A necessary war
Sir: Allan Massie's conclusion that Britain should not have taken part in the first World war (The war for a worse world', 7 November) is very, persuasive. Nonetheless, I wonder whether the world would neces- sarily, as a result, now be a better place. Industrial nations could still have been vulnerable to catastrophes like the Great Depression. Men would still have been vul- nerable to the appeal of demagogues. Marx- 'sal would still have had a powerful appeal to. the disaffected, and the ruthless would still have found it a convenient tool to get and keep power. Mass murder would still have appealed to extremists and psy- chopaths of every persuasion. Granted, the world might have been spared Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot (to name only three), but who is to say that there would not have been oth- ers, if not in Russia, Germany and Cambo- dia then elsewhere, of similar propensities?
One benefit that may have come out of this century — though at a terrible price is that Marxism was able to run its course and demonstrate its failure as an ideology. Without that failure, the lesson might still be waiting to be learned.
H.M. Thornton
3031 Westdown Road, Victoria, BC, Canada
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