One of the measures common to the programmes of all the world’s left-wing parties is the nationalization of the arms industry. To a certain extent all states are already in the armaments business. In England, for example, the government arsenals produce about five-twelfths of the nation’s arms, private firms about seven-twelfths. Complete nationalization would thus be merely the wider application of a well-established principle.
Now the complete nationalization of the arms industry would certainly achieve one good result: it would liberate governments from the influence of socially irresponsible capitalists, interested solely in making large profits. So far, so good. But the trouble is that this particular reform does not go far enough—goes, in fact, hardly anywhere at all. Armaments are armaments, whoever manufactures them. A plane from a government factory can kill as many women and children as a plane from a factory owned by a private capitalist. Furthermore, the fact that armaments were being manufactured by the state would serve in some measure to legalize and justify an intrinsically abominable practice. The mass of unthinking public opinion would come to feel that an officially sanctioned arms industry was somehow respectable.
Consequently the total abolition of the whole evil business would become even more difficult than it is at present. This difficulty would be enhanced by the fact that a central executive having complete control of the arms industry would be very reluctant to part with such an effective instrument of tyranny. For an instrument of tyranny is precisely what a nationalized armaments industry potentially is. The state is more powerful than any private employer, and the personnel of a completely nationalized arms industry could easily be dragooned and bribed into becoming a kind of technical army under the control of the executive.
Finally, we must consider the effect of nationalization upon international affairs. Under the present dispensation adventurers like the late Sir Basil Zaharoff are free (within the limits imposed by the licensing system) to travel about, fanning the flames of international discord and peddling big guns and submarines. This is a state of things which should certainly be changed. But the state of things under a regime of nationalization is only a little better. Once in business, even governments like to make a profit; and the arms business will not cease to be profitable because it has been nationalized. Then, as now, industrially backward states will have to buy arms from the highly industrialized countries. All highly industrialized states will desire to sell armaments, not only for the sake of profits, but also in order to exercise control over the policy of their customers. Inevitably, this will result in the growth of intense rivalry between the industrialized powers—yet another rivalry, yet another potential cause of international discord and war.
It would seem, then, that the nationalization of the armaments industry is merely the substitution of one evil for another. The new evil will be less manifest, less morally shocking than the old; but it is by no means certain that, so far as war is concerned, the results of nationalization will be perceptibly better than the results of private manufacture. What is needed is not the nationalization of the arms industry, but its complete abolition. Abolition will come when the majority wish it to come. The process of persuading the majority to wish it will be described in the next chapter.
The manufacturers of armaments are not the only ‘merchants of death.’ To some extent, indeed, we all deserve that name. For in so far as we vote for governments that impose tariffs and quotas, in so far as we support policies of rearmament, in so far as we consent to our country’s practice of economic, political and military imperialism, in so far even as we behave badly in private life, we are all doing our bit to bring the next war nearer. The responsibility of the rich and the powerful, however, is greater than that of ordinary men; for they are better paid for what they do to bring war closer and they know more clearly what they are about. Less spectacularly mischievous than the armament makers, but in reality hardly less harmful, are the speculative investors who preach imperialism because they can derive such high returns on their capital in backward countries. To the nation as a whole its colonies may be unprofitable, and actually costly. But to the politically powerful minority of financiers with capital to invest, of industrialists with surplus goods to dispose of, these same colonies may be sources of handsome profits.
The small, but politically powerful, minority of financiers and industrialists is also interested in various forms of economic imperialism. By a judicious use of their resources, the capitalists of highly industrialized nations stake out claims for themselves within nominally independent countries. Those claims are then represented as being the claims of their respective nations, and the quarrels between the various financial interests concerned become quarrels between states. The peace of the world has frequently been endangered, in order that oil magnates might grow a little richer.
In the press, which is owned by rich men, the interests of the investing minority are always identified (doubtless in perfectly good faith) with those of the nation as a whole. Constantly repeated statements come to be accepted as truths. Innocent and ignorant, most newspaper readers are convinced that the private interests of the rich are really public interests and become indignant whenever these interests are menaced by a foreign power, intervening on behalf of its investing minority. The interests at stake are the interests of the few; but the public opinion which demands the protection of these interests is often a genuine expression of mass emotion. The many really feel and believe that the dividends of the few are worth fighting for.
(x) Remedies and Alternatives.—So much for the nature and causes of war. We must now consider, first, the methods for preventing war from breaking out and for checking it once it has begun and, second, the political alternatives and psychological equivalents to war.
It will be best to begin with the existing methods of war preventions. These methods are not conspicuously successful for two good reasons: first, they are in many cases of such a nature that they cannot conceivably produce the desired results and, second, even when intrinsically excellent, they are not calculated to eliminate the existing causes of war or to provide psychologically equivalent substitutes for war. Accordingly, after describing and discussing the methods at present in use, I shall go on to outline the methods which should be used, if the causes of war are to be eliminated and suitable alternatives to war created.
The hopes which so many men and women of good will once rested in the League of Nations have been disappointed. The failure of the League of Nations to secure the pacification of the world is due in part to historical accident, but mainly to the fact that it was based on entirely wrong principles. The historical accident which stultified the League’s ability to do good was the refusal of the Americans to join it and the exclusion for many years of the ‘enemy powers’ and Russia. But even if America, Germany and Russia had all been original members, it is still as certain as any contingency can be that the League would not have produced the good results expected of it. The League admits to membership any community, however small, which possesses an army of its own. No community, however large, which does not possess an army is eligible. In practice and by implication the League defines a nation as ‘a society organized for war.’ And effectively this is the only definition of a nation that applies to all the existing members of the class. Every other definition, in terms of race, of colour, of language, of culture and even of simple topography, is proved to be inadequate by the existence of exceptions. Formally and in fact, the League of Nations is a league of societies organized for war.
The militarism which is built into the very definition of the League finds expression in the means whereby, under its present constitution, it is proposed to secure peace. The framers of the League Covenant did what many of the framers of the American Constitution desired to do, but were fortunately dissuaded by Alexander Hamilton from doing: they inserted a clause decreeing first economic and then military sanctions against an ‘aggressor.’
Sanctions are objectionable for exactly the same reasons as war is objectionable. Military sanctions are war. Economic sanctions, if applied with vigour, must inevitably lead to war-like reactions on the part of the nation to which they are applied, and these war-like reactions can only be countered by military sanctions. Sanctionists call their brand of war by high-sounding names. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by mere words. In the actual circumstances of the present day, ‘collective security’ means a system of military alliances opposed to another system of military alliances. The first system calls itself the League; the second is nominated in advance ‘the Aggressor.’
Once war has broken out, nations will consult their own interests whether to fight or remain neutral; they will not permit any international agreement to dictate their course of action. Speaking on November 20th, 1936, Mr. Eden stated that ‘our armaments may be used in bringing help to a victim of aggression in any case where, in our judgment, it would be proper under the provision of the Covenant to do so. I use the word “may” deliberately, since in such an instance there
