Sig,—In your issue of December t3th Dr. L. P. Jacks
returns to his insistence on the urgency of a statement of our war aims, in spite of the Prime Minister's well-considered decision. But this time he feels the statement should be implemented with a " sample." It seems that he has not looked very far for answers to the questions he puts.
Hitler has not waited till after victory to begin the creation of his so-called " new order " because he has overrun other peoples' countries and has had to impose some sort of order for the chaos he brought to them. The new order is nothing but the order of the conqueror to the slaves he proposes to exploit. It is Pan-Germanism according to the most primitive conception of empire, and takes no thought whatsoever for the rights or interests of the enslaved peoples. To us, the one unconquered enemy, he has offered no new order, unless direful threats of extermination can be so termed. We, on the other hand, have as yet conquered no enemies upon whom to impose a new order, even if coercion were our method. I believe there is plenty of evidence that only where the Dictator embargo on truth is enforced is there not full knowledge of our aims.
Why, Dr. Jacks asks, are we waiting to create a better order than Hitler's? I submit that we are not waiting. The " sample" is there before the world in full working order. Has he never heard of the British Commonwealth of Nations? It-embodies, I venture to claim, the most dignified, successful and ideal order of international relations ship yet conceived and put into practice. Why, as Mr.-A. P. Herbert asked in a B.B.C. Postscript, should we be ashamed to state that our war aim is to make that and any other grouping of free nations (where war is also eliminated as the arbiter of destiny) possible?
And on what grounds does Dr.. Jacks so despise the general terms " freedom," " justice," "co-operation " and " democracy "? Aims at this stage of the war must surely be only general (Hitler's threats to us are general, too), and are not to be condemned merely because they are oft-repeated, as though in a Bloomsbury coterie in peace-time.
As for the plea that The Spectator should have given the date to which " after victory " refers, it sounds pure Hitlerism. But pre- sumably it is in line with the strange hypothesis that we have no alternative new order to Hitler's, that he has created one " before" the victory he hopes for, &c., &c.
Only when this cancer of reversion to the primitive tyrannies of soi-disant supermen is completely eradicated can any honest new order hope to flourish. The attainment of that aim, I maintain, will be a new order in itself, and blessedly sufficient for the day.—I am,
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