WAR FUTILE WASTE

Franklin Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 126, 30 October 1936, Page 7

WAR FUTILE WASTE

MERE ANACHRONISM. “ABOLISH IT OR PERISH/’ Since the beginning of this century war “has become a destructive anachronism, useless as a 1001, unpracticable as a measure of national policy, and at the same time an unmitigated waste of all that is best in our civilisation,” the tercentenary meeting of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa was told by Professor Bronslaw Malinowski, anthropologist of the University of London, says the “New York Times.”

Approaching the subject from ail anthropological, biological, and sociological angle, Professor Malinowski presented proofs that “war is not, and never has been, a biological necessity; that the cultural value of war is not universal, but limited to a well-defined period in human development, and that at present war has become the merely destructive and demoralising, the most cruel and imbecile expression of the dominance of the machine over man.

“Had Bismarck known that his ideology would in the long run produce Adolf Hitler as his spiritual successor, he might have doubted whether Sedan was the greatest victory in development.”

Professor Malinowski summed up his anthropological survey and its results as follows:

“Speaking in terms of evolution we find that war is not a permanent institution of mankind. If we define war as an instrument of national policy, as an effective way of obtaining the fruits of victory by means or organised force; war has not always been in existence. The chaotic brawls, the internecine fighting of the lowest savages, have nothing in common with the institution of war. “At the second stage, the battles of head-hunters, the raids of cannibals, the capturing of human bodies for sacrifice. or repast, are an interesting and queer puzzle for the anthropologist. They show no constructive or creative virtue either for the individual or for society.

The Biological Side. “Is war a biological necessity? As regards the earliest cultures the answer is emphatically negative. To blow a poisonous dart from behind a bush, to murder a woman or a child in their sleep, is not pugnacity. Nor is headhunting, body-snatching, or killing for food instinctive or natural.

“Turning to the wars of today and tomorrow, can we say that today man is pitting his strength, skill, courage, or endurance against man? Certainly not! War has become a contest between machines, industrial enterprise, and financial organisation. “The hero of the next war, the man who from the air destroys a whole peaceful township in its sleep with poison gas, is not expressing any biological characteristics of his organism or showing any moral virtues.

“The mechanical and promiscuous murder from a safe place of vantage of unknown, innocent people, men, women, and children, cannot develop courage in the assassin. It is an act of premeditated, cowardly crime on a gigantic scale.

“Give me again the old type of warfare where man was pitted against man, courage against courage, where intelligence and enterprise still counted, and I shall become as enthusiastic about war as any member of the most military-propaganda organisation in a Fascist, Nazi, or Communist country. You can praise the virtue of modern warfare only if you blind yourself to its realities. Or else you can by verbal jugglery draw conclusions from thesvision of past wars, dead now beyond recovery, and by sophistry apply the result to the contemporary mechanical slaughter.

“The results of a future war on a large, modern community would be the same as that eruption of Mount Pelee, which destroyed the capital of Martinique, or a gigantic earthquake which wipes out a community.

“The preparedness for war, far from being functionally profitable, is merely destructive. The education in Fascist Italy, or Hitler’s Germany shows what a complete militarisation of a people can bring about. There is no more teaching or moral development in the schools of Germany and Italy. Children are made into good patriots; that is to say, into suitable material for gun fodder.

“As regards finance and industrial organisation, Ihe appreherfsion in which we live of the next war introduces a permanent source of dislocation and conflict. The economic motive in trade, industry, and finance works at present inevitably towards internationalisation. The political motive of preparedness for the next war drives each State to a strictly selfcontained national policy. “I believe that, to this conflict can be ascribed more than half of the effective causes of unemployment, disorganisation, and national poverty. 1 also believe that the world organised, or rather disorganised, for the future, war is moving inevitably towards economic catastrophe.

“it is my considered opinion, as a student of human culture, that the only alternative for us is to abolish war and organise for peace, or perish.” f

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