Chapter XIV
Up to 1919 the great capitalist powers, in their foreign policies, were fairly realistic about power. They sought security along balance of power lines. That is to say: 1. They accepted the balance of power between nations as an inevitable fact in a society of sovereign states, which are most unequal in economic and military power. 2. They sought at times to change the balance of power through war and diplomacy, but never to substitute for it a monopoly of world power of one nation or one league of nations. With the late world war, came the British need of Woodrow Wilson’s United States, which was to be had only at Wilson’s price of acceptance of the ideal of the League of Nations. This British need imposed on them acceptance of the ideal of collective security and some subsequent pretense at the pursuit of an unattainable monopoly of power for the League. The British and French met Wilson’s price in form but never in substance. The first welshers from the League, of course, were the American people. They were entirely right in repudiating the League and entirely wrong in having fought for something they were unwilling to uphold. It was never more than a sham, put forward by Wilson in all sincerity to the American people as the high moral objective of our entry into war, subscribed to in all duplicity by the Allies as Mr. Wilson’s price for our coming to their rescue and fought for in all futility by the American soldier.
The League had served its purpose when, as an iridescent dream, it had helped get us into the war and when the war had been won by the Allies. Thereafter, it was only a hollow mockery because no great power was willing to surrender any part of its sovereignty towards the constitution of a League of Nations monopoly of power for the enforcement of international law, justice and collective security.
Now that the British and French are again at war with Germany, the ideal of collective security is once more being dusted off for use in bamboozling the American people and in rounding up the United States and other neutrals for another Armageddon. The Allies are not really for collective security any more than Senators Lodge and Borah were twenty years ago, because the Allies are not willing to pay their part of the price of its attainment, which is the relinquishment of national sovereignty to an international agency to be vested with a monopoly of power. It would make little difference, of course, if the Allies were sincere in their professions of loyalty to collective security, since, if they were, there are at least four, not including the United States, of the seven great powers which would never ratify any counterpart of Article 10 of the League covenant, and which are inalterably opposed to collective security; and since three out of seven do not constitute a majority, even if the three are for righteousness and collective security or anything else.
So much for the collective security record of the democracies. It is one of bad faith from start to finish, including our asking American soldiers one year to die for the ideals of the League and then two years later promptly repudiating these ideals once the war had been won. As for the new revolution, it may be said that it is definitely not moving towards collective security but back to the balance of power theory and practice. The Marxist Communist International envisaged a collective security Utopia based on a monopoly of power by a proletarian world-wide socialism, whatever that might be. Just how such an international authority could be constituted and made to function, assuming the world-wide adoption of Marxist communism, has never been satisfactorily explained, even in theory. It would seem probable that there would be as many interest conflicts and power clashes between nations in a socialist as in a capitalist world. There is not much point in speculating about the possibility of a socialist world monopoly of power, however, as socialism in action, in Russia, Germany and, to a slightly less extent, in Italy, has its back turned on collective security and its face turned towards the traditional balance of power theory and practice. The democracies preach, but do not practice, collective security; the socialist dictatorships are neither preaching nor trying to practice it.
In theory, or rather in propaganda, the democracies are seeking to revolutionize the world by establishing the rule of one brand of righteousness under one monopoly of power, something which has never yet been realized. That is to say, the counterrevolutionary Haves are seeking peace on the basis of a revolutionary and visionary monopoly of power in lieu of the present or any other balance of power. The present balance of power is unsatisfactory to the Haves because in it the German, Japanese, Russian and Italian Have-nots are too powerful; it is equally unsatisfactory to these Have-nots because in it they are too poor. What the Haves really want, of course, is to change the post-Munich balance of power into one in which the Haves will be more powerful and the Have-nots less powerful, but what they say they want is to create a power situation in which justice and law will be all-powerful, which is just so much hokum, as no two great nations can ever permanently agree about justice or law. The revolutionary Have-nots, on the other hand, with greater intellectual honesty, are proclaiming, more or less truthfully, what they are actually seeking, namely, a change in the balance of power, or a new balance of power in which the Have-nots will be more powerful and the Haves, notably Britain, will be less powerful. This objective is a traditional pattern of change which is honestly avowed by the Have-nots. The Have-nots explicitly disavow any desire or intention to set up a monopoly of power through any form of international organization.
The facts that the capitalist democracies say that they are fighting for collective security, or a monopoly of power, and that the socialist Have-nots say they are not fighting for any such thing are most significant. These facts, presenting such a sharp contrast, suggest many important inferences about the democracies, the new revolution and the choice confronting America on the issues of the war.
In the first place, the off and on or insincere quest of the Allies after collective security on the basis of an unattainable monopoly of power is strongly indicative of the decadence of the democracies. Dynamic civilizations in the ascendant do not think in terms of Utopia, universal security, impossible guarantees of their early loot and world peace on the basis of its retention. Britain on the rise did not rely on America or any other country to come to her rescue. She relied rather on her own realistic diplomacy and mighty navy. These were adequate largely because her diplomacy always frankly recognized the balance of power and sought to divide and rule rather than to unite the wicked and then mow ’em down like Charlie McCarthy or Popeye the Sailor.
In the second place, this decadence of the democracies, notably of Britain, is symptomatic of a hardening of the democratic arteries. Why does British statesmanship chase the will-o’-the-wisp of collective security, knowing full well that the necessary monopoly of power for its achievement is impossible? Why does Britain get into wars she has no chance of winning without American help? The answer in one word is “democracy.” Actually, neither Mr. Chamberlain nor any other intelligent Englishman really could believe in the war aim of collective security with its preposterous corollary of a monopoly of power. But British realists know that the British masses, in their mental and moral feebleness, need such illusions, and also that in their electoral might they will not permit the pursuit by any British government of a strong realistic foreign policy appropriate to present world realities. Formerly the hard heads and harder hearts of the British ruling classes shaped British foreign policy. Now the soft heads of the British masses determine British foreign-policy decisions. British statesmen now know further that, being inhibited by British democracy from pursuing a realistic foreign policy, they need America and that America can be had only by means of the lure of an unrealistic idealism such as collective security.
In the third place, the new revolution, being a revolt against the shams, illusions, frustrations and failures of democracy, naturally tends to complete realism and intellectual honesty about power.
In the fourth place, the real war choice of America lies between going to war for an unattainable monopoly of power, and allowing the new revolution of realism to continue its course without our opposition while we work out an American policy to keep our present place in the sun in the new balance of power.
The moral case for a second American crusade in twenty-three years on the side of the angels is valid only on the assumption that the angels can win and thereafter maintain permanently the monopoly of power necessary for the stability of their heavenly world order. Few people realize this. Hence the overwhelming majority of Americans are on the side of the angels, merely because the angels are the best people. The moral case for our entering war goes unchallenged principally because no one cares to attack the idea of heaven or the person of an angel. And it is considered bad form to raise practical questions in connection with heaven, angels or moral imperatives. In present-day America it is thought to be a mark of decent instincts to, ignore power in politics just as, in Mid-Victorian England, it was deemed bad taste to mention sex in polite conversation. To make clear the issues of the present war, it is necessary to plunge into some rather abstract political theory. To make the abstract concrete in every particular, which it would be easy to do, would unduly expand the thesis.
The first thing to understand about Utopian schemes of world peace and order and about the exigencies of practical politics is this: To enforce any kind of public order it is necessary for the enforcing agent to command within the area of enforcement a virtual monopoly of power. The nation, if it is a sovereign state, has a monopoly of power within its boundaries. No League of Nations and no alliance, past or present, holy or unholy, has ever had a monopoly of power throughout the entire world. This difference between the power of a nation within its borders and the power of an international alliance within the limits of the entire earth is fundamental. A war for territorial conquest may make sense because it may succeed for one nation. A war for the establishment of a world monopoly of power cannot make sense because it cannot succeed. According to allied propaganda, the war of 1914-1918 was, and the present war is, just that sort of war. Of course, allied propaganda has never had the intellectual honesty, either in the preceding or the present world war, to state frankly that the objective of the world rule of international law can be achieved only on the basis of a single world monopoly of power. This obviously is no reflection on allied propaganda since, to be good, it has to be deceptive.
The Allies at Versailles had what came as close to being an international monopoly of power as anything a victorious coalition ever had in world history. There is no point to going back further than the Congress of Vienna for examples, since in no earlier period of history could any single victorious power or any combination of states ever have had the slightest pretension to a world monopoly of power if only for one reason: Before the nineteenth century no single nation or coalition of nations ever had physical access, either with its ships or its armies, to all parts of the world. Japan, for instance, was closed to foreign ships until past the middle of the nineteenth century. The mighty Roman Empire, for example, was unknown to the Far East or to the great American Indian civilizations of Mexico, Central America and Peru of that period. The Allies at Paris in 1919 counted among their number Japan and China as well as the United States. Russia was the only major world power not participating.
But the unity of command and purpose which carried the Allies to the pinnacle of their power in November 1918 had dissolved even before the plenipotentiaries met in the famous Hall of Mirrors. It had been disintegrating still further all the way down to Munich. By that time Japan and Italy had abandoned the angels, while Russia was definitely with the Teutonic devils. All during the twenties and down through the thirties to Munich, the victorious Allies of 1919 had been working at cross purposes. Their failure, once the peace treaties were signed, to maintain unity of purpose to say nothing of perfecting a permanent monopoly of power on the continent of Europe, is not strange. The interests and ideals of the Allies coalesced only for a brief moment in the temporary war effort to defeat Germany. They wanted Germany beaten for different reasons. Once Germany was beaten, they had no further common interests as a basis for unity or cooperation. Their conduct proves this. And their behavior, whether during the French occupation of the Ruhr or Hitler’s re-militarization of the Rhineland, completely refutes the entire case of the international idealists who promise a better world order if only the foes of Hitlerism triumph in war. The British and French can never triumph in peace because they can never agree in peace. They never did.
In the postwar period Britain wanted a weak German navy and a strong Germany on land to checkmate militarist France, while France was indifferent to the German navy and concerned only to have a militarily weak Germany. Because of this conflict of interests and policies, Hitler was allowed in 1936 to rearm the Rhineland when it would have been the easiest thing in the world for the French and British to prevent it.
The basic fallacy of internationalism is a refusal to recognize that the nations of the world are united by no common set of values, standards or interests. Russia, the largest great power in the world, is anti-Christian. Japan, another great power is non-Christian. Yet Mr. Roosevelt wants us to fight for Christianity or, at least, God. At least two great powers, Germany and Russia, are definitely anti-capitalist. Four of them, Russia, Germany, Japan and Italy are expansionist. Three of them, Great Britain, America and France are anti-expansionist. Ideologically, institutionally, economically, and militarily, world trends are now more than ever before away from international unity in peace. The only formulas of international unity today worth considering are Roman Catholicism and international capitalism. Why should Protestant or poor Americans die for either? There is no international agreement about either religion or property. The most vocal exponents of world unity are the subsidized spokesmen for the Anglo-Saxon plutocracy. They want war to save capitalism. Another vocal exponent of world unity, the Vatican, wants peace to save Christianity. But Mr. Chamberlain and the Pope, presumably both good Christians, do not agree on what to do to save Christianity. Yet Mr. Roosevelt sends a personal emissary with a view to a Papal-American effort to save the world. Well there may have been some sense to the idea of uniting the world under the Cross or under the crescent. But the idea of uniting it under the dollar and pound sterling signs is too silly for words. That, of course, is the central idea of the social scientists and thinkers of liberal capitalism, the idea endowed by great wealth in nearly every American college. It is especially the idea of all international money and credit idealists. At least four hundred million Germans, Russians, Japanese and Italians are unwilling to bow to the rule of the dollar and the pound, a fact which makes the internationalism of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Neville Chamberlain merely the side of the Haves versus that of the Have-nots, with the Have-nots in the numerical majority. A monopoly of power by the Haves, for the rule of righteousness is simply unthinkable under such conditions.
It is interesting in discussing the monopoly of power idea to recall that the British in their long history up to 1917 always spurned this particular dream. After the Napoleonic Wars, they were most emphatic in their rejection of overtures to join the Holy Alliance for the realization of just this chimera.
The chief reason no nation can, or ever will, live up to the obligations of collective security is that to do so would mean a surrender of sovereignty to an agency attempting to exercise a world monopoly of power. No nation, least of all Britain or America, is yet prepared to consider such a surrender. For a nation to surrender its sovereignty to another international power, after all, is neither more nor less than for it to cease to be a nation.
The traditional British policy has been wisely to rely on the balance of power for their security. This policy rests mainly on the historically and logically well-founded assumption that no coalition can ever achieve a monopoly of power. Therefore, it aims to divide and rule. An essential of this policy, of course, is the playing of one powerful nation against another, not the defying of four of the seven most powerful nations in the name of righteousness, international law, collective security or what have you. For the first time in their long history as a great power, the British in 1939 deviated from this traditional policy, first by inviting war with Germany through the guarantee of Poland and, second, six months later, by going to war with Germany to make good that guarantee.
Munich, the only instance of important international change by peaceful agreement between 1919 and 1939, was in entire harmony with the balance of power policy. The guarantee to Poland a half year later was a reversal of that policy for one of collective security, an infallible formula for world war. The theory of Munich was that if the small succession states of central and eastern Europe were left to their fate or to such bargains as they could drive with Germany and if Germany were allowed a completely free hand in that part of Europe, she would sooner or later clash with Russia. Thus two great powers, who have long been traditional enemies of Britain, would check and weaken each other to the enhancement of Britain’s strategic position in the world. No calculation could have been better founded in experience and logic. The only rational alternative to this policy would have been a collective-security policy followed consistently from the end of the World War. Collective security is obviously a policy which, to be followed rationally, must be followed consistently and almost invariably over a considerable period of time. Even so followed, the policy may fail; but, followed spasmodically and inconsistently, a collective-security policy must fail.
It was madness for Britain to scuttle collective security at Munich for the balance of power policy and, incidentally, to hand Hitler the keys to central and eastern Europe, if the British intended to fight a year later for collective security. It is sheer nonsense to say that Britain and France had to do Munich in September 1938 because they were then unprepared to fight Germany and that, one year hence, they would have raised the Anglo-French war potential enough to more than make up for the liquidation of Czechoslovakia’s army of a million and a half men, the loss of the Czech Maginot line, the sacrifice of her strategic position penetrating the heart of Germany and her valuable arms industries. It will take the British at least three years to create as much military power as they gave to Hitler at Munich. It is even more absurd to say that Mr. Chamberlain handed Hitler the Czech key to Poland and southeastern Europe in the faith that Hitler would keep his promise not to use this key. What is a key for if not to be used? Hitler’s only reason for desiring the Czech key to Poland was to use it, and Britain’s only logical reason for giving him that key was that he might use it exactly as he did. The British, like other rational beings, must be assumed to know the logical consequences of their acts.
The explanation of the absurdity of giving Hitler the key to Poland one September and going to war against him for using it the next September is simple. It is the working of democracy. A politician needing votes and observing democratic procedure in England dared not tell the truth about Munich in its defense, either before or after. A democratic statesman cannot act rationally without telling the people the truth and he cannot get elected if he does tell them the truth. He must, therefore, act as irrationally and lie as much as the exigencies of getting elected require. Munich was a piece of rational British balance-of-power politics. Chamberlain hoped to be able to get away with it by concealing and misrepresenting his real, underlying calculations and motives, which he could not frankly avow in a truthful statement of the whole problem. He was unsuccessful, thanks to the workings of democracy. He ran into the difficulties which usually beset the untruthful. He was found out. Being a good politician in the democratic way, he, therefore, jumped out of the Munich frying pan into the Polish guarantee-world-war fire. By so doing he saved his political skin. This was a political triumph in a democracy. The fact that Britain is now at war with Germany as a result does not mar that triumph. Chamberlain was neither a weakling nor a fool. He was a clever and successful politician who knew how to get and keep power in a democracy.
When, under the pressure of democratic politics, Chamberlain scuttled the balance-of-power policy, or playing Germany against Russia, for a sure road to war, he did so under the worst imaginable conditions for British success. That, however, was not his fault. By scuttling a policy of traditional British realism for one of an impossible collective security in the guarantee of Poland in the Spring of 1939, Chamberlain killed three birds with one stone: 1. He made himself solid with democratic public opinion at home and abroad. 2. He united Germany and Russia, normally enemies of each other as well as of Britain. 3. He committed Britain to war against the two greatest land powers in Europe, having together roughly seven times the man power of France, about the most disastrous blunder possible for British foreign policy to make. It was a democratic triumph for Chamberlain to be a war premier and a disaster for Britain to be committed to fighting Germany and Russia over spilled Polish milk. It was a democratic triumph because Chamberlain stayed on top and because the rabble was continuously pleased, first at the Munich surrender to Hitler because it meant “peace in our time,” and second at the Polish guarantee slap at Hitler, because it meant righteousness, i.e., war in our time. It must be a British disaster because it will be a long and costly war from which Britain cannot possibly reap any advantage commensurate with her losses. In a democracy propaganda governs policy. In a totalitarian state policy governs propaganda.
Some readers will perhaps say that if the balance-of-power policy and Munich, one of its necessary corollaries in the situation of September 1939, were so unpopular, and if collective security was so popular with the peoples of the democracies, including particularly the British people, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, each in his turn, erred in not espousing the democratically popular policy of collective security from the beginning of the Japanese aggression in China in 1931 and in not upholding it all the way through—Manchukuo, Abyssinia, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Albania.
It is in answering this particular observation that the general argument of this book is especially apposite. The facts generally stressed here are that while the peoples of the democracies are overwhelmingly in favor of collective security as an abstract ideal and opposed to realism as a policy, they are equally opposed to assuming in time of peace the responsibilities implicit in collective security. Briefly, the people in the democracies do not understand the implications of their desires and will not elect candidates who tell them the truth. Liberals have never understood that truth has prevailed in the past not by reason of the preference of the masses but by reason of the pluck and pertinacity of an elite minority. The only way to get the peoples of the democracies behind collective security is to bring on a war situation and get them mad enough to go to war. Appropriate action for collective security is only possible in the democracies when it is war action. This means that collective security works only when it calls for war, which is to say when it has failed to work. To swing the people into a collective security mood, it is necessary to cook up a war situation. Until that is achieved it is necessary to follow a more or less realistic policy which ordinarily means, for England and every other great power, a balance-of-power policy.
The people, of course, are not to blame that collective security will not work. They are to blame only for not being willing to face the fact that it won’t work, and for electing statesmen who delude them as they like to be deluded. When democracy was less mature, the British masses had less influence on the course of foreign policy. Then statesmen had to lie and delude the public less simply because they had to explain less. And, because they had to lie less, they had to blunder less. The public knew less and cared less about the conduct of foreign affairs. In the days of Pitt, Palmerston or Disraeli, if a British Minister had done a Munich with a view to pitting Germany against Russia, he would not have had to undo it all by guaranteeing Poland seven months later. In those days billions of dollars had not been invested in publishing and radio enterprises in the democracies requiring a continuous exploitation of human imbecility, ignorance and emotionalisrn for a return on the investment.
Of the power situation in September 1939 it may be said that Britain and France only about equaled Germany and Russia for balance-of-power calculations. Therefore, Britain and France, following a balance-of-power policy, would never have dreamed of challenging Germany and Russia, since to have done so would have given control of the balance of power to other and hostile powers like Japan or Italy. Even assuming the strongest probable combination, that of Britain, France and the United States, against the combination of Germany, Russia and Japan, it would be a pretty evenly matched contest. Balance-of-power policy does not risk evenly matched contests. It would never put Britain and France into what might easily be a war against Germany, Russia and Japan. Britain and France may well be able, unaided by America, to defeat Germany and Russia or even Germany, Russia and Japan. A balance-of-power policy ventures no predictions as to the outcome of given contests. It merely forbids a great power to start a war unless, in so doing, it begins with the odds clearly in its favor. Britain and France definitely have not the odds in their favor in the present war unless they can secure as allies America, Japan and Italy, as before. There was plausibility in 1914 to the calculation that, with France, Russia and Japan against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, the war declaration of Britain on the side of France and Russia would prove decisive in favor of the latter. Actually it did not so turn out, as in 1917 it proved necessary for the Allies to bring the United States in on their side in order to win. In 1939-1940 there was not even plausibility to the supposition that Britain and France alone had the odds in their favor in a war against Germany and Russia, with Japan and Italy ready to jump on the British when their exhaustion after prolonged war might make them seem an easy mark. It is not necessary for any unity or community of interests or purposes to exist between Japan or Italy and Germany and Russia for either of the first two named countries to attack Britain for territory when Britain is weakened by war.
The question may be raised, “Can any great power always follow a balance-of-power policy?” The answer would seem to be “Practically always.” Obviously, small nations cannot always profit from the fact that large nations follow it. For a great power, following a balance-of-power policy will mean, broadly speaking, that it will not start a war with another great power unless reasonably certain that the odds are in its favor and that it will not be set upon by other great powers, but this, obviously, does not mean that a great power need hesitate to attack an inferior great power or to jump on a small nation unless it has reason to fear that such an attack by it will invite counter-attack by one or more great powers. Following a balance of power policy will not prevent a nation great or small from being attacked by an equal or superior power. Balance-of-power considerations merely tend to discourage great powers from venturing upon what for them are doubtful wars. In the case of Germany in 1939, however, these considerations were not a restraining factor for the simple reason that Germany felt sure of Russian cooperation and both Japanese and Italian neutrality. Balance-of-power considerations in the spring of 1939 should have held back Britain and France from guaranteeing Poland but should not have been expected to restrain Germany from moving against Poland.
Those who say that it is collective security or else subjugation of the entire world by one aggressor nation or by several aggressor nations do not recognize that it is just as hard for the bad as for the good nations to dominate the entire world. The unity of the bad is just as unattainable as the unity of the good. The supremacy of the wicked is just as impossible as the supremacy of the good. This, of course, does not mean that a big bad nation may not gobble up one or more small nations just as the big good nations, Britain, the United States and France have done in the past. But once a single bad nation goes far on the path of conquest it runs afoul of other bad nations of equal power. The more a great power expands beyond a certain point, which varies according to the circumstances of the given power, the weaker it becomes. The British Empire is now a perfect case in point. It probably cannot now be defended over the long run without the aid of the United States. Those who threaten us with subjugation by Germany or Japan completely overlook the weakness of bigness when, as Britain has done, it undertakes too much. There is, of course, no formula to prevent aggression or to preserve peace and the status quo. Balance-of-power policy merely tends to avert wars which neither side can hope to win.
Stated somewhat differently, the ideal of the internationalists is to create paper bulwarks against aggression, calling them law and treaties. Obviously, there is only one bulwark against force and that is force. Law is a bulwark only to the extent it has force behind it, and to the extent such force is greater than that opposed to it. Every war is an international lawsuit which is always won by the side having the greater force. The balance-of-power policy reckons that the best possible check to one aggressor is another aggressor. It is not always possible to invoke that check. Finland and Poland could not invoke Germany against Russia, for example. British stupidity in vainly trying to encircle Germany with an Anglo-Russian-French alliance had made that impossible for poor Poland and Finland. A policy which declares war on all aggressors, as does collective security, can never utilize the force of one aggressor or would-be aggressor against another. Collective security makes the assumption basic to all law, namely, that the good or law-abiding members of the community greatly outnumber the bad or the lawbreakers. In the international community the assumption is false as regards any possible body of rules. If the three good and great powers, Britain, France and the United States undertake to make war on every bad great power making an aggression, they, thereby, tend to unite all potential aggressors who would never otherwise be united. If half the international community is disposed to break what the other half considers law, why unite the lawbreakers, when united they are nearly invincible?
It is a sound rule of experience that wickedness does not unite any more than goodness. But, attacking simultaneously in the name of righteousness two or more great powers pronounced bad cannot fail to unite them, at least for the duration of the attack by the good. This is why an attack by the good on the bad is rational only if calculated to result in the achievement by the good of a monopoly of power. If this is clearly impossible or most improbable, then the only rational policy is to encourage the rascals to fall out and fight among themselves, which experience shows they always end up by doing. Why send good Englishmen to kill bad Germans when there are so many bad Russians available to do the same thing if only given a chance? Why send good Americans to kill wicked Japanese when there are so many wicked Russians available for this good purpose if only given a chance? Anglo-American policy is calculated to unite aggressor nations in a way they could not possibly attain unity if left to their own devices.
The main trouble, of course, with following a balance-of-power policy within the framework of democracy is that it involves a degree of realism which a popularity-seeking politician or publicist dares not expound or defend. And that is democracy’s funeral. The new revolution will not end war any more than did the capitalist revolution. In its youth capitalism made a rational use of war as an instrument of national policy. In its senility it makes an impotent use of war as a means to unattainable ends. The new revolution will mark a return to rationality in the use of war. Briefly, men will kill, not for the kingdom of heaven, but for something on earth or not at all. This will mean less killing by reason of the elimination of futile killing for righteousness’ sake. In so far as the new revolution is a revolt against religion it will be largely a revolt against religion or other worldly values as motives for worldly wars. It will be a gain for humanity to whatever extent war for the unattainable is discouraged since such warfare is always over and above warfare for the attainable which will always go on as long as there are things to be attained by war and human wills so to attain them.