THE CAUSES OF WAR

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20027, 7 February 1935, Page 11

THE CAUSES OF WAR

To the Editor of “ The Timaru Herald '* Sir, —It is common just now to ascribe the causes of war to “economic” factors and to talk about the dangers of “economic nationalism” or “aggressive imperialism,” as “Observer” did in his thoughtful and dispassionate letter in your issue of last Friday. This practice I should like to criticise on two grounds. The first is that “economic,” “nationalism,” and the rest are short-hand terms, concealing the extreme complexity of the factors, particularly human factors, that should be included in the meaning. Consequently, while appearing weighty and profound, they are in reality specious and superficial. The second ground, implicit in the first, is that the economic explanation of the causes of war given as the need for markets, raw materials, territory for surplus population. ... is quite inadequate. It does not explain why, to satisfy this need, nations resort to war, why war is in crises felt to be the only line of action left. I shall argue in this letter that the causes of war are psychological rather than economic. I think that the attitude of mind which will exchange reason for the international orgy we call war is created out of an enormously complex mixture of individual, social, national. . . . forces.

On this question of why war? Einstein and Freud during 1933, exchanged letters that have been published by the New Commonwealth Movement mentioned recently in these columns. In the opinion of Einstein it is easy to say what must be done to solve the problem of war.. “The quest of international security involves the uncon-* ditional surrender by every nation, in a certain measure, of its liberty of action, its sovereignty that is to say, and it is clear beyond all doubt that no other road can lead to such security .... the ill-success, despite their obvious sincerity, of all the efforts made during the last decade to reach this goal leaves us no room to doubt that strong psychological factors are at work which paralyse these efforts.” In his reply explaining these, Freud makes use of his comparatively recent theory of the life and death impulses, the impulse to create and the impulse to destroy, which are innate in all living things. Without going into an explanation of how in Freud’s view these work, I draw attention to the main theme: the causes of war are to be found, not in pressure of population, need for new markets, etc., but in the way in which the instinctive life of the individual is organised, in the measure of repression or inhibition of the impulses. This appears to be but a pseudo-scientific way of putting the often-quoted dictum of the militarist and the cynic: “War is inevitable, you can’t change human nature,” but a comparison of the attitudes of the militarist and the psychologist, shows a wide difference. The former accepts his term “human nature” as a final explanation without attempting to find out what forces it consists of, and whether the outlet these are given (i.e. war) is irrevocably determined. He uses it as a justification for war, though a more intelligent person would use it rather as the justification for an international police force, as William McDougall does. On the other hand not only is it the task of the psychologist to discover what “human nature” is, blit his discovery can also indicate how human behaviour may be changed. The experiments of Pavlov with dogs, and of Watson with young children, have shown that behaviour which seems instinctive is the result of early conditioning, the tieing of an unlearned reaction (fear, anger), to a new stimulus and the production of a new learned reaction. Is is easy to see, on this view, how a natural tendency to feel secure, appreciated and important among one’s own kind, may after years of conditioning by the tale of national exploits, by flags and anthems, by the misrepresentation of other nations, etc., be transformed into elaborate reaction—patterns like those of nationalism and patriotism. To apply the principle of the conditioned response consciously and extensively to education it would be necessary, first, to know what were desirable and what undesirable responses to develop, and, secondly to begin the process of conditioning in the first years of life. At present, however, while the social sciences (Antropology, sociology, economics, psychology) are at so rudimentary and confused a stage, •to name undesirable responses is much easier than desirable ones. Very few of us, for example, would approve of the naive suggestion of Dr. Watson that labourers should be conditioned to like the jobs and the pay they were given by benevolent (?) employers. And it should be obvious to all who have realised the significance of this process that the conditioning

of young children to respond without thought to the stimulus of the national symbol, the flag, as attempted in the elementary schools in New Zealand, is definitely undesirable. We have to live in a world of interdependent nations, and an unthinking response to such a symbol is, to say the least, unlikely to

make any easier the adjustment to new conditions that has to be made. Stimuli of this kind help to produce

the irrational “defence complex,” the most powerful of all causes of the psychological tension that is released in the explosion of war. The educative process here must be begun by parents, particularly by mothers. It woqld certainly make wars less likely. The psycho-analyst, it is interesting to note, also regards the early years of life as the most crucial in determining later behaviour. According to this theory, the frustration of the destructive impulse in infancy leads to the desire either to inflict or suffer pain, both desires making it easier for the individual to tolerate and even welcome situations of war. The prevention of this condition is again the task of parents, particularly of mothers. The desire for security, the basis of the economic motive, is fundamental in the child, but becomes as intermingled with other factors that the ascription of an act to the economic motive alone must be incomplete. The desire for power, to give an example from adult affairs, is a strong additional motive in Labour’s fight against Capital; the desire to possess territory (like Little America), in order to satisfy “national pride,” apart from the consideration of its economic value is a motive with nations. It is not accurate to say that Japan seized Manchuria for “economic” reasons; it is also quite incomplete to i give “aggressive imperialism” as the reason. Such terms give no indication

of the intricate composition of the attitudes, individual, social, political, national, that give the international situation its present character. I can point my moral excellently in the words of McDougall: “What is needed is an economics that shall frankly recognise the rich complexity of the motivation of human action, of economic no less than of political and of all other forms of social activity, shall recognise that the forces and tendencies of which economists write so obscurely are in the last analysis mental forces, desires, strivings, seekings, purposively and more or less intelligently directed thinking, all springing from the hidden ‘mainsprings of men,’ their lives and hates, their personal and group loyalties and family affections, their patriotism, their fears, their tastes, their ambitions, their ideals, their moral and religious and aesthetic aspirations, their compassions, their sentiments of honour and justice and humanity, their passion for liberty and equality and human brotherhood, no less than from lust and ‘herd instinct,’ and sheer greed or ‘self-interest’.” —I am, etc., WHAT ARE THE FACTS.