A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
SO far as it goes there is a good deal to be said for Lord Beaverbrook's resolute exposure of the horrors of war. The pictures which the Daily Express has been publishing daily achieve their purpose in revealing, as descriptions in words can never fully do, the stark loathsomeness of modern warfare—and it would have been easy to tell the same story about warfare of any period. But the moral drawn is wrong all the way. War will go on, the argument runs ; conspiracies are hatching at this moment that will plunge the Continent in blood ; but at any cost the British Empire must keep out of it ; remember the pictures of war and keep the Empire clear of it. That is all wrong—hopelessly wrong. The right moral is—if war is what these pictures show, we must clear the world, not merely the Empire, of war. There must, in a word, be no war. Fifty years ago the Beaverbrook propaganda would have been well enough. Today, when at least a systematic and organized attempt is being made to clear the world of war, a campaign to clear only part of it and let the rest do what it likes is a deplorable retrogression. It means surrendering British leadership in the greatest crusade being waged in the world today, and it is not even practical politics. For if Europe were plunged in war tomorrow this country would be as certain to be drawn in as in 1914. The only sure way to keep the Empire out of war is to keep the world out of war.
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