Let it not be supposed that I am suggesting that
Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, Isherwood or Auden should return to Great Britain and immediately engage in mortal combat. Mr. Huxley, at least, has always been a convinced pacifist, and I do not for one instant criticise the sincerity of his convictions. Far from it. I am well aware that (but for a strain of obstinacy in my own character plus thirty years spent in studying German psychology and the nature of Germany's ambitions) I might be myself a member of the Peace Pledge Union. But of this I am quite certain, that if I were a pacifist I should be a militant pacifist, and that in times of stress and danger I should not desire to remain outside the conflict. Mr. Huxley was prominent, while still living in this country, as a member of the Peace Pledge Union ; in fact it was he who wrote the drill-book of the organisation. I cannot but feel that if I, by using brilliant powers of dialectic and persuasion, had induced many worthy people to adhere to a cause which is now none too popular in this country I should be anxious, when the moment of acute controversy arose, to be present with my flock.
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