Evening Post WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1926. PACIFIST AND PESSIMIST

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 60, 8 September 1926, Page 8

Evening Post WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1926. PACIFIST AND PESSIMIST

Two years ago Sir lan Hamilton, who was' once a general in the King's Army but is now a pacifist, had discovered a cure for war. If we are misrepresenting him it is only because his patent covered something even better than a cure for one of the most terrible scourges of humanity; it was actually to give us a preventive. As. a leading spirit ;'f the Inter-Allied Federation of ExSoldiers, General Hamilton was organising a movement for the prevention of war, and no gold-brick or wild-cat prospectus ever pointed the way to wealth with a more convincing,- not to say infallible, simplicity than that of the short-cut by which he proposed to: lead a war-weary world to the millennium. By an odd coincidence it was on the Bth September, 1924—tw0 years ago to a day—that General Sir lan Hamilton published his prospectus of peace. The occasion was a meeting of the British Legion held to discuss the "Fidac" Conference —a name derived alphabetically from the French title of the organisation above mentioned, "Federation Inter-Alliee ues Anciens Combattants" —which was fixed for the following week. Eighty , delegates, representing 5,000,000 ex-service men in the Allied countries, were coming to this Conference, and General Hamilton desired to mobilise the British Legion in its support. A beautiful resolution, ho said, has been passed by the League of Nations. Will there be any resolution behind it? ..... I am not speaking in any cynical depreciation of ideali ism, but we ought;by now to know that sentimental pledges rarely stood the strain of a call to aims. Here we are at least about to break new ground. Not the pacifists, but the fighters, are going to combine their | forges against war. You are never quite sure of those pacifists, because their pacificism is usually an inverted form of pugnacity. Look at Josiah Wedgwood. -He preaches peace,until mobilisation is declared, and then he goes and fights with all the enjoyment of a wild cat Shade your eyes and look to the top of the tree, 1 and you will find that the professed pacifist is a person in whose composition conflict is a passion. It is deplorable indeed to think how badly the pacifists of Britain had" been led until this British general came forward to take charge. In war they had displayed the cloven hoof of sympathy with their country—a deformity which, we blush to say, he had himself shared. In peace they were actually pinning their hopes to Geneva. Here at last was. a leader whose robust faith, fired with all the enthusiasm of a convert, shamed their halting and anaemic methods, a leader who also enjoyed the unique privilege for a pacifist of having no less 5,000,000 fighting men behind him. We of the Legion, on the other hand, General Hamilton proceeded, are perfectly sure of ourselves and of one another. We are dead sick of war. Fidao includes vi already in a •emi-military alliance. We don't want our statesmen to sign any fresh scraps of paper. Surely there is a better way out than one lot signing on to fight another lot ten years hence. You can't divide the Continent into two camps and expect a single-mind-ed Europe. We hope Flaac may help us to solve these problems. Fidac are coming here-r-five million fighters—a direct action crowd. At Geneva they are trying to tie up a homicidal maniac-war with pink ribbons. Fidac knows something stronger than pink ribbons will be needed if we are to encounter and overcome the hate, the violent personal exasperation which has been engendered during the pact two years. . . . Fidac was streets ahead of the League of Nations, in that it included the United States of America. ...» We belong to the most powerful organisation on earth. Let us use that power to insist that America is one and that American may not fight with American, that Europe is one and that European may not fight with European. The rest will follow. "Five million fighters—a direct action crowd" !It sounds quite imposing until one realises that the five million fighters, are to be pledged not to fight, that they are to win the next war by taking it lying down, and that this unheroic and highly inactive operation, in which their general will lead the way, is what he honours with the title of "direct action." What a, piece of work is a man! says Hamlet. How noble in reason 1 How infinite in faculty! . .In action, how like an angel! It might be possible to regard the inaction to which General Hamilton proposes to pledge his five million non-fighting fighters as more angelic still if it could conceivably do any good. But except' for those who have allowed the noble and godlike faculty ofjreason "to fust in them unused," how is it possible to regard such a suggestion as anything better than tomfoolery? If the whole of General Hamilton's 5,000,000 direct inactionists could be massed lying dqwn on Russia's Western frontier, would they delay for five minutes the advance of a single Bed Army Cbrps if the 80l-

shevik , leaders thought that the hour for the World Revolution had struck ? The two years that have passed since General Hamilton launched his great peace movement have not improved his logic and have seriously depressed his spirits. The pacifist inspired by a hope, however flimsy, is a far less dismal creature than the pessimist who has exchanged hope for despair and is eager to make others as desperate as himself, and it is apparently blank pes~ simism to which General Hamilton has been reduced by the collapse of his abßurd crusade. He continues to sneer at the League of Nations, which two years ago was "trying to tie up a homicidal mania—war —with pink ribbons," and which now should be abandoned by British Statesmen on account of the coal Btiike! What else do these words mean ? ■ How we havo the nerve to send delegates on expensive journeys to preach peace in the midst of Switzerland, when we are actually bleeding from the self-inflicted wounds of the coal industry, passes me. Does Sir lan Hamilton suggest that the condition of either strikers or non-strikers in Britain will be improved by the shattering of the League, the inevitable substitution of rival alliances, the intensifying of the war spirit, and the probable precipitation of another Armagedi don before his Pacifist Army is ready to lie down and stop it ? Anything more depressing than the whole trend of the address reported on Monday could not well be imagined. "The whole stored-up capir tal of our forefathers has left us" to cross, the Atlantic; the best of the workers are "trembling on the brink of the dole"; "only hotels, pictures, and bookies seem to thrive from to-day's miseries." "Vanity of vanities," said the preacher; and his sufferings are increased because nobody else has the sense to be a«! miserable as he. It may be a great privilege to be so wise and so miserable, but why should soldiers and ex-s.oldiers allow the memory of the immortal dead to be profaned by such craven stuff ?