ADDENDUM
THE ARGUMENT OF THE GREAT ILLUSION
CHAPTER I
THE ‘IMPOSSIBILITY OF WAR’ MYTH
IT will illustrate certain difficulties which have marked—and mark—the presentation of the argument of this book, if the reader will consider for a few minutes the justice of certain charges which have been brought against The Great Illusion. Perhaps the commonest is that it argued that ‘war had become impossible.’ The truth of that charge at least can very easily be tested. The first page of that book, the preface, referring to the thesis it proposed to set out, has these words: ‘the argument is not that war is impossible, but that it is futile.’ The next page but one describes what the author believes to be the main forces at work in international politics: a fierce struggle for preponderant power ‘based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others ... that nations being competing units, advantage, in the last resort, goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker going to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.’ A whole chapter is devoted to the evidence which goes to show that this aggressive and warlike philosophy was indeed the great actuating force in European politics. The first two paragraphs of the first chapter forecast the likelihood of an Anglo-German explosion; that chapter goes on to declare that the pacifist effort then current was evidently making no headway at all against the tendencies towards rivalry and conflict. In the third chapter the ideas underlying those tendencies are described as ‘so profoundly mischievous,’ and so ‘desperately dangerous,’ as to threaten civilisation itself. A chapter is devoted to showing that the fallacy and folly of those all but universal ideas was no guarantee at all that the nations would not act upon them. (Particularly is the author insistent on the fact that the futility of war will never in itself suffice to stop war. The folly of a given course of action will only be a deterrent to the degree to which men realise its folly. That was why the book was written.) A warning is uttered against any reliance upon the Hague Conferences, which, it is explained at length, are likely to be quite ineffective against the momentum of the motives of aggression. A warning is uttered towards the close of the book against any reduction of British armaments, accompanied, however, by the warning that mere increase of armaments unaccompanied by change of policy, a Political Reformation in the direction of internationalism, will provoke the very catastrophe it is their object to avoid; only by that change of policy could we take a real step towards peace ‘instead of a step towards war, to which the mere piling up of armaments, unchecked by any other factor, must in the end inevitably lead.’[97]
The last paragraph of the book asks the reader which of two courses we are to follow: a determined effort towards placing European policy on a new basis, or a drift along the current of old instincts and ideas, a course which would condemn us to the waste of mountains of treasure and the spilling of oceans of blood.
Yet, it is probably true to say that, of the casual newspaper references (as distinct from reviews) made during the last ten years to the book just described, four out of five are to the effect that its author said ‘war was impossible because it did not pay.’
The following are some passages referred to in the above summary:—
‘Not the facts, but men’s opinions about the facts is what matters. This is because men’s conduct is determined, not necessarily by the right conclusion from facts, but the conclusion they believe to be right.... As long as Europe is dominated by the old beliefs, those beliefs will have virtually the same effect in politics as though they were intrinsically sound.’—(p. 327.)
‘It is evident that so long as the misconception we are dealing with is all but universal in Europe, so long as the nations believe that in some way the military and political subjugation of others will bring with it a tangible material advantage to the conqueror, we all do, in fact, stand in danger from such aggression. Not his interest, but what he deems to be his interest, will furnish the real motive of our prospective enemy’s action. And as the illusion with which we are dealing does, indeed, dominate all those minds most active in European politics, we must, while this remains the case, regard an aggression, even such as that which Mr Harrison foresees, as within the bounds of practical politics.... On this ground alone I deem that we or any other nation are justified in taking means of self-defence to prevent such aggression. This is not, therefore, a plea for disarmament irrespective of the action of other nations. So long as current political philosophy in Europe remains what it is, I would not urge the reduction of our war budget by a single sovereign.’—(p. 329.)