WHY I BELIEVE IN WAR
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In Major F. Yeats-Brown's article, "Why I believe in War," he claims that it is impossible to eliminate the desire to fight from human kind " because an organism without fight is dead "or moribund." Agreed. But is war, or more accur- ately, wholesale massacre, the only form of fight Major Yeats- Brown can conceive, or the only form which he regards as significant ? If so, it follows that those who, on account of age or sex, arc precluded from taking a turn at a machine ginr, are inevitably destined to moral atrophy.
Experience, on the contrary, would seem to indicate that most people who are at all brave and vigorous, find in the daily round sufficient to keep them from stagnation without that particular form of deadly exercise.
Certainly mankind's real enemies, Ignorance, Insensitive- ness, Poverty and Disease, are entirely independent of nation- ality, and the weapons of those enlisted in this warfare are not casual, but spiritual. Moreover, since". Courage will not be so necessary" in the wars of the future, and "A coward will be on an almost equal footing with a hero," it is difficult to see how Major Yeats-Brown substantiates his claim that war will always be necessary to preserve the courage of the race.
Finally, may I observe, that although Christ drove the money-changers out of the Temple, there is no record that any of them were gravely injured in the process, and that, in spite of the use of "Force," He is reported to have said, "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword."—I am, Sir, 8r..e.,
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