Groups of individuals pledged to take no part in any future war already exist (e.g. The War Resisters’ International, The Peace Pledge Union); but their organization is too loose and their membership too large and too widely scattered for them to be considered as associations, in the sense in which I have been using the word above. None the less they can and do render very important services to the cause for which all the reformers have always fought. They are propagandists, first of all. In private conversations, in speeches at public meetings, in pamphlets and newspaper articles, their members preach the gospel of non-violence, thus continuing and extending into nonsectarian fields the admirable work performed by the Society of Friends and other purely religious organizations. The result is that in England, in Holland, in the Scandinavian countries, in America and to some extent in Belgium and France, the public at large is beginning to become aware, if only dimly and still theoretically, that there exists a morally better and more effective alternative to revolution, to war, to violence and brutality of every kind.
Groups of war resisters, when sufficiently large and, in the moment of crisis, sufficiently unanimous, can prevent their government from going to war. This was clearly shown in 1920, when the Council of Action compelled Lloyd George to call off his threatened attack on the Soviets. It is unfortunately quite clear that the official leaders of the various left-wing parties of the world are not likely, in the immediate future, to call for similar passive resistance to any war which can be represented as ‘a war of defence,’ ‘a war to save democracy,’ ‘a war against Fascism,’ even a ‘war to end war.’ This means that, in the case of practically any war that is likely to break out in the near future, organized labour cannot be counted upon to work for peace. Without the aid of organized labour, war resisters have but the smallest chance of actually preventing their governments from waging a war. Nevertheless they can certainly do something to make the process morally and perhaps even physically more difficult than it would otherwise be. Peace can be secured and maintained only by the simultaneous adoption in many different fields of long-term policies, carefully designed with this end in view. Meanwhile, however, there is one short-term policy which every individual can adopt—the policy of war resistance.
People of ‘advanced views’ often question this conclusion. The causes of war, they argue, are predominantly economic; these causes cannot be removed except by a change in the existing economic system; therefore a policy of war resistance by individuals is futile.
Those who use such arguments belong to two main classes: currency reformers and socialists.
Currency reformers, such as Major Douglas and his followers, point to the defects in our monetary system and affirm that, if these defects were remedied, prosperity could be spread over the whole world and every possible cause of war eliminated. This is surely over-optimistic. Defects in the monetary system may intensify economic conflicts in general. But by no means all economic conflicts are conflicts between nations. Many of the bitterest economic conflicts are between rival groups within the same nation; but, because these rival groups feel a sentiment of national solidarity, their conflicts do not result in war. It is only when monetary systems are organized in the interest of particular nations or groups of nations that they become a potential cause of war. So long as nationalism exists, scientifically managed currencies may actually make for war rather than peace.
‘Once the controllers of national monetary systems begin to apply their power self-consciously, for the betterment of their people, we have monetary conflicts arising on strictly national lines, such as we see to-day in competitive depreciation and exchange control.’ (Kenneth Boulding in Economic Causes of War.) The greater the conscious scientific control exercised by national authorities, the greater the international friction, at least until such time as all nations agree to adopt the same methods of control. (See the relevant passages in the chapter on ‘Planned Society.’)
The present economic system is unjust and inefficient and it is urgently desirable, as the socialists insist, that it should be changed. But such change would not lead immediately and automatically to universal peace. ‘In so far as the socialization of a single nation creates truly national monopolies in the exports of that nation, so the power of the government increases and the national character of economic conflicts becomes intensified. Thus the socialization of a single nation, even though the rulers of that nation be most peaceably minded, is likely to intensify the fears of other nations in proportion as the control of the socialist government over its country’s economic life is increased. . . . Unless they are supported by a strong conscious peace sentiment, they (the socialist regimes of individual nations) may be turned to purposes of war just as effectively—and indeed probably more effectively—than capitalist societies.’ (Op. cit.)
It will thus be seen that individual war resisters acting alone or in association have a very important part to play in the immediate future. That changes in the present economic and monetary systems must be made is evident; and it is also clear that, in the long run, these changes will make for the establishment of the conditions of permanent peace. But meanwhile, so long as nationalistic sentiment persists, reforms of the economic and monetary system may temporarily increase international ill-feeling and the probability of war. The function of associations of individual war resisters is to prevent, if possible, necessary and intrinsically desirable changes in the economic and monetary systems from resulting in international discord and war.
In some countries the missionaries of non-violence can still preach their gospel without interference. In most of the world, however, they can only labour, if at all, in secret. Men of good will have always had to combine the virtues of the serpent with those of the dove. This serpentine wisdom is more than ever necessary to-day, when the official resistance to men of good will is greater and better organized than at any previous period. Progress in technology and in the science and art of organization has made it possible for governments to bring their police to a pitch of efficiency undreamed of by Napoleon, Metternich and the other great virtuosi of secret-police rule in previous ages. Before the Risorgimento the Austrians governed Italy by means of gendarmes, spies and agents provocateurs. Garibaldi fought to rid his country of these disgusting parasites. To-day, Mussolini has a secret police far superior to anything that the Austrians could boast of. It is the same in contemporary Russia.
Stalin’s police is like the Tsar’s—like the Tsar’s but, thanks to telephones, wireless, fast cars and the latest filing systems, a good deal smarter. The same is true of every other country. All over the world the police are able to act with a rapidity, a precision and a foresight never matched in the past.[11] Moreover, they are equipped with scientific weapons, such as the ordinary person cannot procure. Against forces thus armed and organized, violence and cunning are unavailing. The only methods by which a people can protect itself against the tyranny of rulers possessing a modern police force are the non-violent methods of massive non-co-operation and civil disobedience. Such methods are the only ones which give the people a chance of taking advantage of its numerical superiority to the ruling caste and to discount its manifest inferiority in armaments. For this reason it is enormously important that the principles of non-violence should be propagated rapidly and over the widest possible area. For it is only by means of well and widely organized movements of non-violence that the populations of the world can hope to avoid that enslavement to the state which in so many countries is already an accomplished fact and which the threat of war and the advance of technology are in process of accomplishing elsewhere.
In the circumstances of our age, most movements of revolutionary violence are likely to be suppressed instantaneously; in cases where the revolutionaries are well equipped with modern arms, the movement will probably turn into a long and stubbornly disputed civil war, as was the case in Spain. The chances that any change for the better will result from such a civil war are exceedingly small. Violence will merely produce the ordinary results of violence and the last state of the country will be worse than the first. This being so, non-violence presents the only hope of salvation. But, in order to resist the assaults of a numerous and efficient police, or, in the case of foreign invasion, of soldiers, non-violent movements will have to be well organized and widely spread. The regression from humanitarianism, characteristic of our age, will probably result in manifestations of non-violent resistance being treated with a severity more ruthless than that displayed by most governments in recent times. Such severities can only be answered by great numbers and great devotion.
Confronted by huge masses determined not to co-operate and equally determined not to use violence, even the most ruthless dictatorship is nonplussed. Moreover, even the most ruthless dictatorship needs the support of public opinion, and no government which massacres or imprisons large numbers of systematically non-violent individuals can hope to retain such support. Once
