R. E. Money-Kyrle Says

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 43, 3 May 1935, Page 13

R. E. Money-Kyrle Says

i HERD are two main types of causes of war-precipitating causes and predisposing causes. People who dislike pacifism often say that it is human nature to fight, and -human nature cannot be changed. ' That man in.a state of nature is an aggressive animal is fairly obvious. It is also clear that the civilised man could return to savagery far too easily for his or other people’s safety. We are like people who go about without knowing that their pockets are full of dynamite. The destructive impulses in man are always liable to manifest themselves in different ways. For long periods a nation may be sane, peaceable and contented. Then there’ comes_a change, and it develops all the symptoms of some well! ‘known. insanity. Since suspicion. readily begets suspicion, a, foreign power readily becomes suspicious in turn. Hach. takes defensive measures which confirm the other’s fears, I do not think that any modern nation has actually started a war unless the bulk of its citizens are satisfied that there is a just cause.

An originally unjustified suspicion helps to create the very catastrophe it wishes to avoid. -The individual becomes submerged in the group. The peaceable citizen suddenly discovers that he has a desire to kill, Most of us, although in this modern age we will not admit it, have an inner urge for self-sacrifice. The mania does not subside until all the nations are utterly exhausted. Nations are unlikely to pool their forces until they have learned to trust one. another. If we realise how easy it is to stir up insane fear and hatred between nations we will try more than ever to suppress all forms of provocation, As long as the constitutional causes of war remain, it seems al-, most too much to hope that we shall avoid all the precipitating causes. In the last analysis it is founded on a whole system of infantile de lusions, . We may at least hope that the insanity of nations, like the insanity of individuals, will steadily but slowly fade away under the growing light of knowledge.