" DOGS OF WAR " [To the Editor of THE
SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Although I heartily dislike putting critics in their places, there are some forms of insult which cannot be passed over in silence. Professor Alfred Zimmern delivered himself of such an insult in his review of Major Yeats-Brown's Dogs of War which is an attempt to answer my own book Cry Havoc. In this review, he said : " Major Yeats-Brown makes easy play with Mr. Beverley Nichols, whose white flag brand of pacifism never represented more than a Passing mood."
Here are some facts which will illustrate the extent to which my pacifism is "'a passing mood."
1. In the year 1927, at Cambridge, I debated with G. K. Chesterton the motion " That this house is for peace at any price."
2. In a book called The Star Spangled Manner, published in September, 1928, the entire emotional framework of Cry Havoc is foreshadowed in several pages. In fact, some of the most quoted passages in Cry Havoc are almost literal tran- scriptions from The Star Spangled Manner.
3. During the next five years, in the face of very consider- able hostility from many quarters, I was incessantly working in the cause of peace, not only in England, but in France and Germany. I will not bore your readers with an account of these - activities.- There is plenty of evidence of them in the files of the daily Press.
Cry Havoc took me altogether about a year to write, although it was simmering in my head for some ten years. It represents the deepest conviction which a man can hold. I am not writing this in praise of my own book, but as an answer to a cruel and libellous sneer.
Two other points may be mentioned. When Professor Zimmern speaks of my pacifism as of " a white flag brand," he shows that he has not read Cry Havoc, because the ultimate conclusion of that book, which is stated with the utmost force, is that passive resistance will not work. Secondly in his assumption that my book is " an irresponsible and frivolous form of document," I would point out that it is being used in thousands of schools all over the world. For example, the Government of Canada alone has issued orders to make the study of the book compulsory in 8,000 schools throughout the Dominion. I understand that similar orders are likely to be issued, at an early date, in many other parts of the British Empire.—I am, Sir, &c., 6 New Street, Westminster, S.W. 1. BEVERLEY Maims.
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