[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—A somewhat ambiguous paragraph
in your article on " A True Policy of Peace " would seem to imply that I would base peace upon a crystallization of the status quo ; and that it is for this reason that I enjoy the dubious honour of quota- tion by the Echo de Paris and the Temps.
I have always taken the, view, and stated it I suppose some scores of times, that the maintenance of the status quo is in- compatible with peace. But what I have insisted upon is that if we regard war by the aggrieved party as a legitimate means of correcting an unjust frontier, as something which we need not be concerned to make as difficult as we can, then we shall certainly get. wars, " just " wars, the outcome of which will he injustice. It seems extraordinarily difficult to make clear the fact that one may condemn the status quo and condemn still more any attempt to alter it by war. To say that any method or noliey of peace must. start from the assumption that war must not be used to alter frontiers, comes near to being a mere truism. When we undertake to make such war as difficult and dangerous as possible, it is not in the last resort frontiers which we zuarantee, but peace.. The distinction, again, is one indispensable to clear thinking and one not always made. One of the main problems of peace—again something I have stated very many times—is to find means of change other than war. Heretofore war has been the first, not the last resort as a means of change. Until war is put out of court altogether, men will continue to look to it as the age-old, familiae„method. If we could make the war of even oppressed states impossiiile, human ingenuity could somehow find other means of redress. But you would distinguish in the degree of energy which we should resist a given war. You say :-
" The legalists are quite prepared for the extension of the Locarno system to the whole of Europe—i.e., the ill-fated Genova Protocol, oblivious of the basic fact that, whereas the Franco-German frontier was freely accepted by Germany—as a sacrifice in the cause of peace—Germany's Eastern frontiers have never been thus volun- tarily accepted. The German pledge is simply that she will not go. to war in order to change those frontiers. Yet change of some sort is inevitable, it is the law of international life, more potent than any juridical contrivance.
You agree that in certain cases—those covered by the Locarno Treaties—this country should commit itself to resist the aggressor, the state which uses war as a means of altering frontiers ; should guarantee peace by " sanctions." But only, you argue, where both parties have so fully accepted the frontiers that no change is even demanded. Where change is demanded and there is some risk of war being invoked, in that case, withdraw your war-forbidding arrangements, be neutral, let the parties concerned be as free of outside interference as possible. The argument really seems to be something like this :- " If a state which has displayed nationalist vindictiveness, as Poland and France have at times, is made secure against attack, it will yield nothing ; its policy will be as provocative as its most nationalist elements care to make it. There will come a point when human nature can stand no more, when an ill-treated nation will fight for sheer justice and we shall be concerned to oppose that fight for right. Fear of attack is the beginning of good political behaviour. Until there is some elementary justice in the existing frontiers let the fear of attack operate."
There is a theoretical case to be made for this view. But in practice the fear of attack is far more likely to act as justifica- tion for strategic frontiers, the inclusion of alien populations. The view that likelihood of war by badly treated states will somehow make for better frontiers seems to me a grave mis- reading, alike of history and political psychology.
As to French approval of anything I have written, I might be disturbed at quotation by the Echo de Paris if I had any consciousness of having shifted my position in the very least since the War. I have always stood for the internationalist solution—for the internationalization of power as the first step to its virtual abolition. The French have moved, in official declaration at least, towards the internationalist posi- tion. We may declare the change hypocritical, designed to mask unavowed intentions ; but there it is. The French are not prepared to abandon power and defence ; neither are we. They are prepared, in some measure, to internationalize alike defence and power. It is an advance upon absolute nationalism.
May I add another personal word ? During the War and in the years immediately after, I was one of those whose oppo- sition to the Allied policy of making France predominant in Europe was condemned with bitter railing as pro-German and anti-French. Any suggestion in those pars that militarism was not something due to special wickedness on the part of the Germans but to the European system, and that France herself might be just as subject to it, was resented with especial bitterness, sometimes by those who to-day can see nothing good in French policy. In view of this very recent past, any charge of pro-French leaning leaves me undisturbed.
—I am, Sir, &c., NORMAN ANGELL. Northey Island, Maldon, Essex.
P.S.—May I suggest that Sir Graham Bower's analogy (drawn in the letter which you publish) between the absence of sanctions behind the judgments of the American Supreme Court and the League's attempt to base the defence of its members upon common instead of isolated action, is utterly invalid ? The American constitution forbade the constituent states to maintain separate armies and navies, and in return the Federal Government undertook their defence. The American Union was based on the principle that an attack upon one was an attack upon all. Thus a state's safety did not depend upon its relative power as against others, but upon the strength of the whole society as against any who might challenge it. Europe, for the limited purposes of defence, is painfully trying to follow American example. But those who would urge the League to adopt the defensive principle which has worked so well with the States of the American union, are, apparently,, to be chluged with " bloodthirstiness." And as to
the bogy of the Super State, does Sir Graham Bower really think that North America would be • a happier place •if no Government had been formed at Washington, and that the English-speaking colonies, like the Spanish-speaking colonies of America, had each attempted to achieve security by its- individual power ?—N.A.
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