Who, Confronted By A Fascist Hitler, Would Advocate Disarmament? — Who Except A Christ?

Radio Record, 21 August 1936, Page 7

Who, Confronted By A Fascist Hitler, Would Advocate Disarmament? — Who Except A Christ?

© the world moving toward another bloody catastrophe?. I suppose I yearn for peace as much as anyone. That does not mean that I want to live a life free from conflict, or that I believe humanity can healthfully live free of conflict, but it does mean that it appears to me as if bloody conflict in the years that are coming will almost bring about the downfall of what we call our civilisation. There will always be conflict in society, the clash of will and idea, the ceaseless effort of dreamers and doers to persuade lethargic masses that there are better and happier states: of

society ; the destroyer and recreator will always be at war with the status quo. And humanity will be engaged in an endless effort to tame and

bring elements to its purpose,:to bridle and ride the unpridleable and unrideable, to career through space on some scientific equivalent to the witches’ broomstick. Life, pacifists notwithstanding, is never peaceful. Why, every intelligent unit in society is of himself or herself a battlefield. There is a phrase: "a law of the members that is at war with the law of the mind." ‘There is a war in every human breast, and the most sensitive and intelligent at times knows the greatest devastation as saint and sinner, or, if you believe religion to be merely psychology,

as the p)lologicai, the pnysical, Adam and Hve moulded in the environment of primeval conflicts with the Adam and Eve as. patterned by the environment of the day in which they Live. For is it not true that we change the economic and the cultural inheritance of the human family far more rapidiy ‘ than the biological? Hence there is conflict between biological man, man gifted for primeval society-and _ therefore man horn in sin-and environmental man, man living in society, trying to tame unsocial, biological urges with eultures and religions. Man is, and always will be while he lives, the warrior: a physical pacifist would be a corpse. ‘ Alex. Carrel in "Man, the Unknown," shows man’s cells at war, but to conserve life. If we live a mental life we know how we are

torn between subconscious impulse and conscious scruple which some call God and some accept as an environmental pattern at war with a biological urge. What a war is within the really great minds, what sinners in themselves had most of the saints to overcome. What.a war against other forms of life, against the organic and the inorganic forces massed to encompass his destruction man wages, must wage. But ali for the purpose of conserving life. Man alive is, has been, always will be, the warrior, te defend, to expand his life and the life of society. And in

certain moods man is always war-rior-like in regard to other men, except that he be "Christ-like" and prefer death and renunciation to living. Vicarious Atonement suggest that human frailty is understood and ‘that "crucifixion" is accepted voluntarily only by Gods who find in the eternal triumph of a spiritual ideal. something far greater than the temporal life after. which mere humaus hanker. So then, you will say, Mr. Lee, you view with great satisfaction the piling up of armament and dynamite? No.’ For man has been and is a warrior to. live,. but the machine age and the private profit incentive in the use of machinery has given’ uncanny emphasis not to survival but to murder and the reduplica- * thon of murdering machines. The society in. which we live is kept function= (Continued next page.>

(Continued from previous page.) ing by the motive of private profit so that society can function more readily if i¢ destroys human life with high explosive at a rate per cent, than it can function if it conserves human life at’ what we call a financial loss. The warrior principle that keeps us alive has been harnessed to a system that can win a richer financial profit.out of suicide. The owners of the most destructive machines are given a vested : interest in destruction only. I should like to believe that there would be no more war of the suicide type-so that the warrior man could be liberated «for. his «greater. conflicts. Alas, the human family rarely heeds the idealist until wounded and bereft, and even then the chance for idealism is fleeting, for when the wounds heal we think more of revenge than of eradicating causes, Such a chance oceurred at Versailles in 1919, but ‘"yeace" became a means of continuing the war; not a way of buman salvation. ~ T would like to believe that war was not a likelihood. Actually, during the last twelve months ! have been driven to the conclusion that | we are face to face with a — bloody horrer of. fearful: dimensions; and, strangely enough, the nex! war pro: mises to have erenomic significances scarcely possessed by past wars which were for the materiais and trade of territories.

The horizontal war threatens to become perpendicular as well. The Faseist nations tend to be arraigned against the Democratic, a monster confiict wherein peoples may fight the peoples of other nations not to possess external advantages, but-for the : very right to organise their own economic life. ‘As I write, nations are: being: compelled: to take sides in the war of econ; omic forces which. is rending Spain. Those wha. believe the world had bet- . ‘ter return’ to’ Fascist MedievalismGermany and Italy-and those who recognise the right of the human to give a human: motive instead of a financial: profit motive to machine society ~-Russia, France, Britain-are being forced out of neutrality. We see horizontal and perpendicular conflict~ a war of class and mass, embroiling nations, Man has been a warrior to live. Now universally he arms to suicide, Out of the air.on to towns, on factories, schools, railway stations, water conduits, drainage systems, bridges, roads, hospitals, we’ make ready ‘to shower high explosive." Soeiety is confronted with dis- ’ Jecation and pestilence. And there is"no eseape, except a common agreement to disarm. Who, in a France or a Britain, confronted by _a.Fascist Hitler, would advocate disarmament?-who, except @ Christ? . The human family leaves to its gods and its saints the privilege, of travelling the crucifixion road. . Nor is there any defence. Nations » bpild three planes to carry bombs for —

every fighting machine to resist such planes. There is no defence, except, in a'common agreement to police or to disarm. War, when started, will be a bloody suicide in which society runs the risk of perishing. When humanity was of:the. peasant, all.could fend and live. While society is of the machine and the specialist, of mass production, the destruction of, machine civilisation by air bombs will ‘condemn millious to famine and death. _. he only defence is counter-intimida-‘tion, a piling up of the means to inflict a similar destruction. A dreadful prospect. Yet short of agreement to internationally police or disarm how ean we help engaging in counterintimidation? The average man would not like to share the fate of Abyssinia without a show of resistance. ®ur civilisation is compounded of average men and not of saints. Only gods endure Calvary, with tears of sorrow for the perpetrating rather than of rage and resistance in their eyes. I fear me the world is getting ready for a dreadful suicide. The lethal weapons we fashion we always use. Humanity has not yet understood that its war machine may disintegrate civilisation that mechanical cosmos might explode and leave primeval chaos. I would that I could feel that it would learn the lesson without the suffering, but I fear me that explosive will sear and burn and destroy before mankind recoils into mechanical sanity. And then we shall liberate Man the Warrior from Man the Suicide, and the conflicts and the contests though no less painful will be fought and won at the cost of spiritual suffering rather than on the plane of blood brutishness.