Up to the end of the last war non-combatants, except in countries actually subject to invasion, were not in great physical danger. In any future war it is clear that they will be exposed to risks almost, if not quite, as great as those faced by the fighting men. This will certainly tend to diminish the enthusiasm of non-combatants for war. But if it turns out that the effects of air bombardment are less frightful than most experts at present believe they will be, this enthusiasm may not be extinguished altogether, at any rate during the first months of a war. During the last war, a fair proportion of the combatants actually enjoyed some phases at least of the fighting. The escape from the dull and often stultifying routines of peace-time life was welcomed, even though that escape was bought at the price of physical hardship and the risk of death and mutilation. It is possible that conditions in any future war will be so appalling that even the most naturally adventurous and combative human beings will soon come to hate and fear the process of fighting. But until the next war actually breaks out, nobody can have experience of the new conditions of fighting. Meanwhile, all the governments are actively engaged in making a subtle kind of propaganda that is directed against potential enemies, but not against war. They warn their subjects that they will be bombarded from the air by fleets of enemy planes; they persuade or compel them to subject themselves to air-raid drills and other forms of military discipline; they proclaim the necessity of piling up enormous armaments for the purpose of counter-attack and retaliation, and they actually build those armaments to the tune, in most European countries, of nearly or fully half the total national revenue. At the same time they do all in their power to belittle the danger from air raids. Millions of gas-masks are made and distributed with assurances that they will provide complete protection. Those who make such assurances know quite well that they are false. Gas-masks cannot be worn by infants, invalids or the old, and give no protection whatsoever against vesicants and some of the poisonous smokes, which for this reason will be the chemicals chiefly used by the air navies of the world. Meanwhile warnings by impartial experts are either officially ignored or belittled. (The attitude of the Government’s spokesman at the British Medical Association meeting at Oxford in 1936, and that of The Times in 1937 towards the Cambridge scientists who warned the public against the probable effects of air bombardment, are highly significant in this context.) The whole effort of all the governments is directed, I repeat, to making propaganda against enemies and in favour of war; against those who try to tell the truth about the nature and effects of the new armaments and in favour of manufacturing such armaments in ever-increasing quantities. There are two reasons why such propaganda is as successful as it is. The first, as I have explained in this paragraph, must be sought in the fact that, up to the present, many non-combatants and some combatants have found war a welcome relief from the tedium of peace. The second reason will be set forth in the following paragraph, which deals with another aspect of the psychological causation of war.
(II) A principal cause of war is nationalism, and nationalism is immensely popular because it is psychologically satisfying to individual nationalists. Every nationalism is an idolatrous religion, in which the god is the personified state, represented in many instances by a more or less deified king or dictator. Membership of the ex hypothesi divine nation is thought of as imparting a kind of mystical pre-eminence. Thus, all ‘God’s Englishmen’ are superior to ‘the lesser breeds without the law,’ and every individual God’s-Englishman is entitled to think himself superior to every member of the lesser breed, even the lordliest and wealthiest, even the most intelligent, the most highly gifted, the most saintly. Any man who believes strongly enough in the local nationalistic idolatry can find in his faith an antidote against even the most acute inferiority complex. Dictators feed the flames of national vanity and reap their reward in the gratitude of millions to whom the conviction that they are participants in the glory of the divine nation brings relief from the gnawing consciousness of poverty, social unimportance and personal insignificance.
Self-esteem has as its complement disparagement of others. Vanity and pride beget contempt and hatred. But contempt and hatred are exciting emotions—emotions from which people ‘get a kick.’ Devotees of one national idolatry enjoy getting the kick of hatred and contempt for devotees of other idolatries. They pay for that enjoyment by having to prepare for the wars which hatred and contempt render almost inevitable. Another point. In the normal course of events most men and women behave tolerably well. This means that they must frequently repress their anti-social impulses. They find a vicarious satisfaction for these impulses through films and stories about gangsters, pirates, swindlers, bad bold barons and the like. Now, the personified nation, as I have pointed out already, is divine in size, strength and mystical superiority, but sub-human in moral character. The ethics of international politics are precisely those of the gangster, the pirate, the swindler, the bad bold baron. The exemplary citizen can indulge in vicarious criminality, not only on the films, but also in the field of international relations. The divine nation of whom he is mystically a part bullies and cheats, blusters and threatens in a way which many people find profoundly satisfying to their sedulously repressed lower natures. Submissive to the wife, kind to the children, courteous to the neighbours, the soul of honesty in business, the good citizen feels a thrill of delight when his country ‘takes a strong line,’ ‘enhances its prestige,’ ‘scores a diplomatic victory,’ ‘increases its territory’—in other words, when it bluffs, bullies, swindles and steals. The nation is a strange deity. It imposes difficult duties and demands the greatest sacrifices and, because it does this and because human beings have a hunger and thirst after righteousness, it is loved. But it is also loved because it panders to the lowest elements in human nature and because men and women like to have excuses to feel pride and hatred, because they long to taste even at second hand the joys of criminality.
So much for the psychological causes of war—or, to be more exact, the psychological background whose existence makes possible the waging of wars. We have now to consider the immediate causes of war. Ultimately, they also are psychological; but since they display special forms of human behaviour and since these special forms of behaviour manifest themselves in certain highly organized fields of activity, we prefer to call them ‘political’ and ‘economic’ causes. For the purposes of classification, this is convenient; but the convenience has its disadvantages. We are apt to think of ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ as impersonal forces outside the domain of psychology, working in some way on their own and apart from human beings. To the extent that human beings are habit-bound and conditioned by their social environment, politics and economics possess a certain limited autonomy; for wherever a social organization exists, individuals tend to submit themselves to the workings of its machinery. But man is not made for the Sabbath, nor is he invariably willing to believe that he is made for the Sabbath. To some extent his will is free, and from time to time he remembers the fact and alters the organizational machinery around him to suit his needs. When this happens the conception of politics and economics as autonomous forces, independent of human psychology, becomes completely misleading. It is convenient, I repeat, to class the economic and political causes of war under separate headings. But we must not forget that all such causes are ultimately psychological in their nature.
(III) The first of the political causes of war is war itself. Many wars have been fought, among other reasons, for the sake of seizing some strategically valuable piece of territory, or in order to secure a ‘natural’ frontier—that is to say, a frontier which it is easy to defend and from which it is easy to launch attacks upon one’s neighbours. Purely military advantages are almost as highly prized by the rulers of nations as economic advantages. The possession of an army, navy and air force is in itself a reason for going to war. ‘We must use our forces now,’ so runs the militarist’s argument, ‘in order that we may be in a position to use them to better effect next time.’
The part played by armaments in causing war may properly be considered under this heading. All statesmen insist that the armaments of their own country are solely for purposes of defence. At the same time, all statesmen insist that the existence of armaments in a foreign country constitutes a reason for the creation of new armaments at home. Every
