Ten years after

by Philip Gibbs

The Revolt Against War

I believe that before it is likely to happen the common folk of all countries will revolt from such a method of argument and demand some other means of settlement. The memory of the last war endures among those who realised its agony. Its futility is understood even by those who directed its forces. In Great Britain the generals—or many of them—are most convinced of the need of peace. In France Marshal Foch and many of those who led France to a victory at frightful cost wish to avoid another conflict beyond any other consideration. Some of them may believe in a supreme army as the only defence of peace, but it is peace and security which dominate their minds, not military adventures for ambition’s sake. In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand the Generals of the Dominion forces are peace propagandists. In the United States the commanding officers who went to France are most in favour of generosity to Germany, within the limits of justice.

“What have we gained by the world war?” asked The America Legion Weekly ten years after that war began. The answers came from many great people and with few exceptions they saw more loss than gain, and in most cases all loss and no gain. I was most struck by the answer of General Sir Arthur Currie who commanded the Canadians many times in great battles. I met him often and prophesied his military genius. His strength of character, his stubborn will power, his clear-cut judgment, marked him out as a man of great generalship and his record proved it I think. He was not popular with his men. They thought him ruthless. He was ruthless, while the war went on, but this was his message to the American Legion, founded to perpetuate the memories of the war, and rather prone, it was thought, for a time, to perpetuate the memories of hate and the use of force.

“By the world war we gained a truer appreciation and a better realisation of war’s unspeakable waste, its dreadful hardships, its cruel slaughter, and its aftermath of loneliness, sorrow and broken hearts. We now know that as a means of solving the world’s problems and removing international discord, war is a delusion and a lie. We know that no matter how much a nation may desire to hold itself aloof and to keep apart from the struggle it cannot escape war’s terrible effects.

“An appreciation of even these two things should influence nations to leave nothing undone that would help in even the slightest degree to lessen the possibility of international strife.

“We know that there is no glory in war, either in its methods or in its results, and that its only glory is the glory of a sacrifice for the ideals which are involved.”

When views like that are put before the minds of great bodies of men by such as General Currie there is a hope that reason will prevail over unreason, and that we may exorcise that infernal spectre of another world war which lurks in our bad dreams.

Class Warfare

But we must first kill the idea of force and violence between classes as well as nations. There will be no world peace if those who preach the virtues of international brotherhood are at the same time organising a class warfare in a spirit of intolerance that is abominable. In many countries of the world—and the most civilised—at this present date, the nations are being divided by a passionate opposition between ideas roughly labelled as Capital and Labour, Liberty and Tyranny, Bolshevism and Fasciscism. In England the Left Wing of the Labour Party is using wild and whirling words which are a disgrace to civilised men and women. They are advocating “an orgy of blood” to overthrow the capitalist system and establish equality of labour in all countries. At a meeting in the Memorial Hall, London, last August, the Communists put forward a programme of violence which was an outrageous defiance of the moderate counsels of Ramsay MacDonald and his colleagues, and proposed a charter of labour “rights,” including a thirty-hours working week, which would bring Great Britain to the depths of ruin in a very short time. On the other side the English “Die-hards” are organising a secret society of Fascisti on the Italian lines, for the defence of property, national discipline, and resistance to all liberal ideas. Intolerance, the spirit of violence, are at work among the extremists on both sides, both narrow-minded and ignorant, both asking for trouble, both believing in force rather than in argument, arbitration, and law. In England, by the grace of God and long tradition, there is between these two extremes a great body of middle class, moderate, reasonable, and steady opinion which is the safeguard of the nation against all violent revolution. The aristocracy as a whole is liberal, kindly and self-sacrificing, and by no means disposed to play into the hands of its own extremists represented by the Duke of Northumberland and that remarkable lady, Mrs. Nesta Webster. The Labour Party as long as it is led by its present chiefs is contemptuous of Mr. Tom Mann and his loud-throated “comrades.” Nevertheless the devil of intolerance is making disciples on both sides.

Not only in England. There are many little Mussolinis about the world who are in favour of tyranny under the name of discipline and prefer hammering their political opponents in a physical way rather than converting them by arguments and beating them at the polls. There are many little Lenins skulking about factory yards or drawing good salaries as labour agitators who have an equal scorn for the old traditions of Parliamentary Government and the Common Law of the land, and advocate short cuts to the equality of men by “the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”—which allows no equality to those who disagree with their point of view—and by violent assault upon the lives and property of the middle classes.