PUBLIC OPINION AND THE ECONOMIC BOYCOTT
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In your brief answer to my letter you tacitly withdraw from the racialist position you had taken up—namely, that what was unjustifiable for Mr. Herbert Morrison was justifiable for the leaders of the Jewish community. But in letting Hitlerism out by the back door you throw the door wide open for him in the front.
You lay it down that all organized action by non-official agencies in these matters is to be deprecated and that every- thing is to be left to the League. This has a fine progressive ring about it : but in practice it can only mean one of two, things. Either the League will act over the heads of the peoples of the component States : in that case you will have installed a new leviathan, a Totalitarian World-State, in the City of Calvin. Or the League will not act at all, since the pressure from organized voluntary groups, which constitutes the driving force of public opinion in all truly democratic countries, will not be forthcoming.
It is hardly necessary to remind you that it is along the second line that matters will actually work themselves out and that, in default of organized action to secure its enforce- ment, Article XVI of the Covenant is bound to remain no more than a decorative façade for a defeatist argument. But the other alternative implicit in your argument is worth dragging out into the open, because it shows how subtle and pervasive, even in liberal circles, is the influence of Continental doctrines of absolutism.
When a journal like The Spectator argues after this fashion it is time to look carefully into the intellectual foundations of the Peace Movement.—Yours, &c.,
ALFRED ZIMMERN.
[" The other alternative" never was implicit in our argu- ment. We entirely agree that Government action under Art. XVI of the Covenant should be supported, and if need be stimulated, by an organized public opinion. But what has that to do with the question of a boycott against a State whose domestic system is disapproved ?—En. The Spectator.]
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