LOGIC AND PEACE

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26199, 24 August 1950, Page 5

LOGIC AND PEACE

Sir, —If D. B. Connell and the members of United Nations would only “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” Aldous Huxley’s “Ends and Means” (the most important book in the English language after Butler’s “Erewhon”) he (and they) would perhaps realise the illogicality as well as the immorality of “warring to end war.” It is not enough to have a high ideal like the ending of “hideous regime (s) of oppression, transportation. robbery and exploitation.” that is, of all forms of individual and collective violence, but also to make sure that the means we use to attain it does not violate the very ideal we are striving to realise. That great man. Lenin, once confessed (he was great because he confessed it) that his party had often made “fearful errors. ’ But so have we all. In this evolving world there is “none righteous, no, not one’.” Or ought I to except D. B. Connell?—Yours, etc., A N. M. BELL. August 22, 1950.

Sir, —The logic of war is that every major nation or empire that has used war has been humiliated, subjugated, or destroyed by war. If there is an exception to that rule, the writer is not aware of it. When one generation has enjoyed the loot, rape, and massacre of successful war, another generation has paid the penalty by being looted, raped, and massacred. One individual and his ambition is usually responsible for any war. If successful, he becomes a Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or Napoleon. while millions suffer. If unsuccess r ul, those enterprising freaks are fairly safe, because the intelligence of their supporters at any time, even now, is nothing to be afraid of. But it is that lack of intelligence that makes war possible and is a threat to the very existence of humanity, which makes atomic bombs insignificant and the United Nations a gathering of morons.—Yours, etc., _ H. J. BUTTLE. Darfield, August 21, 1950.