The Next War
What Would be the Character of a New War ? By Sir'Norman Angell and 17 others. (Gollancr. 5s.)
IT was a sound idea to issue this book—a small edition of which was published fifteen months ago on behalf of the Inter-Parliamentary Union—in a form and at a price which will make it accessible to the general public. It was with a view to the approaching discussions of disarma- ment that the Union instituted an inquiry into the nature of a future war, inviting " military men, economists, financiers, scientists, jurists, psychologists and specialists in demo- graphy " to state their opinions freely, " guided only by their professional conscience." Here we have Englishmen, French- men, Germans, Americans, Japanese and others skilled in the science of war, and in the sciences which may contribute to war, setting down in cold blood their accounts, so far as they can foresee it, of what the next conflagration will be. It is not a case of an H. G. Wells drawing on his imagination in picturing a World War, but experts making deductions from known
data.
The facts from which they start are those established by experience of the Great War and subsequent advances in mechanization and chemical discovery. There have been increases in the means of destruction in every direction. The destructive power of air attacks, whether directed upon fortifications, bases, or the civilian population, is already a hundred times greater than in the World War. Guns are more powerful. Tanks are more mobile. Mechanized trans- port makes for greater speed. Poison gases have been per- fected in the laboratory and are capable of being worked up in secret to a series of new types which would produce casual- ties " with great moral effect " on a possibly " totally un- protected enemy." Bacteriological warfare spreading deadly epidemics is a possibility, as is also the " subtle bombardment of the human organism " by forms of energy evolved by
electricity.
Nor will it any longer be primarily the soldiers in the field who will suffer from these wholesale refinements of barbarity. There is some difference of opinion as to the number of effectives in the front line of fighting who will be required in the modern mechanized army. General Requin points out that vast numbers of reserves will be needed owing to the fact that troops engaged with the enemy will be rapidly used up. General von Metzsch says that" the actual number of soldiers
will grow proportionately less as the technical perfection of arms develops." But all agree that the whole nation will be Involved in the conflict. Every town will be a fortress required to defend itself against air attack and poison gas. The war will be a siege in which the besieged place will be the entire country ; and the effect of a siege, as Professor Mayer points out, " has always been great destruction and sometimes the total wiping out of a city."
The next war will take the form, says Dr. Woker, of " mass murder of the civilian population." This will be logically justified by the fact that the whole nation will be mobilized for the purposes of war, the " war potential " of a country consisting not merely of armies and arms, but transport, industries, material resources, communications, and money power. And since the nations recognize that equipment for war depends on equipment in peace—especially the equipment of factories engaged in the mechanical and chemical industries —each of them regards economic self-sufficiency as a condition of security. Hence the insistence on protection of industries for which certain countries have no special aptitude, and suicidal tariff wars. Meantime the armanent firms flourish and carry on their insidious propaganda :
Each time there is a promise of a rapprochement (says M. Delaisi) between France and England, Belgium and Holland, Germany and Poland, Russia and England, &c., just at the psycho- logical moment a ' confidential ' or secret ' document escapes from the military or diplomatic archives of one of the Powers concerned and finds its way into the Press of the other, with a view to showing the duplicity of the first."
The authors do not think it necessary to point the moral to which their analysis leads. The preparations for war and the Disarmament Conference are continuing side by side. The public, reading this book, is provided with an excellent opportunity for judging which method of security is the
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