THE FAILURE OF VICTORY

Marlborough Express, Volume LIV, Issue 185, 6 August 1920, Page 3

THE FAILURE OF VICTORY

SIR PHILIP GIBBS'S VIEWS

Sir Philip Gibbs, writing in the New Republic on the Failure of Victory, says: — "We need a prophet .of God to change the evil in men's hearts, and such a, voice is not heard above the strife and anguish of this present time), when many peoples are sinking again into an abyss of despair, and ethers are behaving with an appalling frivolity because their time has not yet come. We must await a. greater lender than we now have, but men of good will, not great, but true and kind, and endowed with that rare quality which we are pleased to call common sense, might make a beginning in the way of grace. As a newspaper man I think the best beginning could be made in the newspaper vorld from which so much poison is distilled. Let us declare a war against the poisoners, and hill them by ridicule nnd by truth. Let us, men of the pen and the printing press, make a pact of peace among ourselves for the protection of all simple folk. -•"I am for the simple folk --uio, m every country that I know—-and I have travelled a good part of the •earth's surface—want to be left m peace, in their fields and factories with their women and their babies. , It is they who a.ro the victims of the vi!ia.jny, and still more of the stupidity of those above thorn in power and place. How are we to cure this evil? There is no simpler recipe. A friend of mine raid 'Let vis found an International Society for the Suppression of Imbeciles.' There is •something in that. I do think, quite seriously, that there might be an international society of journalists pledged in honor to abstain from all provocative writing about other mv tions, and to denounce as unprofessional the conduct of any of their fellows who are found guilty of spreading slander and spite calculated to disturb the world's pence. "I believe that in the United States and in many nations of Europe there would be a. great body of men to support such a movement on behalf of world peace and democratic fellowship. Wherever I ha.ye been lately in Europe I ha.ye found that. men and women who may be said to belong to that vague class known as the 'intellectuals' —that is to say writing men of decent reputation, artists of all kinds., musicians, and cultured middle-class- people who read books and have some ideal higher than mere getting and spending—are oil thinking much the same things about the present state of the world as it has been left by the heritage of war. They be! >eve in peace. They are not out to capture other people'smarkets. They are anti-military. They have no hatred of other nations. They sympathise with the desire of the laboring masses to enjoy a little more of the iruits of labor, with a better margin of security in life. "If the 'intellectuals' of each nation entered into a fellowship for the promotion of the peace of the world it would have a tremendous effect upon the philisophy and ideas of civilised countries. It would be a safeguard against a revolution, which otherwise ivill sweep across ail densely populated areas of the world where men and women, freshly escaped from the agony of war, are awakened to new knowledge by its calamity, find that nothing has been changed by that sacrifice of youth, that the profiteer is rampant ahoy.' the- ruin, that they are serfs of big trusts and the power of capital, and that the old philosonhy of secret treaties, national rivalries, financial interests, and jealous -diplomacies is again enthroned over tlieir bodies and their frouls."