PACIFISM: ITS USES AND ABUSES
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Pacifism: Its Uses And Abuses By HARRY ELMER BARNES OF LATE YEARS it has become the fashion, even in some anti-war circles, to deride pacifists as impractical idealists, living in a fool's...
...They get themselves into all sorts of contradictions and embarrassments by the all too common assumption in peace circles that there are good and bad wars— defensive and aggressive wars...
...Yet it was Britain and France who declared war on Germany in 1939, but the pacifists still insisted that Germany was the aggressor...
...Pacifism: Its Uses And Abuses By HARRY ELMER BARNES OF LATE YEARS it has become the fashion, even in some anti-war circles, to deride pacifists as impractical idealists, living in a fool's paradise, because their dream of universal peace has not been fulfilled...
...But when it gets money the funds are usually administered by bankers, lawyers and society leaders—the very social and economic core of the war-mongering element in society...
...Finally, the peace movement frequently gets tangled up with prejudices and affiliations that lead to war...
...Even this untenable assumption is not held consistently...
...So, it turns out that the war-makers manage the funds of the pacifists and thus sabotage the peace efforts of the groups potentially the most capable of carrying on effective propaganda for peace...
...No pacifist movement can succeed unless it is consistently against all wars except obvious wars of self-defense...
...Though I am personally not a pacifist, perhaps through lack of sufficient logic and nobility of character, I am glad to pay this tribute to the grandeur and utility of the pacifist philosophy...
...The example of Andrew Carnegie and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is illuminating in this regard...
...It cannot compromise with war and proceed to pick its wars...
...But we shall see the end of wars only when the aspirations of the true pacifists are...
...The American Fund for Public Service was almost the only endowment which has not gravitated into the hands of war-mongers, and this was only indirectly related to the peace movement...
...Pacifists Into War-Mongers Further, since former pacifists all too frequently evolve, or devolve, into war-mongers, they thus seem to confer on any particular war the benediction of pacifism...
...Most pacifists rationalize every war in which their country is engaged as a "different" kind of war—a new and holy war—not at all like those which they have condemned in the past...
...He doubtless believed that Anglo-American unity would work for peace, but it has had the opposite result in both World Wars...
...If this attitude is incorrect and unsupport-able, then the peace movement itself is untenable...
...Carnegie was as much interested in Anglo-American solidarity as in pacifism...
...England has decided to fight to "hold her own," and the subservience of the United States to British foreign policy, enthusiastically promoted by the Carnegie Endowment and the Cecil Rhodes Fund, has involved the United States in both World Wars, and has served to extend and prolong both of them...
...In our present-day enthusiasm for legal devices and international formulas, such as League decrees, outlawry, denunciation, penalized aggression, quarantine, milk for the Hottentots, and the like, we are in danger of falling into the error of believing that war can be ended by some catchword or a formal legal fiat, enunciated full in the face of social conditions making for war...
...It is assumed, for example, that the power which declares war is always the "aggressor...
...Indeed, the main trouble with the pacifists is that they are not pacific enough, especially in the pinches...
...They must guard themselves against either resting content with the stereotypes of the older pacifism or placing exuberant and exclusive faith in rhetorical phrases, formal devices, and legal machinery not based upon honest conversion to the pacifist program...
...A Fatal Rationalization Another difficulty is that the peace movement, like any other program of propaganda, requires money...
...This rationalization is a fatal blow to the peace movement, which thus disintegrates at the very moment when it is most needed...
...War will disappear only when there are more persons of prominence and authority who hate war than there are who cherish it and desire to preserve it as an instrument of national policy...
...The attitude of pacifists in the Greek, Balkan and Italian wars of liberation, in the Revolutions of 1848, in our Civil War, in the Spanish-American War, in the two World Wars, and in the Chino-Japanese Wars well illustrate this point...
...Again, the peace movement usually breaks down in every war...
...Especially important is the pacifist emphasis upon the necessity of considering and removing the causes of wars...
...Since most pacifists, in 1914, were anti-German, they condemned Germany as the aggressor because she declared war on Russia and France...
...The examples of Nicholas Murray Butler, Newton D. Baker, the American Socialists in the first World War, Norman Angell, Bertrand Russell, Walter Millis, Herbert Agar, Archibald MacLeish, James O'Neal, Max Eastman, and Paul H. Douglas are sufficient to make it clear what is meant by this renegade trend among former pacifists...
...Only the earnest pacifists can ever end war or will ever sincerely wish to terminate it, though this does not mean that pacifists should not be progressive and ingenious and on the lookout for all new and potentially effective methods of attacking the war system...
...This is especially the slur cast on them by the recently popular formula-mongers who have sought to end war by phrases...
...realized...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 42
