WHAT SHOULD WE FIGHT FOR ? II
By A. L. ROWSE
[This is the second of a series of articles on the conditions under which military action by this country would be justified. Next week's article is by Lord Beaverbrook.] HAVE been asked as, I suppose, a young man of 1 military age who is also a Labour candidate, to answer this question. It is a very difficult one ; it is perhaps impossible to give a general answer, valid for all circumstances : the matter depends so much upon particular contingencies. There is, for example, the ambiguity in the question, " what should we fight for ? " Who are " we " ?
All we who are socialists are convinced that there is no hope of any international order which can secure peace in the world except through the victory of socialism ; that all hope of peace is indissolubly bound up with socialism ; that there can be no peace unless the forces of the Left are to win. I do not wish to argue this proposition here and now ; this is not the place to do so, though I am always ready to defend it and have done so in various writings. But it is not a merely emotional conviction, it is an intellectual one, based upon considerations of an economic and political order, no less than psychological and cultural. In fact, I may say in passing, that for myself I can hardly conceive the state of mind of those people (though I know only too well the considerations that move them) who cannot or will not see the plain evidence written across the face of Europe and indeed the world, since the War, that there is no hope whatever of peace so long as the existing economic and political order maintains its hold, so long as the rule of the upper classes lasts. The evidences are only too plain: "Look at circumstantials," said Cromwell : " They hang so together ! "
The relevance of all this is that to a socialist the answer is plain and easy : since we are convinced that socialism is the only hope (in a political sense) of a world worth living in, we are prepared to fight for what advances the cause of socialism. We have no difficulty or hesitation there.
But we are not living in a socialist world—though the forces of socialism have a very important part in it; nor is this country socialist. We are then here in a region not of certainty, nor of plain straightforward choices, but of checks and counter-balances, of the calculation of forces, of expediency ; a region of probabilities, where obligations are a question of degree.
In a general way, the right line for a socialist is to take that course of action which most advances the cause of socialism. In contemporary Europe, and the world at large, the gravest danger to socialism, as to the hope of any secure peace, comes from the forces of Fascism, strong in most countries, entrenched in absolute power in some. Anybody ought to be able to see that, and to see further that the more the forces of reaction win, with every step we are precipitated nearer to war. It is the common interest both of socialists and of those who wish to maintain peace, therefore, to form such an overwhelm- ing collective organisation in the world that the forces of disruption and nationalist-Fascist anarchy may not break through and render the world intolerable to live in with their ceaseless propagation of a war-mentality. And, if necessary, it is our duty to fight for it.
But on terms. The terms are that the proper objects of that collective organisation to maintain peace are not thwarted and frustrated at every turn by duplicity or incompetence, but are sincerely and straightforwardly held to. Take the case of the Labour Movement in this country. It will be generally agreed that no war can now be fought by this country unless it has the full par7 ticipation and the agreed will of the Labour Movement behind it. In the great test of collective security which tame last year over Abyssinia, the Labour Movement, which took a line which was in accordance with the inter- ests both of this country and of the collective system, and was prepared to implement their obligations, was fraudulently " sold " by the Government. That at any rate—I am not arguing it, I am merely stating itis the opinion held throughout the Labour Movement.
It has meant a great growth of opinion in favour of a " war-resistance " policy. It means, moreover, that nobody in the Labour Movement—the position has been stated in so many words by Mr. Attlee—would be prepared to fight in a war which was conducted by the present Government as it now stands, for whatever purposes. Apart from the less important consideration, for it is not one of principle, that we have no confidence whatever in the ability of such a collection of crocks and incompetents to direct the policy of this country, let alone run a war— there has never been such an incompetent Government, so incapable of leadership, since the days of Addington or Goderich ; apart from that, they cannot be trusted : they have gone back upon their obligations.
No doubt if a real crisis arises, and we are involved in a war, and the war is in pursuance of our obligation to main- tain such a collective organisation that the disruptive forces of nationalist anarchy shall not break through suc- cessfully and remake the world to worse than before—no doubt in that day and to meet that need, a real govern- ment of the nation would arise in which Labour would claim at least an equal share in determining the objects for which this country fought and the conduct of the war. In that case circumstances would be assimila ble to the first case that I put ; and the answer whether we should fight or no, might be given with not less certainty.
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