THE CABINET AND WAR-AIMS
Sm,—Depressing but hardly convincing—that, I feel, is a not unfair summing-up of your article, "The Cabinet and War-Aims."
We are fighting the second great war in twenty years, yet "it is a mistake to regard the war as imposing. the necessity for fundamental changes in the structure of society. . . ." But for the "ruinous cost" of the last war we should have made greater social progress than has been the case ; and yet at the end of the last war the nation was possessed of wealth-making instruments far greater than had been in existence at the beginning of the struggle. It is because these instru- ments were savagely sabotaged that the record of the post-war years has been so disappointing to liberal-minded men.
Then in the international sphere, you suggest that the League of Nations should be invested with "something more than its former strength," but that we who are fighting for the nations' freedom "cannot impose limits on it." Surely the principal defect of the League was that it was composed of sovereign States, each in the last resort a law unto itself? Are we really fighting to put back the rag-bag of European States, each to be permitted to retain, if it will, its tariffs, its army and its bombing planes?—Yours very truly,
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