple plan is neither desirable
nor practicable, nor likely to be effective.
Its partial realization on a considerable
scale would bring world-chaos ; and from
its very nature it is a plan which can
at the best only be realized in slow and
gradual fashion, and can become effective
only after the lapse of a long period.

But Mr. Ponsonby, in the little book
mentioned above (p. 36), has made a
considered effort to state this policy in a
concise and carefully thought-out manner.
It seems worth while to examine with care
his prescription for the great evil. He
expounds at length the futility of insisting
on the religious, the humanitarian and
the economic arguments against war. Of
them he says : " Taken alone, I do not
believe they are bringing sufficient
converts to the cause of peace."

The pleas of religion, of humanity, of
economic self-interest have, he says,
proved futile. " So also has the rapier
of philosophy and economics. Let us
pick up the bludgeon of common sense,
[59]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

and as the chief foe is Humbug, it may turn
out to be the best weapon." Let us see
with what effect he wields this bludgeon.
He puts forward in place of the religious,
humanitarian and economic pleas, what
he calls the rationalist argument, which
runs as follows : War and preparations
for war are undertaken for the sake of
some end ; but they never attain the
desired end, they prove utterly futile and
worse than futile, because they only
breed more war ; therefore let each of
us frankly and finally refuse to take part
in any war on any grounds whatsoever.

This teaching seems at first sight to be
merely the doctrine of individual passive
resistance to war which has had so much
vogue in America and on which I have
commented in the foregoing section,
qualified only by special insistence on the
impossibility of economic or material
gain through war, a doctrine so long and
so ably propounded by Mr. Norman Angell.

But Mr. Ponsonby, as we have seen,
repudiates the view that war is due
simply to the wickedness of wicked men ;
he has put forward a peculiar view of
the causes of war and properly seeks to
adjust his remedy to his view of the
causes. The cause is the influence of
" Authority ", and the problem is to
break or counteract this influence. " It is
Authority itself which must be tackled."
" Authority," the reader will remember,
[60]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

is constituted by the system of official,
semi-official and traditionally recognized
positions of power and influence, occupied
by persons who make up the greater
part of what are called the educated
classes. The rest of the nation (according
to Mr. Ponsonby's philosophy) is made of
two parts, the Government and the mass
of the people ; and the problem is to break
the power of " Authority " over the mass
of the people, so that it may no longer
persuade them to accept the delusions
that by war some desirable end may
be achieved and that preparations for
war are worth while.

Now Mr. Ponsonby well knows the
great power of Authority ; knows that
it plays the chief part in shaping public
opinion ; he knows therefore that, when
it begins to be made known that " the
causes declared by the Government for
the declaration of any war are, and must
be, based on lies, and that war, however
fiercely waged and however successfully
terminated, can accomplish nothing at all,
. . . Authority will foresee the coming
danger of the people's awakening long
before it reaches this point [the effective
point] and accordingly it will in good time
lay its plans to obviate so embarrassing
a dilemma. Considering its nature and
its methods, considering its peculiar and
unseen power, in all probability Authority
will succeed so that the people will be
[61]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

prevented from reaching this degree of
enlightenment." 1

Although, then, we have been told that
" Education must be the lever " and that
" there is only one thing which can crush
militarism, it is the spread of education
and democracy in an era of peace ", we
cannot hope, as Mr. Ponsonby explicitly
recognizes, to break the power of Authority
by enLghtening the people. There remains
only the Government ; to it we must pin
our hopes. " Although a Government
is only part of Authority and acts
traditionally as its servant, it is by no
means impossible for a Government to
become master of Authority and establish
a new tradition." A Government, then,
resolutely determined to refuse to go to
war or to prepare for war could maintain
this attitude by mastering and radically
transforming Authority. " The social
ideals of such government would be as
subversive of the accepted traditions as
would be their international ideals. The
whole official engine would have to be
turned in a new direction and provided
the Government were convinced and deter-
mined, they would be in a position to do
this." But, of course, as Mr. Ponsonby
is at pains to point out (ruefully remember-
ing the record of the Government of which
he was a member) , it must be a Government
enjoying the secure support of a large
1 Op. cit., p. 167.
[62]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

parliamentary majority. How then is
such an enlightened Government to be
secured and given strong parliamentary
support ? Mr. Ponsonby nowhere tells us.
He does tell us that " Anyone attending
debates on foreign policy will appreciate
the fact that the underlying foundation
generally accepted as a matter of course
is the continued existence of war. They
will at once realize that it cannot be
from parliaments and Governments that
the great change, the new voice, and the
new appeal are as yet to be expected. . . .
It is not by gesticulating before the very
guardians of the old tradition that the
change desired can best be brought about,
but rather by reaching the people first,
enlightening them, and preventing them
in good time from being taken in by the
hackneyed phrases which have been
their undoing in the past." Thus Mr.
Ponsonby completes his vicious circle,
round which he runs like a squirrel in
a cage. The people must be enlightened ;
but that can only be done when the
power of Authority shall have been broken
or completely changed in character ;
that, in turn, can only be effected by a
strong Government determined to accom-
plish this tremendous task ; and such a
Government can only be put in power
by the mass of the people already
enlightened. Further, this impossibly
circular task must be accomplished
[63]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

within the next few years, while the
horrors of war are still present to the
memories of the people.

It may seem otiose further to examine
Mr. Ponsonby's argument. But, since
just such loose thinking is to my mind
the main obstacle to peace, I am anxious
to deal thoroughly with this prominent
example of it provided by an ex-Minister
of State.

It is an essential part of Mr. Ponsonby's
premises that war is and must be in all
cases and circumstances futile. He aims
to prove this by enumerating all the
objects or purposes with which war may
be waged. He distributes them under
twelve heads, and seeks to prove this
contention for each of them. We need deal
only with the first, namely, " War as a
defence against aggression." In three
short pages he professes to show that
war and preparations for war directed
against aggression are futile. The demon-
stration consists in asserting that
international jurists have found it
impossible to define aggression, and that
" to discover proof of aggression is not
possible, as the jurists have now admitted."
The implied conclusion is — therefore
there is and can be no aggression. It is a
purely verbal quibble unworthy of a
serious argument. He touches vaguely
upon the form of aggression in the preven-
tion of which the British Empire is
[64]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

most vitally interested, namely, inter-
ference with sea-borne commerce ; and
he dismisses this most vital danger in
three lines : " But the world's water-
ways should be the property of all the
world. Any danger would then be
removed."

But it is clear that Mr. Ponsonby himself
is not satisfied with this trivial treatment
of a great problem. For his next chapter
is entitled " Security ", and deals with
the problem of national security. " The
most reasonable and necessary ambition
for any nation to entertain is that of
security. Without security, so long as
there is fear and apprehension of future war,
no nation can settle down to the better
development of its own national life,
nor can it embark freely on international
intercourse with any confidence. The
desirability of this aim ... is therefore
beyond dispute." He then points out at
some length the obvious truth that in this
problem of security all nations are
involved in a vicious circle. " We armed
because we feared them, they armed
because they feared us. ... Security
for all is, therefore, the only great objective.
. . . Security means the absence of war,
and this comprehends the whole subject." 1
How then are we to secure that security
for all nations which is the main

1 Italics mine.
[65]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

desideratum, the crux of the whole
problem of war and peace ?

Mr. Ponsonby's reply is — By general
disarmament. " Disarmament, therefore,
should become the first aim and object
of the pacifist. Not, as some say, security
first, then disarmament. This means you
will get neither. But disarmament first,
and security must follow, and indeed
can only follow on disarmament."

Now it is clear to Mr. Ponsonby, as it
is not apparently to a great many persons,
that a mere reduction of armaments
would not provide security. " Half-
way houses in this case are extremely
precarious. It is much more difficult to
insist on and supervise limitation in
armaments than to decide on disarma-
ment." Further, it is clear to him that,
in spite of his demonstration that
aggression is a fiction of the imagination
and cannot occur (because, as he says, the
jurists cannot define it and cannot
discover proof of its occurrence), no great
nation will consent to disarm itself
completely as an example to others. He
even goes so far as to tell us that he would
not in the present state of affairs urge the
disarmament of his own country.
" Personally I would neither vote for,
nor advocate, the abolition of the standing
Army and the scrapping of the Navy.
Public opinion is not ripe for such a step."
In short : "No one nation will dare to
[66]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

take the initiative ; there must be simul-
taneous action." All nations or all the
great nations must simultaneously disarm
themselves. " Disarmament must come
by mutual agreement." Consequently
we are thrown back again upon the
educative process which, as we have
seen, is frustrated by Authority, which
in turn can only be overcome by a
strong Government placed in power
by the educated enlightened mass of
the people.

The prospect of general disarmament
is then not very near. As Mr. Ponsonby
himself says : " From the point of view
of foreign opinion, therefore, prospects
are not bright." From which verdict one
can dissent only in so far as it seems to
imply that the prospect of British disarma-
ment is bright.

I shall have a few words to say upon
the general problem of disarmament
in a later chapter. Here it. may suffice
to point out that Mr. Ponsonby never
escapes from his squirrel's cage. He is a
Socialist ; and at the back of his mind
seems to He the hope that some day all
Governments will be in the hands of
Socialists ; and that then, because
Socialists are good and wise men, all
nations will simultaneously disarm. But
he wisely refrains from making prominent
this feature of his reflections; for obviously,
if security can only come when all nations
[67]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

shall have been converted to Socialism,
we have a long row to hoe, and civilization
may well have destroyed itself before we
shall have made appreciable progress
in that direction.

The reader may suspect that I am
treating Mr. Ponsonby unfairly. I beg
to assure him that it is not so. We have
the spectacle of a good man with abilities
that have made him a Minister of State
and with experience as Under Secretary
for Foreign Affairs in a British Govern-
ment, honestly and fu tilery struggling
to devise a proceedure through which
education and exhortation may produce
throughout the world enough of enlighten-
ment and goodwill to abolish war. He does
not, like so many aggressive Socialists,
say — This is the social state we desire,
therefore human nature is such as will
lend itself to the realization of our plan.
He does not, like Mr. Wells, invoke a
magical gas from the tail of a comet to
transform us into animals so happily con-
stituted that we shall be glad to share with
one another our wives and sweethearts.
He faces the facts of human nature
honestly, and, so doing, finds it impossible
to escape from the truth that the world
is very far from such general enlighten-
ment as will render unnecessary the
use of force ; and he can devise no
method for bringing about such en-
lightenment.

[68]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

DIRECT ACTION OF PUBLIC OPINION

The other form of extreme pacificism
is less naive and more widely entertained.
Recognizing that civilization requires
for its protection armed and well-organized
forces ; recognizing also that the public
opinion of each nation is in the main
formed and guided by the influence of a
relatively small and more educated
fraction of the whole, it looks to the forma-
tion within each nation of an enlightened
and just public opinion, which being in all
nations strongly opposed to war and
capable of judging rightly the issues of
right and wrong between nations, shall
by its own weight intimidate or shame
into submission any nation that may
threaten violence to another. Many of
the exponents of this view hold that no
machinery, no international organization,
is needed to give form and expression
to this world-wide public opinion ; they
look to the pulpit, the Press and the schools
to engender, guide and express it, to render
it sufficiently effective to prevent all war,
even though nations continue to be
armed.

It is only through knowledge of the
wide prevalence of this view in the United
States that Europeans may understand
how the American people, so idealistic,
so opposed to war, so warm-hearted and
sentimental, justifies to itself with an
[69]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

easy conscience its refusal to participate
in the League of Nations or actively to
support the International Court of Justice.
I propose to postpone the examination
of this position to the chapter entitled
" A League to Enforce Peace ", where
the arguments for and against it will be
as concisely as possible weighed in the
balance.

[70]

CHAPTER IV

PREVENTIVES OF WAR (Continued)
TREATIES OF ARBITRATION

Some of those who would mainly rely
upon enlightened world-opinion for the
prevention of war, would give it more
definite form and aid its application to
particular cases of international disagree-
ment by bringing into being a world- wide
net of treaties of arbitration. This plan
has already made considerable progress
towards realization. Let us admit that it
is not intrinsically undesirable nor quite
impracticable. The question remains —
Would it be in itself effective ? Would its
realization suffice to guarantee us against
all war, or to render improbable war on
a vast scale and of the most destructive
kind ? Would it afford to nations that
protection and security which alone can
allay their fears and render them willing
to disarm themselves ?

Surely the question needs only to be
clearly stated in order to be answered
by every honest man, moderately well
informed on international affairs ! In
some cases of disagreement such treaties
may prevent the outbreak of war. In
[71]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

others they may in various degrees ren-
der the outbreak of war less probable,
especially by delaying hostile action and
giving time for hot blood to cool. But it
is vain to hope, dishonest to assert, that
every dispute between nations can be
amicably settled by arbitration, or even
that all nations will observe their self-
imposed obligation to submit to arbitra-
tion their every claim. Nations are loth
to commit themselves unreservedly to the
findings of arbitrators. There are some
issues so vital, so nearly affecting their
very existence, that they cannot trust
any arbitrator, or body of arbitrators,
chosen from another nation to understand
their point of view, to realize fully the
bearing of the question in dispute upon
their most cherished hopes, their unalter-
able resolutions. For example, the British
determination to maintain at all costs
the right to keep open the sea-routes
to her coasts seems to every other nation
to involve an excessive claim to sea-
power, a claim to a predominant position
in the world. But to Britain it seems
clear that the claim she maintains is
nothing more than the claim to continued
existence, the claim to the right to feed
her millions of industrial workers.

America has been foremost among the

nations in promoting the cause of universal

arbitration. But her unhappy experience

in vainly attempting to arbitrate the

[72]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

Tacna-Arica dispute between Chile and
Peru should give pause to the most
ardent advocates of arbitration as a
panacea for the world's greatest evil,
the liability to war.

And are there not rights and claims
which even America would certainly
refuse to submit to arbitration, and which
nevertheless may at no distant date be
challenged by other peoples? Already
we hear it mooted that the raw materials
of the whole world should be put into a
common pot and dealt out to the various
peoples in proportion to their needs. In
the present age the most generous, the
most useful, of all Nature's gifts, the most
valuable of all raw materials, is mineral
oil. The American nation possesses
a vastly greater supply of oil than any
other, and enjoys the use of it in the most
lavish fashion. Will it readily submit
to the arbitrator who shall assign four-
fifths of its supply to other peoples ?
Will Americans calmly consent to go on
foot once more, instead of rolling in
luxury on rubber tyres at forty miles
an hour ? Will they not assert the right
of possession ?

Already we hear from two powerful
and well-armed nations the claim that
they must be allowed to find outlets
for their surplus populations in congenial
territories. Will America submit to the
arbitrator who shall award to all Asiatics

[73]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

the right of free entrance to and settle-
ment within her borders ?

The Philipinos, or all the vocal part
of them, have long demanded freedom
from the American yoke. Will America
at the behest of an arbitratior ca mly
withdraw her hand from that rich
Archipelago, where now she seeks to
develop her own sources of rubber for her
twenty million automobiles ? Will she
consent to hand over to native incom-
petence and misrule the population of
many millions which she has set upon the
path of ordered progress and prosperity ?
Yet war between America and the
Philipinos has been and may be again ;
and a tribunal of arbitration might well
give a verdict in favour of " a nation
rightly struggling to be free ".

Treaties of arbitration can have no
greater binding power than other treaties ;
and, as Mr. Ponsonby says, " there is no
nation which has not been guilty of
breaking a treaty when occasion
demanded." And again he says, truly
enough, " Expediency, not moral right,
being in most cases the basis of a treaty,
the greater expediency which arises when
a nation is in danger will necessitate
their breach."

Arbitration treaties are good and useful ;

but they will not in themselves provide

such security or banish all fear of

aggression ; therefore they will not

[74]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

suffice to bring about general disarmament
or prevent the recurrence of War.

DISARMAMENT AND LIMITATION OF
ARMAMENTS

At the present time the attention of
men of all nations who actively desire
to prevent war is turned upon the proposal
to abolish or reduce national armaments.
The League of Nations has the problem
under consideration. The Washington
Conference has shown that something
may be achieved in this direction. There
is a vague hope abroad. Clear thinking
is here exceptionally difficult and
absolutely essential.

We must distinguish clearly between
two proposals — on the one hand, complete
and general disarmament ; on the other,
some reduction or limitation of armaments.

GENERAL DISARMAMENT

I have already pointed out that complete
general disarmament of the civilized
nations is not desirable ; that its realiza-
tion would not only imperil all civiliza-
tion, but also would certainly and speedily
lead to its submergence under the hordes
of barbarism. Our civilization rests
and for an indefinitely long time must
rest upon a basis of ordered force.

The chaos in China at the present time
well illustrates this truth. There we see
[75]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

a peace-loving, intellectual, highly
civilized people, with immensely strong
and ancient traditions of peace and moral
order, imbued with an actual contempt
for war, given up to social chaos and
wracked with the horrors of civil wars
to which no end can be foreseen. The
Pacifist will say — Yes, but it is all due
to the interference of European powers.
If China had been left undisturbed by
the outer world, she might have continued
her peaceful course indefinitely. To which
we reply — Exactly ! Behind her Great
Wall, strong in her sense of superiority
in numbers and in culture, China
denounced and despised the arts of war and
ceased to cultivate them. Then came
the barbarians, Europeans and Americans,
and forced upon her their commerce and
all the grosser features of their mode
of life. In the modern age, as the Pacifists
are never weary of telling us, the world
is one ; no nation and no group of nations,
not even the American nation, can hold
itself permanently aloof. All must go
forward together, and the standards of
the more advanced must wait upon the
standards of the more backward.

But, even if we put aside this insuperable
objection to complete disarmament, we
have the insuperable difficulty that it is
not practicable, it cannot be brought
about. For no one great nation will be
the first to take the step. General
[76]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

disarmament must be simultaneous and
by common consent of all nations, as
Mr. Ponsonby rightly insists. And there
is no prospect of bringing about such
simultaneous and general consent within
any resonable period, unless general
security can first be assured. Unless
somehow security can be provided, it
is perfectly idle to say, as Mr. Ponsonby
says : " Disarmament first, and security
will follow, and indeed can only follow
on disarmament."

And we may go further and question
whether security would follow, whether
general disarmament (if it were desirable
and practicable) would produce security
and abolish all danger of war. In these
days overwhelming and crushing attack
can be made by one nation upon another,
especially upon an unarmed nation, by
means of a very small military apparatus.
A few swift commercial aeroplanes could,
by the use of a comparatively small
supply of bombs, practically destroy in
a few hours the capital of an unprotected
nation and reduce to chaos all the
delicately balanced processes of its complex
life. No international agreements, no
visible disarmament, however world-wide,
will guarantee nations against this con-
tingency.

It is, no doubt, this consideration which
leads some advocates of disarmament to
say that we must first have " moral
[77]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

disarmament ", a complete change of
heart of all peoples. That, of course,
is to fall back upon the plan of passive
resistance to war, rendered world-wide
and effective by education and exhorta-
tion. That plan we have already examined
and found to be in itself hopelessly
inadequate to the present needs of the
world.

LIMITATION AND REDUCTION OF
ARMAMENTS

Something has already been accom-
plished and more may be hoped for along
this line. And every limitation, still more
every reduction, of armaments, lightens
the economic burdens of the nations.
Therefore let efforts in this direction
continue ; they are all to the good. But
let us not be foolishly sanguine as to the
results that may be achieved. The
desirability of reduction is indisputable ;
its practicability, beyond the very modest
steps already achieved, remains to be
explored ; its probable effectiveness in
preventing war must be examined
dispassionately.

Let us hear on the question of practica-
bility the voice of one who is a warm
friend of the League of Nations, a British
Liberal of light and leading, an experienced
journalist of the best type. Mr. H. F.
Spender has recently published, under the
[78]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

title Is Disarmament Possible ? x an
article in which he discusses the prospects
of reduction of armaments through the
good offices of the League of Nations. " It
is above all necessary," he writes, " that
we should grasp the truth that, so long
as the problem remains unsettled and
Europe continues to pile up her arma-
ments, the very existence of the League
will be imperilled. For the Covenant
of the League presupposes a State of
Society in which the appeal is to reason
and not to force. In a world bristling
with bayonets there can be neither good-
will nor a desire for peace. Neither the
Rhineland Pact nor the spirit of Locarno
will endure unless the signatory nations
agree to reduce their armaments and lay
aside their fears, suspicions and national
antagonisms which a competition in
armaments provokes. But how can this
be done unless the nations can be
persuaded that their security will not be
menaced by disarmament. Here we touch
the root of the problem,2 which presupposes
a means of moral disarmament, that is to
say a change of heart and mind in the
attitude of nations to one another."
He cites Dr. Benes as saying : " The
problem of reduction of armaments
bristles with difficulties." And he proceeds
to display some of these difficulties.

1 Fortnightly Review, March, 1926.

2 Italics mine.

[79]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

First, what are armaments ? Since
almost the whole industrial and financial
resources of a nation are brought into
play in modern war, shall they be reckoned
in any attempt to strike a just balance
of armaments as between one nation
and others ? How are we to measure
the military value of men, manufacturing
power, coal, water-power, oil? How
justly compare the defensive needs of
the various nations with due reference
to the geographic and economic situa-
tion of each ? How distinguish between
offensive and defensive armaments ?

France demands an inquiry into the
ultimate war-strength of nations. " This,
as Lord Cecil pointed out, would lead to
no practical result, because it is
impossible by any procedure of inter-
national negotiation to limit the economic
and industrial resources of a country.
Moreover, the inquiry would be endless,
and might well lead to dangerous friction
between the various nations concerned."
Yet " if France were to disarm to the
same degree as Germany, as far as visible
armaments are concerned, she would have
no security, because Germany with her
larger man-power and superior industrial
organization would in a few months prove
to be a far stronger military power."
He does France justice in attributing her
attitude to a genuine and not ill-founded
fear of Germany. " How this fear may
[80]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

be removed so that France may take the
real path of safety by a reduction of her
armaments . . . is the problem which has
to be solved." He writes of the root
of the difficulty which faces the League
as being " the distrust and fear which
still brood over Europe* To dispel these
is the important work that has yet to be
achieved before real progress with the
limitation of armaments can be made."
Italy is a formidable difficulty. And at
the very outset stands the difficulty that,
while France, Italy and Japan demand that
all form of armaments shall be discussed
together, America and Great Britain
require that naval armaments shall be
separately considered.

Mr. Spender's mournful conclusion is
that, in spite of the spirit of Locarno,
the outlook for any serious reduction or
even limitation of armaments is not
hopeful.

There is another all-important fact
which, in the world's present concern
for the reduction of armaments, is apt to
be overlooked. Namely, even if the
present efforts to bring about reduction
of armaments were largely successful,
if, let us say, the present negotiations
were to lead to reduction of all national
armaments by fifty per cent., or even by
seventy-five, or ninety per cent., we still
should have secured only an amelioration
1 Italics mine.

[81]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

of our condition ; we should have
effected no cure of the great disease.
The economic burdens of the nations
would be lightened ; and the tendency
of armaments to go off of themselves or
in hair-trigger fashion (which too often
is falsely represented as the principal
cause of war) would be greatly diminished.
But we should have provided no security
against aggression. To some extent the
fear of aggression might be diminished ;
but it would not be abolished. The
effectiveness of defensive power is wholly
relative to the power of the aggressor ;
and, as was pointed out above, even com-
plete abolition of visible national
armaments would not in itself provide
that complete security which alone can
allay the fear of aggression.

Further, experience in the Great War
has shown how an industrial and non-
military nation can within a few months
build up a vast army and equip it with
all the apparatus of war. The old delusion
that it takes three years to make a useful
soldier has been dispelled. And, as war
becomes more and more a matter of the
manipulation of mechanical devices, the
difference in military value between the
trained soldier and the skilled artizan
tends to disappear and, with it, the
difference between the nation specially
prepared for war and the nation merely
equipped with first-rate manufacturing
[82]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

power. In view of these facts it may
well be questioned whether the delay
in the outbreak of war which may be
hoped for from arbitration-treaties would
be an unmitigated gain ; for such delay
would enable nations to concentrate
all their manufacturing power upon
preparations for the war that might
come if arbitration should fail.

ECONOMIC PACTS AND ECONOMIC
PRESSURE

Raw materials, markets, tariff-barriers,
monetary exchanges, these are the
economic centres of interest for the
agents of peace. For in them lie great
possibilities of both war and peace. Left
to the course of nature, to the so-called
iron laws of economics, they are the great
fields of international competition ; but
also they are susceptible of being exploited
as fields for international co-operation ;
and further they contain possibilities,
hitherto hardly explored, of being used
as actual preventives of war.

It is now only too clear that the old
Cobdenite principles are illusory. The
mere abolition of tariffs and the prevalence
of free trade throughout the world
would render the competition for raw
materials more acute and would intensify
and embitter the competition between
nations for higher standards of life and
[83]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

comfort. Those that have attained a
high standard of life would keenly feel
and bitterly resent the competition of
hundreds of millions of industrious
workers, content to toil for the bare
necessities.

It is as instruments for the positive
repression of aggressive tendencies that
these economic factors offer possibilities
of manipulation. The Chinese have shown
us how a whole people can set at naught
" the iron laws of economics " and use
the economic boycott as a national
instrument. Fortunately, the nations
most powerful in war are the most
industrialized, the most dependent for
continued prosperity on maintenance of
friendly relations with other nations,
and, therefore, the most sensitive to
economic pressure. It is therefore proposed
that the whole world, acting through the
League of Nations, shall use the economic
boycott and the threat of it to repress
the warlike tendencies of nations. There
can be no doubt that Great Britain,
if she went upon the warpath, would
quickly be reduced to passivity by the
absolute refusal of the whole of the rest
of the world, including the sister nations
of her Commonwealth, to provide her
with food. The same would be true of
Italy and her coal supply ; perhaps at
present and in the near future of the
United States and her rubber supply.
[84]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

But there are two great weaknesses of
any such scheme for world-wide economic
pressure. First, the nations, foreseeing
these possibilities, are tending more and
more to make themselves, or to group
themselves, into great economic units,
each of which shall be as nearly as possible
independent of others for all essentials
of economic life, units such as the United
States, the British Commonwealth, Russia,
Central Europe, France and her satellites,
or possibly all of Western Europe. And,
in proportion as these tendencies are
realized, economic pressure as a preventive
of war must become less and less effective.

Secondly, it must be a matter of the
greatest difficulty to secure the faithful
co-operation of all nations in applying
such economic pressure. When some
nations apply the boycott, opportunities
for making immense profits will be offered
to others, or to the traders of other nations.
And the temptation will be too strong
for some of them. Yet in order that
economic pressure may be effective, all
nations must faithfully co-operate and
each one must strictly impose upon all
its traders the observance of the boycott.

It seems to me only too clear that,
even if the League of Nations were all-
inclusive, the conjunction of these two
difficulties would probably be too great
an obstacle to the effective application
of the boycott. And it is still clearer
[85]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

that, so long as great countries rich in
markets, in raw materials, in financial
resources, like the United States and
Russia, remain outside the League,
economic pressure must remain but a
feeble instrument for the prevention of
war.

And there is another fact new in the
history of the world which must here
be taken into account. It is no longer
possible to hold over nations any threat
of severe punishment for any aggression,
any infraction of treaties or of Law of
Nations. In bygone ages a nation that
undertook aggressive enterprises ran the
risk of being trampled in the dirt, of being
virtually destroyed. But now, no sooner
is peace restored, than the rest of the
world must hasten to the assistance of
the conquered nation, feeding its masses,
restoring its industries, re-establishing
its finances. Self-interest and philan-
thropy combine to render such actions
inevitable. Hence the modern State
knows that in making war it risks only
the losses incidental to the period of war.
It knows that, no matter how gross its
defiance of all laws and all principles of
justice and humanity, it will, even if
unsuccessful, soon be put upon its feet
once more and restored to its former
position in the comity of nations. It is
as though our domestic justice were to
renounce completely the principle of
[86]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

punishment ; so that the highway robber
should know that his only risks are those
incidental to his act of violence ; he may
reckon upon it that, if during its com-
mission he should be so unlucky as to
receive a nasty knock, he will be carried
to hospital, carefully nursed back to
health, and restored to his place in society
with the least possible delay ; for society
is very humane and it cannot afford to
dispense with his services.

In face of this situation, a nation may
well be tempted to risk a rapid blow,
hoping to present the world with a fait
accompli, and to carry off the swag
without so much damage as a continuing
loss of reputation. For it knows only too
well that the world's powers of moral
discrimination and moral indignation
are very feeble ; the former easily hood-
winked, the latter easily exhausted or
allayed by the wise saw — " You cannot
indict a whole nation."

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND OUTLAWING
WAR

Many voices, especially in America,
demand that war shall be outlawed.
I have tried in vain to discover behind
this cry some trace of rationality, some
evidence of considered purpose, some plan
of action, however impracticable or
ineffective. I suppose that to outlaw
[87]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

any particular practice or form of action
means to pass a law against it, to make it
criminal, legally indictable, punishable
and preventible by executive action. But
in the present state of the world nothing
of this kind is possible against war between
nations. We can only outlaw, or put out-
side the pale of legally recognized action,
that which lies already within it. But
war does not lie within any such pale.
There is no law which sanctions or
legalizes it ; there is no law-making
power which can declare it to be illegal.
Those who utter this cry are probably
misled by the current usage of the term
" International Law ". The existence of
the term, of textbooks bearing it on
the title-page, and of professors who
claim to expound International Law,
has presumably imposed on them the
dangerous delusion that International
Law already exists. This delusion is one
of the great obstacles to clear thinking
in this matter of war and peace. It may
be dispelled by a little critical reflection.
Without going into the metaphysics of
jurisprudence, we may note the view that
all law exists or subsists in some supernal
realm of ideas, or in principles of right
and justice that areas timeless and eternal
as the principles of geometry, and that
human effort cannot make, but can only
discover, laws. Without stopping to
inquire whether bad laws as well as good
[88]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

laws enjoy this supernal existence, we
may escape these subtleties by distinguish-
ing effective law from law in general.
We are concerned only with effective law
or laws. Effective law presupposes
not only its discovery by man, but also
its recognition and establishment within
a given society or community, either by
way of statute or by way of the customs of
the people and the rulings of judicial
tribunals. Further, effective law pre-
supposes effective sanctions : that is to
say, law, in order to be effective, must be
supported by sanctions which effectively
oppose the breach of it or in some degree
tend in that direction by imposing
punishment for offences against it.

Now, none of these things is true of
so-called International Law. It may be
true that the moral sense of the better
part of mankind has accepted certain
conventions which have been formulated
in textbooks and even accepted as guides
by jurists in dealing with matters of
dispute between nations. But so-called
International Law is hitherto not effective
law ; first, because it has been established
neither by any international legislative
body nor by any judicial tribunal that
expresses the opinion of the world at large
or is accepted by more than one nation
as an authoritative exponent of its moral
principles; secondly, because it commands,
is supported by, no sanctions other than
[89]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

a vague general disapproval directed
towards those nations which ignore these
international conventions. All this is
not to say that " International Law " as
it exists is of no value and should not be
held in high esteem. I merely insist that
" International Law " as now existing
is not effective law and that to be misled
by the term into regarding it as such
is to be disqualified for serious discussion
of international problems. A large part
of the civilized world has accepted
certain principles of international right
or justice ; but these have not yet been
given the status of effective law. How
to give them that status is of the very
essence of our problem.

INTERNATIONALISM AND ABOLITION OF
NATIONALITY

The spirit of nationality is strong in
the world. Its critics say it is rampant.
And they say truly that it is a prime
factor in engendering international wars ;
for, if it ceased to exist, nations would
soon cease to exist, and there could
be no war between non-existent nations.
From these considerations some of the
critics draw the simple precept : Let
us undermine nationalism and the spirit
of nationality ; nations then will soon
coalesce into one great human brother-
hood or cosmopolitan society and war will
[90]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

cease. This prescription, if it could be
applied, would certainly be effective in
abolishing international war. But is
its realization desirable ? Is it
practicable ? I will not here delay to
argue the former question. In other
works x I have argued the case at length
and shown, as it seems to me, that the
nation or nationhood is an indispensable
instrument for the realization of the good
life for an increasing number of mankind.
It may suffice here to point out that' the
proposal is impracticable in the last
degree. With every advance of education
among the peoples of the world,
nationalism has become correspondingly
more pronounced, and there is every
reason to believe that this will continue
to be the rule.

Even if all that the critics of nationalism
charge against it were true, and if there
were nothing to be said on the other
side, nationalism is so congenial to human
nature, is so concordant with democracy,
is so natural and spontaneous a growth
in a world in which all men claim to
exercise a voice in the determination of
public affairs, that the policy of uprooting
it in favour of any scheme of cosmopolitan
world-organization would ' be a vastly
difficult one requiring a long continued
and world-wide campaign of education.

1 Especially in my Group Mind and my Ethics
and Some Modern World Problems.

[91]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

And, since there is so much to be said
on the other side that the vast prepon-
derance of educated opinion regards the
existence of nations as necessary and
highly conducive to human advance-
ment, such policy has not the slightest
prospect of success.

The policy of abolishing nationalities
is not Internationalism. Internationalism
is the policy of combining nations in a
higher unity, a commonwealth of nations,
within which each may preserve its
distinctive features, may cultivate its
peculiar merits, and continue its work
of protecting, guiding and stimulating
its citizens, facilitating for them in all
possible ways the pursuit of the good life.

In only one way does Internationalism
require the abatement of the spirit of
nationality : namely, it requires that
each nation shall be prepared to abjure
its claims to absolute sovereignty and
independence ; that it shall abate this
claim just in so far as may be necessary
for the establishment of such inter-
national justice and of such effective
international law as will render possible
the peaceful co-operation of nations.

Such abatement of the absolute
sovereignty of nations is implied in the
very conception of International Law,
is implied by every scheme that can be
devised for the amicable settlement of
differences between nations. It is involved
[92]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

in submission to arbitration, and in every
pledge given by a nation as one which
it intends to keep. Still more clearly
is it involved in the acceptance of any
effective sanctions for the support of
international pledges of any kind. There
can be no enduring peace in a world
of nations, unless nations will consent
to give such binding pledges to one
another and, in so far, to submit to abate-
ment of absolute sovereignty.

It is, then, gross inconsistency when
the citizens of a State which most
jealously refuses to support any scheme
that would impair, however little, its
absolute sovereignty, set up a cry for
the outlawry of war.

Let us consider briefly an objection
commonly raised against the League
of Nations and equally likely to be raised
against every step leading towards true
Internationalism, I mean the bogey of the
Super-State. There is a form of Inter-
nationalism which aims at constituting
a World-State or Super-State, a State
which shall include all nations and which
shall absorb as much as possible of the
functions of the existing States. When
the American Union was formed a
Super-State on this model was created.
For all practical purposes the several
States of the Union lost their independence
and a very large part of their sovereignty ;
and throughout the subsequent period
[93]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

the Super-State thus formed has continued
to absorb more of the rights and functions
of the subordinate States. Inter-
nationalism of this kind is anti-national.
But there is a truer and more acceptable
Internationalism, namely, that which,
appreciating the value of nationality
and desiring to preserve intact as far as
possible the rights and functions of
nations, would invite them to abate
their claims to absolute sovereignty only
in so far as that may be necessary for
self-preservation and the preservation
of civilization, for the avoidance of
mutually destructive warfare, and for the
facilitation of voluntary co-operation
between nations in all those matters,
such as the control of epidemics, in which
all are interested but in respect of which
none can take effective isolated action.

To set up a cry of " Super-State "
whenever a proposal for international
co-operation is mooted is to work against
peace by raising a bogey. All personal
liberty is obtained and can be preserved,
not by perpetual vigilance alone, but also
by the voluntary repudiation of licence,
licence to interfere with the liberties of
others. Only by resigning the licence
of highway robbery, of the vendetta, the
duel, and the blood-feud, the liberty to
be judge, jury and policeman in his own
cause, does the individual citizen acquire
the liberty to come and go freely and safely
[94]

PREVENTIVES OF WAR

about his lawful affairs, the liberty that
is assured him only by organized and
justly directed force. If the licence thus
resigned is also to be called liberty,
then we must recognize that, in order to
enjoy liberty in respect to all that is
most worth doing, we have to resign our
liberty to do certain things that are not
worth doing. In respect of this funda-
mental law of liberty, nations are in like
case with individuals. In order to secure
the higher forms of liberty, liberty to
develop all that is best in the national
life and institutions, each nation must
sacrifice the lower forms of " liberty ",
liberty to strike a blow at a neighbour
whenever it is moved by anger, liberty to
be judge, jury and executioner in its
own cause, in short, liberty to make war
whenever it is moved thereto by the
ineradicable passions of human nature.
The refusal of nations to recognize, to
accept, this fundamental and inevitable
law of liberty is the main obstacle in
the way of enduring peace.

[95]

CHAPTER V

THE LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE AND
THE USE OF FORCE IN INTER-
NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Soon after the outbreak of the Great
War there was formed in America an
association whose purpose it was to
found a League to enforce Peace. Europe,
wracked by war, paid no attention to it ;
but it was a momentous and highly
significant effort.

Among the founders and active leaders
of that association were men of the
greatest experience in political and
international affairs, men of the most
mature learning and of the greatest
practical experience, men acknowledged
on all hands to be honoured leaders of
the American people. Its principal
officers were Chief Justice Taft and
President Lawrence Lowell, and among
its members were eminent professors of
international law, leading divines, a
cardinal, one of the most influential
of the Rabbis, several famous
ambassadors, editors, bankers, and college
presidents. These eminent men proposed
a League to enforce Peace because they
[96]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

believed that only by the use of inter-
national force can we hope to prevent
the outbreak of new wars.

When the League of Nations was
constituted the League to enforce Peace
was dissolved ; for its members felt
that this great and beneficent purpose
had been accomplished. They believed
that the League of Nations was a League
of the kind they held to be essential
for the future peace of the world, a League
to enfore Peace. And the Covenant of
the League of Nations justified that
hope and that belief. For it included
Articles X and XVI. Article X pledged
the members of the League to defend
one another against aggression ; Article
XVI pledged the member nations to
apply the economic boycott against any
other member-nation that might make
war in defiance of its covenants ; and it
also assigned to the Council of the League
the duty of recommending " to the
several Governments concerned what
effective military, naval or air force the
members of the League shall severally
contribute to the armed forces to be used
to protect the covenants of the League."

It has now become clear that the
League of Nations is not a League to
enforce Peace. Article XVI has been
amended, and the amended form of the
article contains no reference to the use,
or recommendation of the use, of armed
[97]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

force to protect the covenants of the
League. And, though the Article still
provides for the use of economic boycott
in order to prevent military aggression
or bring it quickly to an end, this provision
has been found to be impracticable.
Already in 1924 the author of the Bok
Peace Plan was able to assert that
" Articles X and XVI in their original
forms have therefore been practically
condemned by the principal organs of the
League and are to-day reduced to some-
thing like innocuous desuetude." And
he added that the League of Nations
" can employ no force but that of persuasion
and moral influence. Its only actual
powers are to confer and advise, to create
commissions, to exercise inquisitive, con-
ciliative and arbitral functions, and to
help elect judges of the Permanent
Court ".

The award of the Bok Prize to Dr.
Levermore's essay by the panel of
eminent and highly competent judges
shows that the opinion thus expressed
by him was endorsed by them.

An important part of the intention
with which the League of Nations was
constituted has thus not been realized.
In this most important respect the scope
and functions of the League have already
been profoundly modified and restricted.
The League was intended and designed to
use economic pressure and armed force
[98]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

for the prevention of military aggression.
It has now resigned those pretensions.

This change in the scope and functions
of the League of Nations is the expression
of a profound divergence of opinion
among the supporters and friends of
the League. On the one hand are those
who believe that, in the present state of
the world, the use of physical force is
necessary for the maintenance of law.
On the other hand are those who believe
and freely assert that physical force, or
the command of force as a potential
instrument of Justice, is not necessary
for the support of law and order.

These two groups of the friends of
peace, thus profoundly divided, are
struggling for mastery. It might seem
that the restriction of the scope and
functions of the League which we
have noted proves the latter group,
the no-force group, to be the more
numerous and influential throughout
the world. But any such inference would
be a grave misinterpretation of the signs
of the times. Among those who believe
that physical force is needed for the
support and enforcement of law, and who
wish to see the League of Nations wield
such force, are very many persons who
are prepared to say " If the use of physical
force by the League is impracticable
let us nevertheless support the League,
and hope for the best. Though it may be
[99]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

unable to prevent military aggression
or to punish it in any way, yet it may do
much good of a minor sort ; it can
ventilate international disagreements ;
it can attempt to bring about arbitration ;
and it can promote international co-opera-
tion in affairs of public health and public
morals." The no-force party has thus
enjoyed a very great advantage in this
struggle. For a world-wide agreement
in support of the League is a necessary
condition of its success. And the no-force
party says in effect : " If the League is
to use force we will withdraw our support."
And it is numerous enough to make this
threat a very serious one.1

And the no-force party has enjoyed
two other very great advantages. Namely,
first, the advantage which arose from the
great practical difficulty of ensuring
to the League of Nations the effective
command of adequate physical force
in support of International Law. Secondly,
the advantage of being able to assert

1 Actually, the abandonment by the League
of all intention to use force, or the threat of
force, for the protection of its covenants seems
to have been chiefly due to the strong desire to
secure the adhesion of America. And the American
people, having little or no experience of the
horrors of war, and feeling secure in its own
strength, was less disposed than any other to
make that sacrifice of absolute sovereignty
which acceptance of the element of compulsion
implies.

[100]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

that, even if the League could command
adequate armed forces, the drawbacks
attending the use of them would outweigh
the benefits.

Let us examine briefly these two
difficulties or objections. It was implied
in Articles X and XVI as originally
adopted that each member-nation should
hold its armed forces at the disposal
of the League for the purposes of inter-
national police-work. But, even if all the
Governments concerned should solemnly
pledge themselves to respond to any
call by the League for such police-forces,
it is only too clear that such a pledge
would be of little worth. It is certain
that in this democratic age, the populace
of any country is likely to refuse to take
up arms, or to permit its government
to redeem any such pledge, when the
occasion arises. The threat of a general
strike would be, and has already been,
effectively used to prevent a Government
from redeeming such a pledge.1 That
any such pledge is worthless is, then, a
very strong argument for the no-force
party. For if this proposition is true,
and it can hardly be seriously questioned,
Article XVI of the Covenant of the

1 I refer to the instance in which the British
Government was prevented in this way from
rendering assistance to Poland when she was
attacked by Bolshevist armies.

[101]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

League, in so far as it proposed the use
of force, was futile and illusory. It
invited the nations to entrust their
safety to a force which had no real
existence.

Secondly, if we disregard this difficulty,
and assume that the nations could and
would effectively support pledges of
armed assistance to the League given
by their Governments, there would remain
a very serious drawback inseparable
from the plan. It proposes to stop war
by going to war ; it proposes that, in
order to stop a war between two nations,
an indefinite number of other and peaceful
nations shall plunge into war, extending
indefinitely the area of bloody conflict
and the number of men exposed to death
and mutilation, thus magnifying
enormously the suffering and the economic
waste which all war involves. This
argument of the no-force party is very
effective. It was used by the late Mr. W. J.
Bryan in a written debate in which
(in 1917) he undertook to criticize the
proposals of the League to enforce Peace.
Chief Justice Taft, as president of that
League, was the other party to the debate.
He defended the League's proposal of
an " agreement of all the powerful
nations of the world to unite their armies
and their navies to resist the premature
hostilities of one or more nations against
another". To this proposal Mr. Bryan
[102]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

replied in effect : You propose to abolish
war by making more war ; you propose
that, when war breaks out in any corner
of the earth, it shall at once be made
world-wide. It must, I think, be confessed
that, in spite of all the persuasive skill
and force of Mr. Taft, the answer of
Mr. Bryan was very effective and cannot
be lightly brushed aside.

At the time when the League to enforce
Peace was active, and when this debate
between Mr. Taft and Mr. Bryan took
place, there was only one alternative plan
which Mr. Taft and his League could
have proposed. Instead of proposing that
each nation should pledge itself to hold
its military forces at the disposal of an
International League, he might have
proposed that such a League should be
authorized to raise and equip an inter-
national police-force. It is, I think,
fairly obvious why this alternative plan
was not proposed. For it was clear that
such an international force, adequate to
enforce peace, would necessarily have
been a very large one. It must have been
a force of some million or perhaps two
million men, professional and mercenary
fighting men, constantly under arms,
constantly trained in all the methods
of modern war, and fully equipped with
all the hideous and costly instruments
of modern war, the guns of all calibres,
the bombs and poison gases, the tanks
[103]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

and aircraft, the battleships and cruisers,
the submarines, etc.

Such an international police-force would
be in itself a grave moral evil and a
serious political danger ; to which must
be added the minor objection that the
financial burden of its upkeep would be
very considerable. These drawbacks are
so obvious and so great that, so far as
I am aware, no proposal of such an
international army and navy has been
made by any influential body of persons.

It is, I venture to affirm, these great
practical difficulties and these grave
drawbacks which seemed inseparable from
every plan for an international police
force which have given the victory to the
no-force patty in the present great con-
troversy. For few men will assert that
an effective police-power for the support
of International Law is not desirable
in itself. If we could have an inter-
national police-power that would not be
in itself a moral evil and danger and could
give sure protection to peaceful nations
against military aggression, even the peace-
at-any-price people would not reject it,
but rather would welcome it. The essence
of their contentions may be stated as
follows : " War is the greatest of evils,
and so we will not go to war for any
purpose no matter how good and noble
it may seem, and we will not do any-
thing that may contribute in any way
[104]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

to initiate or support war." That is the
substance of Mr. Bryan's reply to Mr.Taft ;
it is what the Rev. Mr. Harry Fosdick
says in his introduction to Mr. Kirby
Page's book on war. It is what they all
say. And, in view of the horribleness of
modern war, I, for one, would admit
that perhaps they are right.

The acceptance of the extreme Tolstoian
doctrine that all use of force is wrong
is not, then, the ground on which the
no-force party repudiates the use of force
in support of international law and justice.
We may fairly assume that a large
proportion, perhaps a majority, of them
accept rather the clear teaching of Jesus
Christ, who both by words and deeds
affirmed that, if by the use of force we
can prevent men from doing evil, we
should not hesitate to use it. They
assert rather that war is a poor and
doubtful remedy for war. Yet such was
the remedy proposed by those who founded
the League to enforce Peace.

FORCE AS A NECESSARY SUPPORT OF
LAW AND ORDER

There is, however, a considerable number
of persons who refuse to consider any
proposal for the use of force because,
like Tolstoy and the Quakers, they
accept the abstract proposition that all
use of force is wrong. The emotional
[105]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

energy with which they hold to and
assert this general proposition, the
plausible nature of it, and its congruence
with our humane sentiments, gives to such
persons an influence disproportionate
to their numbers. It seems therefore
worth while to examine their position
a little more closely.

Save for a few utterly irrational
fanatics, those who repudiate all use of
force in international affairs really take
their stand, not on the simple proposition
that all use of force is wrong, but rather
on the proposition that the use of force
in international affairs is wrong because
a better way is open to us for the abolition
of war and the effective support of inter-
national law and justice. They do not
assert that no sanctions are required,
but they maintain that the enlightened
public opinion of the world should be
and may be made a sufficient sanction
for the maintenance of international
law and order.

Now it is obvious that such public
opinion has not been hitherto a sufficient
sanction. But it is maintained that the
League of Nations, by diffusing more
widely a knowledge of and interest in
international affairs and by focussing
and giving expression to the public opinion
of the world, may render it an effective
sanction. This really involves two
propositions : first, that the world (or
[106]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

the enlightened part of it whose opinion
counts) is capable of forming a correct
and just opinion on all matters in dispute
between nations. Secondly, that such
opinion, focussed and openly expressed,
will be a sufficient sanction. These
require separate examination.

As regards highly general principles
of international conduct, the former
proposition is, no doubt, correct. We
may expect general support for such
maxims as that nations should not
commit unprovoked aggression, that they
should treat one another with courtesy
and consideration, and abstain from all
provocation. But it is in the application
of such agreed principles to particular
cases that difficulties arise. Let us
remember that during the Great War
the opinions of neutral nations were by no
means concordant on the moral issues
involved ; that in the United States,
President Wilson, supported by approxi-
mately half of his people, maintained
for some years the view that the cause
of one group of antagonists was in no
way morally preferable to that of the
other group. And even at the present time
twelve years after the outbreak of the
war, the controversy as to the moral
responsibility for its inception still goes
on. In this respect the Great War is
not exceptional. Let the reader try to
name one war of the nineteenth century
[107]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

the moral issues of which are not still a
matter of disagreement. In almost all
cases of international disagreement, a
very delicate inquiry, conducted with
full command of all the facts, is alone
capable of arriving at a just opinion.
Such inquiry is a judicial function :
and it is in order that such judicial
inquiry may be made for the guidance
of world-opinion that the International
Court of Justice has been established.

We may reasonably assume that this
International Court of Justice is capable
of arriving at a just opinion in all cases
brought before it ; and that its verdict
will be accepted by a greatly preponderant
part of the world. Assuming this to be
true and assuming further (what is by no
means probable) that the United States
and all other nations will shortly give
adhesion to the Court, it is necessary
to insist that, even then, two great
desiderata will remain unrealized : namely,
first, some means of ensuring that the
Court shall have time and opportunity
to complete its inquiry and to issue its
verdict before any military action is
taken by either party to the dispute ;
secondly, some means of ensuring that,
when the Court shall have pronounced
its verdict, the nations concerned in the
matter shall loyally accept and abide
by its ruling. The lack of the former is
perhaps the more serious deficiency
[108]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

of the apparatus of International Justice
centring in the Court. It may well be
urged that, when and if a clear verdict
shall have been pronounced by the Court,
no nation will venture to ignore it,
and, flying in the face of world-opinion,
proceed to take violent measures for the
attainment of its desired object. That,
however, remains an open question which
only experience of the working of the
Court can determine. But it is only too
clear that it may be very difficult to hold
nations to the obligation of submitting
their case to the Court and awaiting its
verdict, before taking action.

To each nation the justice of its own
cause is apt to seem so indisputable, the
wrong it suffers so gross and flagrant,
that the notion of allowing redress to
wait upon the leisurely procedure of a
Court that will gather evidence, slowly
set it in order, and deliberately weigh
it, must seem preposterous. And if in
such a case a nation shall have achieved
sufficient self-control to await the verdict,
what will be its emotion when that verdict
goes against it, outraging, to its judgment,
every principle of right and justice ? Will
it not be a new burst of anger, now more
than ever tinged with self -justifying
moral indignation ? Shall it sacrifice
its most vital interests, because the
judges of a court of law (drawn from
diverse nations) cannot see the wood for
[109]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

the trees, or have been swayed, as it may
well seem, by some jealousy of a Great
Power, a jealousy to which they, as
citizens of rival nations, cannot be
immune.

Those who deprecate every proposal
for the use of ordered force for the
regulation of international affairs often
seek a parallel to the course of events
they contemplate in the decline of the
practice of duelling. Just as men, it is
said, have forsworn and condemned
that practice, as they have grown more
civilized, so nations, as they become more
truly civilized, will forswear and condemn
the practice of international war. The
parallel is a valid one ; let us accept its
plain teaching. The practice of duelling
has declined only in proportion as men
have been assured of redress for their
injuries at the hands of the courts of
justice. But it did not suffice that the
Courts should pronounce upon the merits
of the case. If they had done nothing
more than that, duelling would have
continued to flourish. The Courts were
armed with authority to impose punish-
ment, and with force to apply it, both on
him who was found guilty and on him who,
refusing to await its verdict, took the law
into his own hands. Without this
command of force Courts of Justice
could have done little or nothing to
abolish the duel ; and without it they
[110]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

will be able to do but little towards
the abolition of war.

The need of force as support to the
findings of an International Court is far
greater than in the case of a Court which
adj udicates between persons. In the latter
case the person against whom judgment
is given finds himself surrounded by
men who accept the Court's verdict
and a public opinion which, if he should
seek to defy it, would press upon him
with immense weight. But, in the case
of a nation against whom the verdict
of a Court is given, each member of it will
be likely to find himself surrounded by
others of like feeling with himself, fellow-
citizens who will share his resentment and
in so doing fan it into a fierce flame ; while
the opinion of the outside world,
unanimous though it may be, will come
to him only in faint echoes through the
Press.

From his fellow citizens he receives
that immediate intensification of emotion
which only personal contact can give
in full strength ; the opinion of the outer
world he learns of only in the form of
highly general and abstract verbal
propositions.

Those who point to the absence of
violence in the lives of good citizens of
peaceful States as a model for the life
of nations are apt to forget that the
quiet citizen is absolved from all need

tin]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

to use force in defence of his rights
only because he has delegated the use of
force to a special body of his fellow
citizens, who apply it vicariously on his
behalf under the direction of constituted
authority. Without police force our
civilized life could not continue a day.
In some great cities (especially in America,
whence comes in strongest volume the cry
against all force in international affairs)
the most vigorous application of such force
does not suffice to prevent the occurrence
every day of the most dastardly outrages.
And in those few instances (as in Boston
some years ago) in which the police of a
great modern city have gone on strike,
we have had impressively demonstrated,
by the immediate outbreak of violent
disorder, the truth that liberty and justice
live only in so far as they are supported
by force.

The domestic parallel validly illustrates
also another truth applicable to inter-
national affairs. The more highly
organized and effective the force which
supports law and justice, the less does
that force need to be put into actual
operation. Within the well-ordered nation
the actual use of force is so slight that it
may almost seem to those who carelessly
enjoy its protection that no force is needed.
But the truth is, of course, that so little
force is used just because, if necessary,
it can be used at a moment's notice in
[112]

LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE

unlimited volume and with over-
whelming effect. Those, then, who insist
on the necessity and morality of putting
organized force in support of International
Justice do not contemplate a world in
which that force will be frequently brought
into active operation ; rather they justly
look forward to a time when such force
shall be so effectively organized and
directed that the need of putting it into
operation will never arise.

[113]

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V

CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF ROOSEVELT
AND BRYCE

The late Theodore Roosevelt not only
filled with distinction the most influential
office in the whole world ; he also raised
to a new height the prestige of that great
office ; and his personal achievement
was such that, when he retired from that
office, he was able to make across Europe
a journey that was more than a royal
progress ; as he passed he lectured
emperors and kings and powerful Govern-
ments upon their duties, and his admoni-
tions were respectfully received. I
mention these facts to remind my younger
readers that Roosevelt was more than
an able journalist and more than a
President of the United States. He was a
statesman of great experience and of
passionate enthusiasm in the cause of
international justice. During the Great
War he published a number of essays
dealing with the causes and the prevention
of war. Europe was wholly preoccupied
with the conduct of the war and these
essays therefore never enjoyed that
world-wide hearing which they deserved
[114]

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V

and in quieter times would have found.
It seems worth while therefore to bring
together here a few of their most forcible
passages in which Roosevelt insisted upon
the necessity and the moral justification
for the use of force in international
affairs. And I add a similar passage from
the writings of the late Lord Bryce,
than whom none was better qualified
to express a weighty opinion on this
disputed and most urgent question.

In order to give full weight to
Roosevelt's words, I will point out that,
if Roosevelt had been still President
of the United States when the Great War
broke out, that war would, in all
probability, have been brought to an end
by the submission of the Central Powers
before the end of the year 1915, and the
world would have been spared an immense
sum of slaughter, suffering, hatred and
economic loss.

FOREWORD TO "AMERICA AND THE
WORLD WAR "

" Dante reserved a special place of
infamy in the inferno for those base
angels who dared side neither with evil
nor with good. Peace is ardently to be
desired, but only as the handmaid of
righteousness. The only peace of per-
manent value is the peace of righteous-
ness. There can be no such peace until
[115]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

well-behaved, highly civilized small
nations are protected from oppression
and subjugation."

" All the actions of the ultra pacifists
for a generation past, all their peace
congresses and peace conventions have
amounted to precisely and exactly nothing
in advancing the cause of peace. The
peace societies of the ordinary pacifist
type have in the aggregate failed to
accomplish even the smallest amount of
good, have done nothing whatever for
peace, and the very small effect they have
had on their own nations has been, on
the whole, slightly detrimental. Although
usually they have been too futile to
be even detrimental, their unfortunate
tendency has so far been to make good
men weak and to make virtue a matter
of derision to strong men."

" In every serious crisis the present
Hague conventions and the peace and
arbitration and neutrality treaties of the
existing type have proved not to be
worth the paper on which they were
written. This is because no method was
provided of securing their enforcement,
of putting force behind the pledge. Peace
treaties and arbitration treaties unbacked
by force are not merely useless but
mischievous in any serious crisis."

[116]

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V

" From the international standpoint
the essential thing to do is effectively
to put the combined power of civilization
back of the collective purpose of civiliza-
tion to secure justice. This can be
achieved only by a world league for the
peace of righteousness, which would
guarantee to enforce by the combined
strength of all the nations the decrees
of a competent and impartial court against
any recalcitrant and offending nation."

DUTY OF SELF-DEFENCE

" The policeman must be put back of
the judge in municipal law. The effective
power of civilization must be put back
of civilization's collective purpose to
secure reasonable justice between nation
and nation."

" It should ever be our honourable
effort to serve one of the world's most
vital needs by doing all in our power to
bring about conditions that will give some
effective protection to weak or small
nations which themselves keep order and
act with justice toward the rest of
mankind."

How TO STRIVE FOR WORLD PEACE

" Looking back at the real and ultimate
causes ... of the war, what has occurred
is due primarily to the intense fear felt
[117]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

by each nation for other nations. Doubt-
less in certain elements, notably certain
militaristic elements, of the population,
other motives have been at work ; but
I believe that the people of each country,
in backing the government of that country,
in the present war have been influenced
mainly by a genuine patriotism and a
genuine fear of what might happen to
their beloved land in the event of
aggression by other nations."

THE CAUSES OF WAR

"It is idle merely to make speeches
and write essays against this fear, because
at present the fear has a real basis. At
present each nation has cause for the
fear it feels. Each nation has cause
to believe that its national life is in peril
unless it is able to take the national
life of one or more of its foes or at least
hopelessly to cripple that foe. The
causes of fear must be removed or, no
matter what peace may be patched up
to-day or what new treaties may be
negotiated to-morrow, these causes will
at some future day bring about the same
results, bring about a repetition of this
same awful tragedy."

THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

" We must stand absolutely for
righteousness. But to do so is utterly

[118]

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V

without avail unless we possess the
strength and the loftiness of spirit which
will back righteousness with deeds and
not mere words. We must clear the
rubbish from off our souls and admit
that everything that has been done in
passing peace treaties, arbitration treaties,
neutrality treaties, Hague treaties, and
the like, with no sanction of force behind
them, amounts to literally and absolutely
zero, to literally and absolutely nothing,
in any time of serious crisis. We must
recognize that to enter into foolish
treaties which cannot be kept is as
wicked as to break treaties which can
and ought to be kept. We must labour
for an international agreement among
the great civilized nations which shall
put the full force of all of them back of
any one of them, and of any well-behaved
weak nation, which is wronged by any
other power."

PREPAREDNESS AGAINST WAR

" International peace will only come
when the nations of the world form some
kind of League which provides for an
international tribunal to decide on
international matters, which decrees
that treaties and international agreements
are never to be entered into recklessly
and foolishly, and when once entered
into are to be observed with entire
[119]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

good faith, and which puts the collective
force of civilization behind such treaties
and agreements and court decisions and
against any wrong-doing or recalcitrant
nation. The all-inclusive arbitration
treaties negotiated by the present adminis-
tration amount to almost nothing. They
are utterly worthless for good."

" In its essence this plan means that
there shall be a great international
treaty for the peace of righteousness ;
that this treaty shall explicitly secure to
each nation and exempt from the opera-
tions of any international tribunal such
matters as its territorial integrity,
honour, and vital interest, and shall
guarantee it in the possession of these
rights ; that this treaty shall therefore
by its own terms explicitly provide
against making foolish promises which
cannot be kept and ought not to be kept ;
that this treaty shall be observed with
absolute good faith — for it is worse than
useless to enter into treaties until their
observance in good faith is efficiently
secured. Finally, and most important,
this treaty shall put force back of
righteousness, shall provide a method
of securing by the exercise of force the
observation of solemn international obliga-
tions. This is to be accomplished by all
the powers covenanting to put their
whole strength back of the fulfilment
[120]

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER V

of the treaty obligations, including the
decrees of the court established under
and in accordance with the treaty."

WORLD PEACE

" Our business is to make force the
agent of justice, the instrument of right
in international matters as it has been
made in municipal matters, in matters
within each nation/'

" The essential thing to do is to free
each nation from the besetting fear of
its neighbour. This can only be done by
removing the causes of such fear. The
neighbour must no longer be in danger."

" What is needed in international
matters is to create a judge and then to
put police power back of the judge."

Finally Roosevelt cited the words of
one whose opinion may carry for many
readers even more weight than his own,
namely the late Lord Bryce :—

" No scheme for preventing future
wars will have any chance of success
unless it rests upon the assurance that
the States which enter it will loyally
and steadfastly abide by it, and that
each and all of them will join in coercing
by their overwhelming united strength
any State which may disregard the
obligations it has undertaken."
[121]

CHAPTER VI

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE AS A
PREVENTIVE OF WAR.

Our review of the causes and the
preventives of war has shown that the
central and most immediate cause of
war, in which all other causes converge
and through which their power to
precipitate war is greatly augmented,
is the fear of aggression. Each nation
fears that it may be suddenly attacked
and overwhelmed by some other nation
or combination of nations ; and it is this
fear, far more than any other factor,
which prompts them to maintain great
armed forces. This fear is the main
obstacle to all effective limitation or
serious reduction of armaments. And
if in any nation, such as the American
nation, there are many persons who
call for the disarming of their own nation,
it is only because that nation enjoys a
position 01 so great security that the
need for its protection by armed force
seems unlikely to arise.

Security of nations against aggression,

especially security against sudden

aggression, is, then, the prime need of

the world. Only the provision of such

[122]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

security can allay the fear which is
the principal and immediate cause of
war. If such security were provided,
or if each nation could feel sure that,
in case of unjust aggression against it,
the aggressor would be shortly brought
to account and duly punished and the
wrongs of the victim justly redressed,
it might and in most, perhaps all, instances
would be content to dispense with all
national armaments, and to leave its
defence and the redress of its grievances
to the strong arm of International Justice.
For, if its territory were actually invaded,
it would be the part of wisdom and
humanity to offer no resistance, to shed no
blood, to avoid all the horrors of war, and
to receive the invading army with cold
courtesy, confidently expecting speedy
redress for all wrongs committed by it.

We have found that the proposal to
prevent war by intensified campaigns
of education and popular enlightenment
alone is impracticable. There is no ground
for hope that such efforts can prevent
war in the near future. We have found
that the public opinion of the world,
even when focussed, directed and expressed
by the League of Nations and the Inter-
national Court of Justice, will not suffice
in itself to prevent aggression or secure
redress for wrongs committed by one
nation against another.

We have seen that treaties of arbitration
[123]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

are in themselves of little effect as
guarantees against aggression. We have
found that total disarmament of the
civilized world is undesirable and im-
possible, if civilization is to maintain
itself against the forces of barbarism.

We have found that any considerable
reduction of armaments, though highly
desirable, is extremely difficult, perhaps
impossible, to bring about, unless some
guarantee against aggression can first
be provided.

We have found that economic pacts
themselves require the support of effective
sanctions and that economic pressure
of effective degree cannot be surely
brought into play for the enforcement
of international undertakings or the
prevention of aggression. We have found
that the expressions " International Law "
and " the outlawry of war " are at
present merely delusive terms which do
little more than blind those who make
much of them to the need for effective
International Law.

We have found that the abolition of
nationality and of nationalism is unde-
sirable, and impossible to bring about even
were it desirable.

We have found that a most weighty
body of opinion has asserted the absolute
necessity of putting force, latent but
highly organized and overwhelming force,
at the disposal of International Justice.

[12-1]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

But we have seen that an international
army and navy large enough to secure
the ends of International Justice would be
highly undesirable, even if practicable,
and that the project put forward by the
League to enforce Peace, and originally
adopted by the League of Nations, the
project, namely, of binding each nation
to hold its armed forces at the disposal
of an international authority for police
purposes is unworkable and, chiefly for
that reason, has been abandoned by the
League of Nations.

What then remains ? Is the civilized
world to confess itself incapable of solving
its most urgent problem, of finding a cure
for its most distressing disease ? Are all
efforts to abolish war at a deadlock ?
Must each nation continue as hitherto,
arming itself to the teeth, playing for
a place in some strong combination of
nations, and hoping for luck on the
outbreak of the next world war ?

Fortunately, the march of science,
which has rendered modern war so
intensely hideous and destructive, has
put into our hands just such an instrument
as International Justice needs for its
police work, for the prevention of
aggression and the redress of international
wrongs.

" What is needed in international
matters," said Theodore Roosevelt, " is
to create a judge and then to put police
[125]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

power back of the judge." The world
has already created the international
judge in the shape of the International
Court of Justice. It still requires to
create an effective police-force for the
support of that judge, for the enforce-
ment of the rulings of the International
Court of Justice. And the recent develop-
ment of aeronautics provides the possibility
of such a police-force.

The development of the technique
of attack from the air has been so rapid
that no one outside the innermost circles
of the air-ministries can say now how
stupendous may be the forces that may
be brought to bear. At the close of the
Great War air-power had risen to the
first importance, and the public has been
allowed to know that since the war
further rapid development has taken
place. The only partial defence against
air^force is counter air-force. Here, then,
is an instrument than which none can be
conceived better suited to serve the ends of
International Justice. Tremendous force,
force overwhelming and shattering if
once let loose, can be wielded and applied
with extreme rapidity by a small highly
trained body of experts. If nations
could be induced to forego the possession
of national air-forces, a comparatively
small international air-force, stationed
at a few well-chosen centres, could serve
effectively as the International Police
[126]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

which is required to render International
Law effective and to assure International
Justice. Above all it could guarantee
all nations against sudden aggression,
and thus provide that security which
can alone banish the fear of aggression
and render national armaments of little
value ; and at the same time it could
serve to protect civilization against the
attacks of barbaric hordes. The institu-
tion of such an international air-force
might, then, well lead to general aban-
donment of national armaments, and
might initiate an era of universal peace.
For, given the condition that the
International air-force were the only one
in existence, resistance to it would be
hopeless, and no nation would attempt it.
Further, all of the very grave objections
and difficulties in the way of international
armies and navies (whether standing forces
or made up on each occasion of the need
for them by levies from national forces)
would be reduced to a minimum in the
case of an international air-force. The
small numbers of the personnel required,
the high technical knowledge and training
required by it, its grave professional
responsibilities, would give it the character
of such a body as the personnel of Scotland
Yard. Its composition from experts of
all nations, intimately co-operating in
highly technical work, would prevent
its being liable to such national prejudices
[127]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

as must always prevail in armies and
navies.

When some years ago I pointed to the
possibility of using air-force as the police
power of International Justice,1 I urged
that in order to make it effective, it
would be necessary to suppress entirely
the use of aircraft for commercial purposes;
for it seemed possible that commercial
aircraft might be almost instantaneously
converted into fighting craft that might
be used to resist the international police
power. And I urged that such suppression
was desirable on other grounds, more
especially the following : that aircraft
promise to render the work of domestic
police in suppressing banditry and
smuggling indefinitely more difficult ; that
commercial aircraft will be apt to produce
all kinds of international complications ;
and that, just as the motor-car has
ruined the charm, the privacy and the
beauty of rural England, so the world-
wide and unlimited use of commercial
aircraft promises to do the same for the
whole world.

However, it seems only too clear that
the modern world, obsessed by the desire
to move from place to place as rapidly
as possible, is not willing to relinquish
its latest and most wonderful toy. And
fortunately that is not necessary for the

1 Ethics and Some Modern World Problems.
[128]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

successful application of air-force as
International police power.

The modern fighting air-plane travels
at more than 200 miles an hour.1 The
ordinary commercial air-plane can barely
attain a rate of 100 miles an hour. Experts
have assured me that this difference
in speed involves fundamental differences
of construction, so that it is not possible
to convert the comparatively slow com-
mercial plane into a high-speed machine.
Now a speed of 100 miles an hour is
ample for all commercial purposes ; it
renders possible the passage from Europe
to America in thirty hours and any
journey of a thousand miles in ten hours.
It would surely be no great hardship
to our speed-merchants, if a maximum
possible speed of 100 miles an hour
were prescribed for all commercial
planes.

The concrete proposal here made is, then,
that all nations that have joined the
League of Nations shall bind themselves
to make, and to permit to be made, for
commercial purposes, or to be owned by
their nationals, no air-planes capable
of a greater speed than 100 miles an
hour ; and that they shall combine to
establish and maintain at the highest
point of efficiency an International police-

1 A pace of 270 miles an hour seems to be the
present record.

[129]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

force furnished with high-speed planes
and all that contributes to make attack
from the air irresistibly overwhelming.
Such a police-force, distributed in a small
number of depots at well-chosen spots,
could both directly protect any member
nation from aerial attack and, by
threatening the capital of any nation,
could compel submission to the edicts
of the authority controlling the police-
force.

What that authority should be may
be a matter for discussion, but it would
seem to me clear that it should be the
International Court of Justice. And
that Court, thus backed by overwhelming
police-force, should be charged with the
primary duty of protecting all members
of the League from sudden aggression.
The League should make known to the
world that it will not permit military
attack upon any of its members by any
power before that power has stated its
case, and has allowed a certain interval
(say three months) to elapse from the
date of such statement. During this
period of postponement of hostilities
the Court would investigate the claims
of both parties and, doubtless, in a large
proportion of cases would succeed in
bringing about a settlement and in obviat-
ing all military action. If the threatened
nation were found to be innocent of all
offence, the Court would continue to
[130]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

maintain its veto against attack upon it.
If it were found to be at fault and refused
to accept the verdict of the Court and to
make amends as prescribed by the Court,
the Court would withdraw its protection.

If within the prescribed period of delay
either party should take military action
against the other, the Court should
immediately direct against it sufficient
police-force to secure its submission.

Such should be the primary and perhaps
the sole application of the International
Police-Force.

It would suffice to allay for all members
of the League the fear of aggression,
and to encourage them to reduce their
armed forces to the dimensions required
for domestic police work.

Whether the member nations of the
League would find it desirable to widen
the scope and functions of the Inter-
national Police-Force would remain a
question for the future.

Such use of the International Police-
Force would involve a minimum of
derogation from the sovereignty of
nations. It could hardly be resented as
involving the setting up of a Super-State.
The most natural extension of its functions
would be the use of it to support the just
claims or redress the grievances of small
and weak nations against strong. But
such extension would seem to be un-
necessary ; for only the threat of military
[131]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

action compels weak nations to submit
to the injustices of the strong, and to
such threats each member nation of the
League would be rendered impervious
by the protection afforded to it.

The League of Nations and the Inter-
national Court of Justice, wielding such
protective police-force on behalf of all
members of the League, would enjoy
a prestige and an influence immensely
greater than they can hope to attain so
long as they have no such resources.
They would have something of great value
to offer as an inducement to join the
League to nations still outside it.

So long as any powerful nations should
remain outside the League, it would be
necessary for it to maintain an air-
force powerful enough immediately to
overwhelm and crush the air-forces
of those other nations. That would
be an unfortunate necessity of the imme-
diate future. But so many nations are
already members of the League that the
burden of maintaining an international
air-force sufficiently large for this purpose
would not be a serious one, distributed
as it would be among all members of
the League.

We have now to apply to this proposed
preventive of war the three test questions
we have applied to other proposals,
namely, Is it desirable ? Is it practicable ?
Is it likely to be effective ?
[132]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

Is IT DESIRABLE ?

What objections can reasonably be
raised against this proposed International
Air-Force. There is, so far as I can see,
only one ground of serious objection
to the institution of it. It will be objected
that the existence of such a Super-Force
might be a danger to the world in two
ways : first, it might be used unjustly
to the detriment of unoffending nations ;
secondly, it might get out of hand, go on
the rampage as a pirate power, and hold
the world to ransom.

The former objection is one that holds
equally against all police power. But the
danger of such abuse of power would be
far less in the case of an international
police-force which can only act in the
full light of day with the eyes of the
whole world upon it, than in the case of
domestic police power against whose
arbitary action the individual citizen
may find it difficult to find absolute
security or redress. Yet no serious person
regards domestic police power as other
than an unfortunate necessity of all
civilized existence. As was said in a
former chapter, all liberty and all justice
depend upon such power, even though
it be latent only, held in reserve for
occasions which may never arise.

The second objection is purely fanciful.
A great international army might be,
[133]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

would be, a danger to the world as well
as a considerable economic burden. But
an international air-force, with its com-
paratively small personnel and its
intimate and complete dependence upon
its bases of supply, could never be
tempted to undertake piratical adventures
or be used by a new Napoleon for his
own sinister purposes. It could occupy
no territory and could not maintain its
efficiency for the briefest period without
civilian co-operation.

The international composition of the
personnel, the small number of men of
any one nation serving in such a police-
force, and its distribution in a number
of widely separated depots would be
further guarantees against its getting
out of hand.

The application of such International
Police-Force would not be open to the
very serious objection which lies against
every proposal for the use of international
armies and navies for police purposes,
namely, that such usage would be an
attempt to abolish war by making more
war, by extending the area of warfare.
As I have already pointed out, we might
well hope that the existence of such
Police-Power under the direction of a
trusted International Court of Justice
would suffice to prevent war without the
exercise of physical force. But, even if
it should become necessary to put into
[131]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

action the latent force commanded by
the Court, its operation would not involve
peaceful nations in war, would not
extend the area of warfare. And in order
to render its application effective with a
minimum of destructive violence, it
might be applied in a graded series
of operations of increasing intensity,
beginning with a mere demonstration in
force, going on to the dropping of a few
bombs on military depots, then to
destruction of Government buildings,
and as a last resort, never likely to be
provoked, the destruction of a capital city.
One other objection is conceivable.
There are persons who will say — The
existence of such a force may hurt the
feelings and provoke the resentment
of nations outside the League, and there-
for it must not be contemplated. To this
the obvious and sufficient answer is that
membership in the League is open to all
nations. Any nation that may wish to
enjoy the benefits of membership will be
welcomed. And, as for those nations that
may choose to remain outside it, the
League's Police-Force will in no wise
interfere with them, will in no way
restrict their liberty of action, so long
as they abstain from unprovoked attack
upon members of the League. Surely
the members of the League have the right
to say to other nations — We refuse
to continue to bear the burden of great
[135]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

national armaments and constantly to
risk incurring the horrors of war, in order
that you may enjoy unrestricted licence
of aggression against us.

Is IT PRACTICABLE ?

That such a force could readily be
organized and maintained is a proposition
beyond dispute. It could be constituted
in a very brief time and at small expense
by selection from among the air-forces
at present maintained by the nations
of the League. And, if in the judgment
of experts such a course seemed desir-
able, it could easily be maintained at a
two-power, or three-power, standard.
It might, however, reasonably be expected
that the benefits offered by a League of
Nations, thus provided with effective
International Law, would be so obvious,
and the drawbacks attending exclusion
from it so serious, that after a short time
no powerful nation would remain outside
it. Then a comparatively small air-force
would suffice for all international police
purposes, a force so small that the burden
of its upkeep would be vanishingly small.

Is IT LIKELY TO BE EFFECTIVE ?

Would the existence of such an Inter-
national Police-Force under the direction
of the International Court of Justice be
[136]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

able to give effective protection against
aggression ? Would it allay for the
member nations of the League all fear
of unprovoked aggression ? The answer
can hardly be in doubt. The veto of the
Court, backed by the threat of action
from the air against the capital of any
nation, or, if necessary, by a demonstration
in force, would be sufficient to arrest
all aggressive military action, and to
bring to its senses any irate nation.

For the threat could be put into
execution almost instantaneously and
overwhelmingly. In these days of wireless
communication, the whole, or a very
large part, of the International Police
Force could be concentrated at any
spot within a very brief time.

As regards action against any member
nation of the League, it would probably
be necessary to exempt from such duty
all squadrons manned by members of
that nation ; but that necessity would
not seriously diminish the available
force.

Only a complete rupture of the League
by the division of its members into
conflicting groups could render ineffective
the International Force by depriving
it of authoritative direction. And nations
enjoying the solid benefits of sure protec-
tion would be far less likely than they are
at present to lend themselves to any
such division into conflicting groups.
[137]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

How far it might be possible for any
nation to put up any effective resistance
to the International Air-Force is a matter
for experts to decide. But it seems
obvious that such resistance would be
impossible for any member nation of
the League, unless it had prepared in
secret a very considerable air-force,
provided with fighting planes of the most
effective type and manned by pilots
trained in the practices of aerial warfare.
And to the layman it seems impossible
that such preparations should be made in
secret. It might be judged desirable
to ask of the nations of the League
that they should forego the luxury of
possessing anti-aircraft guns ; though
in view of the ineffectiveness of guns
against aircraft, that would hardly seem
necessary.

In no other way would it be necessary
to interfere with the independence of
the nations. They might maintain
armies and fleets as large as they desired,
and enforce conscription on all their
citizens. But it seems safe to prophesy
that the sure protection afforded by the
International Air-Force would soon
make large armies and fleets old-fashioned
and foolish luxuries ; for the fear of
aggression would have become but as
the memory of a nightmare that cannot
recur.

I venture, then, to assert that only
[138]

INTERNATIONAL AIR-FORCE

anarchists, philosophical or unphilo-
sophical, or persons who, without knowing
it, take up the anarchical position,
will object to the institution of such
International Police-Force as is here
proposed. And fortunately such persons
are relatively few.

The nations of the League might be
content to have provided protection
against unjustified aggression, and thus
to have diminished immeasureably the
the danger of future wars. This great
primary purpose of International Justice
having been attained by the institution
of International Police-Power, it would
be a matter for discussion whether the
League should go further in developing
effective International Law. It would
be at this stage of the development
of true Internationalism that those who
dread the creation of a Super-State
might properly intervene in the discussion
and take up the defence of the rights
and independence of nations. I, for
one, would urge that we do not need,
and should jealously guard against all
tendencies of the League to assume,
the function of international legislation.
The decisions of the International Court
of Justice would build up a body of
precedents that would in course of time
constitute a body of accepted and
effective International Law. These
decisions would be the result of the
[139]

THE CONQUEST OF WAR

application to particular cases by the
highest judicial minds of the universally
accepted principles of justice. They
would be very different from statutes
passed by a majority vote of an inter-
national parliament subject to all the
chances of party manipulation, and to the
perversions proceeding from national
animus and jealousies and all the turbid
emotions of a great talking-shop.

[140]

TO-DAY AND
TO-MORROW

Each, pott 8vo, boards, 2/6 net

'"PHIS series of books, by some of the
•*• most distinguished English thinkers,
scientists, philosophers, doctors, critics,
and artists, was at once recognized
as a noteworthy event. Written from
various points of view, one book frequently
opposing the argument of another, they
provide the reader with a stimulating
survey of the most modern thought in
many departments of life. Several
volumes are devoted to the future trend
of Civilization, conceived as a whole ;
while others deal with particular pro-
vinces. It is interesting to see in these
neat little volumes, issued at a low price,
the revival of a form of literature, the
Pamphlet, which has been in disuse for
many years.

Published by

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD.
Broadway House : 68-74 Carter Lane, London, E.C.4.

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

FROM THE REVIEWS

Times Literary Supplement : " An entertaining
series."

Specta tor: " Scintillating monographs . ' '

Observer : " There seems no reason why the
brilliant To-day and To-morrow Series should
come to an end for a century of to-morrows.
At first it seemed impossible for the publishers
to keep up the sport through a dozen volumes,
but the series already runs to more than two
score. A remarkable series ..."

Nation : " We are able to peer into the future
by means of that brilliant series [which] will
constitute a precious document upon the
present time." — T. S. Eliot.

Manchester Dispatch : " The more one reads of
these pamphlets, the more avid becomes the
appetite. We hope the list is endless."

Irish Statesman : " Full of lively controversy."

Daily Herald : " This series has given us many
monographs of brilliance and discernment. . . .
The stylistic excellencies of this provocative
series."

Field : " We have long desired to express the
deep admiration felt by every thinking
scholar and worker at the present day for this
series. We must pay tribute to the high
standard of thought and expression they
maintain. As small gift-books, austerely yet
prettily produced, they remain unequalled
of their kind. We can give but the briefest
suggestions of their value to the student,
the politician, and the voter. . . ."

Japan Chronicle : " While cheap prophecy is
a futile thing, wisdom consists largely in
looking forward to consequences. It is this that
makes these books of considerable interest."

Xew York World: "Holds the palm in the
speculative and interpretative thought of the
age."

[2]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW
VOLUMES READY

Daedalus, or Science and the Future.
By J. B. S. HALDANE, Reader in
Biochemistry, University of Cambridge.
Seventh impression.

" A fascinating and daring little book."
— Westminster Gazette. " The essay is brilliant,
sparkling with wit and bristling with
challenges." — British Medical Journal.

" Predicts the most startling changes."
— Morning Post.

Callinicus, a Defence of Chemical War-
fare. By J. B. S. HALDANE. Second
impression.

" Mr Haldane's brilliant study." — Times
Leading Article. " A book to be read by every
intelligent adult."— Spectator. " This brilliant
little monograph." — Daily News.-

Icarus, or the Future of Science. By
BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. Fourth
impression.

"Utter pessimism." — Observer. "Mr
Russell refuses to believe that the progress
of Science must be a boon to mankind." —
Morning Post. " A stimulating book, that
leaves one not at all discouraged." — Daily
Herald.

What I Believe. By BERTRAND RUSSELL,
F.R.S. Third impression.

" One of the most brilliant and thought-
stimulating little books I have read — a better
book even than Icarus." — Nation. " Simply
and brilliantly written." — Nature. " In
stabbing sentences he punctures the bubble of
cruelty, envy, narrowness, and ill-will which
those in authority call their morals." — New
Leader.

[3]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Tantalus, or the Future of Man. By
F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.Sc., Fellow of
Corpus Christ! College, Oxford. Second
impression.

" They are all (Daedalus, Icarus, and
Tantalus) brilliantly clever, and they supple-
ment or correct one another." — Dean Inge,
in Morning Post. " Immensely valuable and
infinitely readable." — Daily News. " The
book of the week." — Spectator.

Cassandra, or the Future of the British
Empire. By F. C. S. SCHILLER, D.Sc.

' ' We commend it to the complacent of all
parties." — Saturday Review. " The book is
small, but very, very weighty ; brilliantly
written, it ought to be read by all shades of
politicians and students of politics." — York-
shire Post. " Yet another addition to that
bright constellation of pamphlets." — Spectator.

Quo Vadimus ? Glimpses of the Future.
By E. E. FOURNIER D'ALBE.D.SC., author
of " Selenium, the Moon Element," etc.
" A wonderful vision of the future. A book
that will be talked about." — Daily Graphic.
" A remarkable contribution to a remarkable
series." — Manchester Dispatch. " Interesting
and singularly plausible." — Daily Telegraph.

Thrasymachus, the Future of Morals.
By C. E. M. JOAD, author of " The
Babbitt Warren,"etc. Second impression.
" His provocative book." — Graphic.
" Written in a style of deliberate brilliance."
— Times Literary Supplement. " As outspoken
and unequivocal a contribution as could well
be imagined. Even those readers who dissent
will be forced to recognize the admirable
clarity with which he states his case. A book
that will startle." — Daily Chronicle.

U]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Lysistrata, or Woman's Future and
Future Woman. By ANTHONY M.
LUDOVICI, author of "A Defence of
Aristocracy," etc. Second Impression.
" A stimulating book. Volumes would be
needed to deal, in the fullness his work pro-
vokes, with all the problems raised." — Sunday
Times. " Pro-feminine but anti-feministic."
— Scotsman. " Full of brilliant common-
sense / ' — Observer.

Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge. By
MRS BERTRAND RUSSELL. With a
frontispiece. Third impression.

An answer to Lysistrata. " A passionate
vindication of the rights of woman." —
Manchester Guardian. " Says a number of
things that sensible women have been wanting
publicly said for a long time." — Daily Herald.

Hephaestus, the Soul of the Machine.
By E. E. FOURNIER D'ALBE, D.Sc.

" A worthy contribution to this interesting
series. A delightful and thought-provoking
essay." — Birmingham Post. " There is a
special pleasure in meeting with a book like
Hephaestus. The author has the merit of really
understanding what he is talking about."
— Engineering. " An exceedingly clever
defence of machinery." — Architects' Journal.

The Passing of the Phantoms : a Study
of Evolutionary Psychology and Morals.
By C. J. PATTEN, Professor of Anatomy,
Sheffield University. With 4 Plates.

" Readers of Daedalus, Icarus and Tantalus,
will be grateful for an excellent presentation
of yet another point of view." — Yorkshire
Post. " This bright and bracing little book."
Literary Guide. " Interesting and original."
— Medical Times.

[5]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

The Mongol in our Midst : a Study of
Man and his Three Faces. By F. G.
CROOKSHANK, M.D., F.R.C.P. With 28
Plates. Second Edition, revised.

" A brilliant piece of speculative induction."
— Saturday Review. " An extremely interest-
ing and suggestive book, which will reward
careful reading." — Sunday Times. " The
pictures carry fearful conviction." — Daily
Herald.

The Conquest of Cancer. By H. W. S.
WRIGHT, M.S., F.R.C.S. Introduction
by F. G. CROOKSHANK, M.D.

" Eminently suitable for general reading.
The problem is fairly and lucidly presented.
One merit of Mr Wright's plan is that he tells
people what, in his judgment, they can best
do, here and now." — From the Introducti

Pygmalion, or the Doctor of the FutiiR .
By R. McNAiR WILSON, M.B.

" Dr Wilson has added a brilliant essay
to this series." — Times Literary Supplement.
" This is a very little book, but there is much
wisdom in it." — Evening Standard. " No
doctor worth his salt would venture to say that
Dr Wilson was wrong." — Daily Herald.

Prometheus, or Biology and the Ad-
vancement of Man. By H. S. JENNINGS,
Professor of Zoology, Johns Hopkins
University.

" This volume is one of the most remarkable
that has yet appeared in this series. Certainly
the information it contains will be new to most
educated laymen. It is essentially a discussion
of ... heredity and environment, and it
clearly establishes the fact that the current
use of these terms has no scientific
justification." — Times Literary Supplement.
"An exceedingly brilliant book." — New Leader.

[6]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Narcissus : an Anatomy of Clothes. By
GERALD HEARD. With 19 illustrations.

"A most suggestive book." — Nation.
" Irresistible. Reading it is like a switchback
journey. Starting from prehistoric times we
rocket down the ages." — Daily News.
" Interesting, provocative, and entertaining.'"
— Queen.

Thamyris, or Is There a Future for
Poetry ? By R. C. TREVELYAN.

" Learned, sensible, and very well- written."
— Affable Hawk, in New Statesman. " Very
suggestive." — /. C. Squire, in Observer.
" A very charming piece of work, I agree
with all, or at any rate, almost all its con-
clusions."— J . St Loe Strachey, in Spectator.

Proteus, or the Future of Intelligence.
By VERNON LEE, author of " Satan the
Waster," etc.

" We should like to follow the author's
suggestions as to the effect of intelligence on
the future of Ethics, Aesthetics, and Manners.
Her book is profoundly stimulating and should
be read by everyone." — Outlook. " A concise,
suggestive piece of work." — Saturday Review.

Timotheus, the Future of the Theatre.
By BONAMY DOBRISE, author of "Restor-
ation Drama," etc.

" A witty, mischievous little book, to be
read with delight." — Times Literary Supple-
ment. " This is a delightfully witty book."
— Scotsman. " In a subtly satirical vein he
visualizes various kinds of theatres in 200 years'
time. His gay little book makes delightful
reading." — Nation.

[7]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Paris, or the Future of War. By Captain
B. H. LIDDELL HART.

" A companion volume to Callinicus.
A gem of close thinking and deduction."
— Observer. " A noteworthy contribution to
a problem of concern to every citizen in this
country." — Daily Chronicle. " There is some
lively thinking about the future of war in
Paris, just added to this set of live-wire
pamphlets on big subjects." — Manchester
Guardian.

Wireless Possibilities. By Professor
A. M. Low. With 4 diagrams.

" As might be expected from an inventor
who is always so fresh, he has many inter-
esting things to say." — Evening Standard.
" The mantle of Blake has fallen upon the
physicists. To them we look for visions, and
we find them in this book."— New Statesman.

Perseus : of Dragons. By H. F. SCOTT
STOKES. With 2 illustrations.

" A diverting little book, chock-full of ideas
Mr Stokes' dragon-lore is both quaint and
various." — Morning Post. " Very amusingly
written, and a mine of curious knowledge for
which the discerning reader will find many
uses." — Glasgow Herald.

Lycurgus, or the Future of Law. By
E. S. P. HAYNES, author of " Concerning
Solicitors," etc.

" An interesting and concisely written book."
— Yorkshire Post. " He roundly declares that
English criminal law is a blend of barbaric
violence, medieval prejudices and modern
fallacies. ... A humane and conscientious
investigation." — T.P.'s Weekly. " A thought-
ful book — deserves careful reading." — Law
Times.

[8]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Euterpe, or the Future of Art. By
LIONEL R. McCoLViN, author of " The
Theory of Book-Selection."

" Discusses briefly, but very suggestively,
the problem of the future of art in relation to
the public." — Saturday Review. " Another
indictment of machinery as a soul-destroyer
... Mr Colvin has the courage to suggest
solutions." — Westminster Gazette. " This is
altogether a much-needed book." — New
Leader.

Pegasus, or Problems of Transport.
By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER, author of
" The Reformation of War," etc. With
8 Plates.

" The foremost military prophet of the day
propounds a solution for industrial and
unemployment problems. It is a bold essay
. . . and calls for the attention of all con-
cerned with imperial problems." — Daily
Telegraph. " Practical, timely, very inter-
esting and very important." — /. St Loe
Strachey, in Spectator.

Atlantis, or America and the Future.
By Colonel J. F. C. FULLER.

" Candid and caustic." — Observer. " Many
hard things have been said about America,
but few quite so bitter and caustic as these."
— Daily Sketch. " He can conjure up possi-
bilities of a new Atlantis." — Clarion.

Midas, or the United States and the
Future. By C. H. BRETHERTON, author
of " The Real Ireland," etc.

A companion volume to Atlantis. " Full of
astute observations and acute reflections . . .
this wise and witty pamphlet, a provocation
to the thought that is creative." — Morning
Post. " A punch in every paragraph. One
could hardly ask for more 'meat."' — Spectator.

[9]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Nuntius, or Advertising and its Future.
By GILBERT RUSSELL.

" Expresses the philosophy of advertising
concisely and well." — Observer. " It is doubt-
ful if a more straightforward exposition of
the part advertising plays in our public and
private life has been written." — Manchester
Guardian.

Birth Control and the State : a Plea
and a Forecast. By C. P. BLACKER,

A/.C., M.A., M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.

" A very careful summary." — Times Literary
Supplement. " A temperate and scholarly
survey of the arguments for and against the
encouragement of the practice of birth control.'
— Lancet. " He writes lucidly, moderately,
and from wide knowledge ; his book un-
doubtedly gives a better understanding of the
subject than any other brief account we know.
It also suggests a policy." — Saturday Review.

Ouroboros, or the Mechanical Extension
of Mankind. By GARET GARRETT.

" This brilliant and provoking little book."
— Observer. " A significant and thoughtful
essay, calculated in parts to make our flesh
creep." — Spectator. brilliant writer, Mr

Garrett is a remarkable man. He explains
something of the enormous change the machine
has made in life." — Daily Express.

Artifex, or the Future of Craftsmanship.
By JOHN GLOAG, author of " Time,
Taste, and Furniture."

" An able and interesting summary of the
history of craftsmanship in the past, a direct
criticism of the present, and at the end his
hopes for the future. Mr Gloag's real con-
tribution to the future of craftsmanship is
his discussion of the uses of machinery."
— Times Literary Supplement.
[10]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Plato's American Republic. By J.

DOUGLAS WOODRUFF. Third impression.

" Uses the form of the Socratic dialogue
with devastating success. A gently malicious
wit sparkles in every page." — Sunday Times.
" Having deliberately set himself an almost
impossible task, has succeeded beyond belief."
— Saturday Review. " Quite the liveliest
even of this spirited series." — Observer.

Orpheus, or the Music of the Future. By
W. J. TURNER, author of " Music and
Life," Second impression.

" A book on music that we can read not
merely once, but twice or thrice. Mr Turner
has given us some of the finest thinking upon
Beethoven that I have ever met with." —
Ernest Newman in Sunday Times. " A
brilliant essay in contemporary philosophy."
— Outlook. " The fruit of real knowledge and
understanding." — New Statesman.

Terpander, or Music and the Future. By
E. J. DENT, author of "Mozart's Operas."
" In Orpheus Mr Turner made a brilliant
voyage in search of first principles. Mr Dent's
book is a skilful review of the development of
music. It is the most succinct and stimulating
essay on music I have found. . . ." — Musical
News. " Remarkably able and stimulating."
— Times Literary Supplement. " There is hardly
another critic alive who could sum up contem-
porary tendencies so neatly." — Spectator.

Sibylla, or the Revival of Prophecy. By
C. A. MACE, University of St. Andrew's.

"An entertaining and instructive pamphlet."
— Morning Post. " Places a nightmare before
us very ably and wittily." — Spectator.
" Passages in it are excellent satire, but on
the whole Mr Mace's speculations may be
taken as a trustworthy guide ... to modern
scientific thought." — Birmingham Post.

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Lucullus, or the Food of the Future. By
OLGA HARTLEY and MRS C. F. LEVEL,
authors of "The Gentle Art of Cookery."
" This is a clever and witty little volume
in an entertaining series, and it makes enchant-
ing reading." — Times Literary Supplement.
" Opens with a brilliant picture of modern
man, living in a vacuum-cleaned, steam-
heated, credit-furnished suburban mansion
' with a wolf in the basement ' — the wolf of
hunger. This banquet of epigrams." —
Spectator.

Procrustes, or the Future of English
Education. By M. ALDERTON PINK.

" Undoubtedly he makes out a very good
case." — Daily Herald. " This interesting
. lition to the series." — Times Educational
Supplement. " Intends to be challenging and
succeeds in being so. All fit readers will find
it stimulating." — Northern Echo.

The Future of Futurism. By JOHN

RODKER.

" Mr Rodker is up-to-the-minute, and he
has accomplished a considerable feat in writing
on such a vague subject, 92 extremely inter-
esting pages." — T. S. Eliot, in Nation.
" There are a good many things in this book
which are of interest." — Times Literary
Supplement.

Pomona, or the Future of English. By
BASIL DE SfiLiNCOURT, author of " The
English Secret ", etc.

" The future of English is discusssed fully
and with fascinating interest." — Morning
Post. " Full of wise thoughts and happy
words." — Times Literary Supplement. " His
later pages must stir the blood of any man
who loves his country and her poetry. /. C.
Squire, in Observer. " His finely-conceived
essay." — Manchester Guardian.
[12]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Balbus, or the Future of Architecture.
By CHRISTIAN BARMAN, editor of " The
Architects' Journal ".

" A really brilliant addition to this already
distinguished series. The reading of Balbus
will give much data for intelligent prophecy,
and incidentally, an hour or so of excellent
entertainment." — Spectator. " Most readable
and reasonable. We can recommend it
warmly." — New Statesman. " This intriguing
little book." — Connoisseur.

Apella, or the Future of the Jews. By
A QUARTERLY REVIEWER.

" Cogent, because of brevity and a magni-
ficent prose style, this book wins our quiet
praise. It is a fine pamphlet, adding to the
value of the series, and should not be missed."
— Spectator. " A notable addition to this
excellent series. His arguments are a provoca-
tion to fruitful thinking." — Morning Post.

The Dance of Qiva, or Life's Unity and
Rhythm. By COLLUM.

" It has substance and thought in it. The
author is very much alive and responsive to
the movements of to-day which seek to unite
the best thought of East and West, and dis-
cusses Mussolini and Jagadis Bose with
perspicacity. ' ' — Spectator.

Lars Porsena, or the Future of Swearing
and Improper Language. By ROBERT
GRAVES. Second impression.,

" Goes uncommonly well, and deserves
to." — Observer. " Not for squeamish readers."
— Spectator. " No more amusingly unexpected
contribution has been made to this series.
A deliciously ironical affair." — Bystander.
" His highly entertaining essay is as full as
the current standard of printers and police
will allow." — New Statesman. " Humour and
style are beyond criticism." — Irish Statesman.

[13]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Socrates, or the Emancipation of Man-
kind. By H. F. CARLILL.

" Devotes a specially lively section to the
herd instinct." — Times. " Emancipation "
comes through knowledge. The process
making for this freedom is described with
wit and sanity in Socrates." — Scotsman.
" Deals with the trend of modern psychology
in a way that grips the interest. We trust
it will gain a wide circulation." — Clarion.

Delphos, or the Future of International
Language. By E. SYLVIA PANKHURST.

" Equal to anything yet produced in this
brilliant series. Miss Pankhurst states very
clearly what all thinking people must soon
come to believe, that an international language
would be one of the greatest assets of modern
civilization." — Spectator. "Very able sum-
mary."— Field. " A most readable book, full
of enthusiasm, an important contribution to
this thorny subject." — Inti, Language

Gallic, or the Tyranny of Science. By
J. W. N. SULLIVAN, author of " A
History of Mathematics."

" One of the best [of the series] we have
seen. Puts the difficulties [for] physical
science with point and wit." — Lancet. " His
remarkable monograph, his devastating sum-
mary of materialism, his insight into the
puerilities of many psycho-analysts. . . .
This pocket Xovum Organum suggests far
more than it states." — Spectator.

Apollonius, or the Future of Psychical
Research. By E. N. BENNETT, author
of " Problems of Village Life," etc.

" A sane, temperate and suggestive survey
of a field of inquiry which is slowly but surely
pushing to the front." — Times Literary Supple-
ment. " His exposition of the case for psychic
research is lucid and interesting." — Scotsman.
" Displays the right temper, admirably con-
ceived, skilfully executed." — Liverpool Post.

[14]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Aeolus, or the Future of the Flying
Machine. By OLIVER STEWART, author
of " Strategy and Tactics of Air
Fighting."

" He is a whole-hogger for the flying age.
But both his wit and his expertness save him
from the nonsensical-fantastic. There is
nothing vague or sloppy in these imaginative
forecasts." — Daily News. " A strong counter-
blast to Neon." — Evening Standard. " He
is to be congratulated. His book is small,
but it is so delightfully funny that it is well
worth the price, and there really are sensible
ideas behind the jesting." — Aeroplane.

JUST PUBLISHED
Janus, or the Conquest of War. By
WILLIAM MCDOUGALL, M.B., F.R.S.,
Professor of Psychology, Harvard Uni-
versity, author of " The Group Mind."
Reviews all the chief causes of war and
shows their roots to lie in the fear of aggression.
Surveys all the more important suggestions
for the avoidance of war, such as education
and popular enlightenment, treaties of arbitra-
tion, reduction of armaments, economic facts,
abolition of nationalism, etc., and shows
them to be either impossible, useless, or
dangerous. Finally recommends an inter-
national air-force as the only remedy and
answers all objections to it.

Stentor, or the Press of To-Day and
To-Morrow. By DAVID OCKHAM.

Shows how since the War the control of the
Press has largely passed into the hands of
only five men. Now that independent organs
of opinion are almost eliminated, the author
discusses the danger to the community unless
the Public is made aware of the personalities
and policies behind the Trusts.

[15]

TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW

Rusticus, or the Future of the Country-
side. By MARTIN S. BRIGGS, F.R.I. B.A.

Attributes much of the blame for the dese-
cration of our countryside to the petrol engine,
though he recognizes other contributory causes.

He attempts to analyse the charm of our
counties before the Industrial Revolution
and shows how that movement influenced
their aspect. Finally he surveys the future,
making practical suggestions.

NEARLY READY

Vulcan, or the Future of Labour. By
CECIL CHISHOLM.

This stimulating book considers industry
from the point of view of methods of efficiency
and industrial organization. The disappear-
ance of the foreman, the one-day week, labour
reprisals, the age of extravagance, are some
of the subjects discussed.

Clio, or the Future of History. By
ANDR£ MAUROIS.

A whimsical and fantastic picture "of the
world in the not-so-far distant future, showing
the power of a world press organization.

IN PREPARATION

Caledonia, or the Future of the Scots.

By G. M. THOMSON.
Lares et Penates, or the Future of the

Home. By H. J. BIRNSTINGL.
Mercurius, or the World on Wings.

By C. THOMPSON WALKER.
The Future of India. By T. EARLE

WELBY.
The Future of Films. By ERNEST

BETTS.

[16]

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

,H&SS

>A

6512