“PINHEAD PACIFISTS”

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 726, 29 December 1933, Page 4

“PINHEAD PACIFISTS”

In the London Daily Mail, one of the chief of the flails that have been put into his hands for the guidance and correetion of the great British public, Lord Rothermere, bulwark of Empire and noble propagapdist, severely •castigates what he describes as "England's pinhead pacifists." His lordship classifies the "pinheads" into two sections: Two kinds of people are prominent in this agitation, he says. One is drawn from those intellectual prigs whose overweening conceit in their own wisdom and virtue is equalled only by their blindness to hard facts. The other consists of their wellmeaning but sentimental and simple dupes. These noisy and misguided zealots start with the false assumption that those who realise more clearly than they the danger : in which this country stands are animated by some sinister desire for another war. They like to feel that they are crusaders against the powers of darkness. They adopt towards the question of national defence the attitude that is known in America as "holier-than-thou." This sweeping generalisation is a little unkind to the even larger class which his lordship appears to have overlooked — the ordinary citizen, who without pretending to know a great deal I about it, or to possess the omnis- j cience of Lord Rothermere, still | has a conviction that without j some honest gesture toward disarmament, the world is in danger of drifting back into the position of- armed tension which existed prior to 1914. Emboldened by their illusion that | this country is safe from foreign at- j tack, ignorant and self-satisfied agi- ' tators are clamouring for the British Government to continue its dangerous policy of disarmament, his lordship continues. ' They cling to the imbecile belief that war, which has existed since humanity began, and looms so largely on the international horizon to-day, can be prevented by pacifist "gestures." They might just I as sensibly try to pacify a Bengal I tiger by blowing kisses to it. I His lordship goes on to as- ! sail the "defeatist and drawing- j room philosophy" which is ex- I pressed in regard to disarma- ! ment by many of the younger j generation in Engl^nd and to j classify them generally under | the heading of "puling pacifists." j He apiDlauds the dictum of the I Roman military historian Taci- I tus, expressed 1800 years ago, ! that "the peace of nations can- ! not be secured without arms" | and to express a number of very j robust Imperial sentiments re- | garding the protection of the ' Empire and the carrying of the white man's burden which the British Empire has taken up. j

Commonsense will applaud the | remarks of Lord Rothermere I when he emphasises the neces- j sity for adequate protection, al- , though it may deprecate the un- ! necessarily inflammatory style in which his observations are con- 1 ched. Men with a sincere belief i in the ultimate possibility of world disarmament — and they I are many — are not necessarily ! "puling pacifists" and "pin- 1 heads." i "Without the ideal, the inex- 1 haustible source of all progress, j what would man be?" said Ma- ! dame de Gef ardin, but that is a j sentiment to which the Imper- 1 ialist philosophy of Lord Rother- j mere apparently gives no credit. j Englishmen, the world over,. will ; agree with his lordship's strictures upon ranters who rant for the sake of ranting, upon ana'emic theorists who cry that we should turn the other eheek in a world that is not yet ready for Christian charity in its highest sense, but they will not agree with his lordship's wholesale condemnation of any and every person who is prepared to acknowledge that disarmament and world peace is an ideal and one worth striving for. Britain has at least this solace. In spite of "its dangerous policy of disarmament," it has genuinely set the world an example in striving for peace, and it has not been content with grandiloquent phrases and empty promises. It has led the way to the f arthest limit of safety and if its example has not been followed it has at least made more than a publicity ges-

ture. Lord Rothermere gives no credit for sincerity of purpose, but it is possible that the ranting of which he complains and the invective which he himself employs are equally dangerous although directed in opposite directions.