THE PROPHET OF PEACE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 223, 8 February 1913, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PROPHET OF PEACE

A MESSAGE MOT YET OUT OF DATE. When the Balkan War came crashing down on Europe, many people thought that Norman Angell's theory (set out in his famous book, "Tke Great Illusion") hud been smashed into splinters. l'ut, •quite undaunted by the fears of siich leeble folk, and determined that they shall faee another Christmas without collapse, .Mr. Angell has written a fresh philiopic to ju-tify his former book; and so far from being overcome by the liurtling lightning of the Balkan War, he takes that iiery giant by the heard and uses him as a very object lesson to show that what lie said before the war was true, and to-day is doubly true. The faint-hearts are said to have put these questions to tlfe Prophet of Peace:— 1. What lias Pacificism, old or now, to say now? 2. Is war impossible? 3. Is it unlikely? 4. Is it futile? 5. Is not force a remedy, and at times the only remedy? Could any remedy have been devised on the whole so conclusive and complete as that used by the Balkan peoples? 7. Have not the Balkan peoples redeemed war from the charges too readily brought against it as simply an instrument of barbarism? S. Have questions of profit and loss, economic considerations, anything' whatever to do with this war? !). Would the demonstration of its economic futility have kept the peace? 10. Are theories and logic of the slightest use, since force alone can determine the issue? 11. Is not war therefore inevitable, and must we not prepare diligently for it? , NORMAN ANG ELL'S ANSWERS, premising that what he now writes will not be in contradiction of anything already published, nor will it invalidate any of the principles laid down by him:— 1. This war lias justified both the Old Pacificism and the New . By universal admission events have proved that the Pacificists who opposed the Crimean War were right and their opponents wrong. Had public opinion given more consideration to these Pacificist principles this country (England) would not have "backed the wrong horse," and this- war, two wars which have preceded it, and many of the abominations of which the Balkan Peninsula has been the scene during the last CO years mi£ht have been avoided, and in any case Great Britain would not now carry on her shoulders the responsibility of kaving during half a century 'supported the Turk against the Christian, and of having tried uselessly to prevent what has now taken place—the break-up of the Turk's rule in Europe. 2. War is not impossible, and no responsible Pacificist ever said that it was. It is not the likelihood of war which is the illusion, but its benefits. 3. It is likely or unlikely according as the parties to a dispute are guided bv. wisdom or folly. 4. It is futile, and force is no remedy. 5. Its futility is proven by the war vraged daily by the Turks as conquerors during the last 400 years. And because the Balkan people have chosen the less evil of two kinds of war, and will use their victory to bring a system based on conquest and force to an end, we who do not believe in force and conquest rejoice in their action, and believe that it will achieve immense benefits. But if, instead of using their victory to eliminate force, they in their turn pin their faith to it, continue to use it the one against the other, exploiting by its means the population they rule, and become not the organisers of social co-operation amongst the Balkan populations, but merely like the Turks, their conquerors and "owners," then they in their turn will share the fate of the Turk. 6. The fundamental causes of this war are economic in the narrowed, as well as in the larger, sense of the term; in the first, because conquest was the Turk's only trade—he desired to live out of taxes wrung from a conquered people, to exploit them as a means of livelihood, and this conception was at the bottom of most of the Turkish misgovernnient. And in a larger sense its cause is economic, because in the Balkans, remote geologically from the main drift of European economic development, there has not grown up that interdependent social life, the innumerable contacts which in the rest of Europe have done so much to attenuate primitive religious and racial hatreds. 7. A better understanding by the Turk of the real nature of civilised government, of the economic futility of conquest, of the fact that a means of livelihood (an economic system) based on having more force than someone else, and using it ruthlessly against him, is an impossible form of human relationship bound to break down, would have kept the peace. 8. If European statecraft had not been animated by false conceptions, largely economic in origin, based on a belief in the necessary rivalry of States, the advantages of preponderant force and conquest, the Western nations could have composed their quarrels and ended the abominations of the Balkan Peninsula long ago—even in the opinion of the Times. And it is our own false statecraft—that of Great Britain—which has a large part of the responsibility for the failure of European civilisation. It has caused us to sustain the Turk in Europe, to light a great and popular war with that aim, and led us into treaties which, had they been kept, would have obliged us to fight to-day on the side of the Turk against the Balkan States. !). If by "theories"' and "logic" is meant the discussion of and interest in principles, the ideas that govern human relationship, they are the only things that can prevent future wars, just as they were the only things that brought religious wars to an end—a preponderant" power "imposing" peace playing no role therein. J.ust as it was false religious theories which made the religious wars, so it is false political theories which .make the political wars. 10. War is only inevitable in the sense that other forms of error and passion—religious persecution, for instance—are inevitable; they cease with better understanding, as the attempt to impose religious belief by force has ceased in Europe. 11. We should not prepare for war: we should prepare to prevent war; and though that preparation may include battleships and conscription, these elements will quite obviously make the tension and danger greater, unless there is also a better European opinion. THE REAL DANGER. Our statement (declares Mr. Angell) is still founded on a sort of political cannibalism, upon the idea that nations progress by conquering or dominating one another. So long as that is our conception of the relationship of human groups we shall always stand in danger of collision, and our schemes of association and co-operation will always break I down.