THE CAUSES OF WAR

Taranaki Daily News, 14 March 1935, Page 11

THE CAUSES OF WAR

WEALTH AND POWER LUST MAN’S PSYCHOLOGICAL LEANINGS. MISS ELSIE ANDREWS’ REVIEW. The causes, biological, psychological and political, that lead men against their better judgment and beliefs into war were presented and analysed by Miss Elsie Andrews, in an address to the New Plymouth branch of the League of Nations union on Tuesday night. ' Wars were not fought for one reason and one alone, said Miss Andrews. War had happened so frequently that .it was reasonable to believe that deepseated corrosive agencies must be continually at work upon the social order. The most frequently advanced causes of war could be classified under three headings, biological, psychological and political. The biological causes had their roots in the doctrine of Malthus, who held that the world would come to a stage when natural resources would be unequal to the requirements of an increasing population; hence war served a useful purpose—“nature’s pruning hook,” yet- if each individual in the world to-day were allowed a square yard, the whole population could find standing room in a block of land 26 miles square. In war, however, it was the fittest that perished, outraging primary eugenic truths. “If war were .to be declared to-night there can be little doubt that the bulk of our young men would respond to the call of arms immediately,” said Miss Andrews, “Why? The spirit of adventure has much to answer for. War offers a complete change from the drab routine of everyday life. A man does not stop to analyse causes even if that were possible when the first sacrifice in war is truth. He feels he has no personal responsibility in the matter—the government carries that.” ABSTRACT IDEALISM. Then there was patriotism—the sublimation of one’s identity in an abstract idealism. There were various examples of such idealism —one’s school, one’s regiment, one’s religion were all instances, but with these as with love of country the deepest stirrings of one’s heart fuse in a loyalty often incapable of expression except through the medium of service and sacrifice. “A reason less fine is a desire to feel important, and almost everyone has this secret longing to be a. fine man. The pomp and pageantry of war are strong wine for young heads,” continued Miss Andrews. “Another factor is the feeling of hatred engendered by war propaganda and loss of relatives. We look back now with feelings of horror at our childlike credulity, our lack of perspicacity, at our blind fury against Germans.” Poverty drove men to fight, for conditions in the army were a sharp contrast to the lot of the poor. Death was not so horrifying when life offered nothing better than an exhausting struggle against misery and squalor. "I sometimes wonder how many realise the potential danger to the Empire of the existence of the rich and the poor. While’ the ‘ preservation of the rich involves the perpetuation of the poor, democracy can never be other than a mockery. “Ignorance makes men ready victims of war propaganda. It is the breeding ground of fear and fear- begets hatred, cruelty and blind, raging panic—all very useful feelings from the warmongers’ point of view, “So here we have ignorance, poverty, revenge, impotence, patriotism, adventure, all on the side of war. The wonder is not that so many men enlist freely but that there should be any with a vision sufficiently clear to make them raise a voice of protest at the falsity* of it all.” In quite a different category came the causes of war commonly discussed, continued the speaker, the political causes. Individuals did not make wars, governments did. A war might be a war of aggression to secure further territory, to gain enhanced importance or to exploit some source of wealth, or a defensive war to prevent encroachment or preserve a country’s heritage. LUST AND POWER. “At bedrock warn; are caused by lust for power or lust for wealth,” she went on, “and power is rarely recognised as a synonym for responsibility. We think of might, majesty and dominion, of pomp and circumstance, of wealth and adulation. It is difficult to say where lust for wealth ends and lust for power begins but at the root of most warfare you will find the desire for expansion. Great world interests can and no doubt do influence governments for their own ends. Our commerce is founded on the idea of profit and nothing must stand in the way of it “Here we touch the crux of the problem of peace. We have always been anarchists. We do not concern ourselves with ethics. What we can lay our hands on is ours, and what we have, we hold, at whatever the cost. War is the cost. The pity of it is that the blood which flows in defence of the wealth and ' power is so often the blood of the unfortunate who have neither. The rank and file whose lives are forfeited not for high and noble ends, 'for peace and freedom, but for wealth and power for other people.” J. B. Priestly in his book “English Journey” said “I find it very difficult to ‘swap’ reminiscences of boyhood; the men who were. boys when I was a boy were slaughtered in youth; they were slaughtered in youth, killed by greed and muddle and monstrous cross purposes, by old men gobbling and roaring in clubs, by diplomats working underground like monocled moles, by journalists wanting a good story, by hysterical women waving flags, by grumbling debenture holders, by strong, silent be-ribboned asses, by fear or apathy or downright lack of imagination.” “The League of Nations is the hope of the world,” concluded Miss Andrews. “In itself it represents a tremendous advance in the conception of world unity and no amount of cynicism can alter the fact that it stands despite all the attacks launched against it, the one flower in the desert of smashed ideals that is the aftermath of war. It is the duty of all New Zealanders to stand loyally to it and tear to tatters . all arguments in favour of the anarchy of the war, to be earnest propagandists !n the cause of peace and internationalism.”