AFTER VICTORY SIR, —Dr. Shackleton Bailey's letter charges Lord Cecil with
idealism, a crime of which few, alas! today are guilty. But his suggestion that the chief cause of the present war was a lack of realism can scarcely be substantiated. After the last war two courses were open for the victorious countries to take. They could act upon the principle " Si vis pacem, pars bellum" and make such preparations as to ensure that if (or when) war came again they would again be vic- torious ; or they could try to remove the causes which would make for another was. It is interesting to note what has happened to the two countries. which wholeheartedly and almost from the first adopted the first course, France and Italy. France never even pretended to disarm, never lost a chance of making Germany's position difficult and expended enormous sums of money in building the Maginot Line; from the first, in fact, she adopted that very policy of realism which Dr. Bailey advocates. After twenty years war comes, and it is universally admitted that, unprepared as we were, France was in an infinitely worse state of preparation. Having been dominated by the spirit of realism, which in her case was something very like fear, she had no idealistic principles to support her morale, and her twenty years of preparation collapsed in six weeks. Italy, since the march on Rome, has scarcely pretended to prefer peace, to victorious war, and for many years she has devoted her energies almost exclusively to putting herself in the position to obtain military victories. Here it is ambition that has ousted idealism, but ambition has not sufficed to create a " will to win," and Italy's present position is a poor advertisement for the policy of Fascism.
Unhappily it is impossible to find a case where a nation has unreservedly adopted the second of the courses above mentioned. This country has from time to time played with the idea of collective security, but when an irrevocable step has had to be taken, as in the matters of Manchukuo or Abyssinia, she has always given way. Such a half-hearted policy could not be expected to succeed, and many followers and admirers of Lord Cecil must have felt that the policy of full time rearmament when it was finally adopted was far prefer- able to one which combined the disadvantages of both rearmament and disarmament without their advantages. But how infinitely better would have been a consistent policy of disarmament and a genuine support of the principles of the League of Nations instead of the lip-service which was all it received. Once, and once only, in a crisis of the first magnitude, did this country make an effort in support of those principles, and when sanctions were proclaimed against Italy almost every civilised nation was prepared to follow our .lead. But unhappily our Foreign Secretary had not the full support of the Cabinet behind him, and it is not surprising that the actual applica- tion of sanctions was a farce when a leading member of the Cabinet openly declared that that policy, in which he himself had concurred, was " the midsummer of madness."
In so far as realism means the difference between victory and defeat in this war, let us by all means have realism ; but, in so far as idealism opens the way—the only possible way—to a future where
we may contemplate the possibility of no more war, let us thank God for Lord Cecil and Mr. Eden and others who have the vision of a new and better world, and let us do our very utmost to help them to achieve it for us all.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
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