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– Put Out More Flags – N obody who heard on that September morning in 1939 the doleful voice of Neville Chamberlain, announcing that we were now at war with Germany, will ever forget it. A few, a very few, of those who heard it may have foreseen that the war would last nearly six years. Not one of them would have believed it possible that within two years of the end of it the fear of a new and more terrible war would be overshadowing the world. I have been an ardent Pacifist since 1910, and still am. In my vocabulary a Pacifist is not the same as a Conscientious Objector. Nothing is gained by burying one’s head in the sand when war breaks out, and supposing that it will pass one by. On the contrary, as long as one is alive one is taking part in the war, willingly or unwillingly, actively or passively, as a force or as a deadweight: that is, one is helping either one’s country or the enemy. The only logical protest for a Conscientious Objector who refuses to take part is suicide; pre­ferably at sea, so that the war effort shall not be interrupted by the need for burying the body. A Pacifist, in my definition, is one who does not believe that war is ‘a legitimate extension of policy’ or ‘a biological necessity’ or ‘human nature’, and who does 156
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– Put Out More Flags – believe that its economic gains are illusory. So, since it results in the torture and death of innocent and harmless people, he is not only of opinion that it should be outlawed, but looks forward to a day when the whole world will share his opinion. Common sense and common decency, he tells himself, must surely prevail. In 1910 Pacifism was derided. All the wars in the memory of Englishmen had taken place outside their country, and could be followed with the eager but impersonal interest with which we now follow the broadcast of a cricket match. It was true that a few soldiers got killed, but this was just an occupational risk, cheerfully to be accepted in return for the adventure and the glory promised. If the civilians did think about war in the abstract, they told themselves that it was bracing, like corporal punishment and cold baths; and that, since it had been going on for thousands of years, it would probably be wrong, and would certainly be impossible, to stop it now. So Pacifists were dismissed as idealists, cranks, and, as likely as not, vegetarians. In 1920 nearly everybody in this country was a Pacifist in theory, and millions of them were Pacifists in practice: that is, they were trying and hoping, by means of the League of Nations, to make an end of war. This change of opinion was due, and due only, to the experience of a war much more terrible than any that they had known, and much nearer home; a war which had cast its shadow over nearly every family in the land. 157

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– Put Out More Flags –

N obody who heard on that September morning in 1939 the doleful voice of Neville Chamberlain, announcing that we were now at war with Germany, will ever forget it. A few, a very few, of those who heard it may have foreseen that the war would last nearly six years. Not one of them would have believed it possible that within two years of the end of it the fear of a new and more terrible war would be overshadowing the world.

I have been an ardent Pacifist since 1910, and still am. In my vocabulary a Pacifist is not the same as a Conscientious Objector. Nothing is gained by burying one’s head in the sand when war breaks out, and supposing that it will pass one by. On the contrary, as long as one is alive one is taking part in the war, willingly or unwillingly, actively or passively, as a force or as a deadweight: that is, one is helping either one’s country or the enemy. The only logical protest for a Conscientious Objector who refuses to take part is suicide; pre­ferably at sea, so that the war effort shall not be interrupted by the need for burying the body.

A Pacifist, in my definition, is one who does not believe that war is ‘a legitimate extension of policy’ or ‘a biological necessity’ or ‘human nature’, and who does

156

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