by A. A. Milne
We were resting after the first battle of the Somme. Naturally all the talk in the Mess was of after-the-war. Ours was the H.Q. Mess, and I was the only subaltern; the youngest of us was well over thirty. With a gravity befitting our years and (except for myself) our rank, we discussed not only restaurants and revues, but also Reconstruction.
The Colonel’s idea of Reconstruction included a large army of conscripts. He did not call them conscripts. The fact that he had chosen to be a soldier himself, out of all the professions open to him, made it difficult for him to understand why a million others should not do the same without compulsion. At any rate, we must have the men. The one thing the war had taught us was that we must have a real Continental army.
I asked why. ‘Theirs not to reason why’ on parade, but in the H.Q. Mess on active service the Colonel is a fellow human being. So I asked him why we wanted a large army after the war.
For the moment he was at a loss. Of course, he might have said ‘Germany’, had it not been decided already that there would be no Germany after the war. He did not like to say ‘France’, seeing that we were even then enjoying the hospitality of the most delightful of French villages. So, after a little hesitation, he said ‘Spain’.
A t least he put it like this:
‘Of course, we must have an army, a large army.’
‘But why?’ I said again.
‘How else can you – can you defend the honour of your country?’
‘The Navy.’
‘The Navy! Pooh! The Navy isn’t a weapon of attack; it’s a weapon of defence.’
‘But you said “defend”.’
‘Attack,’ put in the Major oracularly, ‘is the best defence.’
‘Exactly.’
I hinted at the possibilities of blockade. The Colonel was scornful. ‘Sitting down under an insult for months and months,’ he called it, until you starved the enemy into surrender. He wanted something much more picturesque, more immediately effective than that. (Something, presumably, more like the Somme.)
‘But give me an example,’ I said, ‘of what you mean by “insults” and “honour”.’
Whereupon he gave me this extraordinary example of the need for a large army.
‘Well, supposing,’ he said, ‘that fifty English women in Madrid were suddenly murdered, what would you do?’
I thought for a moment, and then said that I should probably decide not to take my wife to Madrid until things had settled down a bit.
‘I’m supposing that you’re Prime Minister,’ said the Colonel, a little annoyed. ‘What is England going to do?’
‘Ah! … Well, one might do nothing. After all, what is one to do? One can’t restore them to life.’
The Colonel, the Major, even the Adjutant, expressed his contempt for such a cowardly policy. So I tried again.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I might decide to murder fifty Spanish women in London, just to even things up.’
The Adjutant laughed. But the Colonel was taking it too seriously for that.
‘Do you mean it?’ he asked.
‘Well, what would you do, sir?’
‘Land an army in Spain,’ he said promptly, ‘and show them what it meant to treat English women like that.’
‘I see. They would resist of course?’
‘No doubt.’
‘Yes. But equally without doubt we should win in the end?’
‘Certainly.’
‘And so re-establish England’s honour.’
‘Quite so.’
‘I see. Well, sir, I really think my way is the better. To avenge the fifty murdered English women, you are going to kill (say) 100,000 Spaniards who have had no connexion with the murders, and 50,000 Englishmen who are even less concerned. Indirectly also you will cause the death of hundreds of guiltless Spanish women and children, besides destroying the happiness of thousands of English wives and mothers. Surely my way – of murdering only fifty innocents – is just as effective and much more humane.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ said the Colonel shortly.
‘And the other is war.’
We were silent for a little, and then the Colonel poured himself out a whisky.
‘All the same,’ he said, as he went back to his seat, ‘you haven’t answered my question.’
‘What was that, sir?’
‘What you would do in the case I mentioned. Seriously.’
‘Oh! Well, I stick to my first answer. I would do nothing – except, of course, ask for an explanation and an apology. If you can apologize for that sort of thing.’
‘And if they were refused?’
‘Have no more official relations with Spain.’
‘That’s all you would do?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you think that that is consistent with the honour of a great nation like England?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Oh! Well, I don’t.’
An indignant silence followed.
‘May I ask you a question now, sir?’ I said at last.
‘Well?’
‘Suppose this time England begins. Suppose we murder all the Spanish women in London first. What are you going to do – as Spanish Premier?’
‘Er – I don’t quite –’
‘Are you going to order the Spanish Fleet to sail for the mouth of the Thames, and hurl itself upon the British fleet?’
‘Of course not. She has no fleet.’
‘Then do you agree with the – er Spanish Colonel who goes about saying that Spain’s honour will never be safe until she has a fleet as big as England’s?’
‘That’s ridiculous. They couldn’t possibly.’
‘Then what could Spain do in the circumstances?’
‘Well, she – er – she could – er – protest.’
‘And would that be consistent with the honour of a small nation like Spain?’
‘In the circumstances,’ said the Colonel unwillingly, ‘er – yes.’
‘So that what it comes to is this. Honour only demands that you should attack the other man if you are much bigger than he is. When a man insults my wife, I look him carefully over; if he is a stone heavier than I, then I satisfy my honour by a mild protest. But if he only has one leg, and is three stone lighter, honour demands that I should jump on him.’
‘We’re talking of nations,’ said the Colonel gruffly, ‘not of men. It’s a question of prestige.’
‘Which would be increased by a victory over Spain?’
The Major began to get nervous. After all, I was only a subaltern. He tried to cool the atmosphere a little.
‘I don’t know why poor old Spain should be dragged into it like this,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘I had a very jolly time in Madrid years ago.’
‘Oh, I only gave Spain as an example,’ said the Colonel casually.
‘It might just as well have been Switzerland?’ I suggested.
There was silence for a little.
‘Talking of Switzerland –’ I said, as I knocked out my pipe.
‘Oh, go on,’ said the Colonel, with a good-humoured shrug. ‘I’ve brought this on myself.’
‘Well, sir, what I was wondering was – What would happen to the honour of England if fifty English women were murdered at Interlaken?’
The Colonel was silent.
‘However large an army we had –’ I went on.
The Colonel struck a match.
‘It’s a funny thing, honour,’ I said. ‘And prestige.’
The Colonel pulled at his pipe.
‘Just fancy,’ I murmured, ‘the Swiss can do what they like to British subjects in Switzerland, and we can’t get at them. Yet England’s honour does not suffer, the world is no worse a place to live in, and one can spend quite a safe holiday at Interlaken.’
‘I remember being there in ’94,’ began the Major hastily …
– King and Country –
Wars may be declared for economic reasons, but they are fought by volunteers for sentimental rea
sons. However loudly an iron-field may call to the Elder Statesman, the call will come to Youth through the voices of King and Country. And even the most cynical statesman would hesitate to tell the young volunteer that his King and Country needed him in order to make a certain corner of the world safe for speculators.
But are wars even declared entirely for economic reasons? Is not the statesman also subject to the sentimental impulse? If his motives were purely economic, one would expect him to make out a balance-sheet before he issued his ultimatum; taking into account, on the credit side the value of the oil-fields, goldfields, iron-fields, or whatever was the gleam which he was following; and, on the debit side, the probable length of the war, the estimated cost per day, the estimated number of casualties (and consequent cost of pensions), depreciation of stock, insurance against defeat, damage inflicted by aeroplanes, and so forth. He makes no such balance-sheet. It may be said that he hopes to get his expenses back by way of indemnity, just as a suitor in the law-courts hopes to get his costs. Well, he has discovered by now that indemnity on that scale is simply unpayable; but, even before this great and (one would have thought) elementary discovery was made, there still remained, on the debit side of the account, the irreplaceable human lives. Are the economic gains of war ever balanced against dead Englishmen? Against human misery? It would hardly seem so. The economics of the war-minded statesman are the economics of the nursery. A baby putting its hand into the fire to take out the pretty coal shows as much awareness of reality.
For the truth is this. A nation may declare war in pursuit of some material end, yet, in reality, it is declaring war at the call of ‘honour’. Because ‘honour’ demands that a nation shall achieve its ends regardless of cost.
This ‘honour’, as I have shown, is nothing honourable. It is merely the artificial pride of the duellist. In the days when duelling was the fashion men fought because they ‘had to fight’; because honour compelled them to fight; because they were too proud not to fight.
Now it is almost impossible for Pacifist and Militarist to get into argument about war without the analogy of the duel being brought up, sooner or later, by one or other of them. It might be as well, then, now that I have likened the motive of war to the motive of the duel, to follow the analogy through to the end.
Twenty years ago the comparison between private war and international war was often made. ‘Consider’, the pacifist’s argument ran, ‘how ridiculous the idea of abolishing duelling must have seemed once – as ridiculous as seems now the idea of abolishing war. But the world progresses; and if we have got rid of the one, why should we not get rid of the other?’ To which came the inevitable militarist answer: ‘We got rid of duelling because we had an over-riding authority which could call duellists to account; but it is impossible to create an over-riding authority which can call nations to account.’
Since those days the League of Nations was conceived, has come into being, and now waits uncertainly on its future.
Yet the argument remains. And the argument is not: Since national law has enforced the abandonment of duelling, therefore international law could enforce the abandonment of war; but simply: Since we have outgrown the one convention, is there any reason why we should not outgrow the other?
It is true that, if I fight a duel with a man who has insulted me, I shall be put in prison, and that if I kill him, I shall be hanged; it is true that, however much I wanted to fight him, the certainty of imprisonment, and the probability that one way or the other I should lose my own life, would prevent me from challenging him. But the more profound truth is that I no longer want to fight him. And the reason that I do not want to fight him is not because I am afraid of the consequences, but because the whole idea of fighting seems now to be ridiculous. The duelling convention, in fact, has ceased to exist.
Is there any necessity for the war-convention to continue? We have outgrown the one convention, why should we not outgrow the other?
For this reason (says the Elder Statesman). There is always an intermediary period when an idea is not strong enough to flourish by itself, but needs protection; just as young grass needs protection in between the time when it is sown and the time when it is established. In the case of duelling this protection was given by the Law, and under the Law the idea that private war was wrong and foolish grew to its present strength. But in the case of international war we are back again at the old problem. By what Law, and by what sanctions, can we protect the idea of Peace until it is so firmly established in the minds of nations that international war seems both wicked and ridiculous?
– Pro Patria –
And then, on Armistice Day, there are the heroic dead to be commemorated. The usual speeches are made, the usual sermons preached, the usual leading articles written, and from every one of these threnodies, however pacific in intention, the suggestion escapes that to fight for one’s country is the noblest form of self-expression, to die for one’s country the noblest form of self-immolation. Our heroic dead, our immortal dead. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Yet, looking at the matter in the cold light of reason, we see that a man is not a hero who is conscripted; or who is in the army for lack of other employment; or who is carried away by the waving of flags and the thrumming of bands; or who joins up, as so many did, because life in wartime is hell anyway, and only in uniform can one escape from thinking about it. Nor, we observe, do these ordinary unheroic men become heroes just because an incompetent commander has hurled them in mass upon uncut wire, there to hang like blackberries until they are ripe for the honour, if Chance picks upon them, of Unknown Warrior. Alive or dead, they retain the nobility or ignobility of character which was theirs in peace-time; just as the young men of today, who have not yet had a war arranged for them, are noble and ignoble.
This sentimental feeling that war is an exhibition of heroism, which grants diplomas to all who attend it, is far from the truth. The whole conception of modern war is almost comically unheroic. Gone are the days of Agincourt when King Harry ‘would not lose so great an honour as one man more from England would share from him’. Gone are the days when the little ships of England ranged themselves proudly, almost contemptuously, against the invincible Armada. Gone are the days when a fight was hardly a fight to an Englishman if the odds against him were less than three to one. Today, with no war in sight, yet in terror lest we should be outbuilt, we seek to match ship for ship, gun for gun, aeroplane for aeroplane; and even so, when the war comes, it will be the ‘gentlemen in England’, the chemists and the munition workers, upon whom victory will depend.
But though modern war is not heroic in itself, it might be urged that those who fall in war fall for a cause outside themselves, and, by so doing, have made, as the threnodists say, the supreme sacrifice: they have given their lives for others. Well, let us continue to be unsentimental. Self-sacrifice, to be heroic, must be a voluntary sacrifice and a deliberate sacrifice. Not more than 5 per cent of the soldiers in the last war volunteered to fight. Those who did volunteer went into action knowing that casualties would be suffered, but thinking and hoping and praying (so unheroic are the ordinary people who die in war) that the casualties would be, not to themselves but to their companions. They took the risk of death willingly, as young fools take it daily on motorbicycles, as men take it in aeroplanes, or in search of a Pole, or after big game, or among the mountains; but the absolute certainty of death is something far removed from this. A man is indeed a hero if, longing for life, he accepts death of his own will. How many heroes do we commemorate each year? How many of the ‘immortal dead’ have deliberately died for their country?
Neither in its origins nor in its conduct is war heroic. Splendidly heroic deeds are done in war, but not by those responsible for its conduct, and not exclusively and inevitably by the dead. Of the ten million men who were killed in the last war, more than nine million had to fight whether they wanted to or not, and of these nine million some eight million did nothing heroic whatever before
they were killed. They are no more ‘immortal’ than a linen-draper who is run over by a lorry; their deaths were no more ‘pleasant’ and ‘fitting’ than the death of a stock-broker in his bath.
But of course one can’t just say to a million mothers: ‘I want your sons,’ and then six months later; ‘Sorry, they’re all dead.’ If war is to be made tolerable, the romantic tradition must be handed on. ‘Madam, I took away your son, but I give you back the memory of a hero. Each year we will celebrate together his immortal passing. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.’
– Fighting for Peace –
Wars, however, are not always fought in pursuit or defence of territory. A ‘tariff war’ may lead to an ultimatum. Then which nation is attacking and which defending? In a sense each is defending its rights, for each will proclaim the right to live, and allege that the other is endangering it. Wars may be declared, as Austria declared war on Servia, in defence of some supposed prestige. It was generally admitted that Austria had the right to some sort of ‘satisfaction’ for the ‘insult’ of Serajevo, and it was, in fact, the clash between Austria’s ‘defence’ of her original claim and Servia’s ‘defence’ against an excessive claim which led to the Great War.
It is clear then, that, whatever the origin of a war, each country can protest that she is not the aggressor; each country can claim that she is ‘resisting’ an unfair demand, ‘defending’ her prestige, or ‘repelling’ an attack upon her rights. It is also clear that with the modern facilities for organizing and distributing lies, which every government possesses and none scruples to use, the justice of a cause can be firmly established in the minds of all nationals fighting for it. If the countries of Europe are going to limit themselves in the future to defensive wars; if they are going to limit themselves to wars for which God’s approval has been obtained in advance by their clergy; they will not be pledged to one single war less. To justify defensive war is automatically to justify the next war in which one’s own country is engaged, and is, therefore, automatically to justify war.
