June 12, 1936
Surely this is the supreme question which should engage the thoughts of mankind. Compared with it all other human interests are petty and other topics trivial. Nearly all the countries and most of the people in every country desire above all things to prevent war. And no wonder, since except for a few handfuls of ferocious romanticists, or sordid would-be profiteers, war spells nothing but toil, waste, sorrow and torment to the vast mass of ordinary folk in every land. Why should this horror, which they dread and loathe, be forced upon them? How is it that they have not got the sense and the manhood to stop it? Nowadays the masses have the power in all democratic countries. Even under dictatorships they could easily resume the power, if any large proportion of the individuals of whom these masses are composed singled this issue out among all others and thought, spoke and acted about it in a resolute, and if need be, a self-sacrificing manner.
The modern world presents the extraordinary spectacle of almost everybody wishing to prevent or avoid war, and yet war coming remorselessly nearer to almost everybody. Surely this will be the great mystery which future generations will find among the records, and perhaps the ruins, of our age. 'How was it,' the historians of the future will ask, 'that these vast, fairly intelligent, educated, and on the whole virtuous communities were so helpless and futile as to allow themselves to become the victims of their own processes, and of what they most abhorred?' The answer will be, 'They had no plan.' The thinking people in the different countries could not agree upon a plan; the rest continued to gape and chatter vacuously at the approaching peril until they were devoured by it. They were amused from day to day by an endless flow of headlines about trifles amid which they could not, or did not take the trouble to, discern the root of the matter. We have now gone so far down the slope towards the abyss that very blunt, stern measures will be required. Already the ground is beginning to crumble under our sliding feet. An intense effort must indeed be made. Above all, that effort must be practical. Sentiment by itself is no good; fine speeches are worse than useless; short-sighted optimism is a mischief; smooth, soothing platitudes are a crime.
And here at the outset is a mocking paradox, which seems to rob our collective thought of its logic. No plan for stopping war at this present late hour is of any value unless it has behind it force, and the resolve to use that force. Mere passive resistance by some nations would only precipitate the disaster if others, or their leaders, stood ready to take advantage of it. It is easy to deride the pacifist who is ready to fight for peace. None the less, safety will only come through a combination of pacific nations armed with overwhelming power, and capable of the same infinity of sacrifice, and indeed of the ruthlessness, which hitherto have been the attributes of the warrior mind. The scales of Justice are vain without her sword. Peace in her present plight must have her constables. To bring the matter to an agate point, there must be a Grand Alliance of all the nations who wish for peace against the Potential Aggressor, whoever he may be.[4] Let us, therefore, without delay make this Grand Alliance.
Let all the nations and States be invited to band themselves together upon a simple, single principle: 'Who touches one, touches all.' Who attacks any, will be resisted by all, and resisted with such wrath and apparatus, with such comradeship and hearty zeal, that the very prospect may by its formidable majesty perhaps avert the crime.
Surely there is no other saving thought in the world but this. But how to convert it into reality? 'There's the rub!' What happened to the Negus of Abyssinia when he invoked the sanctity of treaties, and the faith of governments who had admitted him to their pacts? What moral is to be drawn from his melancholy fate? Surely not the moral that the principle of mutual aid was wrong, but rather that the will to enforce it was lacking. To abandon the principle in despair of its efficacy in other circumstances may well be to condemn ourselves to a similar but immeasurably magnified doom. The moral is surely to take steps forthwith to ensure that next time neither the will nor the means will be lacking.
It must be observed that the Potential Aggressor presents himself in different forms to different countries-some fear one, some fear another; that some in each case are near to danger, others some distance from it, others again far off. Theorists would claim that all shall be equally bound in principle and in degree in every case. To ask this is to demand more than mankind in its present development can sustain. To press the theme so far is to divorce it from reality. There must not only be regional pacts, but zones of different though defined responsibility. In the front line, pledged to all the necessary measures, well-equipped, strictly combined, stand those who dwell nearest to the Potential Aggressor; in the second line those likely to be next affected, or indirectly affected, by his aggression. Farther off, and least heavily committed, will be the States who, while they do not fear this particular Potential Aggressor, nevertheless realise that some day, in a different set of circumstances, their turn may come.
To weave together the various regional pacts into one world-wide organism, with the engagement of each nation prescribed according to the occasion, with all the necessary preparations made by each faithful member, presents itself as an immediate, inexorable task. Difficulties must not affright us. If some stand out, all the more must the others be banded together. All the more thoroughly must they be prepared. For what is the alternative? The alternative is being destroyed one by one. When war breaks out who shall say when and where it will stop? Therefore a speedy and genuine organisation of the maximum force against Potential Aggressors by a series of regional pacts included in a Grand Alliance or League offers us the sole hope of preventing war or of preventing, if war should come, the ruin of those who have done no wrong.
