Now it is doubtful if any War Office exists or can exist capable of carrying on a skilled air warfare. There is something subtly stupid and unscientific about this war business, and you will never find first-class imaginations giving themselves freely and continuously to war organisation. Great men like Cromwell or Mr. Trotsky may do miracles of war organisation under necessity, but it is only puerile types like Mr. Amery who can go on planning war in peace time. The soldier is, has been, and always will be a rather limited and usually a rather thickheaded person. It follows therefore that if ever there should be a real, fully-prepared-for war in the world again—a thing which, as the unrepentant author of the phrase “The War to End War,” I am naturally disposed to doubt—then probably the air warfare which will dominate it will be a warfare conducted with machines far below the quality of the best contemporary knowledge, and by men below the highest attainable standard. It may be, therefore, a clumsy war, as needlessly destructive as the great war; and the lumbering big aeroplane, with its tons of explosive, in search for targets of military significance, will incidentally smash up all sorts of precious things. But the less clumsy air-warfare is the less it will do that. It is a paradoxical-looking but quite valid proposition that the less we develop special skill and invention in air-warfare the more prolonged and destructive air-warfare is likely to be. A brilliantly clever and trained and equipped air force might even be capable of purely defensive warfare. A clumsy, abundant air force, incapable of encountering and outflying its antagonists, could only work by the cruel and de-civilising method of reprisal raids.
For these reasons I think it almost as regrettable that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald should talk so readily of a sort of Washington Conference for Europe upon air disarmament as that he should have consented to the replacement building of the five cruisers. Nothing will ever restrain nations at war from making a belligerent use of the air; and the alternative to a specialised scientifically developed air fighting force will be a mobilisation of civil transport air planes for offensive use. This will not be a diminution but an aggravation of the horrors of air attack so far as the ordinary civilised man on the ground is concerned.
A number of people seem to consider civil air transport as the natural reserve for war aviators and machines. The British have recently subsidised the various commercial concerns which run the poor, partial, under-equipped air services between Britain and the Continent, to the extent of a million pounds, no doubt with some such fancy about air reserves in mind. The consolidation of the British air companies was followed at once by a reduction of the salaries of the pilots, and a defensive strike on their part. The ideal pilot of the companies seems to be a higher sort of omnibus driver, hardly better paid. So far there has been no visible increase in equipment. Nothing could have brought out more plainly the essential conflict between profit-making and public service. The need of civilisation in respect to peace and war ends alike is to work out the possibilities of flying to their utmost extent and at any cost to attract exceptionally capable men to every branch of the service. The natural aim of a consolidated group of companies seeking profit is to stabilise conditions at the nearest possible profitable level, regardless of the future and the public welfare. In no branch of human activity is private enterprise for gain more mischievous than in transport, and in no field of transport has private enterprise shown itself more wasteful and futile than in air transport. During the war flying was everywhere a State enterprise, and enormous progress was made in every development of air science. Since the war progress has slowed down to negligible proportions under the magic touch of the modern business man. His method is to standardise; he is the enemy of distinctive quality wherever it is to be found.
XXXVI
LABOUR POLITICIANS: THE EVAPORATION OF THE INTELLIGENZIA
10.5.24
At the last General Election the British Labour Party was supported with the most whole-hearted enthusiasm by a great cloud of artistic and intellectual workers. It had the Intelligenzia solidly for it. It had all the higher and better theatrical and artistic workers on its side: such great literary names as Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell, such men of science as Soddy. They supported it for a variety of very understandable reasons. They were revolted by the mean and sterile dullness of the two historical but disintegrating parties. They were bored to death by Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Baldwin, Lord Birkenhead, their endless differences, and their essential resemblance. They were attracted by the brave hopefulness and the constructive programme of the new party. They were even allowed to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of its ample promises. No doubt they helped at the election, though Heaven knows to what extent. They certainly brought in youth, ever in love with ideas, to canvass and toil for the party; they brought in clever journalists and able controversialists.
But all that was six months ago. Now Labour has been tarnished by office I doubt whether it will exercise the same compelling magic upon intellectually adventurous people. There is all the difference in the world between encouraging a Labour Party which promises everything glorious, and bolstering up a Labour Government which does nothing amusing. I doubt if the Intelligenzia is likely to be very energetic when the next election comes.
It is not in the nature of an Intelligenzia to support a political party in office. Its function in the community is to criticise actuality, and to startle and enlarge people’s æsthetic, scientific, political, and social perceptions. It is always against the thing that is, and it is always in advance of the thing that can practically be. And what it is saying of the Labour Government now is that it is just as dull and just as shifty and just as futile as a Left Liberal Government would have been. Mr. C. P. Trevelyan seems to have some meritorious intentions about education, and there has been a recognition of Russia—which the Liberals would have given us just as well. Apart from that, what have the Intelligenzia got for all their support of Labour?
In Mr. Ramsay MacDonald we have one of the ablest of living public speakers, a Prime Minister of unparalleled piety and gentility, but that is insufficient to console the Intelligenzia for their general disappointment. The more brightly the personality of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald shines, the less visible are the creative ideas for which their advanced spirits followed him. Instead of some genuine effort toward disarmament there has been the most foolish treatment possible of the business of the five cruisers. There has not even been a gesture towards the nationalisation of transport, mines, and the production of staple commodities. At least the Labour Ministers might have availed themselves of official files and opportunities, to prepare reports, digest facts and set inquiries afoot that would open a way to future nationalisation. The Capital Levy has gone behind a screen. There has been a muddle over housing and a resort to Liberal assistance. These Labour leaders over whom the Intelligenzia waved its banners of constructive Socialism and of a world remade, so bravely, turn out to be for the most part just ordinary politicians abjectly afraid to stop anything or start anything that may affect votes.
There is the utmost symbolical value in the behaviour of the new Labour Ministers towards Court affairs. Great Britain is a monarchy and the Ministers must go to Court, but there was no law and no necessity to require a Labour representative in a Labour Ministry to dress up in an expensive and unsuitable livery. The neat blue serge suit in which such a man would attend a Labour Congress or pay his respects to his God in church or chapel was surely good enough for a Court visit. A red tie, perhaps, in suitable cases could have emphasised the note of Socialism. But no! These men the Intelligenzia worked for and elected as the representatives of a new age must needs set out at once to beg, borrow, or steal the uniform of the old. As the newspaper photographs witness, most of them wear it with little grace or dignity. They have the self-conscious solemnity of a new local mayor in his robes. As a rule it matters little what a man wears, but these liveries betrayed stupendous acquiescences.