CAUSES OF WAR

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19127, 23 September 1936, Page 15

CAUSES OF WAR

WHY DOES MAN FIGHT ?

LEAGUE OF NATION'S PLACE

"You will scarcely believe me when I tell you that the. League of Nations from the day of its inception lias not spent a single penny trying to lind out why man .goes to war or how he succeeds iti remaining at peace. Man lias shouted about the proximate causes of war until our ears are deafened with a confused clamour," says Dr. Glover in his chapter oh "The Unconscious Causes of War." "The last war is no sooner over than historians arc busy proving that the causes alleged on the outbreak were not the true causes. The ostensible causes of the 1914 outbreak have long been discredited. Even now, all we know for certain is that it was not. 'a. war to end ■war.' And in the meantime we have taken no steps whatsoever to eliminate even the most, superficial of causes.

"As for those secret forces which have driven men at each others' throats since the dawn of history—man, on the savage principle that what be doesn't know can't, hurt him, is content to bury his head in the sand, like the ostrich, whose intelligence he affects to ridicule . . . ." It is sometimes facetiously said that the old men should be sent to war first of all and Dr. Glover thinks thai both militants and pacifists should have certain restrictions. He says :—

"For example, just as militarists should be excluded from War Departments, so pacifists should lie prohibited from holding office in League of Nations or acting as peace delegates, or as Foreign Secretaries." Tn a special chapter on the League of Nations, Dr. Glover from his point of view as a psychoanalyst asserts: — "The League has had the worst of all possible starts. It was founded by a rigid-minded idealist, its organisation was set up in the worst of all possible times in the phase of reaction to a great war, and in the teeth of national opposition. It was, in effect, tied up with the maintenance of a. peace treaty which was itself forged in panic, and its immediate organisation was determined by existing concepts of nationalism. "This is bad enough in all conscience, but it is not necessarily hopeless. JI migilit lie possible to eradicate the more objectionable features of its organisation, but any effective amendment must be based on psychological realities. A little more modesty, a little less Irneulenco and a little less expansive scli'-rightcousness on the part of its 'supporters would go far to induce conditions favourable to its continued existence,'' Dr. Glover's main theme is that bohind man's facade of rational behaviour, there exists a more primitive and irrational mental structure, and the author insists (hat man regulates his individual and social life by means of this more archaic mind. The author lias the gift of lucidity, and those who may be tempted to shirk an apparently dull subject yet feel this attitude is reprehensible, will find Dr. Glover an exponent they will understand—and will very oflen most heartily disagree with him.