DANGER SPARKS

Evening Star, Issue 19588, 21 June 1927, Page 12

DANGER SPARKS

STAGE SET FOR NEXT WAR It is a tribute to the romantic and incurable imbecility of mankind (writes H. L, Mencken, in the ‘Sunday Chronicle’) that reading articles and listening to speeches iu lafor of international peace is now one of the chief spiritual diversions of the more thoughtful and enlightened minority, m the face of the plain fact that another general war was never _ more likely than it is to-day, not even in tho spring of 1914. Let tho experimenter apply his ear to tho ground on any calm night; ho will hear the whirr of grindstones ■sharpening swords. Has there been any advance in international amity since tho Treaty of Versailles? Many earnest men •nid women argue that there lias been, but such beliefs are as unreliable as dreams of love, i.u Western Europe tho makings of rather general war are plainly visible. LOOKING AT FRANCE. The continued existence of France in her 1 present slate of restlessness is as sure to bring it on as tho sparks fly upward—and the only apparent, cure for that restlessness is war itself. The French came out of the last war honestly convinced that tho cause of civilisation and their own cause were one and indistiguisuablc, and they remain of that conviction to-day. The gallant Gascons probably overestimate their importance to tho world —but whether they overestimate it or not it is real enough to them. Their operations in Poland, the Balkans, and the Near East are surely not to be dismissed as mere maraudings. Tho Germans, having observed the concrete paladins of the French crusade at close range, see only ungenerous enemies—worse, rooting swine. The Americans, viewing a heavy debtor on what seems to be a holiday, with a plume in his hat, growl unpleasantly in their remote kraals upon tho prairie, and are not convinced by the assurances of Columbia professors, however learned and decorated. Even tho Italians and Spaniards murmur, and from Russia come yells. Thus the stage is set to put down another menace to democracy, autocracy, or what you have, and the aforesaid whirring of grindstones freights the midnight air. ■ It is conceivable, of course, that the French, before their enemies are ready to launch the familiar forces of God* against them, may suffer a change of heart and begin to practise _ humility, economy, and all the other virtues. It is also conceivable that all the leopards in the zoos of the world may one cfay change their spots. But neither miracle is probable. WHOSE TURN? The size of the French Army alarms only romantics. It was larger than the German Army at the outbreak of the last war, and yet not. much more than half tho German army hurled it back on Pans. . It will have an during the first few weeks of the fighting, and if not impeded by the help of the Italians (which threatens, despite the present growls) may hang on for three or four months. But after that it will succumb. And wbat then? God knows. I am no prophet in a white chemise, but confine myself to the obvious. It may he the turn of the United States next; nobodv loves a fat man. Or it may be the turn of Britain. The point is that we are passing through? a phase of history which recalls the battles royal which used to be fought in American “ athletic clubs.” Five darkies would bo thrown into the ring together—four small ones and a big one. Tho four small ones would at once combine against the big one, and usually, after a hard struggle, they knocked him out. Then, if they were not too far gone, they would fight one another. HOPELESS PACIFISM. This process, immensely magnified, is now going on in the world. Germany, growing too formidable for comfort, was knocked out by the others. Now it is France that causes alarm, with her flashing army and her grandiloquent .aspirations. Her destruction will only pave the way for the next one. The principle remains the same. There is a struggle, the fittest prevails, and then the less fit combine to restore the balance. The schemes proposed by the pacifists are all plainly hopeless, and most of them are downright lunatic. Of them all, the scheme of, nnivesral disarmament is perhaps the worst. If every nation in the world were actually disarmed, wars might still be improvised overnight, and there is no reason to suppose that they would be fewer or less bloody than they are now, THOSE WHO “NEVER FIGHT.” In another favorite pacifist scheme there is even worse nonsense. This is the scheme so often described (somewhat vaguely) as that of breaking clown national boundaries.

It rests upon tile theory that peoples who speak the same language, exchange goods freely, and pay taxes to the same gang of thieves, never fight. What could be more absurd? Peoples fight when their interests clash—and the interests of the French and the Germans would clash in a United States of Europe almost as plainly as they do to-day. But argument will never fetch the world-savers who now snuffle and sob. There is but one thing that can cure them, and that is another general war. When it begins they will put up their ideals and begin yelling for blood, as they did the last time.