War - Aims and Peace - Purposes No subject requires clarity of discussion more
than the ques- tion of reconstruction, international and national, after the war, and nothing will make more for such clarity than the obser- vance of a right distinction between war aims and peace pur- Poses. Mr. H. G. Wells has recently committed himself to the surprising statement that we are fighting with no clear definition of what it is we fight for and what it is all about. That may describe Mr. Wells's state of mind, but it can hardly describe anyone else's. Our war-aims are perhaps clearer than in any other war we have ever fought. We went into the war to prevent the domination of Europe by one acquisitive and aggressive State, and our aim is simply to beat back the armies of that State behind their legitimate frontiers. War-aims are too plain to be even discussed. But the war will leave Europe, and our own country as much as any, in very different state from its state in August, 1939. It will create immense problems, lay on every Government immense responsibilities, and impose on individual citizens immense sacrifices. We shall have largely to create a new world, and our supreme peace-purpose must be to make the best we can of that intimidating task. It was not a war-aim. We did not go to war to change existing con- ditions. We actually went to war to prevent the change of many ,-onditions which Hitler was attempting to change. We shall have to restore some things—the freedom of subjugated States, for example—while we reconstruct others. But while we are carrying out our war-aims we must be thinking out our Pexe-purposes. It is not at all too soon to start.
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