What Shall We Fight ?
pi-Iwo plays now running in London, and Mr. Wells' recent film scenario, challenge us to think out the problems of peace to their very end. We ask ourselves, first, if the last War was any criterion of what would happen in a future war, and secondly, whether we wish to turn our fighting instincts into useful channels, or hope to suppress them altogether ?
- The Rumour and Journey's End teach us that the last War was a wasteful and disgusting business, in its origins, conduct, and conclusions. That is a lesson my generation has learned in bitterness and which it is doubtless useful to recapitulate. The lice, the boredom and the fright of the rat-ridden trenches, the hopeless raids, the general demoralization portrayed in Journey's End are vivid enough, but already they belong to another age. "The next war," if it ever comes, will be quite different. Damocles. to-day- needs a gas mask, not a tin hat, not only for himself but for his sisters and cousins and aunts. There must be even less glamour in "the next war," and more _fright and boredom, but the extremely im- portant difference would be this—that it would be a war of populations, not armies. The directors of it, remote from the slaughter, would move and mate and slay on a chess- board in a cellar. I saw them practising it last summer, during the air manoeuvres, in an operation room—tired staff officers, notebook in hand, sitting like gnomes in a gallery overlooking a large map, on which equally tired telephonists were moving counters that represented bombing squadrons and scout defenders. It was all extremely efficient—and tiresome. Not the bravest, but the best organized and most ruthless race would win " the next war "—a war, presumably, to make the world safe for Robots. Even in the air, where knightly encounters may still be possible, I doubt if the average pilot, a mere unit in his flight, would need much more than technical ability. He could hardly turn tail out of his formation. Nor can the crew of a bomber or submarine display much initiative. If someone could show on a stage or screen what every pilot or poison gas expert knows about up-to- date warfare, the common sense of mankind would insist on some other method of settling disputes.
But the common sense of mankind cannot change the order, of Nature. We have been equipped with biological weapons which cannot be converted into ploughshares, like our swords. . Whatev,er our aspirations to peace, our supra-renal glands will continue to do their work. Are we to co-operate with our body, or work against it ? Are we to find-jobs for the ape and tiger in us or to push them down the trapdoor of the Unconscious ?
Do we who remember the outbreak of the Great War believe that either side could have stopped it ? Is it not the truth that the plain sensible men and women of every nation, while, disliking bloodshed, felt that it was in- evitable ? Why we felt like this, why we all waited for Mr. Asquith's declaration in an agony of suspense is not to be explained simply. There was, I think, a deep need for change in the psychology of Europe. We were tired of our workaday tasks. They were not exciting enough. To blame the politicians or the Press of any ‘ country (or of all countries) for the War is too easy a judgment to be sound. Newspapers and Parliaments more than ever reflect the mind of the man in the street. We are governed as we deserve, read the news the majority of us demand, fight the wars we want. How public opinion is formed neither I nor any man knows, but to assume that it is always or often swayed by news- papers with big circulations and orators with popular appeal is to misunderstand all the teachings of contem- porary history. There is a collective mind and a national spirit working in us all, and the Great War was entered upon with the enthusiastic approval of most of -the people who were going to be killed in it. If this could happen in 1914, is it not very possible that it will occur again in 1961 ? The League of Nations is a splendid instrument, a supreme achievement of human reason, but, after all, it is only an instrument of international contact—like trade and travel. Of themselves they do not bring peace ; they have to be vitalized by the human spirit. The League is a thing out of the brains of men : it is their bowels that sway great national issues. Instinct is dynamite. The atavisms we all nurse in the nebulous region which is seven-eighths of our mental make-up are still capable of blowing civilization sky-high.
Mr. Munro shows us in his play how rumour may un- leash the furies of hell. The strength of his work lies in the fact that the situation develops in a natural way, with no propaganda bias, no attempt to chloroform the lion so that he shall lie down with the lamb. He shows us that conflict is a law of life, and all of us who look on the League of Nations as the hope of the world should bear this in mind.
If we seek to suppress conflict instead of sublimating it in our lives we sow dragons' teeth. Similarly, if we paint for our children an ideal world where nothing more exciting is ever to happen than a tiff over the tea-tables of international councillors, we shall be laying down not pillars of peace, but casks of tri-nitro-toluene. The whole negative attitude towards war is wrong. Men and women must and should fight, not necessarily each other, but something. Conflict there must be. The big question to- day is, what shall we fight ? M. Andre Maurois, in a skit on the subject, suggested that the nations of the earth (since they would certainly remain bellicose) should have their energies directed harmlessly against the Moon. There are, however, many objects nearer to us which need taming or regulating.
Absolute peace is not meant for earthly creatures.
Here and now every healthy man, woman, and child enjoys a good fight. We want relative peace, so that we can wage war on something more exciting than our own kind, who are never convinced by being killed, and who are so capable nowadays of retaliating with a hideous to quoque. Might it not be possible (I know it would be hard, but if we are to have peace propaganda it should be of the kind that will stand the clear-eyed criticism of another couple of generations : much of the present pap of pacifists will not) to infuse the glamour of a crusade into the advancement of knowledge and to invest the march of science with the " same sudden and collective intoxication " that sent us trenchwards to the strains of " Tipperary " ?
F. YEATS-BROWN.
Previous page
