Aldous Huxley Says

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 45, 17 May 1935, Page 18

Aldous Huxley Says

It is fashionable at the present time to say that the causes of war, like everything from a mystical religion to unemployment, are economic. The causation of current events is a multiple causation. The Battle of Waterloo may have heen won on the playing fields of Eton, but it was conceived in Corsica. Wars are not fought by climates or systems, They are fought by human beings. The grouping of the world gives deep psychological actions to people. War is a catastrophe. Yet for every 100 who kill themselves in peace time only 70. commit suicide in war time. The suicide statistics seem to indicate that life in war-time is about. 45 per cent. more worth living than life in peace time, Man derives enormous satisfaction by feeling himself at one with the members of the group, War produces a certain simplification of the social structure. Nationalism can be made to yield the individual immense satisfaction.

This is intensified even to ecstasy during war. In times of peace vanity is more loudly and more. often expressed than hatred. , People can get more pleasure out of hating foreigners whom they have never seen than by vaguely loving them. All governments, directly or indirectly, forment hatred and vanity. School children are taught to boast about their own nation and to look down on all other nations. The tendency to form groups is not only natural, but it is desirable. There is only one certain way of creating a Utopian world state. That is, to have aggression from Mars, Unfortunately we cannot rely on the planet of Mars. Nationalism is harmful, but satisfying. War, if we take the suicide rate, gives great psychological satisfaction to many people. Much good can be done by making civilised life less monotonous. Abolish boredom, and you abolish a cause ~ of nationalism. If we can keep the "patient" alive long enough the doctors may agree on a diagnosis and decide on a cure,