LETTERS TO THE EDITOR [Correspondents are requested to keep their
letters as brief as is reasonably possible. Signed letters are given a preference over those bearing a pseudonym, and the latter must be accompanied by the name and address of the author, which will be treated as confidential.—Ed. THE SPECrATORJ WAR AIMS SIR,—Is not the disagreement on this subject due largely to a confusion of thought? Some assert that we are fighting
for our existence as a Great Power ; others that our sole aim is to crush Hitlerism ; still others that we must plan for a new world-order. But all these aims are not only com- patible but interrelated. We must crush Hitlerism if we are to survive ; and we must envisage new international machi- nery if we are to avoid the later rebirth of Hitlerism or similar dangerous movements.
In the first place, the world situation, economically as well as politically, has moved on to a phase where it is no longer
possible to maintain Sir John Marriott's thesis that every nation has the complete right to decide on its own form of Government and other matters of internal policy. It is no
longer possible to draw a sharp line between internal and external policy. The Nazi regime assert that their perse- cution of the Jews and other minorities is a purely domestic matter. It is not : through their action the Jewish and the general refugee problems have become matters of grave international concern. If German diplomacy were to secure, say, the establishment of a Rexist Government in Belgium, it would be futile to regard this solely as a Belgian domestic matter: in fact, totalitarian policy has often been directed to securing just such apparently " domestic " alterations in the affairs of other countries.
In the second place, the failure of the League must not deter us from envisaging, as final goal, some form of inter- national machinery designed to prevent war and to promote co-operation and social advance in Europe. The new tech- nique of nationalism developed by Nazi Germany equips the sovereign nation-State with enormously increased power. When the function of the State was confined to foreign and military affairs and the maintenance of internal law and order, the systcm of nation-States operating in a balance of power was adequate. But the Nazi nation-State controls public opinion and economic and social affairs as well. It would seem impossible for States enjoying such an enormous poten- tial of power to co-exist in the narrow confines of Europe on the basis of full sovereignty and the balance of power. One alternative is to aim at a dismemberment of Germany so complete that it would be generations before the fragments could reunite and recreate a nation-State of the same dangerous type. The other is to plan for an extension of international machinery, economic and social as well as political, coupled with some surrender of complete national sovereignty, which would be the first step towards federalism.
The dangers and limitations of the former course seem obvious, partly because it would encourage the spirit of revenge, and still more because it does not attempt to re- move the causes of such movements as the rise of Hitlerism. The failure of the League is generally agreed to be due to two main causes. First, its concentration on the purely political machinery of internationalism, while making no pro- vision for corresponding systems in the economic and social spheres. Secondly, the fact that it was rooted in the principle of self-determination without any real diminution of national sovereignty, resulting in an encouragement of nationalism and the balkanisation of much of Europe.
Our ultimate war aims should therefore be based on the goal of a long-range settlement for Europe which would pre- vent the recurrence of situations like the present, as well as liquidating the Nazi regime. They must therefore include plans for an incipient federalisation of Western Europe. This would involve arrangements for an internationalised civil aviation service ; either an adequate disarmament scheme or a pooling of armed forces in an international police force (either step being now more practicable owing to the dis- parity of. speed between civil and military aircraft making it useless to convert civil machines into bombers); the setting up of unified economic as well as political institutions on an
international basis ; compulsory third-party arbitration in disputes between nations ; inter-availability of medical and other professional qualifications, of patents, &c., within the federation, together with large-scale educational and research interchange ; the safeguarding of political, national and racial minorities and the settlement of the refugee and migration problems ; the pooling of non-self-governing colonial posses- sions under the federation, posts in the administrative and technical services being open to nationals of any country within the federatiorr, and the general principles applying to mandated territories being observed ; and agreement as to the degree to which full national sovereignty will have to be cur- tailed to make the scheme workable. The economic and colonial provisions would seem to be specially important.
Britain and France have announced their intention of act- ing as a single unit during this War. During the last War inter-Allied control radically curtailed national sovereignty in many spheres:• It is absurd to suppose that measures con- ducive to efficiency in war cannot be modified to secure effi- ciency in preventing future war and in promoting the civilised activities of peace.
Western Europe is still the seat of the highest and most influential culture in the world. The Nazi system runs counter to the current of that culture. We are fighting for Western civilisation—negatively, by aiming at the destruction of Hitlerism ; and we shall be doing so, positively, if we also aim to prevent the fragmentation of that civilisation by too rigid adherence to the outworn framework of complete national sovereignty, and to promote its advance by inter- national machinery specifically designed to increase health, standard of living, trade, and general culture. If we do this we shall secure the immediate and valuable adherence of most neutral countries to our programme.
There is finally an immediate point. It has been widely asserted that, if Poland is overrun, Hitler will propose a Peace Conference. We have stated that we shall not make terms with Hitlerism. Can we not go further and make plain on what terms we would be willing to enter a Conference with some other representative of Germany than Hitler— terms which would involve the negation of Hitlerism, such as the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Poland, the hold- ing of the Conference on neutral soil under the chairmanship of some important neutral statesman, and presumably with the co-operation of neutral Powers, the liberation of terri- tories now dominated by force, and the setting up of inter- national machinery for preventing the aggressive use of force in the future, whether externally by arms or internally by
persecution?—Yours faithfully, JuLtax Hum-Ev. Zoological Society of London, Regent's Park. N.W. 8.
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