To End War.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19158, 15 November 1927, Page 8

To End War.

The " no more war " messages in yesterday's cables will be misunderstood if they are read as • proof of a sudden change of heart in Britain on the subject of war. They are proof, in their number and cumulative effect, of a better preparation for Armistice Day than has been made in the past, but not of a new or greater horror of war. It is impossible to hate war more than the Homeland has hated it every day since August, 1914, but the cables show that it is not impossible to arrange for a clearer and more impressive articula-

tion of this hatred. It must not be supposed, either, from the fact that all the speakers reported belong, with one exception, t» the Liberal-Radical school, that the other leaders of English thought are not in sympathy with peace propaganda. Everyone is in sympathy with it, all over the Empire, and if some are less inclined than others to expect immediate results from it, that is as far as the difference goes. But there is perhaps some truth in the cable message that there has lately " been apparent a dangerous drift into "war talk." Not only in the Homeland, but all over the Empire and all over the world, people have slipped back, we shall not say into the old beliefs, but into the old careless expression'of those beliefs which has undoubtedly in the past done great harm. The attitude of intelligent men to war has never changed much; but their attitude to peace has changed in this respect if in no other—that they are now definitely dissatisfied with the "vague aspirations" condemned by Sir John Simon, and definitely afraid of the uncontradicted opinion that war is inevitable. They feel, not so much that preparations for war bring war, as that the lack of definite work for peace fails to keep war away. It is wholly to the good, therefore, that Armistice Day found so many people protesting against a return to the old careless ways with the pen and the tongue, and that it should now be our official rallying point for peace. But it is nonsense to say that "a sudden " determination has spread over Britain "with surprising swiftness" that "there shall be no more war," and to suggest that Britain has only to declare for peace to keep it.