– PEACEFUL LIFE –
British arms’. It is a lie – but pro patria. ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honour more’, said Lovelace to his lady. Unfortunately no Patriot has ever addressed his country so.
This is traditional. Even in home politics, still more in international politics, the ordinary standards of honour have never applied. One could not imagine the craziest Patriot praying that his son should grow up ‘as honourable as England’. International politics is a morass of treachery, theft, broken promises, lies, evasions, bluff, trickiness, bullying, deliberate misunderstanding and shabby attempts to get an opponent into a false position. Our whole conception of national morality is different from our conception of private morality. Consider, as one trivial example of this difference, the war-debt between England and America. If this had been a debt contracted between two honourable men in analogous circumstances, the one would have been as insistent on paying it as the other would have been scornful of accepting payment. As it is, we have an excited discussion, every six months or so, as to whether England should, or should not, keep her word. Imagine a similar discussion in a family which considered its honour to be above reproach!
Now we cannot have it both ways. We cannot disregard truth and expect to be trusted. By its lack of candour in the past every nation has surrendered to its enemies the right of interpretation of its actions. For England to maintain a large navy and a large air-force:
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