Evening star., 1934-10-07


cuss whether we accept the most IA
any man really doubts that he would be
acting like a man If he struck another
man under certain special circumstances.
For my own doubt Is whether the ex-
treme tone of pacifism Is likely to be
favorable to peace. There Is a sort Of
little trick, or snag, in the ordinary
pacifist way Of discussing and denounc-
ing all wars which seems to me most
likely to produce more wars. I have
never seen the point noted anywhere,
yet it strikes me as very obvious.
There seems to be an attempt to
make the very word war" not only
blasphemous but obscene. 1t is as If
the fact of fighting were to become not
only unjustifable, but unmentionable.
! heard that some had proposed that the
word "hell" should actually be substi-
tuted everywhere for the word war;
which would surely be very distressing
to the liberal theologians.
Thus we should read in some sober
and precise history of England, about the
Crimean crisis: cat this point Lord
Aberdeen somewhat reluctantly decided
to go to hell" Or, in the standard
works on the breakdown of diplomacy
in 1914, we should read: Placed in this
delicate situation, Sir Edward Grey con-
sidered that his only course was to go
to hell with the German Emperor, who
had already himself gone to hell with
the Russian Car and the President Of
the French Republic" Properly ma
nipulated, it might produce some pic
turesque and surprising verbal effects;
but whether it would in fact prevent
somebody like Sir Edward Grey from
behaving in the same manner, If placed
in the same position, I am not so sure.
There is, however, a much stronger
case against what may call the un-
discrimination of war than there Is
against this rather unbalanced scheme
of synonyms for war. For the mere
proposal to forget the wars of the past
has a direct tendency to encourage the
wars of the future. 1t is the whole point
of such pacifism that it almost always
insists on blaming everybody-that Is,
ON blaming nobody. After every war 1t
would wash the slate clean and let
everybody start again clear. But that
obviously means letting everybody start
again assaulting his neighbors. Many
man would assault his neighbor (the
irritating neighbor with the banjo or
the staggering neighbor with the
japanese parasoD if he were absolutely
certain that after the general dust-up
the neighbor would be quite as much
blamed for being assaulted as he himself
would be blamed for assault.
These moralists are very fond of say
ing that we no longer settle private
quarrels by duels, and should no longer
settle public quarrels by wars. They say
1t Is absurd that we cannot keep the
peace between civilizations when we do
keep the peace between citizens. But
how do we keep the peace between citi-
sens? Not by washing the slate clean;
not by saying it was six to one and half
q dozen to the other; not by saying that
the disgrace belongs to all the fighters
boleiy because they were fighting. We
do not wind up the case by saying that
Ill the htigants must be wrong because
they are engaged in the crime Of htiga-
ton. We do not say that law is hell.
We keep the peace only by the painful
and laborious process of going into the
moral merits of every case in turn.
THIS is worth noting, because some
u pacifasts are justly angry with
baser and more brutal school Of anti