Vital peace - a story of risks

VITAL PEACE A Study of Risks . by HENRY WICKHAM STEED NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1936 PREFACE THIS book is meant as a challenge. It is addressed to pacifists and non-pacifists alike. Its purpose is to bid them reflect upon the peace of which they often speak. For twenty years I have thought upon peace. Of peace literature I have read my fill and I might have been loth to add this volume to the huge pile of what has already been written and printed had not contact with audiences in this country as well as in France, Belgium, Switzerland, the United States and formerly Germany led me to believe that the views of peace and war which I have come to hold are not only sound in themselves but are felt to be sound by fe ordinary or c common folk whenever and wherever they are clearly stated. This is my warrant for setting them forth. If I am not a pacifist I have faith in peace as a goal which, though distant, need not be so far off as to lie quite beyond the reach of this or a succeeding generation provided that it be sought with courage and vision and without delay. Peace, as I conceive it, must be a more vital form of human existence than any which mankind has known in the past. It will not be attained without changes revolutionary. But I would rather see the peace revo lution begun in a boldly constructive spirit than have it come as a rebound from the catastrophe which retrograde revolutions are now preparing. y 1 PREFACE What I have written is, In some degree, auto biographical, inasmuch as it records the growth in my own mind of ideas upon war, non-war and peace during the past two decades. But I have also drawn freely upon the thoughts and works of others, to whom I make dutiful andgrateful acknowledgment. If, at times, I have seen a little farther ahead than some of my fellows, I lay no claim to any sort of prophetic insight. Nor have I thought it right or needful to dwell upon the horrors of future war as a spur to the adventure of vital peace. War may come again or it may not. If it come none will be en titled to be horror-stricken at the result of what has been left undone and of what is even now being done in many countries. Our generation will deserve., and may get., scant sympathy from its successors if it go forward on the path trodden since 1918. It is because I would have this generation, especi ally its younger members, tread another path in open eyed fearlessness that I have written what I think wholesome and true. For repetitions and redund ancies I offer no excuse. In examining various aspects of one and the same problem some overlapping may be unavoidable and even helpful. I have not striven after literary effect. The only reproach I wish not to merit is that of having failed to make my meaning clear. vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. WAR AND LIFE I II. THE CASE AGAINST WAR - - - 21 III. THE CASE FOR WAR - - - 50 IV. THE CAUSES OF WAR - - - 75 V. APPROACHES TO NON-WAR - - IOI VI. THE QUEST OF SECURITY - - - - 129 VII. LOCARNO - - - - - - IJ7 VIII. THE RENUNCIATION OF WAR - - - l8l IX. NEUTRALITY AND SOVEREIGNTY - - 213 X. THE ENEMY . . - 247 XI. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN - - - 282 XII. THE ADVENTURE OF PEACE - - - 315 INDEX - - - - - - - 338 vil VITAL PEACE CHAPTER I WAR AND LIFE To the Thebans of old the Sphinx put a riddle. Whom soever answered wrongly she slew. QBdipus gave the right answer, and the Sphinx slew herself. The riddle ran A being with four feethas two feet and three feet, and when it has most it is weakest This being, said GEdipus, is man. In infancy he crawls upon all fours, in manhood he stands upright on two feet, and in old age leans tottering on a staff. War, like the Sphinx, puts to men a riddle. It runs What is the meaning of life They have not yet found the right answer. Till it is found and given, the solution for them is like to be, as it was for the puzzled Thebans, what Carlyle called a thing of tooth and claw. From time immemorial men have been slain by war...