The Anatomy of Peace

THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

A DEMOCRATIC MANIFESTO

BY
EMERY REVES

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
New York and ‘London

THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Copyright, 1945, 1946 by Emery Reves
Printed in the United States of America

All rights in this “book are reserved.
No ‘part of the book may be reproduced in any
manner whatsoever -without written ‘permis-
sion except in tine case of “brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Brothers

6-5

EIGHTH EDITION

CONTENTS

i

I. A COPERNICAN WORLD j

PART I

II. FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 33
HI. FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 48

IV. FAILURE OF RELIGION 76

V. ROAD TO FASCISM 87

PART II

VL NATION-FEUDALISM IOJ

VII. WHAT IS WAR?

THE HISTORICAL MEANING OF

SOVEREIGNTY 126

IX. TREATY OR LAW 144

X. SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 155

PART III

XI. FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 175
XH. FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION

OF NATIONS l88

Xin. FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 2OI

XIV. THE MELEE 224

XV. LAW . . . CONQUEST 253
POSTSCRIPT 277

CHAPTER I

A COPERNICAN WORLD

NOTHING can distort the true picture of condi-
tions and events in this world more than to
regard one’s own country as the center of the universe,
and to view all things solely in their relationship to
this fixed point. It is inevitable that such a method o
observation should create an entirely false perspective.
Yet this is the only method admitted and used by the
seventy or eighty national governments of our world,
by our legislators and diplomats, by our press and
radio. All the conclusions, principles and policies of
the peoples are necessarily drawn from the warped
picture of the world obtained by so primitive a method
of observation.

Within such a contorted system of assumed fixed
points, it is easy to demonstrate that the view taken
from each point corresponds to reality. If we admit
and apply this method, the viewpoint of every single
nation appears indisputably correct and wholly justi-
fied. But we arrive at a hopelessly confused and
grotesque over-all picture of the world.

Let us see how international events between die
two world wars look from some of the major national
vantage points.

a THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The United States of America, faithful to the Mon-
roe Doctrine and to its traditions of aloofness from
Europe, did not want to enter the first World War.
But die Germans were sinking American ships, violat-
ing American rights and threatening American inter-
ests. So in 1917, the United States was forced to go
to war in defense of American rights. They went into
battle determined to fight the war to end all war, and
to “make the world safe for democracy.” They fought
bravely and spent lavishly. Their intervention decided
the outcome of the struggle in favor of the Allies.
But as soon as the shooting was over, the major Allied
powers Britain, France, Italy and Japan betrayed
the common cause. They were unwilling to base the
peace on Wilson’s ideals. They signed secret treaties
between themselves. They did not want a just peace.
They wanted to annex territories, islands, bases; they
wanted to impose high reparation payments on the
defeated countries and other measures of vengeance.
America, disgusted by the quarrels and selfishness of
the other nations and disillusioned by the old game
of power politics, retired from the European hornet’s
nest, after having been abused, outsmarted and
double-crossed by her former associates. America
wanted only to be allowed to mind her own business,
to build up the wealth and happiness of her own
citizens. The foreign nations who would have been
crushed without American intervention and who
were saved by America even defaulted on their war
debts and refused to repay the loans America had made
to them in their hour of danger. So even financial and
economic relations with the European powers had to

A COPERNICAN WORLD 3

be reduced to a minimum and American capital had
to be protected by prohibiting loans to defaulting
foreigners. American policy was fully justified by the
ensuing events. Clouds were again gathering in
Europe, Military dictatorships were arising in many
countries, a race of armaments had started, violence
broke out and the whole continent was on the verge
of another great war more of the old European quar-
rels and power politics* Naturally, it was of primary
interest to the United States to keep out of these
senseless internecine old-world fights. The supreme
duty of the American government to its people was
to maintain strict neutrality toward the warring na-
tions across the ocean. Thanks to the weakness of
the appeasement policy and the blindness of Britain,
France and Soviet Russia, the totalitarian powers suc-
ceeded in conquering the entire European continent.
German troops occupied the whole Atlantic seacoast
from Norway to Equatorial Africa. Simultaneously,
the Japanese succeeded in conquering the entire
Chinese coastline, menacing the American-controlled
Philippine Islands* Incredible and unbelievable as
it was, no one could fail to see that the European and
Asiatic military powers, known as the Axis, were
planning the conquest of North and South America*
In sheer self-defense, America was obliged to trans-
form herself into the arsenal of democracy, produc-
ing weapons for the British and Russians to fight the
Germans. Then, on a day which will “live in infamy”
the Japanese Empire launched an unprovoked aggres-
sion against peace-loving America and, together with
Germany and Italy, declared war upon her. Once

4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

forced into the war, the nation arose as one man. In
a short time, it became obvious that once again the
United States was saving the civilized Western world.
Events have demonstrated that disarmament and dis-
interestedness cannot protect America from foreign
aggression. Therefore, peace in the world can be pre-
served only if the United States maintains a large
army, the biggest navy and the biggest air force in the
world, and secures bases at all strategic points com-
manding the approaches to the Western Hemisphere,

How do these same twenty years look from the fixed
point of the British Isles?

In 1914, Britain went to the defense of Belgium,
France and Russia* It was impossible for her to stand
by while militarist Germany was marching to occupy
and control the Channel coast. Britain could not per-
mit Germany to obtain European hegemony and to
become the dominating industrial and military power
on the Continent, menacing the lifelines of the British
Empire and threatening to reduce the British Isles
to starvation and poverty. When, at the cost of tre-
mendous efforts and the lives of more than one million
of her sons, Britain, together with her allies, won
victory, she naturally wanted to see German military
might eliminated once and for all from the path of
the British Empire. It was only just that the German
fleet be destroyed, that German colonies be annexed
and that Germany be made to pay reparations. Un-
fortunately, the isolationists in America stabbed Wil-
son in the back and the United States deserted her
allies. England remained alone to face the European
problem. Without the United States and without the

A COPERNICAN WORLD 5

Dominions, she could not give the guarantees France
demanded and had to be careful lest after victory over
Germany, France should take the place of the de-
feated Reich and become an overwhelmingly domi-
nating military power on the Continent. As the French
went berserk, refusing to disarm and occupying the
Ruhr, England had to become the moderator in
Europe and to continue the traditional balance-of-
power policy that had been successful for so many
centuries. Bolshevik Russia, after the failure of mili-
tary intervention supported by the Allies, succeeded
in stabilizing a Communist regime, and through the
Third Internationale and the various Communist
parties in Europe, threatened the entire Continent
with revolution. Germany, suffering under the conse-
quences of defeat and French intransigence, with six
million unemployed, was particularly susceptible to
revolutionary turmoil. It was of paramount importance
for European peace that German economy be re-
stored and stabilized. Mussolini had succeeded in
reestablishing order in Italy and the growing strength
of the National Socialist movement in Germany
seemed to stem the tide of Bolshevism. But Great
Britain’s economic problems were becoming aggra-
vated. The Americans erected high tariff walls and
refused to import British goods, thus making it impos-
sible for Great Britain to repay her war debts. She
was forced to give up her traditional free trade policy
and to enter into a preference system with the Do-
minions. Italian and German intentions by this time
began to alarm France and the smaller countries of
Europe. Two camps began to crystallize, one trying

6 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

to preserve die status quo of the Treaty of Versailles,
the other seeking revisions favorable to them* Then
as now peace was England’s paramount interest and
her natural role was to be the mediator between the
two factions, to attempt as many revisions as possible
by peaceful means so as to check the dynamism of
the dictatorships, and to prevent an outbreak of
hostilities at any cost. When Italy embarked upon
her unfortunate military operation in Ethiopia, Eng-
land championed the principles of the League. Sanc-
tions were voted and imposed upon the aggressor by
more than fifty nations under British leadership. It
was a most alarming factor that France, frightened
by growing German power and in the hope of obtain-
ing Italian assistance against Germany in Europe,
gave Italy a free hand in Ethiopia. So the League
was sabotaged by France. Italy could not be stopped
except by intervention of the British fleet, which
would have meant risking a major war and had to be
avoided. Shortly after the Italian conquest of Ethiopia,
Germany reoccupied the Rhineland. France, in her
first reaction, wanted to march, but England pre-
vented a military clash between the two major con-
tinental powers. For the pacification of Europe, an
agreement was made with Germany granting her a
new fleet, thirty-five per cent of the British tonnage.
Thereafter, Germany and Italy formed a military
alliance and provoked a civil war in Spain to try out
new weapons and new methods of warfare, and to
establish a regime friendly to them. This incident
created a highly charged atmosphere all over Europe*
Russians were actually fighting German and Italian

A COPERNICAN WORLD 7

forces on Spanish soil. Only by pursuing the strictest
policy of nonintervention and exercising the utmost
patience was England able to prevent France from
intervening and spreading the fight all over the Con-
tinent. In the face of these threatening events, Eng-
land succeeded in strengthening her ties with France.
Unhappily, still further sacrifices had to be made to
prevent a war, which England could not risk, as she
was almost completely unprepared. Other adjust-
ments of the territorial status of Europe had to be
considered. At Munich, British diplomacy was taxed
to the utmost to obtain the transfer of German-
inhabited Czechoslovak territories to the Reich with-
out a violent conflict. Once again England had saved
the peace. But after Munich, it was apparent that
Germany had made up her mind to conquer Europe,
England had to begin rearming and to look around
for allies. Belgium and Holland, jealous of their
neutrality, did not admit military discussions, but the
alliance with France was strengthened, alliances with
Poland and Rumania were signed and every effort was
made to reach an understanding with the Soviet
Union. The Poles, however, stubbornly refused to
permit Russian troops passage across Polish territory
in case of war and in the middle of negotiations in
Moscow, a diplomatic bomb exploded. Russia, betray-
ing her Western democratic friends, had signed a
nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany. That gave
Germany the green light to attack Poland. All this
happened within a few days and England, honoring
her pledged word, declared war upon Germany. It
was impossible for Britain to bring military help to

S THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

the Poles in time and Poland was defeated in a few
weeks. British troops, however, were sent to France,
the best-equipped army ever to cross the Channel.
They, along with French soldiers, took their posts
at the Belgian and German frontiers and waited for
the German attack, believing the defense system they
and their allies held to be impregnable. But Hitler,
instead of opening an offensive against the Allies,
attacked the peaceful and undefended neutral coun-
tries of Denmark and Norway. Britain immediately
sent an expeditionary force to Narvik, which fought
gallantly but which had to withdraw before over-
whelming enemy forces supported by land-based
planes. Shortly thereafter, the Germans made a frontal
attack against the west, occupying neutral Holknd
and Belgium in a few days. They turned the Maginot
Line and cracked the French defenses. The King of
Belgium surrendered. Only some of the British troops
could be evacuated from Dunkirk and other ports of
France. All the equipment of the British Expedi-
tionary Force was lost. France, inadequately equipped
and undermined by Nazi propaganda, betrayed her
British ally by refusing to continue the fight on the
side of the British Commonwealth in the Mediter-
ranean and in Africa, and capitulated to Germany.
The whole Continent was in German hands and
England stood alone. The situation seemed hopeless.
England was without defenses. The Luftwaffe began
to bomb London and British industrial centers. Italy
began to move against Egypt and Suez. Both the
mother country and the lifeline of the empire in the
Middle East were in mortal danger. Britain could have

A COPERNICAN WORLD 9

saved her empire had she accepted German hegemony
in Europe, but she preferred to fight all alone, even
if she had to fight on her beaches, on her hills and
in her villages. Along with the sacrifice of tens of
thousands of civilians, she won the Battle of Britain,
fought off the Luftwaffe with a few fighter planes,
fought the German submarines singlehanded, mobil-
ized her entire population and dispatched everything
she could to the Near East to stem Mussolini’ s advanc-
ing armies. For more than a year, Britain alone de-
fended the cause of democracy. Neither the Soviet
Union nor the United States was prepared to enter
the war on her side. Only when Germany actually at-
tacked Russia and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and
invaded the Philippines did Russia and the United
States join forces with the British Commonwealth to
achieve final victory.

From the point of view of France, the picture
looked like this:

In 1914, France suffered the second German in-
vasion within half a century. The entire north and
east of France were devastated and only by tremen-
dous bloodshed and the sacrifice of a million and a
half of her sons could France defend her soil. With
the help of the Allies, Germany was finally defeated.
The supreme thought in the mind of every French-
man was to be secure against another German aggres-
sion. France felt strongly that as the bastion of
Western democracy she was entitled to security, to
prevent her soil becoming the permanent battlefield of
Teutonic aggression. To obviate the constant threat
of Germans on the west bank of the Rhine, France de-

io THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

manded the Rhine as the new Franco-German border.
Further, she demanded that Germany be demilitarized
and forced to make reparation for the damage caused
to France. At the peace conferences, however, she was
abandoned by the United States and even to some
extent by England and was obliged to accept a com-
promise. After having yielded to Anglo-American
pressure she asked the United States and Britain to
guarantee her eastern frontiers against German re-
venge. They refused. With a population much smaller
than Germany, with a stationary birth rate in the face
of Germany’s increasing population, France had to
rely on her own armed strength and on what alliances
she could make with the newly created, smaller states
east and south of Germany. When the Reich began
to sabotage reparation payments, France, standing oti
her rights, occupied the Ruhr, but was not supported
by her allies. After America had withdrawn from
Europe into isolation, France did her utmost to sup-
port die League of Nations and, with her smaller allies,
suggested a mutual assistance pact within the League
the Geneva Protocol. Britain refused to commit her-
self. France found a substitute in the Locarno agree-
ments which at least guaranteed security in the West.
From the threat of reborn German militarism in the
form of Nazism, she vainly sought protection from
England and finally turned to Italy whose interest
regarding the prevention of the Austrian Anschluss
was identical with that of France. But Italy abused
France’s gesture and attacked Ethiopia, in violation of
her obligations to the League, France was in a des-
perate position between the League and Mussolini;

A COPERNICAN WORLD n

and in the end lost tlie friendship of Italy to uphold
the League. When the Germans remilitarized the
Rhineland, France was alarmed and called upon her
partners in the Locarno Pact, but they turned a deaf
ear and she had to accept the German fait accompli.
Feeling abandoned and growing weaker in the face of
rapidly increasing German military power, France
sought an alliance with Russia but was hindered by
Poland who, although allied with France, would not
give Russian troops permission to march through
Polish territory. When Germany and Italy fomented
and supported the Franco military revolution against
the Spanish Republic, it was obviously a move to en-
circle France. This maneuver foreboded grave events.
France wanted to intervene on the republican side and
thus prevent Franco, supported by Hitler and Mus-
solini, from coming to power. But England opposed
such a move. So the French Republic had to stand by
and watch a hostile Fascist power being established by
her enemies on her third land frontier. She had staked
everything on her friendship with Britain. When it
was obvious that Germany had become the dominat-
ing military and industrial power in Europe and that
none of the other great powers, neither the United
States nor Britain nor Russia, realized the imminence
of danger, many Frenchmen felt that to oppose Ger-
man might singlehanded was a suicidal policy, that
the French must resign themselves to German suprem-
acy in Europe and accept the position of a secondary
power on the Continent. France’s internal stability
was greatly imperiled by a violent cleavage between
capital and labor, and differences of opinion between

i2 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

those who advocated a French policy of collaboration
with England and Russia and those who sought an
arrangement with Germany. In spite of these diffi-
culties, France kept faith with her British ally and
continued to follow her lead. She accepted Munich,
sacrificing Czechoslovakia, her most faithful friend
on the Continent. Her armies were mobilized several
times to be in readiness at critical moments. And when
even Russia abandoned her, signing a treaty with
Germany, and Hitler attacked Poland, France fulfilled
her obligation toward her Polish ally, despite the
difficulties and disappointments created by the pro-
German Polish policy of the previous years. France
declared war on Germany, mobilized six million men
and exposed herself to die inrush of Nazi military
might. She urged Britain to send strong forces across
the Channel but England sent only two or three
hundred thousand men and when the Germans at-
tacked in the west, France had to carry the burden of
fighting practically alone. The King of Belgium laid
down arms. The entire British Expeditionary Force
was encircled and pushed into the sea at Dunkirk. The
German Panzer divisions swept across all the northern
departments of France with overwhelming force. In
this critical moment, Italy stabbed France in the back
and declared war. The military situation was hopeless.
France appealed to America for help which was re-
fused. The British withdrew, betraying their alliance
with France in her darkest hour. There was no
alternative but to accept the bitter humiliation of
defeat and surrender, hoping for a miracle of resurrec-
tion and trying to accommodate France to the new

A COPERNICAN WORLD 13

order in Europe, to ease the suffering of her people.
For four years, the French endured German occupa-
tion and helplessly watched the Nazis looting die
country. They organized a heroic resistance movement
both inside and outside France and four years later,
after America had been forced into the war by Ger-
many and Japan, when the Anglo-American troops
landed on French beaches, French resistance forces
from outside came with them, and French resistance
armies within the country arose, liberating their cities
and villages, and contributing considerably to the
Allied victory.

The image of these same events during the same
period appeared to the German people as follows:

For more than four years from 1914 to 1918 the
German armies fought a coalition of almost the entire
world, which had refused Germany the place under
the sun her growing population required. In spite of
their numerical superiority, the Allies never defeated
the German armies in battle but they did succeed in
blinding a section of the German people with promises
of a just peace so that pacifists, socialists, democrats
and Jews at home revolted and stabbed the German
armies in the back. At Versailles, Germany was un-
justly accused of having been responsible for the war.
The Allies imposed upon her a treaty based on this lie
which meant the dismemberment and enslavement of
the German people. Nevertheless, Germany signed
this shameful treaty and did her utmost to fulfill its
terms and to reestablish a friendly relationship with
her former enemies, believing in their promises to dis-
arm. Germany herself was disarmed and her people

i 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

toiled in utmost poverty and misery to fulfill their
obligations toward the victors. On a pretext, France
occupied the Ruhr, Germany s center of industrial
production, establishing a regime of terror to enforce
the unfulfillable clauses of the treaty. German eco-
nomic life was disrupted and the country was plunged
into an inflation which destroyed all the savings of the
German population. Yet Germany accepted the
Locarno treaties, guaranteeing once and for all her
western frontiers, and entered the League. Germany
signed the Kellogg Pact and outlawed war as an
instrument of national policy. She insisted that the
other parties keep their promises to disarm but they
refused to do so. The chains of the Versailles Treaty
became unbearable. The Allied powers refused to
give Germany equality, a fair share in world trade,
colonies and markets in central and southern Europe.
Unemployment grew and misery reached unprec-
edented depths. Communism was spreading and it
looked as if Germany would disintegrate, the German
people be enslaved forever. During these desperate
years, a savior arose who filled the German people
with new hope, rallied them to his banner and
promised work, bread, progress, strength for resurrec-
tion. The German people, by their own will power,
liberated themselves from the chains of the Versailles
Treaty, restored their own sovereignty by remilitariz-
ing the German Rhineland. As the Allied powers re
fused to disarm and broke their own pledges, Ger
many regarded the military clauses of the treaty &
null and void and began to assert her own dignity anc
to rearm. It was impossible for sixty-five million peopL

A COPERNICAN WORLD 15

to live in such a small and poor country* They needed
living space if peace was to te preserved. The separa-
tion of German Austria from the Reich was ended and
the German peoples were at last united. The new
Germany gave work to everybody, spread wealth and
happiness in the land and created a prosperity, a
period of building and construction, unprecedented in
German history. The German nation could not
tolerate the spreading of Bolshevism in Europe and at
great sacrifice helped the Spanish people to exter-
minate this Asiatic threat. As Germany arose from her
defeat and was again a great, independent power, she
could no longer admit die intolerable oppression and
persecution of her blood brethren in Czechoslovakia,
Relying on the righteousness of her cause, she claimed
incorporation of the Sudeten German territories in
the Reich which the former enemies of Germany
were made to accept without force. But the enemies
of peace had learned nothing. The Poles refused to
stop oppressing and torturing German minorities and
to allow their return to the German Reich. So Ger-
many, to protect and defend her peoples, was forced
to act. To prove her pacific intentions, she signed a
treaty of nonaggression with Soviet Russia and
liberated the lost German territories in the East. Eng-
land and France, who for a long time were jealously
watching Germany’s resurrection, took advantage of
her pacification of the East and declared war on the
Reich without any provocation and with the clear
intention of once again destroying and enslaving the
German people. Germany had no quarrel with her
western neighbors. So, although the Western world

16 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

was fully mobilized and menaced German soil, Ger-
many did not undertake any action but waited in the
hope of a reasonable settlement with England and
France. A few months later, however, it was obvious
that England was planning to violate Danish and Nor-
wegian neutrality in order to outflank German de-
fenses from the north. The Wehrmacht had to in-
tervene and protect the neutrality of Denmark and
Norway. Shortly thereafter, British invasion of Bel-
gium and Holland and the outflanking of the West-
wall was threatening. No more time could be wasted.
Germany had to strike in self-defense. The Wehr-
macht attacked and in a few days achieved the
greatest military victory of all times, Belgium and
Holland were occupied, the British pushed back
into the sea and France was brought to capitula-
tion. In Compi&gne, the Fuehrer avenged once and
for all the German humiliation of 1918. Again
Germany appealed to England to save the peace
of the world, guaranteeing the integrity of the
British Empire in exchange for British recognition
of German Lebensraum in Europe. Britain stub-
bornly refused and began to bomb German cities
in violation of civilized warfare. Germany was
forced to retaliate. She had to strike at British harbors
and military targets and to stop deliveries of arms to
England by torpedoing British convoys. The Anti-
Comintern Pact, which united the anti-Bolshevik
forces of the new order, and the German-Russian non-
aggression pact, kept peace in the East. But intelli-
gence reports made it more and more obvious that
Soviet Russia was using the Russo-German pact

A COPERN1CAN WORLD i 7

merely to gain time and was secretly arming to the
utmost of her ability. Russia was making preparations
for an attack on Germany at a moment most conven-
ient for her. Naturally, Germany could not expose
herself to such mortal danger. She had to forestall
Bolshevik treachery. With a lightning decision
characteristic of the intuition of the Fuehrer Ger-
many, in self-defense, struck at her foe. Her armies
marched against the Soviet Union in order to prevent
Bolshevik aggression and to destroy the Red Army,
the greatest threat to European civilization. . . .

And from the vantage point of Moscow, the same
quarter century appeared in this light:

In 1917, the Russian people succeeded in over-
throwing the autocratic dynasty which had oppressed
and enslaved them for centuries, and established a
socialist people’s republic. The capitalist powers, the
allies of czarist Russia, intervened militarily. Amer-
ica, England, France, Poland, sent troops into Russia
to destroy the new republic and to reestablish the old
regime of exploitation* The rapidly organized Red
Army fought heroically, defeated die invaders and
liberated the Russian soil. However, the young Soviet
forces were not yet strong enough to push the armies
of the capitalist imperialists back to the prewar frontier
and so the Soviet government, in order to secure peace
the quickest possible way, accepted a settlement which
meant a loss of Russia’s Baltic and western provinces.
In spite of this settlement imposed on the Russian
people, the hostility of the outside world toward the
socialist experiment of the Soviet Union continued.
Russia finally emerged from her involuntary isolation

i8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

after five years by signing a treaty in Rapallo with the
other prostrate power, Germany. Russia needed
machinery, tools, engineers, to build up her industries
and to raise the material conditions of her peoples,
and Germany was prepared to do business with her.
The Soviet Union bought everything for cash and
paid in gold, so very soon England and America also
began to sell their products in exchange for Russian
gold. But the U.S.S.R. did not succeed in breaking
the political hostility of the capitalist world. It became
more and more obvious that die success of the Com-
munist economic system aroused great apprehensions
abroad and that the capitalist, imperialist countries
would attack and destroy the Soviet Union at the
earliest opportunity. All the neighboring countries
Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Rumania, Turkey,
the British Empire, Japan were openly defying the
Soviet Union and following an anti-Soviet policy. So
Russia had to postpone her great plan to produce
consumer goods in mass quantities and was forced by
circumstances to build up key industries in order to
construct factories for armament production, and to
organize a land army and an air force of huge propor-
tions to defend the Union. The more powerful the
U.S.S.R. became, the more resentment and animosity
grew in capitalist countries. The friends of the Soviet
people, the Communists, were persecuted every-
where. A new type of military imperialism, Fascism,
was seizing power in one country after the other, in-
tent upon destroying socialist Russia. When Fascism
came into power in Germany and mobilized the great
German industrial potential for war against Russia,

A COPERNICAN WORLD 19

the Soviet government tried to come to an agreement
with the Western democratic nations who were also
threatened by the growing German militarism. The
Soviet Union entered the League of Nations and
worked with all her might for the establishment of a
system of collective security, for a system of alliances
of the peace-loving nations, to make peace indivisible
and to check aggression collectively whenever and
wherever it started. Soon a Fascist aggression occurred.
Italy attacked Ethiopia. But all the powers hesitated,
temporized and appeased the aggressor, leaving Russia
isolated in her fight for collective security. For several
years, the Soviet Union passionately continued trying
to organize the world for peace, advocating co-opera-
tion of the democratic, socialist and Communist forces
in all countries to keep Fascism from spreading and
to prevent aggression. America was inaccessible. Eng-
land and France clearly did not want to align them-
selves formally with Soviet Russia against the Fascist
forces. It became increasingly apparent that they
would welcome a Fascist attack on die Soviet Union,
that they would like to see the German people and
their satellites engaged with the Soviet people in a
long and bloody struggle. The Soviet government, de-
siring peace and knowing how disastrous such a war
would be for the Soviet people, watched these
maneuvers and manifestations of ill will with growing
apprehension. They did their utmost to persuade the
Western democracies of the suicidal shortsightedness
of their policy. Finally, when Munich came and Brit-
ain and France, without even consulting the Soviet
Union, sacrificed Czechoslovakia on the altar of ap-

20 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

peasement, and permitted the destruction of the most
valuable military link between Russia and the West,
the situation became acute. A decision had to be made.
Britain and France were invited to Moscow for con-
ferences, but they sent only third-rate negotiators,
affronting the Soviet government. Those negotiations
left no doubt that even then, the Western powers did
not desire wholehearted collaboration with Russia.
They accepted the point of view of the Polish Fascists
who refused to grant the Red Army permission to
advance to the Polish-German border to organize com-
mon defenses. Then and there, it was clear that the
arrangement suggested to the Soviet Union by the
Western powers had no practical meaning and that it
would inevitably result in a clash between the German
and Russian armies with terrible bloodshed and serious
consequences for the Soviet Union. To prevent such
a catastrophe, the Soviet government had to make
a decision. A radical change had to be made in past
policy. They accepted a German proposal for a non-
aggression pact which guaranteed the Soviet frontiers
and peace, at least for a certain time, between the Ger-
man Reich and the U.S.S.R. After signing the pact,
the German armies attacked Poland. The Polish
armies on which the Western powers had wanted to
base their entire Eastern defenses collapsed in a
few days. The Polish state ceased to exist. To prevent
the Nazi militarists from reaching the Soviet borders,
Red Army units reoccupied the lands inhabited by
Ukrainians and White Russians which had been
stolen from them by Poland during the revolution
when the Soviet Union was weak. Through this act
of foresight the German armies were stopped at a

A COPERNICAN WORLD 21

safe distance from the heart of Russia, and the Anti-
Comintern Pact, the alliance hetween Germany,
Japan and their satellites, against the Soviet Union
was neutralized. Shortly after, Soviet diplomacy was
justified when Germany attacked the West, defeating
the French and British armies, and established Nazi
hegemony over the entire European Continent, ex-
cept the Soviet Union. One year later, the German
Fascists unmasked their aggressive imperialism. Hitler
viokted his pact with Moscow and attacked the Soviet
Union. By that time, however, the Russian armies
were in readiness and defense industries were work-
ing to full capacity far behind the front lines. As a
result of German aggression against the Soviet Union,
the U.S.S.R. became the ally of the British Empire
and kter, of the United States. All these tragic events
prove how correct was Russia’s foreign policy, how
justified her admonitions to the democratic world in
the prewar years. But they also show that the U.S.S.R.
must constantly be alert and prepared in the face of
intrigues and aggressions of any of the foreign coun-
tries. In a world of hostile powers, the Soviet Union
will have to maneuver between them and accept die
alliances of those who will align themselves with her
against the power or powers which represent the most
imminent danger to the Soviet motherland.

The dramatic and strange events between the two
world wars could be just as well described from the

22 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

point of view of any other nation, large or small. From
Tokyo or Warsaw, from Riga or Rome, from Prague
or Budapest, each picture will be entirely different
and, from the fixed national point of observation, it
will always be indisputably and unchallengeably cor-
rect And the citizens of every country will be at all
times convinced and rightly so of tie infallibility
of their views and the objectivity of dieir conclu-
sions.

It is surely obvious that agreement, or common un-
derstanding, between different nations, basing their
relations on such a primitive method of judgment, is
an absolute impossibility. A picture of the world pieced
together like a mosaic from its various national compo-
nents is a picture that never and under no circum-
stances can have any relation to reality, unless we deny
that such a thing as reality exists.

The world and history cannot be as they appear
to the different nations, unless we disavow objectivity,
reason and scientific methods of research.

But if we believe that man is, to a certain degree,
different from the animal and that he is endowed with
a capacity for phenomenological thinking, then the
time has come to realize that our inherited method of
observation in political and social matters is childishly
primitive, hopelessly inadequate and thoroughly
wrong. If we want to try to create at least the begin-
ning of orderly relations between nations, we must
try to arrive at a more scientific, more objective
method of observation, without which we shall never
be able to see social and political problems as they

A COPERNICAN WORLD z 5

really are, nor to perceive their incidence. And with-
out a correct diagnosis of die disease, there is no hope
for a cure.

Our political and social thinking today is passing
through a revolutionary era very much the same as
were astronomy and abstract science during the
Renaissance.

For more than fourteen centuries, the geocentric
theory of the universe, formulated and laid down by
Ptolemy in the second century A.D, in Alexandria, was
paramount in the scientific world. According to this
theory as explained in Ptolemy’s famous Almagest,
the culmination of Greek astronomy the earth was
the center of the universe around which revolved the
sun, the moon and all the stars.

No matter how primitive such a conception of the
universe appears to us today, it remained unchallenged
and unchallengeable for fourteen hundred years. All
possible experimentation and observation before the
sixteenth century A.D. confirmed the Ptolemaic system
as a rock of indisputable scientific truth.

Strangely enough, Greek scientists several centimes
before Ptolemy had a concept of the universe far more
advanced and nearer to our modern knowledge. As far
back as the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras visualized
the earth and the universe as being spherical in shape.
One of his later disciples, Aristarchus of Samos, in
the third century B.C., in his hypothesis deposed the

a 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

earth as the center of the universe, and declared it to
be a ”planet, 1 ‘ like the many other celestial bodies.
This system, called the Pythagorean system, plainly
anticipated the Copernican hypothesis nineteen cen-
turies later. It was probably not completely developed
by Pythagoras himself, but it had been known several
hundred years before Ptolemy.

Yet for almost two thousands years following the
first insight into the real construction and functioning
of the universe, people were convinced that all the
celestial bodies revolved around the earth, which was
the fixed center of the universe.

The geocentric system worked perfectly as long as it
could solve all the problems which presented them-
selves under the then existing methods of observation.
Ptolemy himself appears to have sensed and suspected
the transitory character of his system, as in his Syn-
taods he laid down the general principle that in seek-
ing to explain phenomena, we should adopt the
simplest possible hypothesis, provided it is not con-
tradicted in any important respect by observation.

The geocentric theory of Ptolemy was perfectly in
harmony with the religious dogma concerning the
story of the creation of the universe as told in the
Bible and it became the doctrine approved by the
Church.

But in fifteenth century Italy, under the light of
new learning and observation and under the impetus
of the revolt against the dictatorship of accepted phil-
osophical and scientific doctrines, there came a radical
change. Several thinkers, particularly one Dominico
Maria Novara, denounced the Ptolemaic system and

A COPERNICAN WORLD 25

began spreading “Pythagorean opinions” as they were
called about the universe. Around 1500, these old,
yet revolutionary ideas, attracted and deeply interested
young Copernicus while he was studying at the uni-
versities of Bologna and Padua.

So new circumstances, new methods of observation,
new needs, led to the birth of the Copernican system,
one of the most gigantic steps of scientific progress in
human history.

Through the Copernican system, man’s outlook on
the universe changed fundamentally. In this new con-
cept, the earth itself rotated. It was no longer a stable
point. Our globe, just like the other planets, revolved
in space around die sun and the new theory of plane-
tary movement was founded on the principle of rela-
tivity of motion.

This heliocentric theory of Copernicus was by no
means perfect. It solved many problems the Ptolemaic
system could not solve, but certain outstanding anom-
alies compromised its harmonious working. It is also
well known that for- thirty-five years Copernicus
did not dare publicly proclaim his discovery. When
he finally decided to publish it (in the year of his
death) he called his theory “Hypothesis” to forestall
the wrath of the Church and public opinion.

The later experience of Galileo proved how justified
were the fears of Copernicus. The heliocentric theory
was not only condemned by the church authorities
as heresy; it was rejected by the greatest astronomers
and other scientists of the time. Indeed, it was impos-
sible to prove Copernicus’ hypothesis by the then
existing methods of observation. Only later, through

26 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

the work of Kepler and Galileo, was the heliocentric
theory put on a solid scientific foundation.

At its inception, the Copernican system was nothing
more than a daring speculation. But it opened a new
world, pointed out the road to science and prompted
new and more refined methods of observation which
finally led to general acceptance of the revolutionary
but correct outlook on the universe.

During the first half of the twentieth century, in
so far as our political, social and economic thinking is
concerned, we find ourselves in the same dead-end
road as Copernicus during the Jubilee of 1500,

We are living in a geocentric world of nation-states.
We look upon economic, social and political problems
as “national” problems. No matter in which country
we live, the center of our political universe is our
own nation. In our outlook, the immovable point
around which all the other nations, all the problems
and events outside our nation, the rest of the world,
supposedly rotate, is our nation.

This is our basic and fundamental dogma.

According to this nation-centric conception of
world affairs, we can solve political, economic and
social problems within our nation, the fixed, im-
mutable center, in one way through law and gov-
ernment. And in the circumambient world around us,
in our relations with the peoples of other nations, these
same problems should be treated by other means by
“policy” and “diplomacy.”

According to this nation-centric conception of world
affairs, the political, social and economic relations
between man and man living within a sovereign na-

A COPEENICAN WORLD 27

tional unit, and these very same relationships between
man and man living in separate sovereign national
units are qualitatively different and require two quali-
tatively different methods of handling.

For many centuries such an approach was un-
challenged and unchallengeable. It served to solve
current problems in a satisfactory way and the existing
methods of production, distribution, of communica-
tions and of interchange among the nations did not
necessitate nor justify the formulation and acceptance
of a different outlook. But the scientific and tech-
nological developments achieved by the industrial
revolution in one century have brought about in our
political outlook and in our approach to political and
social phenomena a change as inevitable and impera-
tive as the Renaissance brought about in our philo-
sophical outlook.

The developments creating that need are revolu-
tionary and without parallel in human history* In one
century, the population of this earth has been more
than trebled. Since the very beginning of recorded
history, for ten thousand years, communication was
based on animal power. During the American and
French revolutions, transportation was scarcely faster
than it had been under die Pharaohs, at the time of
Buddha or of the Incas. And then, after a static aeon
of ten thousand years, transportation changed within
a single short century from animal power to the
steam and electric railroad, the internal combustion
automobile and the six hundred-mile-per-hour jet pro-
pulsion plane.

After thousands of years of primitive, rural existence

a8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

in which all human beings, with few exceptions, were
exhausted from producing with their own hands just
enough food, clothing and shelter for sheer survival,
in less than one century the population of the entire
Western world has become consumers of mass-produc-
tion commodities.

The change created by industrialism is so revolu-
tionary, so profound, that it is without parallel in the
history of any civilization. Despite Spengler, it is
unique.

In this new and as yet unexplored era we find our-
selves completely helpless, equipped with the in-
adequate, primitive political and social notions in-
herited from the pre-industrialized world. Slowly we
are coming to realize that none of our accepted
theories is satisfactory to cope with the disturbing and
complex problems of today.

We realize that although we can have all the
machinery we need, we cannot solve the problems of
production. We realize that in spite of die far-flung
and tremendous scope of transportation, we cannot
prevent famine and starvation in many places, while
there is abundance elsewhere on the earth. We realize
that although hundreds of millions are desperately in
need of food and industrial products, we cannot pre-
vent mass unemployment. We realize that even
though we have mined more gold than ever before,
we cannot stabilize currency. We realize that while
every modern country needs raw materials that other
countries have, and produces goods which other coun-
tries need, we have been unable to organize a satis-
factory method of exchange- We realize that although

A COPERNICAN WORLD 29

the overwhelming majority of all people hate violence
and long to live in peace, we cannot prevent recur-
rent and increasingly devastating world wars. We
knew that armaments must lead to wars between na-
tions, but we have learned the bitter truth that dis-
armament also leads to war.

In this confusion and chaos in which civilized na-
tions are struggling with utter helplessness, we are
bound to arrive at the inevitable conclusion that the
cause of this hopelessness and helplessness lies not in
the outer world but in ourselves* Not in the problems
we have to solve but in the hypotheses with which we
approach their solutions.

Our political and social conceptions are Ptolemaic.

The world in which we live is Copernican,

Our Ptolemaic political conceptions in a Copernican
industrial world are bankrupt* Latest observations on
ever-changing conditions have made our Ptolemaic
approach utterly ridiculous and out-of-date. We still
believe, in each one of the seventy or eighty sovereign
states, that our “nation” is the immovable center
around which the whole world revolves.

There is not the slightest hope that we can possibly
solve any of the vital problems of our generation
until we rise above dogmatic nation-centric conceptions
and realize that, in order to understand the political,
economic and social problems of this highly integrated
and industrialized world, we have to shift our stand-
point and see all the nations and national matters in
motion, in their interrelated functions, rotating accord-
ing to the same laws without any fixed points created
by our own imagination for our own convenience.

PART ONE

CHAPTER II

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM

IN THE present turmoil of international relations,
we hear nation accusing nation in a most peculiar
way, the voice of each lifted against the others.

Fascist countries assert that democracy and Com-
munism are one and the same thing, that democracy
is only a political corollary of Communism, that a
democratic system of government must lead to Bol-
shevism.

Communists insist that democracy and Fascism are
one and the same thing, that both are capitalist, that
under both, private capital exploits the workers, that
Fascism is the latest and highest form of capitalism,
nothing hut a device of reactionaries to destroy
socialism.

Democratic countries emphasize more and more
frequently that Fascism and Communism are one
and the same thing, that both are totalitarian dicta-
torships oppressing the peoples by means of a ruth-
less police, destroying all liberties and reducing the
individual to the status of a serf.

A grain of truth can be found in each of these
triangular cross-charges. But actually, each expresses
a superficial and worthless point of view. Mankind is

33

34 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

engaged in an unprecedented life and death struggle,
in a world-wide civil war waged around these social,
political and economic conceptions. If it is to survive,
these vital issues must be clarified, these conflicting
notions must be separated and defined objectively.

Individualist capitalism, the system of free enter-
prise and free competition, was the dominant eco-
nomic philosophy at the birth of industrialism. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, when the in-
dustrial revolution began, the liberating political
revolutions of the late eighteenth century had been
consolidated, their aims achieved. Democratic nation-
states, republics and constitutional monarchies, were
firmly established in the Western world. It was only
natural that the political ideals which had triumphed
should also become the prevailing basic principles of
the economists, manufacturers and traders of the
early industrial age.

Free enterprise, free trade and free competition
were the obvious economic corollary of political liberty.
On the basis of these principles, Adam Smith, David
Ricardo and John Stuart Mill constructed a system of
economic laws, a doctrine unchallengeable in the
abstract even today.

But there is a fundamental difference between
political freedom as embodied in English common
law and proclaimed by the encyclopedists of the
French Revolution and the fathers of American Inde-
pendence and economic freedom as understood by
the classical economists of the early nineteenth cen-
tuiy.

The founders of modern political democracy un-

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 35

derstood that freedom in human society is relative,
and that freedom in the absolute is bound to lead to
anarchy, to violence to the exact opposite of freedom.
They realized that the freedom for which man had
been struggling for five thousand years, means in
practice only the proper regulation of the interdepend-
ence of individuals within a society. They saw that
human freedom can be created only by limiting the
free exercise of human impulses through generally
applied compulsion in other words, by law.

Freedom is an ideal that appeals to everyone. The
only trouble is that one’s own longing for freedom
is somewhat upset by a similar longing for freedom in
others. What slightly complicates die eternal problem
of freedom is the not quite negligible fact that hun-
dreds of millions of human beings are dominated by
the same subjective desire freedom the full exercise
of which by every one of the hundreds of millions of
individuals would necessarily impinge upon the
freedom of all others.

So it was obvious to the makers of modern demo-
cratic constitutions that freedom can be granted to an
individual only to the extent that the freedom of
action of one individual does not infringe upon tie
freedom of action of other individuals. Individual
freedom, as granted by the constitutions of all modern
democracies to the citizens, is clearly defined by law
as a series of compulsions imposed upon all individuals
by the community the state.

The economists of laissez-faire, however, failed to
conceive freedom in its only possible form in the
form of a synthesis between freedom of action, and

36 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

die prohibition of such actions as might impair or
destroy the freedom of others. Freedom in economic
affairs, according to their theory, was absolute, un-
limited and unrestrained.

They had a nebulous notion about the necessity
of protecting the economic freedom of man from in-
fringement by the actions of others, but compared
with the clear principles regarding freedom in human
society which guided the authors of the modem
democratic constitutions, theirs were extremely primi-
tive. They fought against monopoly tendencies, know-
ing that these would strangle competition. But their
stand against restricting competition among laborers
was based on the same argument, i, e,, that such re-
strictions would destroy freedom of competition be-
tween workers, that what is today called “collective
bargaining” on the part of organized workers would
be unfair to nonorganized labor, to the consumers,
and would produce unemployment. They did not
realize that trade unionism was the specific reaction
to the total lack of norms regulating die relationship
between employer and employee, to the unregulated,
absolute freedom on the labor market which was
gradually destroying the freedom of the wage earners.

Absolute, unlimited and unrestrained freedom of
action could bring about “freedom” in this world only
if absolute equality in every respect existed between
individuals, if an order could be established which
everyone would consider just and if it were possible
to preserve such order in static form forever or at
least for a long period of time. It is evident that such
absolute equality among men does not and never can

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 37

exist. Economic conditions, like life itself, are in a
permanent state of flux, and so after a short time,
absolute economic freedom, like absolute freedom in
any other field, created a situation in which many, if
not the majority of people, were in fact deprived of
freedom.

An economic order could rightly be called a system
of absolute free enterprise based on absolute freedom
of competition if inheritance did not exist; if, at the
death of each individual, all the tools, all the means
of production and wealth he had accumulated during
his lifetime were destroyed or taken by the state, so
as to give each person complete equality of oppor-
tunity. As such a thing is not likely to come to pass,
freedom of enterprise and freedom of opportunity can
at best be relative.

Theoretically, complete freedom of competition in
economic life is thinkable only if each person starts
from scratch. The moment capital, business organiza-
tion, tools, patents and other assets accumulated by
successful individuals during their activity in the field
of free competition, are transferred to other individ-
uals, who thus start with a great advantage over many
others of their generation, absolute freedom of compe-
tition loses its meaning. In such a situation, if com-
plete tyranny by a few economic dynasties is to be pre-
vented and a relative degree of freedom in economic
life is to be maintained, a certain amount of regulation
by kw is imperative and unavoidable.

In human society it is difficult to challenge the
righteousness and justification of the claim for leader-
ship and privileged positions of those who are more

3 8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

capable, more diligent, more intelligent, more thrifty.
But it became hard for the masses to accept justifica-
tion of the claim for leadership and privileged posi-
tions of second or third generations who inherited
fortunes and capital from their parents, thus starting
upon free enterprise in economic life under conditions
so favorable that free competition became a method
of perpetuating economic inequalities.

We cannot very well call the order existing today
in the United States, the British Commonwealth and
in other capitalist countries a “system of free enter-
prise” when many industries are monopolized to an
extent which makes it absolutely impossible to start
new ventures in those fields or to compete with those
industries.

Consequently, within two or three decades, modem
industrialism has created not only hitherto undreamed-
of wealth for the economically stronger and more
fit, as well as for their descendants, but it has also
created poverty, frustration, dependency and lack of
freedom, bitterly resented by those millions who lost
their chance to become independent and whose labor
is now a mere commodity.

This situation naturally created reactions, and
finally modern socialism.

Socialism teaches that private capitalism necessarily
leads to monopoly to a greater concentration of
capital in the hands of the few, to economic dismem-
berment and to the pauperization of the laboring
masses. The conception of class warfare between
capitalists and proletariat was construed and the sal-
vation of the Western industrial world was seen to

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 39

lie in the expropriation of the exploiters, in the aboli-
tion of the profit motive and in the nationalization of
all means of production.

For nearly a century now this class warfare has
teen going on in all Western countries, despite the
fact that the entire controversy is based on a mis-
conception. It is not because capital is controlled by
individuals and private corporations that the private
capitalist system of free enterprise failed. It failed
because in the economic field, “freedom” was regarded
as an absolute instead of a functional concept, a
human ideal in constant need of adjustment and
regulation by law, and of institutions for its defense
and safeguard. In absolute form, freedom of one man
means the serfdom of the other. Obviously such a state
of affairs cannot be a human ideal and cannot be
called “freedom.”

After a period of fabulous wealth for a few and in-
creasing poverty for many, some people recognized
the danger of the trend and tried to bridge the abyss
separating the capitalist and proletarian classes by
accepting trade-unionism, introducing labor legisla-
tion, social security, inheritance taxes and other
measures to overcome the most blatant injustices aris-
ing from absolute freedom in economic life. Experi-
ence with social legislation unquestionably demon-
strates that in this direction lies the solution of the
social problem. If freedom in economic life is to have
meaning, we must create a system of regulations and
norms within which free enterprise, free initiative
and freedom of economic activity can exist without
destroying the freedom of enterprise, free initiative

40 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

and free economic activity of others. This principle
cannot work realistically except by establishing insti-
tutions capable of giving expression to constantly
changing conditions and of creating law.

The scope and limits of free enterprise are just as
relative as are those of any other freedom in human
society. It was not so long ago that raising armies came
within the scope of private enterprise. Just as modern
capitalist states own a few industrial enterprises,
the state the king also had an army. But the king
could not wage war without the support and collabora-
tion of his great landowners, just as modern demo-
cratic states cannot wage war without the support and
collaboration of the great industrial enterprises. And
just as governments today call upon private indus-
trialists to produce guns, planes and ships for them, in
other days powerful knights were called upon to raise
armed battalions and to take command over them.

It is not so long since the champions of absolute
free enterprise hotly defended their sacred right to
raise and possess armies. Who today would defend
that right and assume that private enterprise includes
the right of the big landowner or the big employer to
raise and command armies? Who today would regard
state monopoly of conscription and of maintaining
armed forces as an infringement upon the system of
free enterprise? Or is the Duke of Atholl, who still
enjoys the privilege of maintaining a private army
in Scotland, the only remnant of the system of free
enterprise in the Western world?

The fact that at certain stages, evolution demands
the transfer of certain human activities from the in-

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 41

dividual to the collectivity does not mean the end of
individualism. It means, rather, that the interest of
the community and the freedom of its members are
better served if certain activities vitally concerning
all are under the control of the community.

From a dogmatic viewpoint of absolute individual
free enterprise, it is difficult to speak of freedom of
enterprise in America or in England, when no land-
owner, no banker, no industrialist, is free to raise
armies and fight under his individual banner, for his
own house, for his own interests, for his own inde-
pendence. The state monopoly of conscription, of rais-
ing and maintaining armed forces, is such a far-reach-
ing infringement upon absolute individual liberty and
the system of absolute freedom of enterprise, that it
outranks completely the limitations upon free enter-
prise arising from trade-unionism or social legislation.
Yet, after a hard and long fight between the defenders
of free military enterprise and the community, that
issue has been settled so that today, no one, not even
the most adventurous industrial robber baron, believes
that his individual freedom of action has been der
stroyed and that he is living in a Communist society
just because he is no longer free to invest capital in
a private army.

Our civic life is based entirely on the fundamental
doctrine that maximum individual freedom results
from the prohibition of the free exercise of such
human actions as would infringe upon the freedom
of action of others. This is the meaning of political
freedom.

It is also the meaning of economic freedom.

4 z THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The first conflict between false theory and reality
in the industrial age the anarchic situation created
by the erroneous conception of freedom in economic
life might have been solved, after many unnecessary
struggles, by a rapprochement between capitalist and
socialist doctrines through social legislation, as it has
been very nearly solved in small, progressive countries
like Sweden, Denmark and Norway. But an even
greater barrier to free industrial development, a
dominating force in our civilization, has created a
much more violent conflict which threatens to destroy
all the positive achievements of the past two cen-
turies. This conflict is the clash between industrialism
and political nationalism.

Modern industrial economy, in order to progress,
needs freedom of exchange and transportation even
more than it needs freedom of individual initiative
and competition. The purpose of mechanized indus-
trial economy is maximum production of consumer
goods. This entails the utmost rationalization of pro-
duction processes, widespread division of labor, plant
location on the economically most favorable geo-
graphic sites, free supplies of raw materials from aU
over the earth and free distribution of finished prod*
ucts to all world markets. These conditions essential
to industrial development were recognized at the be-
ginning of the industrial age; and free trade became
die natural policy of the first great industrial power,
England, where abolition of the tariffs on agricultural
products the remnants of the mercantile age was
urged and complete freedom in international trading
advocated.

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 43

But by the time free trade had established England’s
leadership in industrial production and world trade,
the eighteenth century nation-state system had already
crystallized as a rigid political structure. People in the
Western world had begun to think in national terms,
pledging allegiance to their nation-states, their na-
tional symbols and ideals above everything else. And
these young nation-states the United States, Ger-
many, France looked with envy upon England’s
growing wealth created by her industrial power and
export trade. They began to feel that free trade was
a very profitable policy indeed for the economically
strongest nation and that, under the existing freedom
of economic exchange they themselves had very little
chance to build up industries at home, capable of
competing with British manufacturers. They wanted
to produce within their own national borders as much
as possible of what they needed, and in addition, a
substantial volume of commodities for export.

To create a national industry became more impor-
tant to them than to carry on the free trade system,
even if such a change of policy meant higher prices
at home. Each felt that, as a national unit, it would
have more “freedom” if it put legal restrictions on the
freedom of trade of the stronger producer nations.
So, championed by Alexander Hamilton and Fried-
rich List, a new theory of industrial protection was
born and national tariff barriers were erected under
the protection of which national industries came
into being in the United States, in Germany and in
various other countries.

From that moment, the system of free individualist

44 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

economy a most promising departure was halted,
disrupted and strangled.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, it has
been meaningless to talk of a free economy. The
reality consists of a system of warring national econ-
omies guided primarily by political and not economic
interests and considerations.

For a relatively short time about half a century
this misalliance between industrialism and national-
ism could be overlooked because in the politically
divided world a few nations were large enough for
industrialism to continue to develop. For a time suffi-
cient open spaces provided conditions that enabled
the relative wealth of the United States and of the
colonial powers of Great Britain, France, Germany,
Holland and Belgium to be created. All of these na-
tions were engaged in desperate competition during
the entire nineteenth century, seeking to bring under
their own national sovereignty territories large enough
to supply their industrial machinery with raw ma-
terials and markets of their own.

This development finally reached a saturation point.
Once there were no more territories to discover, once
the possibility of annexing virgin lands ceased, these
divided national industrial states got into violent colli-
sions with each other, starting a new type of conflict,
creating more and more chaotic conditions through-
out the world.

Within narrow national boundaries fortified by
artificial tariff walls, economic freedom became a
farce. The impossibility of exchanging freely, of pro-
ducing where production was economically most
rational, of supplying the markets where a demand

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 45

for commodities existed, accelerated and made more
acute the periodical crises within the system of na-
tional economies, bringing about unemployment and
misery in the midst of plenty.

What we usually call world economics, interna-
tional trade, has today little, if anything, to do with
economics or trade. They are in fact economic war-
fare, trade warfare. The dominating motive of all
economic activity outside existing national boundaries
is not trade, is not production, is not consumption,
is not even profit, but a determination to strengthen
by all means the economic power of the nation-states.

Within the political strait-jacket of the nation-states,
national economies could function only through arti-
ficial stimulants which, after a brief flurry, made the
position even worse. Capitalists, who originally
thought that they profited most by the system of free
enterprise began to seek to eliminate competition, the
very foundation of the capitalist system. Artificial
structures, trusts and cartels, were erected to control
competition and to circumvent the iron laws of supply
and demand on the free market. They thought they
saw salvation in economic planning, fixing in advance
quality, quantity and rate of production to avoid over-
production and to keep prices high.

On the other hand, the workers, whose sufferings
increased under this system of anarchic economy, re-
jected the very idea of private capital and free enter-
prise, organized trade unions to obtain higher wages
through collective bargaining and formed political
parties to influence legislation and control govern-
ments.

On all sides today in the Western world voices are

46 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

raised accusing managers of trusts and cartels as well
as the leaders of labor parties and trade unions of de-
stroying individual freedom. The cry is that planned
economy, whether controlled by capitalist cartels or
socialist labor parties, inevitably leads to dictatorship
and destruction of democracy.

This is unquestionably true.

Both cartels and labor unions have been driving the
great industrial democracies of the Western world
toward more government control and less individual
freedom. But the strange thing is that none of these
champions of absolute individual and economic liberty
have taken the trouble to analyze the crisis through
which the world is passing. None of them have tried
to determine the underlying causes of the trend, nor
the forces which are driving us toward ever-increas-
ing power for the state. They assert it is the leaders of
cartels with their fear of competition, and the socialists
with their collectivist ideology, who cause this trend.
Some are even so blind as to declare that no “objective
facts” make inevitable our march toward complete
state control. Only wrong ideas, only human stupidity,
they say are responsible for the present situation which
has come about because people “believe” in false
prophets and in the heresies of economic planning,
collectivism and government control

Economic freedom and the system of free enter-
prise have been driven into bankruptcy by the primi-
tive, erroneous notion of unregulated freedom and by
political nationalism > by the nation-state structure.

Except for a limited period after the birth of in-
dustrialism, free economy has never really existed.

FAILURE OF CAPITALISM 47

The political credo of nationalism undermined and
destroyed it before it could develop.

The primacy of national interests in every country
forces governments and peoples toward economic self-
sufficiency, toward preparedness for war, toward more
economic planning and direction, which means the
transfer of more and more authority from individuals
to the central government. The political structure of
the nation-states is in violent and absolute opposition
to the needs of an economic system of free enterprise.
In final analysis, all obstacles to free economy aris-
ing in the democratic countries derive from it

To all practical purposes it is today a waste of time
to search for the laws of economic life. In a world of
national industrialism, it is the gun that regulates
production, trade and consumption. There is no
higher law to govern economy in a world of sovereign
nation-states.

Monopolistic tendencies, socialism, collectivism are
merely reactions, attempts to cure die most urgent
symptoms of the crisis created by the clash between
industrialism and nationalism* Developments in every
single nation-state have run parallel, albeit with
varying rapidity, toward the domination of the individ-
ual by the state, first in his economic and then auto-
matically in his political life.

From this evolution over the past fifty years, it is
clear that individual capitalism, within the limited
boundaries of nation-states at the present stage of
industrial development, cannot operate without caus-
ing anarchic conditions that force governments to in-
tervene and take control of the economic process in

48 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

the interest of the nation. The advantages of a free
economic system, higher living standards, greater
wealth, better housing, better education, more leisure
are unquestionable. But it remains a fact that they
mean much less to the blind citizen-serfs of the na-
tion-states, than their nationalist passions. People will-
ingly and enthusiastically renounce the enjoyment of
freedom and wealth, if only they can continue to in-
dulge in slavish submission to and abject worship of
their nation-state and its symbols.

The individual system of free enterprise within the
limits of nation-states can neither flourish nor develop.
In all countries it has led to more and more power for
the state, to a totalitarian form of government and the
destruction of individual liberty.

Prohibitive tariff walls, monopolies, cartels, control
of government by trusts and private interests, dump-
ing, poverty, slums, unemployment and many other
products of the system of absolute free enterprise are
surely not freedom, or freedom has no meaning.

CHAPTER III

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM

ATTER decades of unrest, struggle and attempted
revolutions, in 1917 one great country at last
became the scene of a large-scale socialist experiment

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 49

Russia. Contrary to the predictions of Marx, Com-
munism first succeeded in establishing the dictator-
ship of the proletariat, not in the most advanced in-
dustrial country but in one of the most backward.
This alone, in such contradiction to the Marxist time-
table and theories, should have sufficed to arouse im-
mediate suspicion as to the socialist quality of the
Russian Revolution. Later developments have proved,
and history will undoubtedly record the events of
1917 to be not so much a socialist revolution, as the
Great Russian National Revolution, coming a hun-
dred and fifty years after the national revolutions of
the Western countries and creating not socialism but
something quite different

The slogans and the symbols that germinated the
revolution are losing their meaning and importance
in the light of more significant historic facts. In 1917,
the main revolutionary force of the world was Com-
munism, which unquestionably gave impetus to the
violent overthrow of the old regime, czarism and cap-
italism alike. But the revolution did not establish eco-
nomic equality and social justice, the aim of its origi-
nators. It brought about something quite different

No doubt Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and the other
theorists and initiators of the Russian Bolshevik rev-
olution were idealists who sincerely believed in a
Marxist collectivist society. They were convinced that
once “ownership” of land and means of production
were expropriated and transferred from private indi-
viduals and corporations to the collectivity, repre-
sented by the state, social equality would be achieved
and a new, prosperous and happy society created.

50 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

They resorted to terror only as a temporary measure
to remove the parasites of the old regime. The dic-
tatorship of the proletariat was to be merely a period
of transition, as Marx taught, during which the ex-
propriation of private capital and its transfer to the
state was necessary, but would be abolished automat-
ically as soon as the operation was completed and a
classless society created.

A few years after the revolution, it became obvious,
even to the Soviet leaders, that absolute economic and
social equality are incompatible with the very nature
of man, “that private initiative is essential to progress
and that a certain amount of property is an inevitable
corollary to the conception of human liberty. A series
of reforms were introduced to differentiate income and
social position, which in a few years led to gradations
in wealth, power and influence as pronounced as in
any capitalist country.

One thing about the Soviet system, however, was
indisputable. It worked. In an economic system con-
trolled entirely by the collectivity, the agricultural out-
put was raised; coal, iron and gold were mined in
ever-increasing quantities; huge factories, dams and
railroads were built; steel, aluminum and textiles were
produced; tractors, cars and airplanes were manufac-
tured.

The complete failure of the Comintern ideal of
world revolution as propagated by Trotsky, Zinoviev
and the old guard of Lenin’s disciples, strengthened
the position of those who believed that the Soviet
Union would perish if it entered into conflict with
other nations, that it must be prepared to resist for

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 51

eign aggression, that die Soviet peoples must concen-
trate on increasing the industrial strength of the
U.S.S.R. rather than on spreading revolution.

For two decades the Russian people worked with
all their energy and devotion to lay die foundation of
a great industrial power and to produce the aims
and munitions necessary to defend the sacred soil of
their country against attack. But in spite of the fabu-
lous production figures of Russian heavy industry,
the standard of living of die great masses of the Rus-
sian people remained stagnant. Although they have
expanded their system of transportation and opened
up wide, undeveloped spaces for settlement, dieir
standard of living has remained extremely low.

It does not detract one iota from the achievements
of the Russian people to state that almost none of the
social ideals of Marx and Lenin have been achieved
in die Soviet Union dirough die dictatorship of die
proletariat. The workers are living under material con-
ditions less favorable than those in the Western de-
mocracies. Individual liberty is nonexistent. Alttough
all natural resources and tools are collective property,
the relationship between management and worker is
in principle the same as in England or America in
practice, worse. Soviet labor unions are instruments
of die state and can do litde toward improving work-
ing conditions for their members. In any dispute, die
management is just another instrument of die same
state. Most of the workers are tied to the factory or
mine or land where they work, and have no freedom
of movement if dissatisfied with die existing surround-
ings and conditions. In a short span of twenty yeaxs,

52 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

after the complete elimination of all upper and mid-
dle classes, a new ruling class has crystallized. A Red
Army general, a high government official, a successful
engineer or a famous writer, painter or orchestra con-
ductor is just as far above the great masses of labor as
in the most capitalist country.

Developments during the first twenty-five years of
the first Communist state run surprisingly parallel to
the evolution of capitalist democratic countries. In a
state of permanent international distrust, under con-
stant fear of foreign aggression, in perpetual danger
of destruction by outside forces, under pressure of the
political nation-state structure of the world, the first
and foremost endeavor of the Soviet peoples was to
strengthen the power of the centralized Soviet state.
The survival, at all costs of the national state the
U.S.S.R. is the dominant doctrine of the Stalin
regime. It did not take long for the original interna-
tionalism in Communist philosophy to fade away and
disappear, to give way to National Communism.

Since Stalin’s victory over Trotsky, the Soviet gov-
ernment has been building up the industrial and mil-
itary power of the U.S.S.R,, forging the heteroge-
neous elements of that huge country into one great
national unit, arousing and exalting the group in-
stincts of nationalism, to a point that has made it pos-
sible for the Soviet government to ask their people
for any sacrifice to defend and strengthen the Soviet
state.

The nationalist passions of all the heterogeneous
peoples forming the Soviet Union were aroused and
inflamed by the same oratory, the same slogans, the

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 53

same flags, music, uniforms, as in capitalist countries.
To build up die power of the nation-state, the people
had to give up all hope of a better material life for
a long time to come. The production of consumer
goods was kept to a minimum to concentrate the en-
tire productive power of the nation on the manufac-
ture of war material and reserves.

It is useless to express opinions on the righteousness
or unrighteousness of this turn. It is a historical fact
June, 1941, proved how necessary it was. Stalingrad
proved how successful.

This change of course in economic policy created
much dissent among the peasant and working masses.
But this smoldering opposition was ruthlessly extin-
guished by the central administration which, under
growing internal opposition on one side and the grow-
ing external pressure created by the deteriorating in-
ternational situation on the other, became every day
more dictatorial, more tyrannical. The aspirations of
. the Russian people to a greater degree of individual
freedom and political democracy, so manifest during
the first decade of the Soviet Union, were slowly
strangled, and in the late 1930*5 it was dear that from
a political point of view the Soviet state was develop-
ing not toward democracy but toward absolute state
control, toward complete and totalitarian ‘domination
of society by an autocratic state administration.

Communist economy is based on two completely
unreal and fictitious conceptions.

The first is the overemphasized importance at-
tached to “ownership” of tools and means of produc-
tion. The development ot industrialism in capitalist

54 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

countries clearly shows that, as mass production be-
comes more complex, ownership of tools and means of
production becomes more diffused and anonymous, is
more widely scattered among thousands and hundreds
of thousands of shareholders who have practically no
control over the actual handling of their property.
When a private enterprise is owned by a great num-
ber of people, it is managed more or less as a socialist
or state-owned enterprise. As regards actual manage
ment and the relationship between owners and em-
ployees, there is no difference whatever between the
American or British railroad companies owned by
private capital, and the Scandinavian, German, Ital-
ian or Soviet railroads, owned by the state. The em-
ployees of the Bell Telephone Company, a private
enterprise in America, stand in exactly the same posi-
tion toward the ownership of the invested capital as
do the employees of the British, French and Soviet
telephone companies, owned by the state.

Twenty-five years of “Communist” regime in Rus-
sia have conclusively demonstrated that recognition of
private property is almost indispensable to a smoothly
working economic system. A man with initiative and
imagination, or one who works hard and is thrifty, is
bound to possess more wealth and achieve a higher
position than the average worker who merely carries
out orders, who has no personal initiative, who worl
no more than he can help and who spends everythn ^
he earns. After twenty-five years of “Communist”
economy, the range of incomes in Soviet Russia is
just as great, if not greater, than the range of incomes
in capitalist countries. With this similarity, almost

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 55

identity, of actual conditions and developments be-
tween the Soviet Union and the countries of private
enterprise, it matters little to the worker wfeo “owns”
the plants and machines. For all practical purposes,
it is irrelevant. At the present stage of industrialism
there is little or no difference in the situation of the
worker employed in the Magnitogorsk Works owned
by the Soviet state, or the worker employed by private
“^enterprises like Imperial Chemicals or General Mo-
tors.

There is no reason why creative minds like Edison,
Ford, Citroen or Siemens should be prevented from
building up and “owning” great industrial properties,
although it may be dangerous to the community and
detrimental to society if they remain the private prop-
erty of second or third generation nonconstxuctive
heirs. But ;with rising inheritance taxes, this problem
has virtually been solved in* most countries. It is only
a small step from where death duties stand in England
today, for instance, to the complete abolition of the
right of inheritance of capital. And this step may quite
possibly be taken in a none-too-distant future. Al-
ready a great industrial enterprise created by one in-
dividual is usually transformed during his lifetime
into a corporation of widespread anonymous owner-
ship under a separate management.

• The second fallacy of Communism is that the main
  ^f6blem of economy is distribution. The sad truth is
  that if today we could divide total annual world pro-
  duction equally among the members of the entire
  human race, the result would be poverty. If we di-
  vided all incomes equally among all men, the general

56 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

standard of living would scarcely be above that of a
Chinese coolie. In spite of our pride in the “mirac-
ulous” industrial achievements of the United States,
England, Germany and Russia, our production lags
miserably behind existing scientific and technical po-
tentialities.

That nationalism and the nation-state represent in-
surmountable barriers to the development of an indi-
vidualist capitalist economic system the system of
free enterprise should be apparent by now to every-
body. High tariff walls, export subsidies, exchange
manipulations, dumping, cartels, the artificial creation
of industries through government financing, etc., have
completely distorted the free play of economic forces
as understood by the classical theorists of the early
nineteenth century. The all-important trend of oui
age is to strengthen the nation-state. In the presence
of constant threats emanating from other nation-
states, the people of each nation have been forced to
centralize more and more power in their national gov-
ernments.

But the similarity, indeed, the exact identity of the
development of a socialist economic system within a
nation-state, with the development of the capitalist
system under the same conditions, is still not fully un-
derstood. To point out a few anomalies existing be-
tween fact and theory may throw light on the subject.

According to Karl Marx, the state is the result of
the breaking up of society into irreconcilable, antago-
nistic classes. Friedrich Engels explains in his Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State that
die state arises when and where class antagonisms

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 57

cannot be objectively reconciled. And, as Lenin put it,
the existence of the state proves that class antagonisms
are irreconcilable.

So, according to the Marxist theory, the state is an
organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of
one class by the other; “its aim is the creation of
‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppres-
sion by moderating the collisions between the classes/’
In his State and Revolution, Lenin arrives at the con-
clusion that “the state could neither arise nor main-
tain itself if a reconciliation of classes were possible/’

And from here, only one step is necessary to arrive
at the conclusion expressed by Engels in his Anti-
Duhring, that once the proletariat seizes state power
and transforms the means of production into state
property, “it puts an end to all class differences and
class antagonisms, it puts an end also to the state as
the state. … As soon as there is no longer any class of
society to be held in subjection; as soon as, along with
class domination and the struggle for individual exist-
ence based on the former anarchy of production, the
collisions and excesses arising from these Lave also
been abolished, there is nothing more to be repressed,
and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer
necessary . , . government over persons is replaced by
the administration of things and the direction of the
processes of production. The state is not ‘abolished/
it withers away! 9

This theory of the state and of its “withering away”
after a socialist revolution is one of the main argu-
ments in the writings of Lenin, who regarded it as
a fundamental doctrine of Communism. He develops

58 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

the thesis that the bourgeois state, whether monarchic
or republican, absolute or democratic, is “a special
repressive force” which can be demolished only by
violent revolution. But once the dictatorship of the
proletariat has abolished classes, the state will ”be-
come dormant/* To quote Lenin from his State and
Revolution: “The bourgeois state can only be put an
end to by a revolution. The state in general . . . can
only wither away? Or, otherwise expressed by Lenin:
‘The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian
state is impossible without a violent revolution. The
abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of all states, is
only possible through withering away?

In his Poverty of Philosophy Marx writes that once
the working class replaces the old bourgeois society
“by an association which excludes classes and their
antagonism . , , there will no longer be any real polit-
ical power, for political power is precisely the official
expression of the class antagonism within bourgeois
society/’

In criticizing previous bourgeois revolutions, in The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx
roundly criticizes the parliamentary republics for cen-
tralizing and strengthening the resources of govern-
ment “All revolutions [he writes] brought this ma-
chine to greater perfection, instead of breaking it up/’

This thought is developed in the Communist Mani-
festo and Lenin gives it clear expression when he says
in State and Revolution that: “All revolutions which
have taken place up to the present have helped to per-
fect the state machinery, whereas it must be shattered,
broken to pieces . . /’ These lessons ‘lead us to the

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 59

conclusion that the proletariat cannot overthrow the
bourgeoisie without first conquering political power,
without obtaining political rule, without transforming
the state into the proletariat organized as the ruling
class; and that this proletarian state will begin to
wither away immediately after its victory, because in
a society without class antagonisms, the state is un-
necessary and impossible.”

Before digging further into the “scientific** conclu-
sions and predictions of Marx, Engels and Lenin
about the nature of the state and its automatic and
immediate “withering away” after its conquest by the
proletariat, let us pause for a moment to compare
these prophecies with the realities of the Soviet state,
with what it has become after a quarter of a century
of existence.

Lenin said: ‘The centralized state power peculiar
to bourgeois society came into being in the period of
the fall of absolutism. Two institutions are especially
characteristic of this state machinery: bureaucracy
and the standing army/’

What would be the reactions of Lenin’s comrades
in the Politburo if he were able to make this state-
ment in Moscow twenty years after his death?

Thundering against “those Philistines who have
brought socialism to the unheard of disgrace of jus-
tifying and embellishing the imperialist war by ap-
plying to it the term of ‘national defense’ M Lenin
proclaims: “Bureaucracy and the standing army con-
stitute a ‘parasite* … a parasite bom of the internal
antagonisms which tear that society asunder, but es-
sentially a parasite ‘dogging every pore’ of existence.”

60 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

What would be the reaction of die Soviet leaders
if Lenin should arise from his mausoleum and make
that speech in the Red Square today?

And what would the marshals of the Red Army and
the high dignitaries of Soviet diplomacy say if, twenty
years after his death, in talking about the role of state
power in Communist society, Lenin were to repeat
that it “can be reduced to such simple operations of
registration, filing and checking that they will be quite
within the reach of every literate person, and it will
be possible to perform them for ‘workingman’s wages 1
which circumstance can (and must) strip those func-
tions of every shadow of privilege, of every appearance
of ‘official grandeur/ *

And what would the families of Lenin’s comrades
of the revolutionary days of 1917 think if, remember-
ing the events of 1936 and r937, they reread the state-
ment Lenin made at die time of die revolution: “We
set ourselves the ultimate aim of destroying the state,
i.e., every organized and systematic violence, every
use of violence against man in general/*

The contradictions are even more striking if we
turn to the writings of the founders of Communism
and their views concerning the role of law and the
relationship of the individual to the state.

In State and Revolution Lenin wrote: “Only in
Communist society when the resistance of the cap-
italists has been completely broken, when the capital-
ists have disappeared, when there are no classes , . .
only then the state ceases to exist and it becomes pos-
sible to speak of freedom . . . only then will democracy
itself begin to wither away due to the simple fact

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 61

that, free from capitalist slavery, from the untold
horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist
exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed,
to the observance of the elementary rules of social
life that have been known for centuries and repeated
for thousands of years in all school books; they will
become accustomed to observing them without force,
without compulsion, without subordination, without
the special apparatus for compulsion which is called
the state/’

A few more short quotations from Lenin are neces-
sary to a comparison of socialist theory and socialist
reality.

“Communism renders the state absolutely unneces-
sary, for there is no one to be suppressed no one in
the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic strug-
gle with a definite section of the population/*

‘While the state exists there is no freedom. When
there is freedom there will be no state/’

‘The more complete the democracy, the nearer the
moment when it begins to be unnecessary/’

And to the question as to how the state, standing
army, bureaucracy and compulsion will “wither away”
in a Communist system through the dictatorship of
the proletariat, Lenin answers with the dogmatism
of a high priest: ‘We do not know how quickly and
in what succession, but we know that they will wither
away. Witt their withering away, the state will also
wither away.”

These doctrines might have been taught two thou-
sand years ago, in some primitive rural community.

62 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

But it is somewhat astonishing to hear them put forth
in the second decade of die twentieth century.

The theory that the state is created by the struggle
between the capitalist and proletariat classes and that,
once the capitalist class is done away with, state ma-
chinery would be unnecessary and would therefore
disappear, is in total contradiction to existing facts
and to die teachings of history. Of course, conflict
between groups within a given society necessitates
the creation of law and the use of force by the com-
munity to prevent violence between die two conflict-
ing groups. But it is difficult to understand how other-
wise scientifically trained minds could make the as-
sertion that class struggle alone is the source of the
state and that the only purpose of the state is to per-
petuate the domination of one class by another.

Law and coercion in society are necessitated by
thousands and thousands of conflicts arising within
a given society between individuals and groups of in-
dividuals in innumerable fields, among which, in
modern times, one is unquestionably the class struggle.

The state is not a diabolic device invented by a rul-
ing class to oppress another class. It is the product
of historical evolution. From ancient times, when
magicians and priests in primitive tribes proclaimed
and enforced the first rules of human conduct, up to
the establishment of British constitutional monarchy,
the republican constitution of the United States, the
constitution of the Soviet Union, all history of civiliza-
tion passing upward through families, tribes, villages,
cities, provinces, principalities, kingdoms, republics,
empires, commonwealths and modern nation-states,

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 63

the one fundamental and invariable motive of this
evolution has been that human beings, taken in-
dividually or in any given division of groups, whether
vertical or horizontal, whether racial, linguistic, re-
ligious or national, are constantly in conflict with each
other and that, in order to prevent these permanent
and manifold clashes of interest from degenerating
into violence, certain rules are necessary, certain re-
strictions and limitations on human impulses must be
imposed and an authority established to represent the
community with the right and the power to enforce
such regulations and restrictions on the members of
that community.

The Ten Commandments given to Moses on
Mount Sinai, the writing of the Koran by Moham-
med, the commands of Darius and Genghis Khan,
are identical in purpose with the laws enacted by
Parliament in London, Congress in Washington
and the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. The differences
are only changes in form throughout one long his-
torical evolution. All these rules and regulations of
human conduct, in no matter what form laid down,
were devised to enable men to live together in a given
society.

Who should have decisive influence in formulating
these rules, what should be their content, to whom
they should apply, how and by whom they should be
carried out, how should they be changed, by whom
and how their creation and application controlled
these have been the eternal questions of man as a
member of society and on these questions political

64 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

struggles have centered for thousands of years and
will center for thousands of years to come.

During the past fifty years we have been passing
through a stage in this long development where mod-
era industrialism has created a conflict between those
who own or manage industrial enterprises and those
who function as wage earners in that system. The
conflict between the capitalist class and the proletariat
is doubtless deep and acute, and a solution to this
problem must be found. But to say that in our age this
is the only conflict between groups of men and that,
with the resolving of that conflict, the state as such
can or will disappear since it will become “unneces-
sary” is an altogether fantastic and unrealistic con-
clusion.

In 191 7, in the midst of the first World War, Lenin
wrote in his preface to the first edition of State and
“Revolution: “The foremost countries are being con-
verted we speak here of their ‘rear’ into military
convict labor prisons for the workers.”

How right Lenin was in pointing out that as a
result of international wars, states are becoming “con-
vict labor prisons/’ But how wrong he was in attribut-
ing this to class struggle.

In all the Marxist analysis of the state and of the
development of the state toward more and more
bureaucratic and militaristic institutions, there is not
one word about the real cause of this development-
nationalism. There is not one word about the fact
that the nation-states are in conflict with each other,
a conflict which is bound to find expression in recur-
rent wars. There is not one word that these wars be-

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 65

tween national units are caused, not by die internal
structure of the economic and social system within
these individual nation-states but by the fact that they
are independent, sovereign units whose relationship is
unregulated.

In saying that after establishment of the dictator-
ship of the proletariat and the Communist system of
economy, the “state will wither away” and that in a
“classless” society, coercive law and the use of force
will not be necessary, because once everyone is a
“worker,” the people will acquire the “habit” of be-
having in society so that the state machinery will not
be necessary Marx the theorist and Lenin the realist
show themselves to be greater Utopians than the early
socialists they so mercilessly lashed with their power-
ful didactic minds. The belief that institutions can
change human nature is indeed the dominant feature
of all Utopias*

Social and political institutions are the result of
human behavior, the product of man. Periodically
they become obsolete and require improvement or
even radical reform, not to change human nature,
but to make it possible for men to live together, with
their existing and unchangeable characteristics, in
changed circumstances.

Lenin’s assertion that freedom will exist only when
the state has been abolished, is another dialectic dis-
tortion, a superficial observation and a most erroneous
conclusion.

It proves that he had no understanding of the real
meaning of freedom.

Far from being the result of the abolition of the

66 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

state, freedom in human society is exclusively the
product of the state* It is indeed unthinkable with-
out the state.

There is no freedom in the jungle. Freedom does
not exist among animals, except the freedom of the
beast of prey, the freedom of the strong to devour
the weak. Freedom as an ideal is essentially a human
ideal. It is the exact opposite of the freedom of the
tiger and the shark. Human freedom is freedom from
being killed, robbed, cheated, oppressed, tortured and
exploited by the stronger. It means protection of the
individual against innumerable dangers.

Experience demonstrates that during all our his-
tory, there has been one method and one method
alone to approach that ideal. The method is: Law.

Human freedom is created by law and can exist
only within a legal order, never without or beyond
it. Naturally, through changing conditions and eco-
nomic and technical developments, new situations
constantly arise in which certain individuals or groups
of individuals find that their freedom is menaced by
newly arisen circumstances or insufficiently protected
by existing laws. In all such cases, the law must be
revised and amended. New restrictions, new laws
create additional freedoms.

The required new freedom, made necessary by new
conditions, results from the promulgation of new
laws, by the granting of new, additional protection
to the individuals by the community. Freedom is in
no way created by the abolition of the source of such
protection.

Twenty-five years after the creation of the first

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 67

Communist state based on die principles of Marx,
Engels and Lenin, the Soviet Union has developed
into the greatest nation-state on earth, with an all-
powerful bureaucracy, the largest standing army in
the world, a unique police force controlling and super-
vising the activities of every Soviet citizen, a new
social hierarchy with exceptional rewards and privi-
leges for those in leading positions in the state, the
army, the party or industry, with incomes a hundred
times or more higher for the privileged few than for
the average wage earner.

The Soviet people may say that it is unjust to blame
the Communist regime for having developed into a
strong, centralized state with a powerful army and
bureaucracy. They may say that this was necessary,
because the Soviet Union was surrounded by hostile
capitalist states which forced them to change their
original program and policy for more democracy and
higher standards of living, into a policy of armaments
and preparedness for national defense.

Precisely.

But in this inevitable process, the fact that the
U.S.S.R. was Communist and the other countries
were capitalist is totally irrelevant. England and Ger-
many were both capitalist when they went to war.
Nor was the United States Communist when it was
attacked by Japan.

The one major cause of the development of the
Soviet Union into a powerful centralized state and
not into a “withering away” of that state, is that there
were other sovereign power units in existence outside
the U.S.S.R. and that as long as there are several

68 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

sovereign power units, several national sovereignties,
they are bound to conflict, no matter what their in-
ternal economic or social systems. And irrespective
of their internal economic and social systems, these
units, under the threat of conflict, are irresistibly
driven to strengthen their own national power.

It would have been extremely interesting to watch
Communist society develop in Soviet Russia without
any outside pressure, in a complete absence of inter-
ference and disturbance from outside forces. But on
this earth it is impossible to create laboratory condi-
tions for social experiments. The world as it is, is the
only place where social experiments can be carried out

To state that Russia’s tremendous development in
the first twenty-five years of the Soviet regime has vir-
tually nothing to do with socialism and Communism
is not to be interpreted as disparaging the positive
achievements of the Soviet government and the Rus-
sian people during this quarter century. The strides
made in industrialization, production, education, or-
ganization, science and the arts, have been fabulous
indeed. But in this respect, Russia has done nothing
unique. The very same progress had already been
achieved in many capitalist countries and with demo:
cratic political institutions.

What the Soviet regime has demonstrated is the
important fact that in spite of skepticism and hostility
in capitalist countries, a Communist economy can
create heavy industry, build huge mechanized fac-
tories, produce armaments and organize a power-
ful centralized state just as well as any capitalist
country

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 69

The rapid adaptation of the Soviet Union to the
existing world order is a most striking phenomenon*

During the second World War, at all international
meetings called to discuss the shape of a new world
organization, the representatives of the Soviet Union
have been defending exactly the same position that
of unrestricted national sovereignty as did Lodge,
Johnson and Borah in the United States Senate at
the end of the first World War. The most stubborn
of American isolationist Senators of 1919 would un-
doubtedly agree heartily with the views advocated a
quarter century later by the country which claims to
be and is regarded as the most revolutionary and “in-
ternational” of all the countries.

Soviet foreign policy developed along exactly the
same lines as that of any other major power a policy
of alliances and spheres of influence, resorting to ex-
pediency and compromise in weak situations, unilat-
eral decisions and expansion after military victories.
The Soviet Union even puts its diplomats into uni-
form with no stint of gold lace. In the third decade
of its existence, the Soviet government is clearly pur-
suing power politics, the same power politics as
czarist Russia or any other great country pursued when
able to do so, no matter what its internal regime. They
are playing the game even better. As a result of the
profound upheaval in the Russian social structure
and restratification that follows every revolution, a
great number of first-class talents in every field
emerged from Russia’s immense human reservoir. The
nationalist Soviet statesmen, diplomats and generals
are patently more talented than the statesmen, diplo-

yo THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

mats and generals in other countries engaged in the
international struggle for national supremacy. It is
apparent that the political and military leadership
of the U.S.S.R. is much more astute, shrewd and
cunning and consequently more successful than
that of the older democratic countries where military
and political preferment are not easily obtainable by
merit alone.

However, all these assets held by Soviet Russia
have nothing to do with socialism or Communism.
They are the achievements of a first generation of
vigorous, self-made men and the results of a national
revolution. The same upsurge took pkce after radical
changes in the history of the United States, France,
England and many other countries.

Some people are convinced that nationalism in
Soviet Russia which has been in the ascendant since
the death of Lenin and has become so manifest dur-
ing the second World War is nothing but a means,
a new technique of Stalin to spread Communism and
to bring to pass Lenin’s original dream: world revolu-
tion. History will most probably be of just the opposite
opinion. Long before the first centenary of the Soviet
Union, it will be apparent that Communism was but
a means to the end, to the great end of nationalism.

The tremendous achievement of the first twenty-
five years of the Soviet regime was the creation of a
centralized, powerful nationalist state*

Under Lenin and for several years after his death,
the Soviet regime was not at all what it is today.

There was a great deal of individual freedom, there
were open and public discussions, criticism of the

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 71

government and of the party in the press and on the
platforms. Not until later did the system develop into
a totalitarian state with an all-powerful police force,
the suppression of free speech, free criticism and all
individual liberty. The development of the Soviet
Union into a totalitarian dictatorship has run parallel
with the awakening and growth of nationalism and
the strengthening of the nation-state.

The first few years of the Soviet regime proved that
socialism is not incompatible with political freedoms.
It was the influence and pressure of nationalism that
forced the regime to evolve into a totalitarian dictator-
ship. And in traveling the road toward the totalitarian
state, the Soviet regime destroyed not only political
freedom but also die principles of socialist society
as they were understood and proclaimed by Lenin and
his associates in 1917.

Since the 1920*5, Communism has been diminish-
ing in importance and nationalism has been growing
by leaps and bounds. During these first twenty-five
years, the Communist Internationale, in spite of in-
numerable attempts, failed to spread the influence
of Moscow abroad. But the totalitarian Soviet nation-
state succeeded. Even the many Communist parties
in foreign countries, unquestionably inspired by Mos-
cow, have given up their fight for the socialization
of their countries and become merely the instruments
of Soviet Russia’s nationalist policy, adopting in each
country an attitude dictated not by the necessity of
fostering Communism, but by the necessity of
strengthening the international position of the Soviet
Union as a nation-state.

72. THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

In the second World War, the Communists in every
country have become more nationalist than any mon-
archists, landowners or industrialists anywhere. They
have provided the vanguard of “patriotic” forces in
every country.

The passionate debates, the international strife ex-
isting between the protagonists of capitalism and
socialism, seem of secondary importance if we take
into consideration the following undeniable facts:

a. A state-controlled economy can build factories
and produce commodities just as well as a sys-
tem of free enterprise.

b. Ownership of capital, tools and means of pro-
duction does not appreciably affect either the
economic or the social structure of a state.

c. Under both capitalism and socialism ownership
tends to become impersonal.

d. In both systems, employed, salaried manage-
ment is the real master of the economic machin-
ery.^

e Socialism fer se does not raise the material
standard of die workers nor does it secure for
them a higher degree of political and economic
freedom.

f . Economic and political security and freedom de-
pend upon specific social legislation which can
be and in varied degrees has been evolved both
in capitalist and in socialist countries.

g. Socialism cannot prevent international conflicts

any more than can capitalism.
h. Under the present political structure of the

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 73

world, both capitalism and socialism are domi-
nated by nationalism and actively support the
institution of the nation-state,
i. The permanent state of distrust and fear between
nation-states and the recurring armed conflicts
between them have the same effects on capitalist
and on socialist economy, neither being able to
develop under the constant threat of war.

In view of these facts, there seems to be no place
for dogmatism in connection with the dispute between
capitalism and socialism. Both proclaim their aim to
be an economy of rational mass production, full ex-
ploitation of modern technological and scientific
methods to raise the material and cultural standards
of the masses. Which system can best accomplish this
task should be decided by experience, not by cracking
each other’s skulls in a senseless class warfare. If cer-
tain people like the Slavs through their century-
old traditions, have an inclination toward collective
ownership of farm lands, pastures or modern indus-
trial plants and prefer a socialist system, and if other
peoples like the Latins and Anglo-Saxons through
their century-old traditions and inclinations, prefer
an individualist and private ownership economy, there
is not the slightest reason why these different methods
should not be able to coexist and co-operate with each
other. To concentrate on differences of opinion and
habit, and to believe that this is the field on which
will be fought the great battles of the twentieth cen-
tury, is an unfortunate confusion of issues.

We can continue this class struggle for decades.

74 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

It may even be that one of the two classes will defeat
and dominate the other. But whether we continue
this internecine strife forever or whether one sys-
tem achieves victory over the other, the solution of
the problem of the twentieth century will not be ad-
vanced a single step.

This analysis of trends in the Soviet Union is in no
way intended to be anti-Communist or anti-Russian,
just as the analyses of similar trends in the United
States, Great Britain and other capitalist-democratic
countries are not intended to be anti-capitalist, anti-
American, anti-British or anti-anything. The conclu-
sions are not directed against any nation, any social
system, any economic order. Far from it, they seek
to prove the irrelevancy and complete uselessness of
class accusations and how superficial is criticism based
on the belief that any economic system as suck is
capable of solving the issues with which we have
to deal.

Our endeavor is to demonstrate that it is the political
status quo the existing system of sovereign nation-
states, accepted and upheld today by capitalists and
socialists, individualists and collectivists, all national
and religious groups alike that constitutes the in-
surmountable obstacle to all progress, to all social
and economic efforts, that bars all human progress on
any lines.

The conflict between our static, inherited political
institutions and the realities of economic and social
dynamism is the real issue to which we must address
ourselves.

The underlying thesis of Marxist historical mate-

FAILURE OF SOCIALISM 75

rialism, that history is nothing but a class struggle
moved solely or preponderantly by the profit motive,
the economic self-interest of die dominating classes,
is an oversimplification which pays undue tribute to
human intelligence and reason.

It would be extremely easy to solve social prob-
lems if the motor of human action were such a clearly
definable, materialist driving force. The trouble is
that man is not such a reasonable creature. History is
molded by much more volcanic, much more primitive
forces, much more difficult to control and to deal
with than the economic self-interest of individuals or
classes. The real powers of historical evolution have
always been and are today more than ever, tran-
scendental emotions, tribal instincts, beliefs, faith,
fear, hatred and superstition.

And Marxism, in spite of its scientific aspirations,
has merely created another set of emotional feais,
superstitions and taboos which have become a very
strong force in the present world convulsion, but
which is only one of many such emotional forces at
work today.

It might advance a dispassionate approach to the
sterile and now century-old controversy, if the cham-
pions of capitalism and socialism would realize that
they are fighting each other within a hermetically
sealed conveyance. The fight for a better seat, for a
broader view, for a little more comfort is rather mean-
ingless, as they are being carried by it relentlessly
toward the same terminus. The vehicle is nationalism*
The terminus is totalitarianism.

THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

CHAPTER IV

FAILURE OF RELIGION

THE wholesale murder, torture, persecution and
oppression we are witnessing in the middle of
the twentieth century proves the complete bankruptcy
of Christianity as a civilizing force, its failure as an
instrument to tame instinctive human passions and to
transform man from an animal into a rational social
being.

The revival of barbarism and the wholesale prac-
tice of mass murder all over the world cannot be re-
garded as the work of a few godless, sadistic Gestapo
men and some fanatic believers in Shintoism. It is be-
ing practiced by many churchgoing men of many
nationalities.

Millions of innocent people have been murdered
in cold blood, tens of millions have been robbed, de-
ported and enslaved by Christians, descendants of
families belonging for centuries to the Roman Cath-
olic, Greek Catholic and Protestant churches. Cruel-
ties, horrible and inhuman beyond imagination, have
been committed by countless men, not only German
and Japanese, but Spanish, Italian, Polish, Rumanian,
Hungarian, French, Serbian, Croatian and Russian*
And these deeds, surpassing in ferocity and blood-
thirstiness anything hitherto recorded in Western his-
tory, have been tolerated, and therefore tacitly ad-

FAILURE OF RELIGION 77

mitted, by each and every organized Christian re-
ligion.

There is no intention here to accuse or to pass
judgment upon any of the organized religions for
tolerating these outbreaks of prehistoric, atavistic
animalism in man. But the very fact that such a radical
reversion has occurred proves the utter inadequacy of
the methods followed by the Christian religions to in-
fluence and mold human character and to male man
follow, not his own brutal instincts but something in
the nature of moral principles.

It cannot be denied that Christianity has failed to
penetrate the soul of man, to take root in human char-
acter. It has succeeded only in creating a fragile
veneer of ethical conduct, a thin crust of civilization
which has been blasted away and blown to pieces by
the volcanic social eruptions of the twentieth century.

For a certain time there was some justification for
the belief that the Judaeo-Christian principles were
triumphing through their effective ritualism and the
mystical presentation of their dogmas, which filled
simple, primitive men with enough awe and fear to
induce diem to follow the teachings of Christianity,
not because they understood them and wanted them
but because they feared the Uncertain and the Un-
known. But today, since modern science has destroyed
or made ridiculous most of the age-old superstition?
and venerated symbols the necessary and useful
media for the propagation of ideals centuries ago
the ideals alone are powerless to direct and regulate
human conduct in society-

We have to recognize that the Ten Command-

78 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

ments, the moral teachings of the prophets, of Christ,
the evangelists and the Apostles, cannot be made a
reality in this world of enlightenment, science, tech-
nical progress and communications by using methods
devised centuries ago by the founders of religions, ac-
cording to the circumstances of their time methods
which are wholly ineffective today. It in no way der-
ogates from the great work and the good intentions of
the religions, nor is it anything to be ashamed of if
we realize and admit that man, to be transformed
from the beast he is to a responsible member of a
civilized society, needs methods more effective than
prayer, sermons and ritual.

Man can become a conscious and constructive
social being only if society imposes upon him certain
principles in the form of a legal order.

History demonstrates indisputably that there is
only one method to make man accept moral prin-
ciples and standards of social conduct. That method
is: Law.

Peace among men and a civilized society which
are one and die same thing are imaginable only
within a legal order equipped with institutions to give
effect to principles and norms in the form of law,
with adequate power to apply those laws and to en-
force them with equal vigor against all who violate
them.

This self-evident truth supported by the entire
history of mankind can hardly be the subject of
debate any longer.

Just as prayer, sermons and ritual are inadequate
to impose upon mankind a social conduct based on

FAILURE OF RELIGION 79

principles, so pledges, declarations and promises are
inadequate to achieve the same purpose.

Throughout the entire history of all known civiliza-
tions, only one method has ever succeeded in creating
a social order within which man had security from
murder, larceny, cheating and other crimes, and had
freedom to think, to speak and to worship.

That method is Law.

And integrated social relations regulated by law
which is peace have been possible only within
social units of indivisible sovereignty, with one single
source of law, irrespective of the size, territory, popu-
lation, race, religion and degree of complexity of such
social units. It has never been possible between such
sovereign social units, even if they were composed of
populations of the same race, the same religion, the
same language, the same culture, the same degree of
civilization.

The failure of Christianity as a civilizing force of
society is an incalculable tragedy.

Two thousand years is time enough to judge the
efficacy of a method, no matter how valuable the
doctrine. During these twenty centuries, it has seemed
at times that Christianity had at last succeeded in
taming the beast in man, in controlling and directing
destructive human impulses and characteristics.

But since the Christian churches have deviated
from their universal mission and have evolved into
national organizations supporting the pagan, tribal
instincts of nationalism everywhere, we see how weak
was the hold of Christianity upon the Western world*
For worldly interests they have abandoned their moral

8o THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

teachings and have capitulated before the volcanic
instincts of men, who are bound to destroy each other,
unless restricted by universal law.

What was divine and civilizing in Christianity was
its monotheism, its universalism. The doctrine which
teaches that all men are created equal in the sight of
God and are ruled by one God, with one law over all
men, was the one really revolutionary idea in human
history.

Unfortunately, organized Christianity developed
into a more and more dogmatic, totalitarian hierarchy
and the reaction to it led first to schism, then to wide-
spread sectarianism. Thus the ideal of universal law
has degenerated on one side into more and more
centralized absolutism, and on the other into more and
more widely separated sects and denominations. At
the moment modern nations began to crystallize and
national feeling in the Western world began to pre-
vail over Christian feeling, the Christian churches,
already divided among themselves, split into a num-
ber of new sects, each supporting the rising ideal of
the nation.

Nationalism soon became identified with Chris-
tianity and in every country nationalist policy was
recognized as Christian policy, in opposition to liberal
and socialist tendencies.

Since the abandonment of universalism by the
Christian churches Catholic as well as Protestant
they have diverged from the original fundamental
doctrine of Christianity to which they adhere no
longer except in name. In thousands of churches to-
day, Catholic priests and Protestant preachers of all
denominations are praying for the glory of their owu

FAILURE OF RELIGION 81

nationals and for the downfall of others, even if they
belong to the same church. This is indeed in violent
contradiction to the highest religious ideal mankind
ever produced universal Christianity.

A universal moral principle is neither universal nor
moral, nor is it a principle if it is valid only within
segregated groups of people. ‘TThou shalt not kill”
cannot mean that it is a crime to kill a man of one’s
own nationality, but that it is a virtue to be blessed
by all Christian churches to kill a man of the same
faith, who happens to be technically the citizen or sub-
ject of another nation-state. Such an interpretation
of universal moral principles is revolting.

The same development can be observed in the sec-
ond great monotheistic creed, in Islam. The great
unity which had been maintained by the Koran for
so many centuries among peoples of different stock,
from the Adas to the Himalaya Mountains, has been
visibly splitting up into nationalist groups within
which allegiance to the new nationalist ideal is more
powerful than -loyalty to the old universal teachings
of Mohammed.

There is Pan-Turkism or Pan-Turanism, aimed at
the union of all branches of the Turkish race living
in the region extending from the Dardanelles to the
Tigris and Euphrates.

To the south, the rising Pan-Arab movement is ad-
vocating the federation of all the Arab tribes into one
nation.

Farther to the east in India the believers in
Islam are inflamed by a strong Indian national feeling,
expressed in the slogan: “I am an Indian first, a
Muslim afterwards.”

8z THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

And among the Mohammedan populations of the
Soviet Union there burns a passionate Soviet nation-
alism.

Not only Christianity and Islam with their vast
numbers of believers are being completely absorbed
and dominated by neopagan nationalism. Even the
originators of monotheism, even the Jews, have for-
gotten the fundamental teaching of their religion:
universalism.

They seem no longer to remember that the One
and Almighty God first revealed Himself to them
because He chose them for a special mission, to spread
the doctrine of the oneness of the Supreme Lawgiver,
the universal validity of monotheism among the peo-
ple of the world. They too, just like the followers of
other monotheistic creeds, have become abject idola-
ters of the new polytheism nationalism.

With glowing passion they desire nothing more
than to worship their own national idol, to have their
own nation-state. No amount of persecution and suf-
fering can justify such abandonment of a world mis-
sion, such total desertion of universalism for national-
ism, another name for the very tribalism which is the
origin of all their misfortunes and miseries.

It is of utmost importance for the future of man-
kind to realize the apostasy and failure of all three of
the monotheistic world religions and their domination
by disruptive and destructive nationalism, as without
the deep influence of the monotheistic outlook of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, human freedom in
societydemocracy could never have been instituted
and cannot survive*

FAILURE OF RELIGION 83

Democracy, political freedom, the political rights
of the individual, the equality of man before the law
all the things we have in mind when talking about
democracy are the products of Greek philosophy and
Judaeo-Christian ethics. Democracy and political in-
dependence as we conceive them today are essentially
the fruits of Western civilization. The roots of demo-
cratic ideals, of course, are much deeper. Village com-
munities in India were run on a democratic basis
centuries before the Greek cities. Meng-tse in China
expressed views similar to Jefferson’s long before the
Christian Era. But the organization of powerful na-
tions in centralized democratic states is something
entirely new in human history, and it is the product
of universal monotheism. For Aristotle a democratic
state was not conceivable with more than ten thou-
sand inhabitants. Fifteen centuries of Judaeo-Chris-
tian-Islamic teaching about man created in the image
of God, about the equality of man before God, were
needed to forge the ideology of modern political
democracy.

The free thinkers of the eighteenth century, who
were among the pioneers of modern political democ-
racy, revolted, not against the moral teaching of
monotheism, but against the immoral practices and
superstitions of the churches as national, human in-
stitutions. In fact, those free thinkers, in spite of the
anathema cast upon them by the organized churches,
were the most faithful disciples of the monotheistic
conception since the prophets of Israel and the
Apostles of Christ

There have been and there are other civilizations.

84 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Among them the two most important are the Chinese
and the Indian. But those great Asiatic civilizations
are based on religious ideals, on notions of the rela-
tionship of man to man and man to God, entirely dif-
ferent from ours. Neither the Chinese nor the Indian
peoples have ever had, nor have they ever yearned
for the political and social system we in the Occident
call democracy.

To us, there is something wrong and unjust about
inequality and poverty. Our political struggles and
aspirations tend to limit, if not abolish, social in-
justice, to create more goods and a more equitable dis-
tribution of wealth. Having made men more or less
equal before the law and given them equal political
rights, we seek to equalize their material conditions
also. At least, that is the motivating ideal, however
far we may be from achieving it*

In India, China, Japan throughout the Orient
where more than half the human race lives in-
equalities are not regarded as a social injustice. In-
deed, their whole system of religious thought is a
direct justification of poverty, social inequality and
the caste system.

How could democracy exist among the believers in
Shintoism, which teaches that the earthly rulers
themselves are gods? A creed having countless gods,
in which every household deifies its ancestors, in which
the greater gods preside over the empire and the
lesser gods over towns and hamlets and which teaches
that the emperor, an absolute monarch, is a god him-
self and the direct descendant of the sun-goddess,
obviously precludes any reforms in the inherited struc
ture of that society.

FAILURE OF RELIGION 85

In even more striking contrast to democratic society
are the great Asiatic religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism,
Hinduism. These creeds, in which hundreds of mil-
lions of people dogmatically believe, are simultane-
ously religious and social institutions. Their two basic
doctrines are:

i. A polytheistic pantheism, with an endless num-
ber of gods.

2,. Metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls or
reincarnation.

The entire social fabric of six to eight hundred mil-
lion people is woven from these doctrines which domi-
nate the everyday life and validate the morality of
nearly half the human race. For them only one reality
exists Brahma an absolute, all embracing spirit,
the original cause and ultimate goal of all individual
souls. This faith teaches that the soul is immortal,
that each soul goes through endless reincarnations,
and that no one can change, or has even the right to
seek a change in his present condition of existence.
Any desire for betterment in earthly conditions is
a sin. Only through piety can a man strive to
improve his lot, not in the present life but in future
incarnations. The unbelievable poverty, abject misery
and sub-animal existence of the sixty million untouch-
ables in India, for instance, cannot be altered, since
they are believed to be suffering in this life the just
punishment for sins committed in previous incarna-
tions.

Such a creed naturally goes hand in hand with gross
superstitions, the worship of hosts of godlings, ghosts,
spirits, demons and mystic objects of every kind. Ap-

86 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

proximately four-fifths of the people of southern India,
while commonly acknowledging the spiritual guidance
of the Brahmans, worship local village deities with
animal sacrifices and primitive rites.

The entire social structure reflects these religious
ideas. One of the cardinal principles of society is
racialism, the preservation and purity of descent. It
is an aristocratic, not an egalitarian society. According
to the prevailing religious principles, the society
recognizes, utilizes and explains the inequalities of
individuals and groups of individuals without making
any attempt to remedy them.

It would be an affront to the great Asiatic peoples
to criticize their traditions and their faith. Nothing
is more remote from our intentions. But an analysis
of the relationship between religious doctrines and
principles of society demonstrates that the form of
society at which the Western world is aiming is closely
connected with the basic teachings of monotheism.
Without its influence, modem democracy is unthink-
able.

It is therefore of vital importance, from die point
of view of the future of democratic institutions, hu-
man liberty and further progress of Western civiliza-
tion, that the monotheistic religions recognize the
incompatibility of nationalism with tteir basic doc-
trine, and the mortal danger presented to our immedi-
ate future by national disintegration and national
sectarianism in the Jewish, Catholic, Protestant,
Greek Orthodox and Islamic religions.

Today, nearly two centuries after Thomas Paine
wrote The Age of Reason, his utterance is more to

ROAD TO FASCISM 87

the point than ever: “I do not believe in the creed
professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church,
by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor
by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
own church. All national institutions of churches,
whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me
no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and
profit.”

Human society can be saved only by universalism.
Unless the Christian churches return to this central
doctrine of their religion and make it the central
doctrine of their practice, they will vanish before the
irresistible power of a new religion of universalism,
which is bound to arise from the ruin and suffering
caused by the impending collapse of the era of
nationalism.

CHAPTER v

ROAD TO FASCISM

FREE enterprise, individualist and capitalist, was
wrecked on the rock of nationalism. In the ab-
stract, its principles, as propounded by Adam Smith,
David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, are as correct to-
day as they were at the beginning of industrialism. We
see now that such a system of absolute economic freer

88 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

dom never existed nor could ever exist except
within relatively wide national boundaries, at an early
stage of industrial expansion and then only for a
short time. It was tried in England at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, but its free development
was soon obstructed by the United States, Germany
and other countries whose nationalism induced them
to establish tariff barriers to create a national indus-
try for their home markets and to enable themselves
to compete with British industry on the world mar-
ket

From the very moment the first tariff barriers were
imposed on industrial products, we could no longer
speak of a system of free enterprise and free economy.
Since that time, now more than a century ago, eco-
nomic principles and economic necessities have been
clashing with our political beliefs and fighting a los-
ing batde. No matter how rational were the classic
arguments of liberal economists, their doctrines were
powerless in the face of irrational and transcendental
nationalist passions. To national governments and
to the great majority of the peoples it seemed more
important to build up and maintain national indus-
tries, no matter how uneconomically they functioned,
than to allow their people access to tie best and cheap-
est commodities on the market.

For a certain time tariff barriers did help certain
nations to increase their wealth and raise their living
standards. Large national compartments, the United
States, the British Empire, even the French and Ger-
man Empires, progressed rapidly and nationalist ad-
vocates of tariff barriers were perf ecdy justified in

ROAD TO FASCISM 89

pointing out that this progress was the result of the
protective walls erected around their nation-states.

Within a few decades a point was reached at which
there was hardly a country whose economy could de-
velop further hased entirely on national territories and
populations* The greatest industrial powers lacked
raw materials, which they were forced to purchase
abroad, and were unable to consume their entire pro-
duction at home. Once this saturation point in the in-
ternal development of national economies was reached
and interchange with the economies of other closed
national systems became inevitable, the ensuing con-
flict between political and economic interests threw
the entire economy of the world out of gear.

Unemployment surged up and the nation-states,
after having intervened in the free movement of goods
and services, were now forced to interfere with the
free movement of peoples, with migration. This solvecj
no problem at all The social schism resulting from
the so-called system of free enterprise which nation-
states never allowed to be free began to dominate
the political scene and socialism was born.

Although Marx and Engels made the socialist par-
ties international, strangely enough, “nationalization,**
and not “internationalization** of the means of produc-
tion was pursued. Obviously, the “internationalism”
of the Socialist Internationale was only a tactical
move, a mere label. The actual programs of the social-
ist parties have always been national. They advocated
national solutions of the economic problem through
transfer of ownership from private individuals to the
nation-states.

90 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The evolution of Western civilization in the past
hundred years is best characterized by this struggle
between the liberal and conservative elements uphold-
ing the ideals of free enterprise and private ownership
of took and means of production, and the socialist
and Communist elements working toward state owner-
ship of instruments of production.

Today it is clear to all the First, Second and
Third Internationales notwithstanding that the out-
look of both groups has always been and still is na-
tional. Both believe solutions of the economic and
social problems to be possible and desirable on a
national basis within the framework of the present
nation-state structure as established in the eighteenth
century, before the birth of industrialism.

Today we can survey with some degree of his-
torical perspective the growth of both systems: the
individualist system of free enterprise in Western
states and the socialist-Communist system of collec-
tivism in the Soviet Union. In both, such observation
reveals the same trend toward ever-increasing na-
tionalist state machinery and ever-growing pressure
on the individual by control, regulation and infringe-
ment of his personal liberty.

In all capitalist countries the conflict between indus-
trialism and nationalism led to higher and higher
tariffs, to more and more government control of pro-
duction and distribution by means of export and im-
port regulations, quotas, taxation, supervision, direct
control and active direction. Growing tension result-
ing from demographic pressure and economic neces-
sity led more and more of the industrial countries to

ROAD TO FASCISM 91

embark upon a policy of expansion, first by the con-
quest of foreign markets through dumping and other
artificial export subventions, then by open military
aggression.

The incredibly rapid development of world com-
munications brought all the industrial powers in con-
tact with each other, making conflicts insoluble and
wars inevitable. This constant danger of attack from
outside forces tremendously accelerated the already
existing tendency to concentrate more and more power
in the hands of centralized national governments.

Within the nation-states the conflict between
eighteenth century doctrines of political democracy
and early nineteenth century doctrines of free eco-
nomic enterprise became even more acute after the
first World War, which left all the underlying prob-
lems unsolved. In some countries where the pressure
was greatest, it led to open repudiation of democratic
and liberal political principles and to the establish-
ment of a new creed, which made of necessity a vir-
tue and proclaimed the state as the highest ultimate
goal of human society, in absolute denial of the
eighteenth century democratic conceptions.

The fact that the conclusions of abstract reasoning
and the results of empirical observation coincide is of
great help in the correct diagnosis and interpretation
of the present world crisis, its causes and its symptoms.

We have seen the irresistible sequence of events
which, during the past decades, has led all industrial
countries, both capitalist and Communist, toward the
all-powerful nation-state, in almost total contradiction
to their proclaimed principles.

9 * THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Developments during the first part of the twentieth
century demonstrate conclusively the fallacy of the
Marxist belief that capitalism is bound automatically
to be transformed into Communism, that Commu-
nism is the natural product and the final result of
capitalism.

During the critical twenty-five years between 1917
and 1942, not one single democratic capitalist coun-
try has become Communist nor has one adopted gov-
ernment ownership of all means of production. Not
one single event has occurred to prove this Marxist
doctrine, despite the tremendous efforts of Communist
parties all over the world to conquer power and despite
the deadly fears of the capitalists that they would do so.

Only in Russia has die Communist system been
established, by means of revolution. Now Russia had
never been a capitalist, democratic society. It had al-
ways been feudal, agricultural, illiterate, a backward
conglomeration of peoples ruled by an autocratic
dynasty. From the very moment of the Communist
revolution which was in complete opposition to the
scientific previsions of Marx, who said Communism
would grow out of capitalism and be established first
in the most highly industrialized countries from that
very moment the same phenomena occurred as in
capitalist countries, the same development, the same
transformation, the same irresistible drive .toward cen-
tralized bureaucratic state administration.

During those very same twenty-five years, how-
ever, about two dozen capitalist, democratic countries
became Fascist

Empirical observation would indicate that the “nat-

ROAD TO FASCISM 93

ural product” of capitalism is not Communism but
Fascism. And it seems equally clear that Communism,
under certain circumstances now prevailing, moves
in the same direction.

The alternative therefore appears not to be “Com-
munism or Fascism,” as was popularly believed be-
tween 1920 and 1940. Historical events during those
twenty years and political facts irrefutably demon-
strate that:

1. Not one capitalist, democratic country became
   Communist.
2. A number of capitalist, democratic countries
   evolved through parallel processes, toward
   Fascism.
3. The only existing Communist country was
   dominated by the same forces and also evolved
   into a totalitarian, Fascist state.

History will not describe socialism as having re-
placed or followed capitalism. Most certainly both
will be recorded as parallel phenomena, expressions
of one and the same era.

Socialism could not establish itself until capitalism
had first begun closely to resemble socialism, until
socialism itself had begun to look a good deal like
capitalism. It was the transformation of capitalism into
a system of economic planning, of cartels, trusts, tariffs,
subsidies and other regulations, and of interference by
the central political authority that paved the way for
socialism. And it was the transformation of socialism
from a rigid, egalitarian doctrine into an hierarchical
conception with differentiations of functions and in-

94 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

come that made socialism a workable reality. Today
it is useless to contrast the two systems, as there are
many socialist features in the most capitalist countries,
just as there are many capitalist features in the most
socialist country.

The only conclusion we can draw from these facts
is that capitalism and socialism are parallel phenomena
intimately blended everywhere; that Communism
does not grow out of capitalism; that it can establish
itself only by revolution; that within the existing
nation-state structure both have a tendency at the
present stage of industrialism to develop into cen-
tralized, bureaucratic and totalitarian regimes.

Simultaneously with this development, a new polit-
ical philosophy and movement arose Fascism pro-
claiming as an ideal, as a positive aim of policy, the
very social order toward which all countries were
actually developing. This new Fascist movement, so
diametrically opposed to all the fundamental prin-
ciples of Christianity, socialism and democracy,
spread like wildfire around the whole globe.

What is the historic meaning of Fascism?

We cannot answer this question without freeing
ourselves from emotional prejudice. It makes for hope-
less confusion to allow die terms applied to the major
forces of our time to degenerate into fetish words
with which to slur each other. We shall get nowhere
by calling anyone who is not himself an enterpriser
and who expresses doubts as to the wisdom of the
political, economic and financial policies of the capi-
talist countries a Communist; or by calling anyone
who dares to remark that Soviet Russia is not quite a

ROAD TO FASCISM 9?

perfect Garden of Eden, or that Stalin and his gov-
ernment may not always and in all cases be a hundred
per cent right a Fascist. Emotional outbursts and
name-calling cannot help in an effort to analyze and
discuss the dominating currents of our time.

We must stop believing that Fascism is the political
instrument of a few gangsters lusting for power.

It is also impossible to explain Fascism by social
cleavage alone, by class warfare. The liberals say that
Fascism is the result of socialism, that socialist doc-
trines regarding economic planning, public control of
production, distribution, etc., lead straight to state
domination, totalitarian dictatorship, Fascism.

But there must be a difference between socialism
and Fascism. Otherwise Fascist governments, after
assuming power, would not immediately dissolve trade
unions and labor parties, destroy all the liberties of
the workers and persecute all who called themselves
socialists or who desire to advance the interests of
the working class.

Socialists say that Fascism is an instrument of
capitalism, that it is the highest form of capitalism,
that its purpose is to oppress the working classes and
to prevent their emancipation through labor unions
and socialism*

This is an equally shallow point of view. The
socialists cannot deny that of their own free will mil-
lions of factory workers supported and voted for Hit-
ler, Mussolini and other Fascist dictators, that many
trade unions and syndicates joined Fascist regimes
and that many socialist leaders became members of
Fascist governments. In face of Fascism the cleavage

96 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

in proletariat ranks is just as wide as in any otter
section of society.

Certainly elements of both capitalism and socialism
are to be found in Fascism. But its historical and
sociological meaning are altogether different and much
more significant.

If we try to determine the meaning of democracy,
socialism and Fascism, it becomes apparent that under
the pressure resulting from the nation-state structure
of the world and because of the ravaging wars in-
herent in this structure, both the democracies and the
Soviet Union axe bound to evolve toward Fascism.

Among the three great powers opposing the Fascist
camp in this second World War, the Soviet Union,
of course, most closely approaches the ideal of totali-
tarianism, the ideal of a Fascist state, although Soviet
citizens would vigorously deny such an allegation.
But this confusion of terms is merely the result of a
lack of definition. It is a game of words. There is a
story about Huey Long which, whether true or not,
is extremely symptomatic of our age. When the
Louisiana demagogue was asked whether he believed
that the United States would become Fascist, he
answered: “Surely. But we shall call it anti-Fascism.**

In spite of the innumerable speeches and treatises
attempting to define the phenomenon of Fascism
more exactly totalitarianism it is, even after it has
conquered half the world, a nebulous notion, a rather
mystical conception. The best definition of Fascism is
still the article “Fasdsmo” written by Benito Musso-
lini in the Encyclopedia Italiana.

The ideology and the doctrinal foundation of

ROAD TO FASCISM 97

Fascism are admittedly a reaction to developments of
the past two centuries. According to Mussolini:
“Fascism is a spiritual conception, born of the general
reaction of this century against the sluggish and ma-
terialist positivism of the eighteenth century/’

It is also a reaction to the age of reason in the
political field. “Fascism is a religious conception in
which man appears in his inherent relationship to a
superior law, to an objective Will, which transcends
the particular individual and elevates him as a con-
scious member of a spiritual society .”

To induce man confused and disillusioned by the
insecurity resulting from the bankruptcy of demo-
cratic individualism in an age of conflicting nation-
states to renounce his individuality and accept com-
plete subordination to the state in exchange for se-
curity, Mussolini surrounded the Fascist idea with a
great deal of mysticism and sophism.

‘The world in the sense of Fascism is not the
materialistic world it superficially appears to be, in
which rnan is an individual distinct from all the
others, standing alone, governed by a law of nature
which instinctively makes him live a life of egoistic
and momentary self-satisfaction. The man of Fascism
is an individual who is the expression of nation and
country, die expression of the moral law that binds
together the people and generations in one tradition
and in one mission, which does away with the instinct
of a narrow life of short-lived pleasure, to establish a
sense of duty toward a superior life, free from the
limits of time and space: a life in which the individ-
ual, through self-abnegation, through sacrifice of his

98 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

own particular interests, even through death, realizes
all that spiritual existence in which lies his value as

a man/*

And to justify complete political and economic
enslavement of the individual, he proclaims: “The in-
dividual in the Fascist State is not nullified, rather he
is multiplied, just as in a regiment one soldier is not
diminished but multiplied by the number of his
comrades . . . Outside history, man is non-existent.
For that reason, fascism is against all the individual-
ist abstractions based on eighteenth century mate-
rialism; it is also against all Utopias and Jacobin inno-
vations. Fascism does not believe in the possibility
of Tiappiness’ on earth, as was the desire expressed
in the economic literature of the 1700*5. . * .”

But underlying all this dialectic and emotional
justification, Fascism has one single purpose, one
single thesis, one single philosophy, which is mirrored
throughout Mussolini’s long expose defining the doc-
trine of Fascism,

“Liberalism denied the state in the interest of the
individual; Fascism reaffirms the state as the true em-
bodiment of the individual . . .”

“Anti-individualist, the Fascist conception is for
the state. It is for the individual only insofar as he
coincides with the state, that is with the consciousness
and universal will of man in his historical exist-

ence../’

There can be … “no individuals outside the state,
nor any groups (political parties, associations, trade
unions, classes) . . .”

“For the Fascist, everything is in the state, nothing

ROAD TO FASCISM 99

human or spiritual exists, and even less anything of
value exists outside the state. In this sense, Fascism
is totalitarian, and the Fascist state, the synthesis and
unity of all values, interprets, develops and lends
potency to the whole life of the people. . . /’

“It is not the nation which creates the state. . . .
On the contrary, the nation is created by the state,
which gives the people, conscious of their own moral
unity, a will, and therefore a real existence . . .”

“For Fascism the state is an absolute, before which
individuals and groups are relative. Individuals and
groups are ‘thinkable* only insofar as they are within
die state . . .”

‘The state, in fact, as the universal ethical will
is the creator of right , . .”

These categoric declarations make it clear that
Fascism is not an economic conception. It is essen-
tially a politico-social doctrine. Its aim is the absolute,
untrammeled, totalitarian domination of the nation-
state with complete regulation of individual life, the
reduction of the individual to serfdom.

But this totalitarian, Fascist state can operate in
principle just as well in capitalist economy, with
private enterprise and private ownership of capital,
as it can function in a socialist system of economy
with centralized state planning and state ownership
of capital.

Fascism is not a reaction to capitalism nor is it a
reaction to socialism.

It is a reaction to democratic individualism, in no
matter what economic form, under certain specific
political conditions.

ioo THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Totalitarian Fascism clearly represents a suppres-
sion of the social and economic conflict within the
nation-states by bestowing absolute supremacy on the
nation-state die real cause of the crisis to the detri-
ment of free industrial development which alone
could remedy it.

The strait-jacket of nationalism and the nation-
state tends to paralyze political liberty and economic
freedom. In the gradual disintegration we have wit-
nessed during the first half of the twentieth century,
within one nation-state after the other, a stage was
reached in which it appeared imperative for survival
of the state to throw overboard the already challenged
and distrusted ideals of individualism and democracy,
and to establish a clear-cut dictatorship, on the pretext
that complete state domination was the only solution
to internal chaos and political fratricide.

The real conflict of our age is not between in-
dividualism and collectivism, nor between capitalism
and Communism, but between industrialism and
nationalism.

In recent history and in our own lifetime we have
seen that both capitalism and socialism lead to state
domination to totalitarian Fascism. From this em-
pirical phenomenon, we must draw the conclusions
we should have reached a long time ago by rational
analysis, that Fascism has nothing to do with the
form of the economic system capitalism or social-
ism but with its content: industrialism.

We cannot maintain industrial progress within the
nation-state structure without arriving at complete
state domination and the destruction of political

ROAD TO FASCISM 101

democracy and individual liberty without arriving
at Fascism.

To what purpose is all this mistrust, hatred and
fighting between socialists and capitalists, accusing
each other of totalitarianism, oppression and exploita-
tion?

The truth is that both are becoming Fascist and
totalitarian. It is high time to realize this and to start
the common fight for human liberty and welfare,
against the common and real enemy the nation-
state.

Both camps are more or less hypnotized by the
Fascist reasoning that there can be no individual
freedom without “freedom” of the state. Conse-
quently, since the democratic machinery created to
express the sovereignty of the people gets out of con-
trol as a result of internal crises within the nation-
states and government becomes unstable, the view
is advanced that the sovereignty of the people is best
expressed by the totalitarian state. Indeed, according
to Fascist theory, the power of the state is the only
criterion of national sovereignty. In this conception,
the needs of modern industrialism are completely sub-
jugated to the dictates of an all-powerful nationalism.

Many people have thought, and still believe, that
Fascism is the antithesis of or a reaction to Com-
munism. Many democracies on their road to dictator-
ship have passionately debated whether they were
heading toward Communism or Fascism.

People in democracies, who are trying to mate up
their minds whether the danger lies in Communism
or in Fascism are dreaming of a freedom of decision

io2 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

they do not possess. There is no choice. We are mov-
ing straight toward Fascism. To a large extent, we are
already there. Even should a Communist revolution
succeed in one country or another, it would change
nothing in our progress toward totalitarianism. The
Communist countries, should there be more of them,
would soon join the throng led by the irresistible
Pied Piper: the sovereign nation-state.

Prevailing theories about the antagonism of Com-
munism and Fascism are utterly fallacious.

As fallacious is the point of view that Fascism is the
antithesis of or reaction to democratic capitalism.

The truth is that neither individualist capitalism
nor collective socialism can work within the nation-
state structure. Both are marching straight toward
totalitarian Fascism. Both are creating Fascism under
certain specific conditions, conditions which are acti-
vated by nationalism and the nation-state.

If we limit ourselves to a choice between national
capitalism, national socialism or national Communism,
it matters little which we choose. If it is to be “na-
tional” it will in any case be totalitarian Fascism.

In the last analysis, modern Fascism would seem
therefore, to be the inescapable result of the conflict
between industrialism and nationalism at their satu-
ration point within the framework of a sovereign
nation-state, irrespective of whether the economic sys-
tem is capitalist or socialist.

PART TWO

CHAPTER VI

NATION-FEUDALISM

/CONDITIONS prevailing today in human society
\^Jl show striking parallels with conditions after the
reign of Charlemagne and the Garlovingians, the era
between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, when the
system of political feudalism had been stabilized and
was flourishing.

When the centralized rule of the known Western
world collapsed with the fall of the Roman Empire,
and the Church was not sufficiently strong and well-
organized to replace the Pax Rcmzana with an equally
efficient centralized secular order, the lives and prop-
erty of the people were stripped of the necessary pro-
tection against uprisings of the poverty-stricken,
landless peasants or against sudden attacks by in-
vaders from the neighboring lands.

From this chaotic stage of Western evolution
emerged feudalism, created and set into motion as a
political system by the desire of the masses for pro-
tection and security. The landless freeman and the
small landowner went to the most powerful lord of
the land in the neighborhood and asked for shelter
and support in exchange for which they offered their
services.

105

io6 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The subjects submitted themselves and their lands
if they had any to the baron, and received from
him food and shelter in peacetime and equipment in
war, for which they tilled the soil, paid taxes and
fought battles.

Although later the lords of the land were all vassals
of the Icing who became the symbol of unity
sovereign power was, for all practical purposes, vested
in the individual barons. The administration of the
land and of the law, of armed force and of finance
were almost entirely in their hands.

Feudalism differed greatly in the various parts of
Europe, but certain of its features were identical
everywhere. These were:

i. The vassal-lord relationship.

2,* Loyalty and mutual obligation, protection and

service, binding together all the ranks of each

separate feudal social unit

3. Contractual relations of lord and tenant, de-
   termining all individual and collective rights,
   forming the foundation of all law.
4. Financial sovereignty of the feudal lord, with the
   power to tax his subjects and in some cases to
   coin money.
5. The juridical sovereignty of the feudal lord.
   His courts were the public courts, and revenue
   from all fines went to him.
6. The military sovereignty of the feudal lord. All
   subjects on the lands of the lord owed him mili-
   tary service, were obliged to take up arms when-
   ever he called upon them. The feudal landlord

NATION-FEUDALISM 107

was also the commander of the troops composed
of his subjects.

7. Each feudal baron had his symbol, emblem,
   flag, etc., to which all subjects living on his
   lands owed obeisance and allegiance.

The relations between commoner and feudal land-
lord as demonstrated by these principles are almost the
same as the relations existing today between nation-
states and their citizens.

The foundation of feudal relationship was not only
land. A great many other services and privileges were
integrated in the system. The feudal lord conferred
public offices, various sources of revenue, the right
to collect tolls, to operate a mill, etc., to some of his
subjects, in return for which the subject became a
vassal of the lord. He swore an oath of fealty binding
him to the obligations of service and allegiance he had
assumed. With such a contract he received ceremonial
investiture from his lord.

These ceremonies establishing the relations between
vassal and lord were almost identical with the process
of naturalization in modern nation-states.

During the centuries of political feudalism, the
actual government of the kings, the central power,
was most rudimentary and primitive. Little, if any,
direct relation existed between individual subjects
and the central government of the king. Real power
was vested in the feudal baron who was the actual
ruler. He alone had control and power over the in-
dividuals.

The system, however, soon began to show its in

io8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

adequacies. Within one large estate the lord of the
land could provide his subjects with protection. But
identical social units were developing in the same
way on all sides, with corresponding power and rights
vested in the neighboring barons. Hundreds, thou-
sands of feudal lords obtained sovereign rights over
their lands and over their subjects.

The relations between the lords and their subjects
were established by custom and regulated by law, but
die relationships between the neighboring lords of the
land were unregulated except by family ties, friend-
ships, pledges and agreements between them. Nat-
urally, jealousies and rivalries soon flared up among
the individual lords, who more and more frequently
called upon their subjects to take up arms and fight
the subjects of a neighboring lord to protect their own
sovereignty, their lands, their influence.

As intercommunications developed and increased,
as populations grew and interchange between feudal
units was intensified, the conflicts between these units
increased in frequency and violence. Each feudal
knight looked upon the power and influence of his
neighbors with fear, distrust and suspicion. There was
no way to obtain security against attack other than
to defeat one’s neighbor in battle, conquer his lands,
incorporate his subjects, thereby raising one’s own
power and widening one’s own sphere of influence.

This evolution culminated in complete chaos with
almost permanent fights between the various sover-
eign feudal units.

It took a long time for the subjects to realize that
the contracts they had entered into with the feudal

NATION-FEUDALISM 109

barons to obtain security and protection had brought
them instead permanent wars, insecurity, misery and
death. Finally, however, they found that their salva-
tion could be achieved only by destroying the power
of the feudal landlords and establishing and support-
ing a government to stand above the quarreling and
warring barons, a government that would possess
enough strength to create and enforce laws standing
above feudal interests, and that would establish direct
relations between the subjects and the central govern-
ment, eliminating the intermediary feudal sovereign-
ties. So they rallied around the kings, who became
strong enough to impose a superior legal order.

Feudalism, a political system which dominated the
world for five long centuries, finally began to disin-
tegrate at the end of the thirteenth century, the mo-
ment better means of intercommunication and the
growth of common ideas made wider centralization
possible. Under the impjact of these new conditions,
die subjects turned against the sovereign feudal gov-
ernments and established central governments under
the sovereignty of the king, ending once and for all
the interminable quarrels and fights between the in-
termediary social units which enslaved the popula-
tion in the interest and for the maintenance of the
sovereign power of the lords of the land.

What does this long and painful history of medieval
society have to do with our problem in the twentieth
century?

Man in society is constantly seeking security and
freedom. This is a fundamental instinct Both security
and freedom are the products of law. Since history

uo THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

began to be written, the human race has struggled for
the best forms and methods to achieve a social order
within which man can have both freedom and
security.

The historical evolution of human society proves
that these human ideals are best achieved if the in-
dividual is in direct relationship with a supreme,
central, universal source of law. Twice in the history
of Western civilization this truth, which seems
axiomatic, has found institutional expression: in the
monotheistic religions and in democracy.

The fundamental doctrine of the Jewish, Chris
tian and Mohammedan religions is monotheism, the
oneness of God the Supreme Lawgiver the basic
belief that before God, every man is equal. This
doctrine, the rock upon which modern Western civili-
zation is built, destroyed the polytheism of primitive
human society. It destroyed the many different, selfish
and inimical gods who, in the early stages of history,
incited mankind to war and to destroy each other for
the simple reason that every minor group of men had
a different god whom they worshiped and who gave
them law. The establishment of a single universal
God as the Supreme Being and unique source of
authority over mankind, and the attribution of His
direct relationship to every man on earth, revealed
for the first time the only kwmaking system upon
which peaceful human society can be built.

At the time this elementary thesis of society was re-
vealed and proclaimed, technical and material condi-
tions were far too primitive to permit its application
and effective realization in the known world. In reli-

NATION-FEUDALISM HI

gion, the doctrine slowly conquered the faith of man
and became the dominating creed of the modern
world. However, it could not assert itself as a political
doctrine of a society that continued to develop along
pre-Christian lines.

In the eighteenth century, political conditions at
last induced the fathers of modern democracy to open
a crusade to destroy the sovereignty of the many kings
and rulers who oppressed and enslaved the people.
This crusade led to the formulation and proclamation
of the basic principle that sovereignty in human
society resides in the community.

This principle, the very foundation of democracy,
represents the political corollary of monotheism. Its
triumph meant the acceptance by society of the thesis
that there can be only one supreme sovereign source
of law the will of the community and that, under
this sovereign law guaranteeing security and freedom
to man in society, every man is to be regarded as
equal

It is one of the great tragedies of history that the
recognition and proclamation of this principle came
a century too early.

When it became the dominating doctrine, the uni-
versality of sovereignty, the universality of kw, the
indivisibility of the sovereignty of the community
as the supreme source of democratic kw, was not yet
feasible or technically possible. The world was still
too big, it could not yet be centrally controlled, it was
still an exclusively agricultural planet with economic
conditions scarcely different from those of antiquity.
So a substitute presented itself which permitted the

ii2, THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

new doctrine of democratic sovereignty to find im-
mediate practical expression.

This substitute was the nation.

An intermediary between the individual and the
universal conception of democratic society, the sover-
eignty of the community, had to be established in
order to make the organization of society on a demo-
cratic basis immediately realizable. In the eighteenth
century, society could not possibly be organized uni-
versally. Consequently, democracy could not be or-
ganized according to its fundamentally universal
principles. It had to be organized nationally.

For a long time the problem seemed to have been
satisfactorily solved and citizens and subjects of the
modern democratic nation-states enjoyed a hitherto
unknown degree of freedom, security and welfare.
Relations between the nation-state and its citizens
were stabilized, according to which the state guar-
anteed protection, security, law and order, in ex-
change for which the citizens pledged exclusive al-
legiance to their national state and agreed to accept
its laws, to pay taxes and to go to battle when national
interests required the supreme sacrifice.

The national organization of democracy worked
perfectly well for a while. But soon, under the im-
petus of technical, scientific and economic develop-
ments, and the tremendous increase of intercommuni-
cation, interchange of ideas, populations and produc-
tion, the various sovereign national units were brought
into close contact with each other. Just as in the
medieval age, these contacts between the sovereign
national units the relationships of which were un-
regulated created frictions and conflicts.

NATION-FEUDALISA1 1 13

Today we find ourselves in the same social convul-
sion and political chaos that human society was pass-
ing through at the end of the thirteenth century. Far
from enjoying freedom, far from obtaining the ex-
pected security and protection from their nation-
states, the citizens are constantly exposed to oppres-
sion, violence and destruction. The multiplicity o
the conflicting sovereign units in our society destroys
every vestige of the freedom, protection and security
originally promised and granted to the individual by
the nation-states at their inception in the eighteenth
century.

In the middle of the twentieth century, we are
living in an era of absolute political feudalism in
which the nation-states have assumed exactly the same
roles as were assumed by the feudal barons a thou-
sand years ago.

Feudalism created serfdom, not because the supreme
source of law was an individual or a family, but be-
cause in a given territory there were many individuals
and families exercising sovereign power and because
these various sovereign units were not brought under
a higher, all-embracing law. The fact that men were
living in a society composed of a multiplicity of
scattered and disintegrated sovereignties, led feudal-
ism into a series of conflagrations which caused the
utter misery and starvation of the peoples and the
ultimate self-destruction of the system.

The fact that today we are not ruled by barons
and counts but by institutions created by national
constitutions, loses its significance when the multi-
plicity of such scattered sovereign institutions divides
mankind into separate sovereign units. This arbitrary

1 1 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

and artificial segregation of human society compels
nation-states to act in exactly the same way toward
their subjects and toward their neighbors that feudal
lords of the land acted under similar conditions to up-
hold their symbols and institutions, their power and
influence, which were for them absolute, ultimate
ends.

There is nothing kings, emperors or tyrants ever
did to their subjects that nation-states are not doing
today. Tyranny does not mean the rule of a king,
emperor, dictator or despot. It is to live under a
system of law in the creation of which the individual
does not participate.

In the nation-state system, we are unable to par-
ticipate in the creation of law in any part of human
society beyond our own country. It is, therefore, a
self-delusion to say that Americans, Englishmen or
Frenchmen are “free people/’ They can be attacked
by other nations and forced into war at any time.
They are living in a state of fear and insecurity just
as great as under tyrants who interfered with their
liberties at will.

Absolute monarchy was anti-democratic and tyran-
nical, not because it was wicked or malevolent, but
because it identified the interests of the king with the
interests of the people over whom he ruled and be-
cause it acted solely to safeguard its particular in-
terests.

This is exactly the position of the present-day
nation-states. Guided exclusively by their own na-
tional interests, disregarding completely the interests
of their fellow states and having sovereign power

NATION-FEUDALISM 115

in their respective countries, the nation-states have
become anti-democratic and have re-established the
absolutism our forefathers destroyed when it was per-
sonified by kings.

If we take human society as a whole which in
relation to technological reality is smaller today than
the society over which the Carlovingian kings ruled
we have to admit that we are living in a society
without public law. The legislation of the various
nation-states dividing humanity into a number of
closed and separated units has all the characteristics
of the private law of the medieval dukes, counts and
barons, which usurped public law for so many cen-
turies, creating immeasurable bloodshed and misery
for all who lived under this multiplicity of distinct
systems of law.

This system of nation-feudalism has plunged the
world into unprecedented barbarism, and destroyed
almost all individual rights and human liberties
secured with so much toil and blood by our fore-
fathers. Modern nation-feudalism has erased, except
in name, every moral doctrine of Christianity.

There is not the slightest hope that we can change
the course into which we are rapidly being driven
by the conflicting nation-states so long as we recognize
them as the supreme and final expression of the
sovereignty of the people. At ever-increasing speed
we shall be hurled toward greater insecurity, greater
destruction, greater hatred, greater barbarism, greater
misery, until we resolve to destroy the political system
of nation-feudalism and establish a social order based
on the sovereignty of the community, as conceived

u6 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

by the founders of democracy and as it applies to
the realities of today.

This necessitates the realization and acceptance of
the following axioms:

1. Individual freedom and individual security in
   modern society are the product of democratically
   created and democratically executed law.
2. All individuals must be directly related to the
   institutions expressing the sovereignty of the
   community.
3. Any intermediary organizations with attributes
   of sovereignty standing between individuals
   and the institutions of the sovereignty of the
   community (cities, provinces, churches, nations
   or any other units) destroy the rights of the in-
   dividual, the sovereignty of the community and,
   consequently, destroy democracy itself.

CHAPTER VII

WHAT IS WAR?

IT IS commonly taken for granted that we can
never abolish war between nations, because war
is in the nature of man. It is even more widely
accepted that war has innumerable causes and that
to try to abolish all of them would be a hopeless task.
We must refuse to accept such apparently true

WHAT IS WAR? 117

but basically deceptive statements, if we would avoid
becoming the helpless victims of superstition. No one
knows just what “human nature” is. Nor is this a rele-
vant question. Assuming or even admitting that cer-
tain evils are part of “human nature/* this does not
mean that we should sit passively and refuse to ii*-
vestigate the conditions which cause the evils to be-
come deadly and the possibility of avoiding their
devastating effects.

Since man began to think about life and himself, it
has been generally accepted that appendicitis and gall-
stones were in the nature of man. Indeed, they are.
But after thousands of years, during which men died
from these fatal evils of ‘liuman nature/* some people
had the courage to take a knife and cut open the
diseased part to see what was happening. Appendici-
tis and gallstones continue to be “in the nature of
man.” But now man does not necessarily die from
them.

Superficially, it looks as ttough wars have been
waged for a great variety of reasons. The struggle for
food and mere survival among primitive tribes, feuds
between families and dynasties, quarrels between
cities and provinces, religious fanaticism, rival conot-
mercial interests, antagonistic social ideals, the race
for colonies, economic competition and many other
forces have exploded in fatal and devastating wars.

Since time immemorial, among primitive people,
families, ^m and tribes have fought, enslaved and
exterminated each other for food, shelter, women,
pastures, hunting grounds. Each group had a “reli-
gion/* a demon, a totexn, a god, or several of each,

u8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

whose divine and supreme will was interpreted “by
priests, medicine men and magicians, and who pro-
tected them from the dangers and depredations of
other clans; inspired and incited them to war upon
and to annihilate their neighbors. Life at that stage
of society was no different from the life of fish in the
deep and beasts in the jungle.

Later, at a higher level of civilization, we see larger
settlements and city communities fighting and warring
with each other. Nineveh, Babylon, Troy, Cnossos,
Athens, Sparta, Rome, Carthage and many other
similar rival settlements continuously battled, until
all of them were finally destroyed.

Under the inspiration and leadership of dynamic
personalities, powerful clans and races set out upon
wars of conquest so that they might rule over new
lands and subjects in safety and wealth. Tiglath Pile-
ser, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Alexander, Attila,
Genghis Khan and other conquerors in history waged
large-scale wars to subdue the world as it was known
to them.

For centuries after the fall of Rome, European
society was rocked by endless clashes and battles
among thousands of feudal barons.

After the consolidation of the three world religions
originating in Judaism Catholicism, Islamism and
Protestantism a long series of wars were fought by
the followers of these expanding and conflicting faiths.
Kings, princes and knights took part in crusades to
defend and spread their own creeds, to destroy and
exterminate the believers in the other creeds. The
great wars fought by Constantine, Charles V, Sulei-

WHAT IS WAR? 119

man, Philip II, Gustavus Adolphus and other mighty
rulers of die Middle Ages were mostly attempts to
unify the Western world under one religion.

Following the collapse of the feudal system, with
the development of craftsmanship, trade and shipping,
a middle class of modern bourgeois citizenry emerged
and began to crystallize. The field of conflict again
shifted, and wars were fought by great commercial
centers, Venice, Florence, Augsburg, Hamburg,
Amsterdam, Ghent, Danzig and other city units,
which impressed their own citizens and hired mer-
cenaries.

Then another series of wars were waged by abso-
lute monarchs in the interest of their dynasties, to
widen the domains of the great royal houses. The
Hapsburg, Bourbon, Wittelsbach, Romanoff and
Stuart monarchies and dozens of minor dynasties
led their subjects into battle to defend and extend
their power and rule.

A different type of war was waged between smaller
kingdoms and principalities to obtain supremacy with-
in a particular system of monarchy, such as the wars
between England and Scotland; Saxony, Bavaria and
Prussia; Tuscany, Piedmont and Parma; Burgundy,
Touraine and Normandy.

And finally, the creation of modern nation-states
at the end of the eighteenth century has brought
about a series of gigantic conflicts between whole
conscripted nations, culminating in the first and
second world wars.

Looking back over history, war appears a hundred-
headed hydra. As soon as the peacemakers chop off

i2o THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

one head, new ones immediately appear on the
monster. Yet, if we analyze what seem to be the
manifold causes of past wars, it is not difficult to ob-
serve a thread of continuity running through these
strange historical phenomena.

Why did cities once wage wars against each other
and why do municipalities no longer fight each other
with weapons today? Why, at certain times, have great
landowner barons warred with each other and why
have they now ceased that practice? Why did the
various churches plunge their adherents into armed
warfare and why today are they able to worship side
by side without shooting each other? Why did Scot-
land and England, Saxony and Prussia, Parma and
Tuscany, at a certain period in their history, go to
battle against each other and why have they ceased
fighting today?

A careful study of human history reveals that the
assumption that war is inherent in human nature
and therefore eternal is shallow and faulty, that it
is only a superficial impression. Far from being in-
explicable or inevitable, we can invariably determine
the situations that predispose to war, and the condi-
tions which lead to war.

The real cause of all wars has always been the
same. They have occurred with the mathematical
regularity of a natural law at clearly determined
moments as the result of clearly definable conditions.

If we try to detect the mechanism visibly in opera-
tion, the single cause ever-present at the outbreak of
each and every conflict known to human history, if
we attempt to reduce the seemingly innumerable

WHAT IS WAR? 121

causes of war to a common denominator, two clear and
unmistakable observations emerge.

1. Wars between groups of men forming social
   units always take place when these units tribes,
   dynasties, churches, cities, nations exercise un-
   restricted sovereign power.
2. Wars between these social units cease the mo-
   ment sovereign power is transferred from them
   to a larger or higher unit.

From these observations we can deduce a social
law with the characteristics of an axiom that applies
to and explains each and every war in the history of
all time.

War takes place whenever and wherever non-
integrated social units of equal sovereignty come into
contact.

War between given social units of equal sovereignty
is the permanent symptom of each successive phase
of civilization. Wars always ceased when a higher
unit established its own sovereignty, absorbing the
sovereignties of the conflicting smaller social groups.
After such transfers of sovereignty, a period of peace
followed, which lasted only until the new social
units came into contact. Then a new series of wars
began.

The causes and reasons alleged by history to have
brought about these conflicts are irrelevant, as they
continued to exist long after the wars had ceased.
Cities and provinces continue to compete with each
other. Religious convictions are just as different today
as they were during the religious wars.

122, THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The only thing that did change was the institu-
tionalization of sovereignty, the transfer of sovereignty
from one type of social unit to another and a higher
one.

Just as there is one and only one cause for wars be-
tween men on this earth, so history shows that peace
not peace in an absolute and Utopian sense, but con-
crete peace between given social groups warring with
each other at given times has always been estab-
lished in one way and only in one way.

Peace between fighting groups of men was never
possible and wars succeeded one another until some
sovereignty, some sovereign source of law, some sover-
eign power was set up over and above the clashing
social units, integrating the warring units into a higher
sovereignty.

Once the mechanics and the fundamental causes of
wars of all wars are realized, the futility and
childishness of the passionate debates about armament
and disarmament must be apparent to all.

If human society were organized so that relations
between groups and units in contact were regulated by
democratically controlled law and legal institutions,
then modern science could go ahead, devise and
produce the most devastating weapons, and there
would be no war. But if we allow sovereign rights to
reside in the separate units and groups without regu-
lating their relations by law, then we can prohibit
every weapon, even a penknife, and people will beat
out each other’s brains with clubs.

It is tragic to witness the utter blindness and
ignorance of our governments and political leaders in

WHAT IS WAR? 123

regard to this all-important and vital problem of the
world.

Voices are now being raised in the United States
and in Great Britain demanding compulsory military
service and the maintenance of extensive armaments
in peacetime. The argument is that if in 1939 the
United States and Great Britain had been armed,
Germany and Japan would never have dared to start a
war. The Western democracies must not be caught
unprepared again. If conscription is introduced and
America and England have large armed forces ready
to fight at a moment’s notice, no other power will
dare attack them, and they will not be forced into
war. That sounds logical. But what about France, the
Soviet Union, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia
and the other countries which always had conscrip-
tion and large standing armies? Did this save them
from war?

After 1919, the peacemakers were obsessed by the
idea that armaments lead to wars, that a sine qua nan
for world peace is the general limitation and reduc-
tion of armaments on sea, land and in the air.
Disarmament completely dominated international
thought for fifteen years after the signature of the Cov-
enant. Tremendous amounts of propaganda were
poured into the public ear by printed and spoken
word, to the effect that “armament manufacturers”
were the real culprits responsible for wars, that no
nation should build battleships bigger than thirty-five
thousand tons, that the caliber of guns should be re-
duced, submarine and gas warfare prohibited, mili-
tary service shortened, and so forth.

i2 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

These views found the democratic victors receptive
and persuaded them to disarm to a large extent. But
naturally they were without effect on the vanquished
who sought revenge and a revision of the status quo
by force. The outbreak of the second World War
proved conclusively the complete fallacy and useless-
ness of seeking peace between nations through dis-
armament

Now our leaders are preaching the exact opposite.
We are told today that only powerful armaments can
maintain peace, that the democratic and so-called
peace-loving nations must maintain omnipotent na-
tional navies, air forces and mechanized armies, that
we must control strategic military bases spread around
the globe, if we would prevent aggression and main-
tain peace.

This idea, the idea of maintaining peace by arma-
ments, is just as complete a fallacy as the idea of
maintaining peace through disarmament. Technical
equipment, arms, have as much to do with peace as
frogs with the weather. Conscription and large
armies are just as incapable of maintaining peace as
no conscription and disarmament

The problem of peace is a social and political
problem, not a technical one.

War is never the disease itself. War is a reaction
to a disease of society, the symptom of disease. It is
just like fever in the human body. We shall never be
able to prevent all wars in advance, because it is im-
possible to foresee future differentiations of human
society, exactly where divisions and splits of society
will take place. In the twenty-fifth century perhaps

WHAT IS WAR? 125

the great conflict will be between die orange growers
and the believers in Taoism* We do not know.

What we do know is that war is the result of con-
tact between nonintegrated sovereign units, whether
such units be families, tribes, villages, estates, cities,
provinces, dynasties, religions, classes, nations, re-
gions or continents.

We also know that today, the conflict is between
the scattered units of nation-states. During the past
hundred years, all major wars have been waged
between nations. This division among men is the only
condition which, in our age, can create and un-
doubtedly will create other wars.

The task therefore is to prevent wars between the
nations international wars.

Logical thinking and historical empiricism agree
that there is a way to solve this problem and prevent
wars between the nations once and for all. But with
equal clarity they also reveal that there is one way
and one way alone to achieve this end: The integra-
tion of the scattered conflicting national sovereignties
into one unified, higher sovereignty, capable of creat-
ing a legal order within which all peoples may enjoy
equal security, equal obligations and equal rights
under law.

126 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

CHAPTER VIII

THE HISTORICAL MEANING OF
SOVEREIGNTY

/” I ARE fundamental problem of peace is the
A problem of sovereignty. The welfare, the happi-
ness, die very existence of a miner in Pennsylvania,
Wales, Lorraine or the Don Basin, a farmer in the
Ukraine, the Argentine, the American Middle West
or the Chinese rice fields the very existence of every
individual or family in every country of the five con-
tinents depends upon the correct interpretation and
application of sovereignty. This is not a theoretical
debate but a question more vital than wages, prices,
taxes, food or any other major issue of immediate in-
terest to the common man everywhere, because in the
final analysis, the solution of all the everyday problems
of two thousand million human beings depends upon
the solution of the central problem of war. And
whether we are to have war or peace and progress
depends upon whether we can create proper institu-
tions to insure the security of the peoples.

Schopenhauer pointed out that health is a nega-
tive feeling of which we are never aware, while pain
produces a positive sensation. If we cut our Htde
finger, we concentrate on that completely dominating
pain, excluding from our consciousness the many
other parts of our body which remain uninjured and
healthy.

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 12.7

This observation has also heen proved true in other
fields of human activity certainly in the field of
social science. Great social and political structures and
revolutionary ideas are usually born in times of crisis.

The very fact that today there is so much talk of
sovereignty a word that was hardly mentioned in
political discussions a decade or two ago proves the
existence of a sore spot in the body politic. It leaves
no doubt that something is wrong with sovereignty,
that the present interpretation of this notion is pass-
ing through a crisis and that clarification, restatement
and reinterpretation are necessary*

In discussing this most intricate problem, it is
essential to make a clear distinction between its two
entirely different aspects.

The first is scientific: a realization of exactly what
sovereignty is, what it meant historically during the
various phases of human development, and what it
means in a democracy in the middle of the twentieth
century.

The second which we must eliminate from con-
sideration while searching for definitions and prin-
ciples is: What would the people be capable of un-
derstanding, and what would they accept politically
right now?

In our endeavor to arrive at a dear definition and
correct interpretation of democratic sovereignty, we
must not be deterred by the argument that the quest
is futile because the people are nationalist and would
resist any changes in the present political construc-
tion of the world. Such an outlook a sort of govern-
ment by polls of public opinion is not democracy,
but its caricature.

128 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

New ideas always take shape within a small group
of men whose task it is to spread them and get them
accepted by the people.

When Pasteur discovered that contagious diseases
were caused by living organisms and explained how
such diseases could be cured, almost everybody, in-
cluding the overwhelming majority of doctors,
laughed at him* At the time Hertz and Marconi de-
clared that sound and signals could be transmitted
around the world by radio waves, a public opinion
poll would certainly have shown that ninety-nine
per cent of the people believed such a thing impos-
sible and for all purposes, impractical. Those who, at
the time of the Thirty Years* War, declared that it
was possible for Catholics and Protestants to worship
in freedom according to their beliefs and to live to-
gether peacefully under law, were regarded as
dreamers and most impractical men.

Democracy does not mean that governments have
to ask the people their opinions on complicated issues
and then carry them out. It is essentially a form of
society within which the conception of new ideas,
their diffusion in view of their acceptance by the
majority, the fight for leadership, is open to every-
body.

The first problem, therefore, is that those who, for
one reason or another, are in a position to influence
public opinion and events should know the exact
meaning of the words they are using and clearly define
the ideas they are advocating.

The first step toward realism is the clarification of
principles.

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 129

It seems one of the absurdities of our unhappy
generation that hopeless Utopians who live entirely
in the past and are incapable of visualizing the future
otherwise than as a projection of the past, call them-
selves realists and practical men and deride any at-
tempt at rational thinking as “idealism/*

What does this word “sovereignty*’ mean?

By now most people must realize that humai>
beings are exceptionally perverted and ferocious
creatures, capable of murdering, torturing, persecut-
ing and exploiting each other more ruthlessly than
any other species in this world.

At a very early stage of human society, it was
discovered that before we could live together, in a
family, in a tribe, it was necessary to impose cer-
tain restraints upon our natural impulses, to forbid
certain things we like to do, and to compel us to do
certain things we do not like to do.

The day the first legal imposition of a compulsion
was forced upon a community was the greatest day in
history.

That day, freedom was born.

How did this happen?

Human nature is such ttat man does not accept
rules unless they are imposed upon him by consti-
tuted authority. The first absolute authority was God.

So it was necessary to make people believe that
the required rules and regulations were the express
commands of God. They were proclaimed with all
the magic at their command by priests, who had
direct access to God and who knew how to proclaim

130 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

His will, amid so much thunder and lightning that
the people were frightened into accepting them.

Here we have the first sovereign authority the
first source of law a supernatural symbol.

Later on as human society developed and kw and
order grew, it was necessary to separate that which
was Caesar’s from that which was God’s. During that
long period of history when peoples were ruled hy
the divine right of absolute monarchs, chiefs, em-
perors and kings, to maintain their authority and
lawmaking power, to make people recognize them as
the supreme source of law, the rulers linked them-
selves as closely as possible with religion and pro-
claimed that they derived their power from God.

The monarchs ruling by divine right were called
sovereigns and their lawgiving capacity was designated
as “sovereign.”

Between the Renaissance and the eighteenth cen-
tury, as a result of the revival of learning and new
methods of rational and scientific thinking, a revolu-
tionary social ideal took shape and found fertile soil
among the masses suffering under absolutism. This
revolutionary ideal was the principle that no individ-
ual, no family, no dynasty, could any longer be re-
garded as sovereign, that the sovereign lawgiving
authority was the people and that “sovereignty resides
in the community.”

This revolutionary principle led to the great popular
uprisings of the eighteenth century, to die establish-
ment of the American and French republics, and to
the “king reigns but does not rule” parliamentary
system in England and many other countries.

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 131

The ideal of national sovereignty and national in-
dependence springs from long eras of monarchy and
colonization. At its inception, it was a great forward
step and an incentive to human progress. The Ameri-
can Declaration of Independence, the French Revolu-
tion, following on the development of representative
institutions in England, were an enormous incentive
to other peoples to fight for their own sovereignty and
independence. The climax of this evolution was
reached in the peace treaties of 1919, when more
nations than ever before became completely sover-
eign and independent. Twenty years late all those
proud national sovereignties lay trampled in the dust
and today more people than ever before in modem his-
tory are enslaved and plunged into misery.

Why did this happen?

It happened because the political system established
in 1919, an apotheosis of eighteenth century ideals,
was an anachronism, and in total contradiction to
things as they are in the twentieth century. The great
ideals of national sovereignty, independence, national-
ity as the basis of states, were wonderful achievements
in the eighteenth century, in a world which was so
vast before the industrial revolution had begun.

The democratic form of government adopted by the
great Western powers brought about a century of
wealth, a spiritual, scientific and material progress
unique in history. But nothing is eternal in this world,
and we are again in the throes of a crisis which de-
mands reinterpretation of the foundations of our
social life.

Our present conception of national sovereignty

i 3 2 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

shows how an ideal once realized, can be distorted in
the span of a single century.

According to the eighteenth century French philos-
ophers, the most articulate among the founders of
modern democracy, the democratic conception of
sovereignty meant the transfer of sovereign rights
from one man, the king; to all men, the people. In
the democratic sense, sovereignty resided in the com-
munity.

By “community” they meant the totality of people.
It was quite clear that no individual or groups of in-
dividuals could exercise sovereign rights unless de-
rived from the sovereignty of the community.

We must try to visualize the world as it was
in the eighteenth century. The industrial revolution
had not even begun. The stagecoach was the fastest
means of transportation. Everybody lived a rural life
and any territory of one hundred thousand or even
ten thousand square miles was an entirely self-suffi-
cient and self-supporting unit.

Under such conditions, the widest horizon of the
forebears of democracy was the Nation. When they
proclaimed the sovereignty of the nation, they meant
the sovereignty of the community; they meant sover-
eignty to have the broadest possible basis.

Today, a hundred and fifty years kter, when we
can fly around the globe in less time than it took to
go from Boston to New York, from London to Glasgow
or from Paris to Marseille, the situation is completely
different.

As the world is organized today, sovereignty does
mot reside in the community, but is exercised in an

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 133

absolute form by groups of individuals we call nations.
This is in total contradiction to the original demo-
cratic conception of sovereignty. Today, sovereignty
has far too narrow a basis; it no longer has the power
it should and was meant to have. The word is the
same. The conception it expresses is the same. But
the surroundings have changed. The conditions of the
world have changed. And this changed situation calls
for corresponding changes in the interpretation of
this basic principle, if we desire to preserve this, the
only foundation of democratic society yet discov-
ered.

The great change brought about by the technical
and industrial achievements of the nineteenth cen-
tury is that the nation, which in the eighteenth cen-
tury was the ‘broadest imaginable basis of sovereignty,
today is far too narrow a basis.

The seeds of the twentieth century crisis began to
germinate almost immediately after the establish-
ment of the modern democratic nation-states. Quite
independently of the organization of the nation-states
and the political conceptions of eighteenth century
democracy, almost at the same time something
happened which was destined to become an equally
strong movement and an equally powerful factor of
human progress. That something was: Industrialism.

These two dominating currents of our age, national-
ism and industrialism, are in constant and inevitable
conflict with each other.

Industrialism tends to embrace the whole globe
within its sphere of activity. Modern industrial mass
production needs raw materials from all over the

i 3 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

earth, and seeks markets in every corner of the world.
It strives to achieve its purposes irrespective of any
political, geographic, racial, religious, linguistic or
national barriers.

Nationalism, on the other hand, tends to divide
this world into smaller and smaller compartments and
to segregate the human race into smaller and smaller
independent groups.

For about a century it was possible for these con-
flicting currents to flow side by side. The political
constitution of the eighteenth century nation-state
structure of the world had some compartments large
enough for industrialism to develop.

But since the beginning of this century these two
forces have clashed with titanic violence. It is this
collision between our political life and our economic
and technological life that is the cause of the twen-
tieth century crisis with which we have been
struggling since 1914, as helpless as guinea pigs.

The meaning of this convulsion is clear. The polit-
ical framework of our world with its seventy or eighty
sovereign nation-states is an insurmountable obstacle
to free industrial progress, to individual liberty and
to social security.

Either we understand this problem and create a
political framework in this world within which in-
dustrialism, individual liberties and peaceful human
relationship are possible or we dogmatically refuse to
change the foundation of our obsolete political struc-
ture.

We can remain as we are. It is perfectly possible.
But if this is our choice, then democracy is finished

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 135

and we are bound to march with increasing speed
toward totalitarianism.

The first step toward ending the present chaos is
to overcome the tremendous emotional obstacle which
prevents us from realizing and admitting that the
ideal of sovereign nation-states, with all its great
record of success ‘during the nineteenth century, is
today the cause of all the immeasurable suffering and
misery of this world. We are living in complete an-
archy, because in a small world, interrelated in every
other respect, there are seventy or eighty separate
sources of law seventy or eighty sovereignties.

The situation is identical with that period of his-
tory when feudal lords of the land had absolute
sovereign power over their fiefs and spent their lives
fighting and killing each other, until the over-all
rulers, the kings, imposed a higher sovereignty upon
them, based on a broader framework. Within such a
broader framework, the knights continued to envy
and to dislike each other. But they were obliged to
envy and dislike each other peacefully.

Our present system of national sovereignty is in ab-
solute contradiction to the original democratic con-
ception of sovereignty, which, meant and still mean*
sovereignty of the community.

Why is it so urgently necessary to revive this
notion and to re-establish the democratic conception
of sovereignty of the community, which means author-
ity of the people, standing above any individual or any
group of individuals?

We all reject the monstrous totalitarian conception
that the state is the absolute ultimate goal, with

136 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

supreme power over its citizens, that the individual
is merely the abject slave of the Moloch state.

We accept the democratic conception that the
state, created by the people, exists only to protect them
and maintain law and order, safeguarding their lives
and liberty.

The significant thing about the present crisis is
that the nation-states, even the most powerful, even
the United States of America, Great Britain and the
Soviet Union, are no longer strong enough, no longer
powerful enough to fulfill the purpose for which they
were created.

They cannot prevent disasters like the first and
second world wars. They cannot protect their peoples
against the devastation of international war.

However sincerely the American, British and Rus-
sian governments sought to keep out of this war, they
were forced into it in spite of themselves. Millions of
their citizens have died, hundreds of billions of dollars
of their national wealth have been wasted, for sheer
survival. They had to fight for their lives.

If the sovereignty of the United States of America,
the sovereignty of Great Britain and the sovereignty
of the Soviet Union do not suffice to protect their
citizens, then we need not even talk about the fiction
of sovereignty in Latvia, Luxembourg or Rumania.

To put it plainly, the ideal of the nation-state is
bankrupt. The nation-state is impotent to prevent
foreign aggression, it no longer serves as the supreme
institution capable of protecting its people against
war and all the miseries and misfortunes that war
brings.

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 137

The second World War has finally demonstrated
that not a single one of the existing nations, even the
most powerful, is economically self-sufficient

These indisputable facts prove that our present
conception of national sovereignty is obsolete and
pregnant with deadly danger to us all.

The inescapable economic and technical realities
of our age make it imperative to re-examine and re-
interpret the notion of sovereignty and to create sover-
eign institutions based on the community, accord-
ing to the original democratic conception. Sovereignty
of the people must stand above the nations so that
under it each nation may be equal, just as each in-
dividual is equal under the law in a civilized state.

The question is not one of “surrendering” national
sovereignty. The problem is not negative and does not
involve giving up something we already have. The
problem is positive creating something we lack,
something we have never had, but that we impera-
tively need.

The creation of institutions with universal sovereign
power is merely another phase of the same process
in the development of human history the extension
of law and order into another field of human associa-
tion which heretofore has remained unregulated and
in anarchy,

A few centuries ago, many cities held full sovereign
rights. Later some portion of municipal sovereignty
was transferred to provinces. Then to larger units
and finally, at the end of the eighteenth century, to
the nation-states.

In the United States of America today, the problems

138 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

of fire prevention, water supply, street cleaning and
other similar matters are under municipal authority.

The construction of roads, marital legislation, edu-
cation, legislation regarding industrial and commer-
cial enterprises, and endless other issues are under
state sovereignty.

And finally, problems affecting the United States
Army, Navy, foreign policy, currency and other mat-
ters, are under Federal sovereignty.

The development is crystal clear. As human prog-
ress continues, conditions require an ever-broader
basis for sovereignty, for absolute power, to fulfill its
purpose: the protection of the people.

New Yorkers are citizens of the city of New York,
of the state of New York and of the United States
of America. But they are also citizens of the world.
Their lives, their security, their liberties are pro-
tected in a very wide field by the sovereign authority
which resides in the people, who have delegated its
exercise partly to the city of New York, partly to the
state of New York and partly to the Federal govern-
ment of the United States of America.

The situation as to the delegation of sovereign
power by the people to authorities on different levels is
the same in all democratic countries. Just as in the
United States, so in Great Britain, France, Switzer-
land and in the other countries, the sovereign peoples
have delegated parts of their sovereignties to munici-
palities, boroughs, counties, departments, cantons and
national state institutions.

But during the past three decades, we have learned
that these highest sovereign units created by the

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 139

people the nation-states are not strong enough,
are not sovereign enough, to protect them against
international war, against attack by a foreign power
over which existing sovereignties have no control
whatever.

If the state of New York enacted economic or social
legislation that reacted harmfully on economic and
labor conditions in Connecticut, and no higher
sovereignty existed, such an act on the part of the
sovereign state of New York could not be prevented
by the sovereign state of Connecticut, except by war.

But a higher sovereignty the Federal sovereignty
exists, and under it the state of New York and the
state of Connecticut are equal. This higher sover-
eignty alone protects the people against such danger.

The same dangers would exist in the relations of
counties in England, departments in France and can-
tons in Switzerland, without higher sovereign na-
tional authority.

Democratic sovereignty of the people can be cor-
rectly expressed and effectively instituted only if
local affairs are handled by local government, national
affairs by national government, and international,
world affairs, by international, world government

Only if the people, in whom rests all sovereign
power, delegate parts of their sovereignty to institu-
tions created for and capable of dealing with specific
problems, can we say that we have a democratic form
of government. Only through such separation of
sovereignties, through the organization of independent
institutions, deriving their authority from the sover-
eignty of the community, can we have a social order in

2 4 o THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

which men may live in peace with each other, en-
dowed with equal rights and equal obligations before
law. Only in a xvorld order based on such separation
of sovereignties can individual freedom be real.

Such separation of sovereignties, such gradation of
governmental functions, has proved to be the only
real, enduring instrument of democracy in any
country.

It is irrelevant whether the delegation of sovereignty
proceeds from local government to national govern-
ment, as in the United States, or from national gov-
ernment to local government, as in Great Britain.
Whether the delegation of sovereignty develops his-
torically one way or the other, does not modify the
fact that democracy needs separation of sovereignties
and separate institutions to deal with affairs on differ-
ent levels, adequately to express the sovereignty of
the community.

Existing anarchy in international relations, due to
absolute national sovereignty, must be superseded by
universal statutory law, enacted by a duly elected
legislative body. Such universal law must take the
place of the utterly fallacious, ineffectual and pre-
carious rule of unenforceable treaty obligations en-
tered into by sovereign nation-states and disregarded
by them whenever it suits their purpose.

The conception of sovereignty is not an end but a
means to an end.

It is an instrument necessary to create law and
order in the relations of men. Sovereignty finds ex-
pression in institutions, but in itself, is not and never
can be identical with any institution.

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 141

Institutions derive their sovereignty from where
sovereignty resides. In ancient times, in religion, in
absolute monarchies from God. In democracies
from the people.

If our inherited institutions, established in the
past, are no longer capable of maintaining law and
order and protecting us, then their claims to sover-
eignty, their insistence upon sovereign power jeopard-
izes our very lives and liberty, the well-being of
society to which we belong, and the sovereignty of , . .
“we, the people/’

Institutions churches, dynasties, municipalities,
kingdoms, nation-states can be recognized to ex-
ercise sovereign power and to incarnate sovereign
rights only so long as they are able to solve concrete
and tangible problems, to fulfill the purposes for
which they were created. To identify sovereign insti-
tutions with sovereignty itself, to assume that sover-
eign rights must eternally reside in any specific institu-
tion today the nation-state to believe that the
nation-state is the expression of sovereignty, is pure
totalitarianism, the greatest foe of democracy, the
greatest political and social heresy imaginable, rank-
ing with the making of graven images of God and
their identification with God Himself in the Chris-
tian religion.

The nation-states were originally instituted and
received their power from their peoples to carry out
clearly defined tasks, i.e., to protect their citizens, to
guarantee security to their peoples, to maintain law
and order. The moment established institutions fail
to keep abreast of conditions in society and are unable

i 4 * THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

to maintain peace, they become a source of great
danger and must be reformed if violent social con-
vulsions and wars are to be averted.

Through such reform and transformation of ob-
solete and ineffective human institutions into more
adequate and more powerful institutions adapted to
realities, nothing whatsoever is “sacrificed” or “sur-
rendered.” Quite certainly not sovereignty.

Such a reform does not require the abolition of
nations and national boundaries. Widiin each nation-
state, we still have state lines, county demarcations,
city limits, boundaries of our home lots or of houses
and apartments. Families have names of their own
different from those of other families. We like, pro-
tect and defend our own families more than other
families. We love our homes, pay allegiance to our
own communities, our countrysides, our provinces.

But sovereign power is not vested in these units
which divide us.

Sovereign ppwer is vested in the state, which unites
us.

Those who talk of “surrendering” the sovereignty
of the United States, of Great Britain, France or of
any other democratic country, simply do not under-
stand the meaning of “sovereignty.”

A democratic state cannot “surrender” sovereignty,
for the simple reason that it is not sovereign. Only a
totalitarian or Fascist state is sovereign. A democratic
state is sovereign only to the extent to which sover-
eignty is delegated to it by those in whom, under
the democratic concept, sovereignty is vested the
people.

HISTORICAL MEANING OF SOVEREIGNTY 143

The real source of sovereign power cannot be em-
phasized too strongly and must never be lost sight
of if we would understand the political problem
we face. It is the people who create governments and
not as the Fascists say governments that make
nations.

The nation-states as they were set up in the
eighteenth century, and as they are organized in the
democracies today, are nothing but the instruments
of the sovereign people, created for the specific pur-
pose of achieving certain objectives. Should the people
realize and come to the conclusion that in certain
fields they would be better protected by delegating
part of their sovereignty to bodies other than the
nation-states, then nothing would be “surrendered.”
Rather something would be created for the better pro-
tection of the lives and liberties of all peoples.

Sovereignty would continue to reside in the peo-
ple in accordance with the original conception of
democracy, but institutions would be created to give
realistic and effective expression to the democratic
sovereignty of the people in place of the inefficient
and tyrannical institutions of the nation-states.

The people would “surrender” their sovereignty
only if sovereign power to create law were abandoned
to an arbitrary authority or a lawless power.

But to transfer certain aspects of our sovereign
rights from national legislative, judiciary and execu-
tive bodies to equally democratically elected and demo-
cratically controlled universal legislative, judiciary
and executive bodies in order to create, apply and
execute kw for the regulation of human relation-

144 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

ships in the international field in a field where such
law has never existed is not “surrender” but ac-
quisition. It is an exchange of a phantom asset, the
product of unfulfilled and unfulfillable promises, for
a real and tangible asset

CHAPTER IX

TREATY OR LAW

IF AT any time since the Tower of Babel utter
confusion has reigned in this world, it is today
confusion created by discussion of the why and
wherefore of the second World War and of the condi-
tions and possibilities of peace. Thousands of books
and articles have been published and speeches made
about the all-important problem confronting us: how
to establish a world order that will prevent another
global war.

All the planners of lasting peace believe that theirs
is the magic formula; that they can make something
work which never has worked; that after the failure
of thousands of peace treaties they can draft one that
will prevent war.

What caused these world wars?

Again and again we must raise this question to see
clearly the anatomy of peace, because only by ac-
curate diagnosis can we find a cure and arrive at a
healthier international life.

TREATY OR LAW 145

As an explanation of the second World War, no
reasonable man can accept Hitler or Mussolini, or
Fascism, or totalitarianism, or Japanese militarism, or
French corruption, or Bolshevism, or British appease-
ment, or American isolationism. These and many
other explanations are easily accessible sand piles in
which to bury our heads like ostriches; they are con-
venient self-justifications for our delusion that we are
the innocent victims of circumstances and of the
malice and mischief of others. They tell nothing at all
of the why and wherefore of the second World War.

That war came because our social institutions and
principles as we inherited them and as we worship
them today are in total contradiction to economic,
technical and scientific realities of the twentieth cen-
tury in which we live.

Our democratic national constitutions, the result
of slow ideological development, of a long and labori-
ous upward struggle, with much shedding of blood,
and revolutions not a few, were drawn up by our fore-
bears who lived under primitive, rural conditions. The
laws and institutions they created were determined
by the conditions in which they lived.

The institutions established and the standards set
by our eighteenth century forebears opened up a cen-
tury of unprecedented progress and prosperity. More
can hardly be expected from human institutions. Con-
ditions that have arisen since the birth of this cen-
tury, however, have made it impossible for those in-
stitutions to control and channel the torrent of events,
the force and scope of which could not be foreseen
at the time national institutions were created.

Our leading statesmen and political thinkers, puz-

146 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

zled by the events of the first half of the twentieth
century and unable to understand the essence of peace,
seek to escape responsibility by taking refuge in such
nebulous assertions as: “It is impossible to foresee
what the situation will be in twenty years . . .” or ‘We
cannot at this time prescribe rules of conduct for
future behavior* . . /’ Consequently, they argue, let
us seek a “temporary” solution, a “provisional” settle-
ment for a “cooling-off period/’ for a “transitional”
period, after which “we shall see. . . .”

Looking back five thousand years, it can be seen
that every decade, every year, every day, has always
been a “transitional period/’ Human history is noth-
ing but an endless chain of “transitions.” Transition
is the only permanent thing on this earttu In human
affairs the temporary is the perpetual.

The problem of peace is not to create a permanent
status quo. It is to pass through these endless changes
and transitions by methods other than violence.

We have always been able to solve the problem of
peace -within sovereign groups of men. We have never
been able to solve this very same problem of peace
between sovereign groups of men, today between
nations. The reason is obvious.

Trying to solve international problems by diplomacy
or foreign policy, through alliances or the balance of
power, is like attempting to cure cancer with aspirin.

We could not have a peaceful society in any coun-
try if it were based on the idea that the Jones or the
Smith family should enter into an agreement with
the Al Capone family or Jack the Ripper family,
pledging peaceful relationship among themselves.

TREATY OR LAW 147

Peace in a society means that relations among the
members of the society are regulated ty law, that
there is a democratically controlled machinery of law-
making, of jurisdiction, and that to carry out these
laws the community has the right to use force, a
right which is denied to the individual members of
that community.

Peace is order based on law. There is no other
imaginable definition.

Any other conception of peace is sheer Utopia.

Each time a war is fought, it is followed by end-
less debate on the land of peace treaty that will be
made. Hundreds of suggestions are advanced, but
no matter what kind of treaty is signed, the next war
is inevitable.

Why?

Because the content of a treaty is irrelevant die
treaty idea itself is at fault

We have had thousands and thousands of peace
treaties in the history c mankind. None of them has
survived for more than a few years. None of them
could prevent the next war, for the simple reason
that human nature, which cannot be changed, is such
that conflicts are inevitable as long as sovereign power
resides in individual members or groups of members
of society, and not in society itself*

Quite certainly peace is not a Utopia.

The only question is, what kind of peace?

If we seek peace between x sovereign units, based
on treaty agreements, then peace is an impossibility
and it is childish even to think of it But if we conceive
peace correctly, as order based on law, then peace is a

148 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

practical proposition that can be realized just as well
between the nation-states as it has been realized so
often in the past among states, provinces, cities, prin-
cipalities and other units.

Whether we are to have peace or continually re-
curring war depends on a very simple proposition,

It depends upon whether we want to base interna-
tional relations on treaties or on law.

If the second World War is again followed by an-
other treaty or covenant, the next war may be taken
for granted. If we have die foresight, and decide to
make that fundamental and revolutionary change in
human history, to try to introduce law into the regula-
tion of international relations, then and not until then
shall we approach an order which may be called
“peace/’

The reason for this is not difficult to understand.

The essence of life is constant change, perpetual
development.

Up to now, peace between nations has always been
a static conception. We have always tried to determine
some sort of status quo, to seal it meticulously in a
treaty, and to make any change in that status quo
impossible except through war..

This is a grotesque misconception of peace. After
having tried it a few thousand times, it may be wise
to remember what Francis Bacon said three centuries
ago, that “it would be an unsound fancy and self-
contradictory to expect that things which have never
yet been done can be done except by means which
have never yet been tried”

Human society and human evolution, a dynamic

TREATY OR LAW 149

phenomenon par excellence, can never be mastered
by static means.

Treaties are essentially static instruments.

Law is essentially a dynamic instrument.

Wherever we have applied the method of law to
regulate human relationship, it has resulted in peace.

Wherever we have applied treaties to regulate
human relationship, it has inevitably led to war.

If we continue to refuse to recognize the essence of
peace and believe that it is a negative state of affairs
which can be “lasting,** which can be “kept” for a
long time without changes, which can be “enforced**
by any means, then the problem of peace will be
solved only after we solve the much easier problems
of the quadrature of the circle, perpetual motion and
how many angels can sit on the head of a pin.

But if we realize that peace is not a status quo, that
it can never be a negative or a static conception, but
that it is a method, a method of dealing with human
affairs, a method of adapting institutions to the un-
interrupted flow of change created by the permanent,
inexorable dynamism of life, then the problem of peace
is clearly definable and perfectly solvable. Indeed, it
has been solved many times in many fields.

Policy, diplomacy, treaties, are static, nation-centric
conceptions. The only way to control and canalize
dynamic social realities is the proved flexible method
of law. Clear recognition of the distinction between
the two methods of regulating human relations is of
utmost importance in determining the direction we
wish to take.

The method of treaties and the method of law are

ijo THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

qualitatively different and can never converge. We
can never arrive at a legal order by means of treaties.
If our goal is a society based on law, then it is im-
perative to start afresh.

The confusion existing in this field is alarming.
Many government officials and political writers, in
discussing national sovereignty, argue that every time
a nation signs a treaty with another nation and under-
takes certain obligations, it surrenders parts of its
sovereignty. This is an absolute fallacy. The signing
of treaties by national governments, far from limiting
or restricting their sovereignty, is the very criterion of
national sovereignty.

A strange paradox lies embedded in the dogmatic
minds of our statesmen and political thinkers. It is
the traditional belief, inherited from the past and en-
tirely dominating their outlook and actions, that there
are two different ways of maintaining peace between
men.

The one universally recognized and applied
within national, sovereign units, is Law, Order,
Government.

The other, so far used leetween sovereign national
units, is Policy, Diplomacy, Treaties.

This is a mental aberration, an utterly warped pic-
ture of the problem.

Peace can never be achieved by two such totally
contradictory methods for the simple reason that peace
is actually identical with one of those two methods.

Peace is law. It is order. It is government.

“Policy” and “diplomacy” not only may lead to
war, but cannot fail to do so because they are actually
identical with war.

TREATY OR LAW 151

The use of force the act of compulsion and kill-
ing is irrelevant in defining peace and war. It can-
not be the criterion of one or die other because force
is inherent in both states of society. The application
of force by a government within an established social
order does not create xvar. It strengthens and supports
the established legal order, therefore strengthens and
supports peace. On the other hand, force used as an
instrument of policy and diplomacy between social
units without previously established law is identical
with war.

That peace between sovereign nations can ever be
achieved by policy or diplomacy no matter what
policy and what diplomacy whether or not force
is at their disposal, is a mirage*

“Peaceful policy/’ “peaceful diplomacy/’ are terms
of absolute incompatibility. In the world of reality,
the methods of policy and diplomacy between sov-
ereign social units are identical with war and can
never be anything else.

Several thousand years of social evolution have
crystallized this axiom concerning any human society:

Peace among men can only be achieved by a legal
order, by a sovereign source of law, a democratically
controlled government with independent executive,
legislative and judiciary bodies. A legal order is a plan
laid down by the common consent of men to make
their individual lives, their families and nations secure.
Of all the methods hitherto tried, this alone has proved
capable of developing and carrying out changes in
human relations without violence.

The otter method, the method tried and tried again
to keep peace between sovereign units of any type and

i 5 a THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

any size, the method dogmatically and stubbornly ad-
hered to by our national governments, has invariably
failed at all times, in all places and under all cir-
cumstances. To believe that we can maintain peace
among men living in separated, sovereign national
units, by the method of diplomacy and policy, without
government, without the creation of sovereign law-
making, independent judiciary and executive institu-
tions expressing the sovereignty of the people and
equally binding on all, is a mere dream.

To try to prevent war by the use of policy is like
trying to extinguish fire with a flame thrower.

Agreements and treaties between national govern-
ments of equal sovereignty can never last because such
agreements and treaties are the products of mistrust
and fear. Never of principles.

Diplomacy, like military strategy, consists of hood-
winking, tricking and outwitting the other party. In
every other field of human activity, if someone suc-
ceeds in making his opponent believe the exact op-
posite of his real intentions we call this man a liar, a
deceiver, a cheat. In military life he is regarded as an
outstanding tactical genius and becomes a general.
In diplomacy, he is looked upon as a great statesman
and he is called Your Excellency.

I^aw is the only foundation upon which social life
in modern society can exist. We cannot rely on men’s
promises not to murder, on their pledges not to steal,
on their undertakings not to cheat. That is why we
have to have laws and courts and police, with duties
and functions clearly defined in advance.

We all recognize that when we talk of individual

TREATY OR LAW 153

freedom, we mean a synthesis of freedom and com-
pulsion, as quite obviously freedom is a relative notion
which depends not only upon the extent to which we
are free to act as we please, hut equally upon the
extent to which the free actions of others affect us.

It is extraordinary that despite recognition from
time immemorial of this elementary and self-evident
truth, we still ignore the essence of individual and
group interdependence in the relations of nations, in
international Hfe.

In international relations we still talk ahout the
“independence” of nations in absolute form, believ-
ing that a nation is independent only if it has abso-
lute sovereignty to do whatever it wants, to sign
treaties with otter sovereign powers and to “decide”
upon war and peace. We categorically reject any regu-
lation of diat national sovereignty on die ground
that this would destroy national independence.

In the past we have tried to regulate the relations
of nations on the basis of pledges, promises and treaty
obligations. We have seen that this did not work. It is
not surprising that such a structure always broke
down. The extraordinary thing is that it worked be-
tween recurrent wars even for the briefest space.

The old system crumbled because a peaceful col-
laboration of independent sovereign nations based on
mutual treaty obligations is an impossibility like
some acrobatic feat no trapeze artist could perform.

The independence of a nation, just like that of an
individual, does not rest solely on its freedom of ac-
tion, but equally on the degree to which the freedom
of action of other nations may infringe upon its own

154 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

independence. Independence of nations, therefore,
does not mean that each nation should be free to
choose the form of government it wishes; it means
that relations between nations must be regulated by
law.

Our task is not to devise a status quo no matter
how just but to proclaim fundamental principles,
and on their basis to set in motion machinery for the
creation of law.

If world society is again based on treaties, then no
change in the established status quo is possible with-
out \var.

Only if we base international relations on law
just as \ve base on law the relations of individuals and
groups within organized society can we hope that
the constant and inevitable evolution essential to life
will be brought about by peaceful methods within
that legal order.

The dogma of “national sovereignty/’ which is
supposed to overawe us, has no relevance in this con-
nection. In either case whether we stay on a treaty
basis or set up a legal order sovereignty is vested in
the people. The difference is that in the treaty system
sovereignty of the people is not exercised in suf-
ficiently effective form because each sovereign nation-
state has power over a limited area only, without any
possibility of control over other sovereign nations
seeking changes in the existing status quo; whereas in
a world based on law, changes in international rela-
tions could for the first time be carried out without
violence by legally instituted procedure.

Any treaty die best or the worst will bring ant-

SUPER-STATE AND’THE INDIVIDUAL 155

other war. History offers hundreds of instances to
bear out this assertion and not a single exception to
disprove it.

We cannot prevent crime. For thousands of years
we have tried to do so in our social life and we still
have murderers and thieves and kidnapers. But what
we have been able to achieve is to define quite clearly
what we mean by crime, to establish a certain system
of laws with coercive force; to establish independent
courts to apply these laws and to establish police,
prisons and punitive measures to give effect to the
decisions of courts of law.

This is the only thing we can realistically hope to
achieve in our international life. But this we can
achieve if we agree upon the proper diagnosis of this
world crisis and if we realize that when we talk about
international peace we mean exactly the same thing
as when we talk about keeping the peace within a
nation in other words, order based on law.

CHAPTER x

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL

EOUR modern industrial world, nation-states
ire not only the greatest obstacle to world peace.
More and more they are the destroyers of the most
cherished individual liberties in a democracy.

156 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

We have seen:

1. That in all stages of history, social units of equal
   sovereignty in contact inescapably get into con-
   flict and war.
2. That a phase of human history marked by a
   series of clashes between a particular type of
   equal sovereign units comes to a close when
   sovereign power is transferred from the con-
   flicting groups to a higher unit.
3. That a transitory period of relative peace fol-
   lows each such transfer of sovereignty.
4. That a new cycle of wars begins as soon as the
   new units of equal sovereignty come into con-
   tact with each other.

These cycles of peace and war in human society
through transfers of sovereignty from existing, con-
flicting social units to higher units, run parallel with
the development of individual human freedom.

Whenever, through human effort evolution or
revolution individual freedom in varying degrees
was achieved and granted within existing social units,
these liberties flourished only until the social units
in which they were established came into contact
with other units of equal sovereignty. Once such con-
tacts became effective they inevitably resulted in fric-
tion and conflict between the units, and they inevit-
ably led to the limitation, restriction and finally, to
die destruction of individual freedom, in the interest
of the presumed security and the power of the social
unit as a whole.

This development can be observed in the history

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 157

of primitive tribes, of the Greek and Renaissance
city-states, of mighty empires, of world religions, of
great economic enterprises and of modern nation-states.

The present trend toward strengthening central
government power to the detriment of individual
liberty within the modern nation-states is a trend
identical with this evolution during many phases
of history in all parts of the world. It is a permanent
phenomenon in human development. Contacts be-
tween social units create competition, arouse jeal-
ousies, foster conflicts and lead to violent clashes
xvhich, in turn, react by creating a tendency toward
centralized power and crushing individual liberty in
every sovereign unit within this sphere of contact.

In this era so prodigiously prolific of secret weapons
and political slogans, another concept has been
launched by the enemies of progress, a concept des-
tined to become the object of passionate debate. This
term is: super-state. It sounds terrifying. All men of
healthy instincts are supposed to react in unison: We
will have none of it!

Any attempt to establish a legal order beyond the
boundaries of the present nation-states is to be dis-
credited and defeated by the rhetorical question: “Do
you want to live in a super-state?”

What is a super-state? Is a super-state a state of vast
dimensions? Or is it a state with an overlarge popula-
tion? Or is it a too-powerful state?

Since the beginning of thought, writings about the
nature and the problems of the state in human society
would fill whole libraries. In this century-old search
for the truth about the state, two conceptions have

158 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

crystallized. One is the theory that the state is an end
in itself, the purpose of society, the ultimate goal. In-
dividuals have to obey the dictates of the state, sub-
mit to the state’s rules and laws, with no right of par-
ticipation in their creation. Without the state the in-
dividual cannot even exist. This conception of the
state found expression in autocratic kingdoms and em-
pires throughout history. Since the destruction of most
of the absolute monarchies, it has returned in our age
in the form of Fascism, Nazism, the dictatorship of
a single party or military caste.

The other conception of the state the democratic
conception sees the ultimate goal in the individual.
According to the democratic theory of the state, the
individual has certain inalienable rights, sovereignty
resides in the community, and the State is created by
the people who delegate their sovereignty to state in-
stitutions for the purpose of protecting them their
lives, their liberties, their properties and for main-
taining law and order within the community.

Our ideal is the democratic state. The state we want
to live in is one which can guarantee us maximum in-
dividual liberty, maximum freedom of religion, speech,
press and assembly; maximum freedom of communi-
cation, enjoyment of scientific progress and material
wealth. We want the state to restrict and control these
individual freedoms only to the extent to which in-
numerable free individual actions interfere with each
other and mate necessary regulation of the inter-
dependence of individuals within a society a legal
order. Throughout the whole nineteenth century, such
has been the development of the great democratic na-

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 159

tions toward greater wealth and more individual free-
dom.

But this development reached its zenith at the be-
ginning of the twentieth century, when industrial
progress began to overflow and undermine the struc-
ture of the eighteenth century nation-state. In order
to reinforce the structure, in every one of the nation-
state units, artificial measures had to be taken on a
scale that could only be undertaken by governments.
A development started which, in the greater part of
die world, led to the complete destruction of all in-
dividual liberty.

In some countries like Germany, Italy and Spain,
this change was undertaken openly and purposely by
suppressing individual liberty, and by proclaiming the
principle that salvation lies in the all-powerful totali-
tarian nation-state endowed with the right to dispose
of the very lives of its citizens.

In other countries, like the United States, Great
Britain, France, the development has been slow,
gradual and against our will. We have continued to
uphold democratic ideology but little by litde we have
given up more and more of our individual liberty to
strengthen our respective nation-states. It is immate-
rial which parties were in power and were instru-
mental in bringing about these changes. Right and
Left, conservative, liberal, socialist, capitalist and
Communist forces evolved in the same direction. It
is wide of the mark to blame any government or any
political party for the growing centralization of state
administration. The trend is irresistible. Any other
governments or parties in power would have been

160 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

forced to take the same measures in their strug
against involvement in foreign wars with other nation-
states and in their fight against violent social con-
flicts at home.

Under the double threat of imminent and in-
escapable war, as pressure from outside, and growing
social conflicts, economic crises and unemployment,
as pressure from inside, it was and is imperative for
each nation to strengthen its state by instituting or
expanding military service, by accepting higher and
higher taxation, by admitting more and more inter-
ference of the state in the everyday life of the in-
dividual.

This trend seems the logical result of the present
conflict between the body politic and the body eco-
nomic in our nation-states. In a world which indus-
try and science have transformed into a single huge
entity, our political ideologies and superstitions are
hindering growth and movement.

Violent conflicts between nations are the inevitable
consequence of an ineffective and inadequate organi-
zation of relations between the nations, and we shall
never be able to escape another and another world war
so long as we do not recognize the elementary prin-
ciples and mechanics of any society.

It is a strange paradox that at any suggestion of a
world-wide legal order which could guarantee man-
land freedom from war for many generations to come,
and consequently individual liberty, all the worshipers
of the present nation-states snipe: “Super-state!”

The reality is that the present nation-state has be-
come a super-state.

It is this nation-state which today is making serfs

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL z6x

of its citizens. It is this state which, to protect its par*
ticular vested interests, takes away the earnings of
the people and wastes them on munitions in the con-
stant fear of being attacked and destroyed by some
other nation-state. It is this state which, by forcing
passports and visas upon us, does not allow us to move
freely. It is this state, wherever it exists, which by
keeping prices high through artificial regulations and
tariffs, believing that every state must be economically
self-supporting, does not permit its citizens to enjoy
the fruits of modern science and technology. It is this
state which interferes more and more with our every-
day life and tends to prescribe every minute of our
existence.

This is the “super-state”!

It is not a future nightmare or a proposal we caa
freely accept or reject. We are living within it, in
the middle of the twentieth century. We are entirely
within its orbit, whether in America, in England, in
Russia or Argentina, in Portugal or Turkey.

And we shall become more and more subject to
this all-powerful super-state if our supreme goal is to
maintain the nation-state structure of the world. Un’
der the constant threat of foreign war and under the
boiling pressure of economic problems, insolvable on
a national basis, we are forced to relinquish our lib-
erties, one after the other, to the nation-state because
in final analysis our tribalism, our “in-group drive/*
our nationalism, is stronger than our love of freedom
or our economic self-interest. At the present stage of
industrialism, the nation-states can maintain them-
selves in one way alone: by becoming super-states.

The super-state which we all dread and abhor can-

i6a THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

ot be qualified by the territory over which it ex-
tends or by the number of citizens over which it has
authority. The criterion of a super-state can be only
the degree to which it interferes with individual liber-
ties, the degree of collective control it imposes on its
citizens*

The Italy of Mussolini in 1925 was much more a
“super-state” than the United States of Coolidge, al-
though the latter was twenty-five times larger. Tiny
Latvia, under the dictatorship of Ulmanis, was much
more a “super-state” than the Commonwealth of Aus-
tralia, covering a whole continent.

We cannot have democracy in a world of inter-
dependent, sovereign nation-states, because democracy
means the sovereignty of the people. The nation-state
structure strangulates and exterminates the sov-
ereignty of the people, that sovereignty which, instead
of being vested in institutions of the community, is
vested in sixty or seventy separate sets of sovereign
nation-state institutions.

In such a system, the sovereignty of each group
tends to cancel out the sovereignty of the others, as
no institution of any one group can ever be sovereign
enough to protect its people against the infringements
and dangers emanating from the fifty-nine or sixty-
nine different sets of institutions in the other sov-
ereign groups.

Absolute national sovereignty, as incarnated by our
national governments, could operate satisfactorily only
in a condition of complete isolation. Once a situation
exists in which several sovereign nation-states are in
contact with each other, their inevitably growing in-

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 163

terdependence, their ever-closer relations completely
modify the picture. In a world of sixty or seventy sov-
ereign nation-states, the real sovereign power of a
nation to determine independently from influences
radiating from other sovereign nation-states its own
course and its own actions is reduced to a minimum.
The tendency within such an interdependent system
is to reduce to zero, to cancel completely and to annul
any real sovereignty or self-determination of the con-
flicting national units.

At die present stage of industrial development, there
can be no freedom under the system of sovereign
nation-states. This system is in conflict with funda-
mental democratic principles and jeopardizes all our
cherished individual freedoms.

As the sovereign nation-states cannot prevent war,
and as war is becoming an indescribable calamity of
ever-longer duration, we are periodically called upon
to sacrifice everything for sheer survival.

We cannot say that our individual freedom is guar-
anteed if every twenty years all our families are
torn apart and we are forced to go forth to kill or be
killed.

We cannot say that our welfare and economic free-
dom are guaranteed when every twenty years we have
to stop production of consumer goods and waste all
our energies and resources in the manufacture of the
tools of war.

We cannot say that we have freedom of speech and
the press when every twenty years conditions force
censorship upon us.

We cannot say that private property is guaranteed

r6 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

if every twenty years gigantic public debts and in-
flation destroy our savings*

Defenders of national sovereignty will argue that
all these restrictions and suppressions of individual
liberty are emergency measures, necessitated by the
exigencies of war and cannot be regarded as normal.

Of course, they are emergency measures. But as
the nation-state structure, far from being able to pre-
vent war, is the only and ultimate cause of the recur-
rent international wars, and as the aftermath of each
of these international wars is simultaneously the prel-
ude to the next violent clash between the nations,
eighty or ninety per cent of our lives are spent in times
of “emergency.” Under existing conditions, periods
of emergency are the “normal” and not the “ab-
normal”

If we want to stick to the obsolete conception of
nation-states, which cannot prevent wars, we shall
have to pay for worshiping this false goddess with the
sacrifice of all our individual liberties, for the protec-
tion of which, ironically, the sovereign nation-states
were created.

World wars such as have been twice inflicted on
this generation cause such major catastrophes, are so
horribly costly in human life and material wealth that
before all else we must solve this central problem and
establish freedom from fear. It is a foregone conclu-
sion that unless we do this we cannot have and shall
not have any of the other freedoms. Within a nation-
state, as within a cage, freedom of action, individual
aspirations, become a mockery.

It is all the more important to recognize the pri-

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 165

mordial necessity of a universal, political and legal
order because there is not the slightest possibility that
we can solve any one of our economic or social prob-
lems in a world divided into scores of hermetically
sealed national compartments. The interrelationship
and interdependence of the nations are so evident and
so compelling that whatever happens in one country
immediately and directly affects the internal life of
all the other countries.

It is pathetic to watch the great laboring masses
of common men aspire to better conditions, higher
wages, better education, more leisure, better housing,
more medical care and social security, while they
struggle under the most appalling conditions. There
can be no question that these are the real problems
of the overwhelming majority of men and women and
it is perfectly comprehensible that the ambitions and
desires of hundreds of millions are focused on these
issues.

Yet, the very fact that these problems are everywhere
regarded as national matters, problems which can be
solved by national governments through national in-
stitutions, makes these aspirations unattainable
dreams. In themselves, they are within the reach of
reality. Scientific and technological progress have
brought them to our very door. For a fraction of the
time, money, thought and labor wasted on interna-
tional wars, social and economic conditions could be
transformed beyond recognition. But under the cer-
tain threat of recurrent wars, all these social aspira-
tions of the people are being indefinitely postponed.
Even if in one country or other legislation to this

166 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

effect is enacted, it will be crushed and buried by the
next global war, lite mountain huts by an avalanche.

Full employment within the compartmented polit-
ical structure of sovereign nation-states is either a
myth or Fascism* Economic life can develop on a
scale to provide work and goods for all only within
a world order in which the permanent threat of war
between sovereign nation-states is eliminated, and the
incentive to strengthen the nation-states provided by
the constant fear of being attacked and destroyed is
replaced by the security that a legal order alone
creates*

Social and economic problems are essentially prob-
lems of a Copernican world, insolvable with nation-
centric, Ptolemaic means.

National leaders seriously declare in one breath
that we must maintain untrammeled national sover-
eignty, but that we must have free trade between the
nations.

Free trade without free migration is an economic
absurdity, a mathematical impossibility.

But the nation-states, like feudal knights, are chain-
ing their subjects to the soil of their homeland,
refusing them that most elementary of freedoms, the
freedom of movement The interference of the nation-
states in this field of human liberty is identical with
the absolute rule of the feudal landowners over their
serfs. The system of passports, visas, exit permits, im-
migration quotas, is incompatible with free economic
exchange*

Were it possible to assign to nations the economic
roles they must play, like casting a theatrical produc-

SUPER-STATE ^ND THE INDIVIDUAL 167

tion, the problem of international trade would be
simple. If Spain could be persuaded to concentrate on
growing oranges, Brazil on producing coffee, the Ar-
gentine on raising beef, France on manufacturing
luxuries, Great Britain on weaving textiles and the
United States on making automobiles, it \vould be
relatively easy to persuade people of the advantages
of a free and unhampered exchange of products be*
tween the nation-states.

But the economic roles thus allotted to the nations
are not equally important or equally profitable from
a political point of view, and therefore each national
unit naturally tends to produce everything possible
at home. There is not tie slightest chance that the
United States will ever stop producing grain and
meat so that Canada and the Argentine may freely
export their grain and meat products to the United
States. Nor will Great Britain and France ever agree
to stop building ships and motorcars so that United
States shipyards and industrial plants may freely sell
their products all over the world.

Once a certain number of closed national units are
in existence, each producing a certain amount of al-
most every commodity, and once each sovereign nation
is dominated by the idea of strengthening its national
economic machinery, freedom of exchange between
these units becomes impossible without the stronger
producer nation dominating the weaker. Free trade
between such divided national economies would in-
evitably cause shutdowns in a great number of indus-
tries in many of the countries and would make it im-
possible for several countries, working under less

168 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

favorable conditions, to sell their agricultural products.

Such a calamity brought about by the sudden
abolition of tariff walls between the sovereign nation-
states could be remedied only if the masses, as they
became unemployed in certain parts of the world, were
free to migrate to those places where the freedom of
competition resulting from the abolition of tariffs,
would create prosperity and new opportunities for em-
ployment and investment in specific fields.

If the nations maintained the existing restrictions
on migration, abolition of protective tariffs would
bring about conditions in many nations which no sov-
ereign nation-state could nor indeed ever would
accept and sanction*

The Malthusian superstition regarding immigra-
tion that exists in all die nations of the world is so
strong today that it is impossible to imagine the sover-
eign nation-states easing their rigid policies aimed at
prohibiting immigration.

The fallacy that immigration above all creates pres-
sure on the labor market, lower wages and unem-
ployment is so deep-rooted; the failure of the still
underpopulated new countries to realize that, on the
contrary, wealth is created by man is so striking, that
freedom of migration between sovereign nation-states
is politically unrealizable* Without it, freedom of trade
between sovereign nation-states is unimaginable.

Free trade cannot function between sovereign units.
To have free trade between larger territories, we must
first eliminate the obstacle of political frontiers divid-
ing the peoples.

Another conditio sine qua non of a free world

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 169

economy which alone can produce tinder present-
day conditions enough wealth to secure economic
freedom is a stable currency. It is a truism that a
well-functioning, highly rationalized and integrated
economy requires a stable standard of exchange. But
this elementary problem has never been satisfactorily
solved and can never be solved within the political
nation-state framework.

Without a stable and generally accepted standard,
no national economy could have developed as it actu-
ally did. And no further progress in international
economy is thinkable without a universally accepted,
stable standard of exchange.

Every few years, the entire system of international
trade gets out of gear because of some difficulty in
the peculiarly constructed world monetary system.
Currency is a jealously guarded attribute of nation?!
sovereignty and each nation-state insists upon havin^
its own national currency and determining its value
as it pleases, by internal, national, sovereign decision.

So it is a terrible and constantly recurring problem
how to “stabilize” the exchange rates between the
United States and France, between England and
Spain, between each and any of the national sovereign
economic units.

But it is no problem at all to keep the currency in
permanent relationship between Michigan and South
Carolina, between Cornwall and Oxfordshire. The
reason is very simple. One single currency is in cir-
culation.

Economists and statesmen say that such a solution
could never be applied between nations because their

i 7 o THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

living standards are not on the same level and rich
countries would suffer from any monetary union.
This economic commonplace hardly stands examina-
tion. The difference in wealth between nations is no
greater than the difference in living standards between
the South Carolina tobacco fanners and the Detroit
industrialists in the United States, the Breton fisher-
men and the Parisians in France, or between rich and
poor regions to be found inside any nation.

The fact is that, just as unified national currency
was necessary to facilitate the development of national
economies up to their present level, so a unified world
currency is the indispensable condition for further
development of world economy from the present stage
on.

“International monetary agreements/’ “stabiliza-
tion funds,” “international banks/’ “international
clearing houses/’ “international barter arrangements”
can never create stability of exchange rates. If we
maintain scores of different national currencies, each
an instrument of sovereign national policy, no amount
of banking acrobatics can ever keep them balanced,
as each sovereign nation will at all times regard its
own national economic interests as more important
than the necessity of international monetary stability.
The complicated machinery of world economy,
world-wide production, world-wide use of raw mate-
rials, distribution on the world markets, demands a
stable standard of exchange that only a single world
currency can provide. As long as it is the sovereign
attribute of sixty or seventy social units to cheat each
other by selling a hundred yards of cloth in exchange

SUPER-STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 171

for fifty pairs of shoes and then, by a national sov-
ereign decision, to reduce the length of the yard from
three feet to two feet, there is no hope for freedom in
world economic exchange.

No matter how it hurts our most cherished dogmas,
we have to realize that in our industrialized world, the
greatest threat to individual liberty is the ever-gro\ving
power of the national super-state.

As a direct result of national sovereignty, we are
living today in the worst kind of dependency and
slavery.

The rights of the individual and human liberty,
won at such a cost at the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury through the overthrow of personal absolutism,
are more or less lost again. They are on the way to
being completely lost to the new tyrant, the nation-
state.

The fight for liberty if it is liberty we want will
have to be fought anew, from the very beginning.
But this time it will be infinitely harder than it was
two centuries ago. Now we have to destroy, not men
and families but tremendously strong, mechanized,
sacrosanct, totalitarian institutions.

Those who will fight for the lost freedom of man
will be persecuted by the nation-states more ruthlessly
and cruelly than were our forefathers by the absolute
monarchs.

PART THREE

CHAPTER XI

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM

NONE of the dominant conceptions of political
thought is more abused, more discredited,
more prostituted, than “internationalism/ 1

Internationalism is such a useless word. It is dis-
liked by the great majority of peoples and compromised
by its association with the Catholic church, socialism,
big business, Communism, Jewry, cartels, Free-
masonry, Fascism, pacifism, armament industry and
other movements and organizations opposed one and
all by the majority of the human race. Also it is an
utterly misleading term.

It may prove a blessing that internationalism has
been compromised in so many aspects. From its in-
ception, internationalism has been an entirely erro-
neous notion. It has retarded political and social prog-
ress by half a century.

Rather early in the industrial age, people of various
classes and professions within the various nation-states
began to feel restrained and hindered by their na-
tional barriers. Efforts were made to try to overcome
these barriers, by establishing contacts and working
out common programs, common movements, common
organizations between groups with similar interests

i 7 6 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

in different countries. For a certain time tliese organi-
zations no doubt strengthened the position and influ-
ence of those who took part in them. But far from
overcoming the difficulties which induced their cre-
ation, such international organizations stabilized and
perpetuated the conditions responsible for the diffi-
culties.

Internationalism means exactly what it says. It ex-
presses: Inter-Nationalism.

It does not and never has opposed nationalism and
the evil effects of the nation-state structure. It merely
tries to alleviate particular symptoms of our sick world
without treating the disease itself. Paradox it may be
but nothing has added more to the strength of na-
tional institutions, nothing has fanned nationalism
more than internationalism.

The founders of modern socialism assumed that the
working classes ruthlessly exploited, as they believed,
by the capitalist states could feel no loyalty toward
their particular nations. The interests of the laboring
masses in every country were thought to lie in oppos-
ing and combating capitalist states. Consequently, the
proletariat was organized on an international basis, in
the belief that the loyalty and allegiance of the workers
would be the exclusive appanage of the internationally
organized Socialist party.

But neither the First nor the Second nor the Third
Internationale saw that allegiance and loyalty to a
nation-state has little, if anything, to do with the eco-
nomic and social position of the individuals in that
state. They made no attempt to weaken or destroy the
nation-state as such. Their aim was to overthrow the

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 177

capitalist class and transfer political power to the
proletariat within each nation-state. They thought that
such independent, heterogeneous national revolutions
taking place in many countries through co-ordinated
action, either simultaneously or following each other,
would solve the social problem, abolish war between
nations, create world peace.

It was soon obvious that these “international” work-
ing ckss organizations changed nothing in the world-
wide trend toward nationalism. All working organs of
the Internationales were composed of “delegates” from
all the various nations, from socialist parties whose task
was to defend the interests of their own national
groups and among whom serious differences of opinion
existed at all times. The moment organized socialist
workers in the various countries had to choose between
loyalty to their comrades in the internationally or-
ganized class warfare within nations, and loyalty to
their compatriots in the nationally organized warfare
between nations, they invariably chose the latter.
Never in any country did organized labor withdraw its
support from the nation-state in waging war against
another nation-state, even though the latter had a
laboring class with the same resentments, the same
ideals and the same aims as its own.

Through a fundamental contradiction in its pro-
gram, modern socialism is particularly to blame for
strengthening nationalism and for the inevitable con-
sequence: international war. The contradiction lies in
the discrepancy between the socialist political ideal
of internationalism and the socialist economic ideal
of nationalization of the means of production.

i 7 8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

It is difficult to understand how, during an entire
century, and particularly in the face of the events of
the first part of the twentieth century, not one of the
socialist or Communist leaders called the attention of
his followers to the fact that nationalization of the
land and of industries cannot be reconciled with the
political ideal they call “internationalism.”

The greater the extent of nationalization, the more
power is vested in the nation-state, the more impreg-
nable becomes nationalism. The stronger the nation-
states, the more inevitable and the more imminent is
the danger of conflict between them. The coexistence
of three score and ten odd sovereign nation-states with
all economic power in the hands of each nation-state
is unthinkable without frequent and violent conflicts.
Wars between nations or the threat of such wars
lead to restrictions of individual rights, to longer work-
ing hours, lower living standards, freezing of wages,
outlawing of strikes, reduction of consumption, con-
scription, regimentation in short, to everything
labor is supposed to be fighting.

The socialist and Communist parties must realize
that through their program of “nationalization” they
have done more to strengthen and buttress the modem
totalitarian nation-states than have the aristocracy
or any feudal or capitalist ruling class. This tragedy
is the result of acting emotionally on first impulses,
without thinking the problem through. The workers
of the world’ must realize that through their miscon-
ception and through their self-deluding ideal of inter-
nationalism, they are preventing the realization of
their ideals of peace and betterment of economic and
social conditions.

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 179

By advocating nationalization, the socialists orig-
inally had in mind, of course, collectivization, the
transfer of certain property rights from individuals to
the community. During the first half of the nineteenth
century, the concept of the nation was almost identical
with the ideal of the community, and the confusion
of the two at that time is understandable. But at the
present stage of industrial development, in the middle
of the twentieth century, nothing is more remote from
the ideal of the community than the nations. They
have shrunk into tightly sealed compartments ob-
structing any community expression. From the point
of view of the community, national and private inter-
ests differ scarcely at all. Both are particular interests.

“Nationalization” today no longer means collectiv-
ism but its opposite. Human collectivity, at the present
stage of evolution, is without institutions and conse-
quently without reality.

If socialists and Communists believe that took and
means of production or indeed anything, should be-
long to the community, they must first give reality to
the ideal of community before the transfer of any kind
of authority to that community can have meaning.
Confusing the nation-state with the community is a
most dangerous error, as today nation-states are the
mortal enemies of the ideal of human community, far
more than any landowner, industrialist or private cor-
poration.

The same misconception prevails among socialists
as to economic planning. They believe that the pres-
ent anarchic conditions of production guided ex-
clusively by the profit motive can be remedied by
economic planning. They would have production

xft> THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

guided not by motives of immediate profit, but by
the long-range needs of the consuming masses.

That for smoother and more efficient functioning
the economic process in its present stage needs a cer-
tain amount of guidance and directives emanating
from authorities higher than the individual manufac-
ture^ can no longer be disputed if we understand
the laws regulating all social activities, including eco-
nomic activity. But the realization of this necessity
is an altogether different thing from the assertion
that national governments should control such eco-
nomic planning.

In theory, it is conceivable that the economic life
of each nation might be controlled and planned as
minutely as possible by government authorities. But
if such planning is regarded as a national problem;
if all plans and regulations are undertaken by national
governments, applicable only to their own national
populations; and if there are seventy-odd independent
systems of planning devised by the sovereign nation-
states in their own particular interest, the result can
only be confusion, clash of interests, conflict, war
the exact opposite of planning.

In the middle of the twentieth century, we see
that industrial workers, organized in socialist and
Communist parties, are the most intransigent national-
ists, the stanchest supporters of their respective nation-
states. Without even mentioning Soviet Russia, where
identification of the Communist party with the Soviet
state explains to some extent the nationalist fervor of
Soviet labor, the organized industrial workers in the
United States, Great Britain, France and other demo-

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 181

cratic countries represent forces demanding higher
and higher tariff barriers; restriction if not prevention
of immigration; racial discrimination and a series of
measures that are clearly reactionary, in which they
go hand in hand with their national governments. In
any relationship between national units, they totally
disregard the interests of their fellow workers liv-
ing in other nation-states.

Internationalism among the capitalist forces was
exactly similar in its development

Industrialists, bankers, traders, also began to feel
hampered by the barriers of nation-states and began to
form organizations reaching beyond national bound-
aries. By and large, they succeeded in arriving at
agreements which excluded competition in their
respective domestic markets, in fixing minimum prices
and in regulating competition on the world market

Most of these measures were naturally detrimental
to consumers the world over. But their greatest draw-
back was that they failed to solve satisfactorily or for
any length of time the problems they were supposed
to solve. Far from leading to a reconciliation of diver-
gent national interests, such international financial
and cartel agreements served only to intensify national-
ism among industrialists and bankers, all anxious to
strengthen their own positions as national units,
against other national units.

The national contingents of these international
producing and financing corporate bodies became com-
pletely identified with the interests of their nation-
state and in every country governments were backing
them by economic policies designed to strengthen the

zSa THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

national representatives in these international eco-
nomic organizations. The direct results of these at-
tempts to internationalize big business led to an ac-
celeration of economic nationalism, higher tariffs,
irrational subsidies, currency manipulations, and all
the other devices of government control repugnant
to the principles of free enterprise.

All these attempts by private interests and political
forces to overcome the obstacles arising from die rigid
framework of the nation-states were utterly futile.

After the ravages of the first World War, the rep-
resentatives of the nation-states, the national govern-
ments themselves, felt that something had to be done
to bridge the constantly widening abyss between na-
tions, and to prevent a repetition of such devastating
wars between them.

From this necessity, the Covenant of the League
of Nations was born, drafted mainly by Woodrow
Wilson, Colonel House, Lord Cecil and Lon Bour-
geois. According to the Covenant, peace was sup-
posed to be maintained through regular meetings and
discussions of representatives of sovereign nation-
states having equal rights in an Assembly of all na-
tions and in a Council, comprised of representatives
of the great powers, as permanent members, and a
limited number of smaller powers elected as tem-
porary members by the Assembly. No decision was
possible over the veto of any nation. Unanimity was
necessary to apply any effective measure. Any na-
tional government could withdraw from the League
the moment it did not like the atmosphere.

The spirit of the Covenant was as irreproachable

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 183

as the bylaws of an exclusive London club, open to
gentlemen only. But it was somewhat remote from
reality. The League had some success in nonpolitical
fields. It did excellent research work, and even settled
minor political clashes between small nations. But
never in its entire history was the League able to
settle a conflict in which one of the major powers
was involved. After a few short years, the construc-
tion began to totter and crack. When Japan, Ger-
many and Italy withdrew, it was obvious that the
political value of the League of Nations, its ability
to maintain peace between the nations, was equal
to zero.

It is useless to argue what would have happened
if . * *

If the United States had joined the League. * . .
If Great Britain and the ILS.A. had sent their navies
into Japanese waters in 1931. … If France, England
and other European powers had marched into Ger-
many when Hitler repudiated the Locarno Pact and
occupied the Rhineland. * . . If Britain and France
had closed the Suez Canal and had used force to
prevent Italian aggression in Ethiopia. … If the
members of the League had gone to the defense of
Austrian independence. . . . And many more ‘if s* . . .

The historical fact remains that never on any oc-
casion was the League of Nations capable of acting
when action would have involved the use of force
against any of the leading “military powers. To say
that this was not the fault of the League, that it was
the fault of the powers who would not support the
League, makes no sense* The League was, after all,

1 84 THE AXATOMY OF PEACE

nothing more than the aggregate of the nations that
composed it.

The League of Nations failed because it was Based
on the false notion of inter-nationalism, on the idea
that peace between national units, between sovereign
nation-states, can be maintained merely by bringing
their representatives together to debate their differ-
ences, without making fundamental changes in their
relations to each other.

Since the foundation of the League of Nations,
events have moved with fatal rapidity into the sec-
ond phase of the twentieth century world catastrophe,
which occurred on September i, 1939, exactly as if
the League had not existed. It is not too much to as-
sume that die rhythm of this series of inexorable
events was even accelerated by the existence of the
League, because the frequent meetings of representa-
tives of the sovereign nation-states served only to in-
tensify their mutual distrust and suspicion.

Besides the functioning of the League, between die
two world wars we have witnessed innumerable inter-
national conferences, composed of the representatives
of national governments, on political, military and
economic matters. AH of them failed, although for a
short time one or two of them gave the illusion of
success. But even these exceptions, widely publicized
as successes, were nothing more than pious expressions
of vague and unreal hope, like the Kellogg Pact that
was certainly not worth the traveling expenses of the
national delegates.

In spite of these experiences, in spite of die im-
measurable misery and suffering of this universal
catastrophe caused by the clash of national units, our

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 185

governments and political parties, supported by the
vast majority of a misled, gullible and unenlightened
public, have nothing better to offer than a repetition
of what has been proved and proved again a total
fallacy: peace and the prevention of war by treaty
arrangements between sovereign nation-states.

With the one sole exception when in a moment
of despair in June, 1940, Winston Churchill sug-
gested union between Great Britain and France all
the utterances and declarations of our governments
and political leaders of all parties demonstrate that
they are incapable or unwilling to contemplate any-
thing except such an inter-national organization.

All the political manifestations during World War
II the Atlantic Charter, the United Nations declara-
tion, the Moscow agreements, the Dumbarton Oaks
proposals, the Teheran and Yalta communiques, the
San Francisco Charter underline, specify and empha-
size that whatever may be done is to be done and will
be done between sovereign nation-states.

The world outlook expressed by the word “inter-
nationalism” embodies the greatest misconception and
the gravest error of our generation.

Inevitably it will continue to fortify the nation-
state structure, at a time in history when our only
salvation and chance to progress lies in weakening
and finally destroying that framework. Any artificial
setup to overcome difficulties by “bringing together/*
by “mutual understanding between’* the delegates of
nation-states is not only bound to fail but will un-
necessarily prolong the agony of our obsolete, mori-
bund political system.

To realize clearly the implications of inter-national’

1 86 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

ism, \ve must bear in mind the meaning of nationalism.

In this our day and generation, nationalism domi-
nates democracy, socialism, liberalism, Christianity,
capitalism, Fascism, politics, religion, economics,
monarchies and republics* Nationalism is the soda
water that mixes with all the other drinks and makes
them sparkle.

Nationalism is a herd instinct. It is one of many
manifestations of that tribal instinct which is one of
the deepest and most constant characteristics of man
as a social creature. It is a collective inferiority com-
plex, that gives comforting reactions to individual
fear, loneliness, weakness, inability, insecurity, help-
lessness, seeking refuge in exaggerated consciousness ‘
and pride of belonging to a certain group of people.

This urge, today called nationalism, has been viru-
lent at all times and in every civilization, manifesting
itself in many different ways. The origin and quality
of this transcendental mass emotion are probably un-
changeable, but the object toward which it directs
itself has undergone manifold and radical transforma-
tions throughout history. In the long evolution of
human society, the “in-group drive” was transferred
from the family to the tribe, village, city, province,
religion, dynasty up to the modern nations.

The object is always different But the emotional
herd instinct itself remains the same. And it con-
stantly causes conflict between the various units until
the object of the “in-group drive” is integrated into a
larger, broader group.

According to the democratic conception, the nation
is the totality of the population living within one

FALLACY OF INTERNATIONALISM 187

state bound together by common ideals. The nation
is, therefore, an elastic concept. During the past cen-
turies, it has constantly changed and grown and the
allegiance of peoples has changed and grown with it

People from Massachusetts and people from Georgia
did not feel the same “nationalism” in 1850 that they
feel today. Englishmen and Scotsmen owed allegiance
to different states and symbols before 1707. So
changed the “nationalism” of the Piedmontese and
the Tuscans, the Burgundians and the Gascons. The
Uzbeks were not always Russian nationalists and the
Saxons did not always fight side by side with the
Prussians.

Nationalism, like any other group emotion, can be
directed toward a different object without changing
the quality or intensity of the emotion. But at no
time in history and upon no occasion was it possible
to reconcile and to maintain peace between distinct
and conflicting groups of men driven by the same
emotions.

Inter-nationalism countenances nationalism.

It implies that the various nationalisms can be
bridged. It recognizes as supreme the sovereign
nation-state institutions and prevents the integration
of peoples into a supra-national society.

We have played long enough with the toy of inter-
nationalism. The problem we are facing is not a prob-
lem between nationalisms. It is die problem of a crisis
in human society caused by nationalism, and which
consequently nationalism or inter-nationalism can
never solve.

What is needed is universalism, A creed and a

iSS THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

movement clearly proclaiming that its purpose is to
create peace by a legal order between men beyond
and above the existing nation-state structure.

CHAPTER XII

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION OF
NATIONS

DURING the second World War, Wilson has
often been blamed for a series of grave errors
of procedure, for not handling the situation properly
after the first World War. Others, defending Wilson,
say that the League of Nations failed, not because
of any mistake Wilson made, but because the nations
composing the League did not live up to the obliga-
tions they assumed*

Those who criticize Wilson’s actions say that he
made a great mistake in not taking a representative
committee of American Senators with him to the
peace conference in Paris* Had leading members of
the Foreign Relations Committee of the United
States Senate participated in the negotiations pre-
ceding the Versailles Treaty, the Senate would have
ratified the Covenant. Had America become a mem-
ber of the League, the argument continues, the sec-
ond World War would never have broken out

By taking to Paris a delegation with only one Re-

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 189

publican, who was neither a Senator nor prominent
in the party, Wilson offended the Senate and the
Republican party, with the result that the treaty was
not ratified. To avoid a repetition of that tragedy, this
time representatives of both parties in the Senate
should participate in drafting the new world organi-
zation.

Wilson is also blamed for having insisted upon the
inclusion of the Covenant of the League in the
Treaty of Versailles, So the conclusion was drawn
that this time we should set up the world organization
separately from the peace arrangements.

Wilson insisted on the equality of nations, mem-
bers of the League. As that principle did not work,
we are now to have a league dominated by the great
powers, who actually are responsible for keeping the
peace.

Wilson insisted that the coalition created by the
war, the Allied and Associated Powers, be dissolved
after the cessation of hostilities and that the new
League take over the settlement of all further prob-
lems and disputes, including the application of the
peace treaties. That method having failed, the grand
alliance created by the war is to be maintained and
the proposed world organization to have nothing to
do with the peace settlement or with the conditions
imposed upon the defeated enemy countries.

Wilson insisted upon general disarmament As
that program proved ineffective to maintain peace,
this time the great powers are to remain armed to
prevent any further aggression and protect the peace.

Wilson insisted on immediate settlement after the

i 9 o THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

cessation of hostilities. Now we are to postpone
political, territorial and economic decisions and make
special transitional arrangements before we discuss
“final” settlements*

Thus goes the dispute. Arguments and more argu-
ments are adduced, blaming the failure of Wilson
on the opposition of “bad men/’ on the secret treaties
of the Allies, on the mistake he made by going to
Europe personally, on the fact that he took principles
and no plans to Paris, on his stubbornness in dealing
with the Senate between February 14 and March
13, 1919, when he was back in Washington, and so
forth.

All these arguments criticizing Wilson’s acts and
policies are entirely superficial. None of them even
approaches the core of the problem.

Having reversed our policy and applied methods
and procedures the exact opposite of Wilson’s methods
and procedures, without changing the fundamentals
of our approach to the problem, the result will be
exactly the same.

Granted that the new covenant for a world league
was almost unanimously accepted by the United
States Senate; now if we made a just peace with the
enemies of the United Nations; if we maintained the
grand alliance to enforce the postwar settlements; if
we created a world organization of all ‘ peace-loving”
nations with the United States and the U.S.S.R. par-
ticipating; if the great military powers maintained
heavy armaments to prevent “aggressions”; if the
great powers were charged by the proposed world or-
ganization to maintain and enforce peace with their

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 191

armed might in brief, if we followed a procedure
diametrically opposed to the procedure of 1919, the
result would be the same: another world war in a
short time.

We shall never learn the lessons of the swift and
complete collapse of the 1919 world order, if we con-
fine ourselves to formal and superficial discussions
of method and policy.

Less wide of the mark, though altogether fallacious,
is the view that the League and the world order of
1919 crumbled, not because of any errors committed
in 1919 nor because of any weakness of the League,
but because the nations refused to fulfill their Cove-
nant and failed to act at critical moments as they
had promised and were supposed to act.

So at the end of the second World War, we find
statesmen asserting that the 1919 world structure
failed because the ideals and principles of Wilson
were abandoned. According to them, there was noth-
ing whatever wrong with the underlying principles
upon which that order was erected.

The historic fact is that the second World War
came about, not because Wilson’s doctrines were
not carried out, but because they were!

If we wish to avert further disappointments and
another major catastrophe, we must try to understand
the essential errors and fundamental fallacies of Wil-
son’s ideas.

Although there are a few indications that Wilson
did aim at the establishment of a “sovereignty of man-
kind/’ his ideas as laid down in the Fourteen Points,
Four Principles, Four Ends, Five Particulars and

392 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

finally in the Covenant of the League, all point most
distinctly in an opposite direction.

The basic thought of Wilson was that every nation
and every people is entitled to self-government, politi-
cal independence and self-determination and that a
league of independent and sovereign nations should
guarantee the independence and sovereignty of each
and every nation.

In the eighteenth century this would have been a
feasible conception. But in the twentieth century such
an oversimplified and superficial solution was bound
to lead to total anarchy in international relations.
This conception clearly demonstrates that Wilson,
his associates in the creation of the 1919 world order
and all the millions who today seek solutions along
the same lines, are unable to clarify the confusion in
their minds as to elementary social and political
principles.

Self-determination of the nations is a Ptolemaic
conception.

Self-determination is an anachronism. It asserts
the sacred right of every nation to do as it pleases
within its own frontiers, no matter how monstrous or
how harmful to the rest of the world. It asserts that
every aggregation of peoples has a sacred right to split
itself into smaller and ever smaller units, each sov-
ereign in its own corner. It assumes that the extension
of economic or political influence through ever-larger
units along centralized interdependent lines is, in
itself, unjust

Because this ideal once held good in a larger,
simpler, less integrated world it has a terrific emo-

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 193

tional appeal. It can be used and is being used by
more and more politicians, writers, agitators, in
slogans calling for the “end of imperialism/’ tlie
“abolition of the colonial system,” “independence”
for this and that racial or territorial group.

The present world chaos did not come upon us be-
cause this or that nation had not yet achieved total
political independence. It will not be relieved in the
slightest by creating more sovereign units or by dis-
membering interdependent aggregations like the
British Empire that have shown a capacity for eco-
nomic and political advancement On the contrary,
the disease now ravaging our globe would be intensi-
fied, since it is in large measure the direct result of
the myth of total political independence in a world
of total economic and social interdependence.

If the world is to be made a tolerable place to live
in, if we are to obtain surcease from war, we must
forget our emotional attachment to the eighteenth
century ideal of absolute nationalism. Under modern
conditions it can only breed want, fear, war and
slavery.

The truth is that the passion for national independ-
ence is a leftover from a dead past. This passion has
destroyed the freedom of many nations. No period in
history saw the organization of so many independent
states as that following the war of 1919. Within two
decades nationalism has devoured its children all
those new nations were conquered and enslaved, along
with a lot of old nations. It was, let us hope, the last
desperate expression of an ideal made obsolete by
new conditions, the last catastrophic attempt to

194 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

squeeze the world into a political pattern that had lost
its relevance.

Quite certainly, independence is a deep-rooted
political ideal of every group of men, be it family,
religion, association or nation.

If there were only one single nation on earth, the
independence of its people could very well be achieved
by its right to self-determination, by its right to
choose the form of government and the social and
economic order it desired, by its right to absolute
sovereignty.

Such absolute national self-determination might
still guarantee independence if in all the world there
were only two or three self-sufficient nations, sepa-
rated from each other by wide spaces, having no close
political, economic or cultural contact with each other.

But once there are many nations whose territories
are cheek by jowl, who have extensive cultural and
religious ties and interdependent economic systems,
who are in permanent relations by the exchange of
goods, services and persons, then the ideal of self-
determination of each nation having the absolute
right to choose the form of government, the economic
and social systems it wishes, of each having the right
to untrammeled national sovereignty becomes a
totally different proposition.

The behavior of each self-determined national unit
is no longer the exclusive concern of the inhabitants
of that unit. It becomes equally the concern of the
inhabitants of other units. What the sovereign state
of one self-determined nation may consider to the
interest and welfare of its own people, may be det-

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 195

rimental to the interests and welfare of other nations.
Whatever countermeasures the other self-determined
sovereign nations may take to defend the interests
of their respective nationals, equally affect the jJeoples
of all other national sovereign units.

This interplay of action and reaction of the various
sovereign states completely defeats the purpose for
which the sovereign nation-states were created, if that
purpose was to safeguard the freedom, independence
and self-determination of their peoples.

They are no longer sovereign in their decisions
and courses of action. To a very large extent they are
obliged to act the way they do by circumstances exist-
ing in other sovereign units, and are unable to pro-
tect and guarantee the independence of their popu-
lations.

Innumerable examples can be cited to prove that,
although maintaining the fiction of independence and
sovereignty, no present-day nation-state is independent
and sovereign in its decisions. Instead, each has be-
come die shuttlecock of decisions and actions taken
by other nation-states.

The United States of America, so unwilling to yield
one iota of its national sovereignty, categorically re-
fusing to grant the right to any world organization to
interfere with the sovereign privilege of Congress to
decide upon war and peace, was in 1941 forced into
war by a decision made exclusively by the Imperial
War Council in Tokyo. To insist that the declaration
of war by Congress following the attack on Pearl
Harbor was a “sovereign act” is the most naive kind of
hairsplitting*

196 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Nor was the entrance of the Soviet Union into the
second World War decided by the sovereign au-
thorities of the U.S.S.R. War was forced upon the
Soviet Union by a sovereign decision made in Berlin.

The failure of national sovereignty to express self-
determination and independence is just as great in
the economic field, where every new production
method, every ne\v tariff system, every new monetary
measure, compels other nation-states to take counter-
measures which it would be childish to describe as
sovereign acts on the part of the seventy-odd sovereign,
self-determined nation-states.

The problem, far from being new and insoluble,
is as old as life itself.

Families are entirely free to do many things they
want to do. They can cook what they like. They can
furnish their home as they please. They can educate
their children as they see fit But in a Christian
country no man can marry three women at the same
time, no man living in an apartment house can set
fire to his dwelling, keep a giant crocodile as a pet
or hide a murderer in his flat If a person does these
or similar things, he is arrested and punished.

Is he a free man or is he not?

Clearly, he is absolutely free to do everything he
wants in all matters which concern himself and his
family alone. But he is not free to interfere with the
freedom and safety of others. His freedom of action is
not absolute. It is limited by law. Some things he can
do only according to established regulations, others
he is forbidden to do altogether.

The problems created by the ideal of self-determi-

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 197

nation of nations are exactly the same as the prob-
lems created by the freedom of individuals or families.
Each nation can and should remain entirely free to
do just as it pleases in local and cultural affairs, or in
matters where their actions are of purely local and
internal consequence and can have no effect upon
the freedom of others. But self-determination of a
nation in military matters, in the fields of economic
and foreign affairs, where the behavior of each nation
immediately and directly influences the freedom and
safety of all the other nations, creates a situation in
which self-determination is neutralized and destroyed.

There is nothing wrong with the ideal of self-de-
termination.

But there is something very wrong indeed with the
ideal of “self-determination of nations/’

This concept means that the population of this
small world is to be divided into eighty or a hundred
artificial units, based on such arbitrary and irrational
criteria as race, nationality, historical antecedents, etc.
This concept would have us believe that the dem-
ocratic ideal of self-determination can be guaranteed
and safeguarded by granting people the right of self-
determination within their national groups, without
giving corporate expression of self-determination to
the aggregate of the groups.

Such a system can preserve self-determination of
the people only so long as their national units can live
an isolated life. Since the nations today are in con-
tact, with their economic and political lives closely
interwoven, their independence needs higher forms
of expression, stronger institutions for defense. In ab-

198 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

solute interpretation, the many self-determined na-
tional units cancel out each other’s self-determination.

What was the use of the “self-determination of
Lithuania” when self-determined Poland occupied
Vilna? And what was the use of “Polish self-determi-
nation” when self-determined Germany destroyed
Poland? Unquestionably, self-determination of na-
tions does not guarantee freedom and independence
to a people, because it has no power to prevent the ef-
fects of actions committed by other self-determined
nations. If we regard the freedom and self-determi-
nation of peoples as our ideal, we must do our utmost
to avoid repeating the mistakes of 1919 and realize
that ”self-determination of nations” is today the in-
surmountable obstacle to “self-determination of the
people”

Nobody realized the dangers of the predominating
forces of our age better and sooner than Winston
Churchill. In an article, published in the United
States in February, 1930, he wrote:

‘The Treaty of Versailles represents the apotheosis
of nationalism. The slogan of self-determination has
been carried into practical effect. The Treaties of
Versailles and Trianon, whatever their faults, were
deliberately designed to be a consummation of that
national feeling which grew out of the ruins of des-
potism, whether benevolent or otherwise, just as
despotism grew out of the ruins of feudalism. All dbe
inherent life thirst of liberalism in this sphere has
been given full play. Europe is organized as it never
was before, upon a purely nationalistic basis. But
what are the results? Nationalism throughout Europe.

FALLACY OF SELF-DETERMINATION 199

for all its unconquerable explosive force, has already
found and will find its victorious realization at once
unsatisfying and uncomfortable. More than any other
world movement, it is fated to find victory bitter. It
is a religion whose field of proselytizing is strictly lim-
ited and when it has conquered its own narrow world,
it is debarred, if it has no larger aim, by its own
dogmas from seeking new worlds to conquer,”

And, after a brilliant analysis of the fallacy of a
world order based on absolute national sovereignty,
and on the ideal of national self-determination,
Churchill concluded, in 1930:

“No one can suppose that this is going to last”

It did not last. But the emotional hold of these
eighteenth century nationalist ideals are all-powerful
in the minds of our national statesmen. A decade
later, the same Winston Churchill, as Prime Min-
ister and the unforgettable and unchallenged leader
of the democratic forces against totalitarianism, pro-
claimed the very same principles of consummated na-
tionalism and self-determination as the foundation
upon which the coming world order was once again
to be built the very principles which ten years be-
fore he so correctly recognized as futile and their
victory unsatisfying and bitter.

The aggregation of acts in every possible combina-
tion and permutation the product of the self-de-
termination of all sovereign nation-states creates an
inextricable network of effects and counter-effects,
within which the ideal of independence becomes ri-
diculous.

In a small interrelated and interdependent world,

200 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

it is obvious that the ideals of independence and self-
determination are relative notions. Independence and
self-determination can exist in fact only as an opti-
mum, can be achieved only through the regulation of
the interrelations of the self-determined sovereign
units.

The Polish people would have been independent
and would have had self-determination to a much
higher degree than was actually assured them by the
sovereign Polish Republic, had certain attributes of
Polish national sovereignty been limited, restricted
and integrated into a higher sovereign institution,
provided that the sovereignty of the German state
had been equally limited, restricted and integrated.
The first criterion of independence and self-determi-
nation is the ability to guarantee freedom against ag-
gression and destruction by outside forces. Today the
institutions of the sovereign nation-state are patently
incapable of fulfilling that task.

The Covenant of the League of Nations was based
entirely on the principles of national sovereignty, of
national self-determination, on the right of every na-
tion to do as it pleased within the boundaries of its
national state. The Covenant was built upon the as-
sumption that peace between such sovereign nation-
states could be maintained by providing a place for
the representatives of these sovereign units to meet
and discuss their relationship, and the machinery to
handle the problems arising between them.

This was a purely formal and unrealistic concep-
tion which did not even recognize the existence of
the crucial problem of human society that must be

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 201

solved, die evident and apparent causes that lead to
conflicts and to wars between the nations. With such
complete lack of understanding of the nature of in-
ternational conflicts, with such basically erroneous
notions as to the essence of group relationship, Wil-
sonism and its creation, the League, was bound to fail,
no matter what policies, what procedure, what tactics,
were pursued by its founders, no matter what attitudes
were adopted by its member states.

CHAPTER XIII

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY

FOR some thousands of years we have been strug-
gling for peace. That we have never reached our
goal does not prove that peace is unattainable. But
it does prove that the means and methods by which
we have tried to achieve it are inadequate.

In 1919, completely misunderstanding the forces
of his time and the meaning of the crisis which he
was called upon to solve, Woodrow Wilson rejuve-
nated all the eighteenth century conceptions of na-
tionalism. The order created after the first World
War was the apotheosis of nationalism, of national
sovereignty, of self-determination of nations, of the
right of each nationality to its own sovereign state.

For twenty years the world agonized in the strait-

2oz THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

jacket of this rigid structure which prevented organic
integration of die nations, led to higher and higher
tariffs, to mistrust, unemployment, hatred, misery,
dictatorships, armaments and the second World
War.

It would seem that all these horrible events might
have shaken the blind confidence in those outdated
and deadly dogmas, and that the people who have to
lead the nations through this holocaust might at
least have searched for the real causes of the crisis
and for the path that could lead us out of it*

The tragic fact, however, is that we are neither
heading nor thinking in a new direction. Those in
power have no time and no incentive to think. And
those who think have no power whatsoever. ‘

All the documents and pronouncements of the gov-
ernments of the United Nations prove that they have
nothing else in mind than a return to the old policies
that failed so completely. It is a strangely topsy-turvy
world in which all governments, statesmen, diplo-
mats, politicians and party leaders are ardent protag-
onists of theories and conceptions so evidently at vari-
ance with the realities of our time.

During the second World War the documents in
which are crystallized the thoughts of the United Na-
tions are the Atlantic Charter, the United Nations
Declaration, the Moscow, Teheran and Yalta agree-
ments, the Dumbarton Oaks proposals and the San
Francisco Charter.

When the Atlantic Charter was first proclaimed,
the democratic world was thrilled to the marrow.
That thrill derived more from the event itself than

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 203

from the contents of the proclamation. After a series
of Brenner Pass meetings between Hitler and Mus-
solini, each the prelude to further Axis triumphs, the
high-seas meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill
was novel and dramatic; it held the promise of tri-
umphs for the enemies of the Axis.

Does the Atlantic Charter does the world view
implicit in that document offer a new approach to
the solution of international problems?

The underlying idea of the Atlantic Charter is ex-
pressed in its third paragraph: ‘They (the President
of the United States and the British Prime Minister)
respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of
government under which they will live; and they wish
to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to
those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”

That is the charter of the first World War.

That is a reiteration of the old doctrine of self-de-
termination, upon which we built the world of 1919
that crumbled so miserably and so quickly. The At-
lantic Charter again proclaimed the right of every
nation to choose the form of government it desires
or the form imposed upon it by a ruthless minority.
It bowed abjectly before the fetish of “national sov-
ereignty” with all that it implies: unlimited terror
and organization for aggression within any nation so
inclined; nonintervention in military epidemics until
too late; blind isolationism and neutrality in a world
made small by science and interdependent by in-
dustry.

The Atlantic Charter, for all its fine intentions,
is an anachronism. If applied it would divide the

2c 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

world into more and yet more nations, each of them
independent of the others, unlimited in its sovereign
right to do mischief. It recognized the right of any
country to he as undemocratic and totalitarian as it
pleases, a law unto itself. It failed to recognize and to
implement larger sovereignties that transcend national
sovereignties, human rights that take precedence over
national rights.

Self-determination is no guarantee of independ-
ence. The sad fate of the small nations set up at
Versailles proves that Even before their freedom was
finally wiped out by the rampant and self-determined
nationalism of Nazi Germany, they could maintain the
illusion of independence only by accepting the pat-
ronage and protection of one of the more powerful na-
tions.* Independence in its absolute form produces
only fear, mistrust, conflict, slavery because it penal-
izes pacific nations and gives the right of way to ag-
gressors and troublemakers among countries*

The third paragraph of the Atlantic Charter, in one
terse phrase, enshrines the tragic misunderstanding
of our generation.

We all assume it to be true that freedom and inde-
pendence are the inalienable rights of man, and we
are seeking to create institutions to guarantee and
safeguard those rights. In the eighteenth century our
forebears found those guarantees and safeguards in
the principle of national sovereignty, in the insti-
tutions of the sovereign nation-state, controlled by the
people, and in the rights of all peoples to self-determi-
nation, to choose the form of government, the struc-
ture of their political and economic system within the

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 205

territorial boundaries of their state, to do so of their
own free will without foreign interference.

These concepts and these institutions, in their ab-
solute form, were perfectly capable of expressing and
protecting national independence as long as contact
between the established national units was either
nonexistent, unnecessary or loose. Since modern in-
dustrialism, science and communications have shrunk
this planet of ours into a sixty-hour flying trip, and
vrill continue to shrink it further; since no nation,
not even the mightiest, is economically self-sufficient;
since industry seeks to gain markets all over the world
and can develop only within a framework where ex-
change and free communication are possible, these
eighteenth century concepts, as expressed in the
treaties of 1919 and in the Atlantic Charter, create in
their absolute form, conditions similar to a society in
which individuals may act as they please, without any
limitations on their impulses, without any considera-
tion as to the effect of their actions on other members
of that society. In their absolute form, the principles
upon which the Atlantic Charter is based lead straight
to anarchy in international life.

If this present trend cannot be reversed, we are
heading toward nationalism more frenzied and deliri-
ous than ever. If we ding to the principle of self-
determination of nations, we shall have to face the
claims of the innumerable nationalities in Europe,
Asia, even in Africa, to have sovereign states of their
own.

The principle of “self-determination of nations’*
is a primitive and oversimplified expression of the

206 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

concept of national independence. It is designed to
work in laboratory conditions. Present-day realities,
however, produce too many interferences to make pos-
sible the application of such a hypothetical formula
without recurrent explosions.

The right of one man is the fruit of the obligations
of all men. In social life, this is self-evident. No or-
ganized society is conceivable without a codification of
the rights and duties of all members of that society.
Now, irresistible and inexorable events force us to
organize the relations of nations. In international life,
however, we refuse to acknowledge this fundamental
principle of society, and insist that a workable world
order be built upon a Bill of Rights without a Bill of
Duties. We fail to recognize that what made the Bill
of Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man
possible were the Ten Commandments.

The Atlantic Charter, far from explaining the
causes of this world catastrophe and indicating the
road to real freedom and independence, again lured
mankind toward the mirage of peace, toward a be-
lief that we can have peace and all our cherished
democratic ideals if only we give every nation com-
plete self-determination and “the right to choose its
own form of government.”

The ideals of group independence and group self-
determination have degenerated into an idol which
must be destroyed in our minds if we ever want to
see again exactly what that ideal really means.

In the Atlantic Charter as well as in all the other
documents and pronouncements relating to a future
world organization, there lies an implication that is a

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 207

dangerous fallacy. This is the widespread and gener-
ally accepted notion about the nature and causes of
aggression.

Aggression is popularly considered the root of all
international evils, the cause of all wars. This funda-
mentally erroneous premise logically leads to the
equally erroneous conclusion that the task of peace-
makers is to suppress aggression.

The idea of setting up inter-national machinery
with no other purpose than to “prevent aggression”
to “keep the peace” as the slogan goes, not only
misses the point completely, hut indeed may become
the source of grave consequences.

Peace is conceivable only as a social order having
the machinery necessary to carry out all the organic
changes and modifications in human society that
may at any time be required by die natural and unin-
terrupted development of that society.

Such an order of never-ending reform is the only
alternative to recurrent outbreaks of violence. This
only known alternative is the Rule of Law.

If there were no national legal order, then violence
between the individuals, religions, parties, classes and
other groups within a given nation would be inevi-
table. Violence under such conditions is an absolutely
natural phenomenon, indispensable, unavoidable,
even desirable for carrying out changes required by
permanently evolving human society.

We know that so long as we believe in peace be-
tween sovereign nations and endeavor to maintain an
established status quo between these nations (no mat-
ter what status quo’) we shall have wars. If, on top of

2c8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

this policy, which failed as often as it was tried in
the past, we are going to create an international “se-
curity organization” to “prevent aggressions‘ or to stamp out aggression by force when it does occur, then we shall have created, certainly not peace but higher pressure on a society that is simmering, stronger ob- stacles to the irresistible torrent of events, which are bound to cause more and more violent eruptions, because in such an order change without violence is exceptional, if not impossible

To condemn aggression irrespective of the condi-
tions within which it takes place is a superficial tru-
ism \vhich can never solve a problem of such com-
plexity. We can never have peace and security by aim-
ing at negative, static conceptions, like “preventing
aggressions.” If we want to live a more civilized life,
we shall simply have to go through the painful labor
of setting up “a standard to which the wise and the
honest can repair/* proclaiming principles and fight-
ing for them.

At one time, there were seven Saxon kingdoms in
England eternally waging wars against each other.
Then a foreigner, a conqueror from Normandy,
crossed the Channel, invaded the island and unified
the bickering, quarreling, warring Saxon tribes. By
no imaginable moral standard was this a justifiable
act in die eyes of those who lived on the island. It
was clearly a case of brutal, unprovoked aggression.
But was it evil? Was the unification of the English
kingdoms, although brought about by a foreign con-
queror, wrong?

The conquest of the American West was unques-

FALLACY Of COLLECTIVE SECURITY 209

tionably another case of brutal, unprovoked aggres-
sion. But was this opening of the American continent,
this unification by aggressive methods, evil?

The planners of future peace should beware of
their fundamental illusion: that they can create an
order to last forever. No one can put this world into
a strait-jacket. No one can design an order and freeze
it into permanent shape. It is against the nature of
things to create a system of national boundaries and
alliances, of economic organization, and then com-
mand history to stand still; to consider anyone who
attempts to change this order an “aggressor.”

When the essence of life is perpetual change, ad-
herence to worn-out forms and static conceptions must
lead to explosions, wars and revolutions. Static struc-
tures, too weak and rigid to withstand the storms of
events, will be blown away like a house of cards*

Here is the fundamental fallacy of the idea of col-
lective security, based on treaty agreements between
sovereign nations, which seems to be the one and only
dogma upon which this generation can visualize a
world order.

All die peace treaties ever signed, all the alliances
ever concluded on this planet, the Covenant of tibe
League of Nations, the United Nations Organization,
the principles of collective security, are identical in
their fundamental conception. TTiey all arbitrarily
divide the world into a number of sovereign social
units, create a status quo, and try to prevent any
changes in the established order except by unanimous
consent, which makes no sense; or by force, which
makes war.

210 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The Covenant of the League, the Dumbarton Oaks
and San Francisco documents, the notion of collective
security, are all static, Ptolemaic conceptions. They
are antidynamic and consequently represent only bar-
riers to peace, to life itself. They all seek solutions
on a basis which if it existed would leave no prob-
lems to be solved.

Collective security without collective sovereignty is
meaningless. The insecurity of the individual as well
as of groups of individuals is the direct result of the
nonexistence of law to govern their relations. Allowing
sovereign sources of law to reside, not in the com-
munity but in the eighty-odd separate nation-states
forming that community; attempting to make their
coexistence peaceful, -not by establishing institutions
with sovereign power to create law binding all mem-
bers of the collectivity but by agreements and treaties
between the divided sovereign units, can never, under
any condition, create security for that collectivity*
Only a legal order can bring security. Consequently,
without constitutional institutions to express the
sovereignty of the community and to create law for
the collectivity, there can be no security for that col-
lectivity.

The debate among the representatives of the na-
tions in drafting the charter of a world organization
was exclusively limited to formalities and technicalities
which have absolutely no bearing upon peace and
the future of mankind. All the representatives of na-
tional governments are in full agreement in rejecting
the only foundation upon which a peaceful interna-
tional order could be constructed.

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 211

One of die technicalities is the question of voting
within a council of sovereign nations. According to
the Covenant of the League, in case of an “aggres-
sion” by any sovereign member state of the League,
sanctions could be taken only by unanimous consent
Naturally, this made the functioning of the inade-
quate League machinery which under no condi-
tions could have prevented major wars utterly il-
lusory.

No sovereign nation-state will ever freely admit that
it is an aggressor, nor of its own free will, will it sub-
mit to sanctions imposed by other sovereign nations.
So whenever a nation was accused by the League of
aggression or threatened with sanctions, it merely
tendered its resignation and left the party.

The accusing nations behaved just as hypocritically.
When the consequences of such collective action
were to be faced and decisions carried out against the
offending nations, all the other sovereign members of
the League followed the private interests of their in-
dividual nation-states. The use of force against any
major power was unthinkable. That meant war.

This tragi-comic game will be repeated again and
again, so long as we believe that a league or a council
of sovereign nation-states can, under any circum-
stances, maintain peace among its members.

In a society without any system of law, no indi-
vidual would ever trust a judge, a jury or a court
even if composed of the most eminent and selfless of
his fellows. No individual would ever freely submit
his personal freedom and fortunes to the judgment of
any group of men composed of members with no

2i2 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

higher authority than his own. No individual would
ever submit of his free will, without defending him-
self by all means at his disposal, to interference in his
life by a force, if the actions of that force had not
previously been delineated and defined.

Individual members of a society are prepared to sub-
mit to one thing alone. To Law. They are ready to
submit to social institutions only insofar as those in-
stitutions are die instruments of Law.

Such law is nonexistent in our inter-national life.
It never did exist in inter-national relations. It has
been excluded from the League of Nations and from
the United Nations Organization. Under these cir-
cumstances, there can be no peace between nations.

To base “peace” on unanimous decisions of a cer-
tain number of sovereign national governments in
the present day, on the unanimous decisions of the
five greatest military powers means indulging in a
daydream. It is an Alice-in-Wonderknd adventure.
And in seriously proposing such an organization and
assuring the peoples of the earth that the five greatest
military powers will by common consent and unan-
imous decision act in concert, our present leaders,
our governments and diplomats are guilty of mon-
strous hypocrisy or else of naivet far greater even
than Alice showed in her adventures in dreamland.

History proves beyond doubt that any real danger
to world peace always emanates from one of the major
military powers. It is to be expected that in every sit-
uation threatening the existing order, one of the major
powers will be seriously involved. It is clear that die
major power will not cast its vote in any inter-national

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 213

council against its own interests* Consequently, in
no major crisis will unanimous vote in the security
council be obtainable. Whenever such conflicts arise,
as they are bound to arise, the only course open to the
others will be to close their eyes and let die events
of Manchuria, Austria, Ethiopia, Spain and Czecho-
slovakia repeat themselves or go to war.

But even if the nations be prepared to accept major-
ity decisions within such a world council, the problem
would remain unsolved. Majority decisions in a coun-
cil of sovereign nations would be wholly unrealistic.
If in a given situation, three of the major powers
voted for a certain military intervention, while the
other two voted against such a measure, these two
powers could scarcely be pictured taking up arms
and undertaking military action contrary to what they
regard as their own national interests, and contrary to
their votes.

So the whole debate on unanimous vote versus
majority vote on issues arising in a security council
of a world organization is irrelevant because in neither
case could a decision on an issue involving a great
power be enforced without precipitating a major
war.

The conclusion to be drawn is this: The funda-
mental problem of regulating the relations between
great powers without the permanent danger of major
wars cannot be solved so long as absolute sovereign
power continues to reside in the nation-states. Unless
their sovereign institutions are integrated into higher
institutions expressing directly the sovereignty of the
community, unless the relations of their peoples axe

2i 4 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

regulated by law, violent conflicts between national
units are inevitable. This is not prophecy, not even
an opinion, but an observable and irrefutable axiom
of human society.

Just as a council of delegates and representatives
of fifty sovereign cities, defending the interests of
their respective municipalities, could never create a
united nation, a national legal order, peaceful rela-
tions between the citizens of the fifty cities, security
and freedom of the individuals living within each
sovereign municipality so the representatives and
delegates of fifty sovereign nations meeting in a coun-
cil and defending their own national interests, will
never arrive at a satisfactory solution and settlement
of any problem concerning the interrelations of the
sovereign national units.

Just as peace, freedom and equality of the citizens
of a nation require within their state specific institu-
tions and authorities separate from and standing above
municipal or local authorities, and the direct delega-
tion of sovereign power by the people to these higher,
national, government authorities so peace, freedom
and equality of men on this earth, between the nation-
states, require specific institutions, authorities separate
from and standing above national authorities, as well
as the direct delegation of sovereign power by the peo-
ple to these higher world government authorities, to
deal with those problems of human relations that
reach beyond the national state structure.

None of the projects and plans of a world organiza-
tion even considers a direct relationship between the
“international” organization and the individual. In all

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 215

these proposed and debated structures, the determin-
ing factor continues unchanged to be the nation-state.

All power, all decision, all action, all source of law,
continues to rest with national governments. The in-
dividual remains the serf of the nation-states. The
proposed society as contemplated by our governments,
is clearly a society of the modern feudal lords, the
nation-states, who are desperately trying to preserve
their accumulated and abused privileges and power
to the detriment of the peoples they oppress.

In the major countries, particularly in the United
States, people are heatedly debating whether their
representatives in the proposed world security council
should have power to act of their own volition re-
garding the application of force in case of an inter-
national conflict or whether they should refer baclc
to their governments or to their legislative bodies for
final approval.

The underlying point of the controversy against
those who would not yield one iota of the rights and
privileges of inherited institutions is that if the rep-
resentative of the United States or of any other coun-
try in the world council is not empowered to use
armed force against a nation declared to be an ag-
gressor, but is obliged to wait upon the deliberations
of his government or legislative body at home, weeks
or months may be lost and this delay may paralyze
the international machinery. But if the delegates do
have full power to order the armed contingent of
their countries to enter into action against an aggres-
sor, then the international organization will be strong
enough to enforce peace.

ai6 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

This issue is seriously debated by members of
emments, by legislators, editors, columnists and radio
commentators, as being the crucial issue on which
war or peace in the future depends.

It is at once apparent that the controversy is of the
shallowest, that die alternative put before us is purely
formal. Whether we resolve to take this course or the
other, whether the representatives of the five great
powers in the security council are empowered to en-
gage the armed forces of their countries in action or
whether before such decisions the situation must be
debated in Congress or Parliament makes absolutely
no difference. The course of events will not be
changed by any of the suggested procedures, because
the fundamental problem of war and peace has no
relationship whatsoever to these procedures.

Whether the application of force is an act of war
or a police action depends upon one single criterion:
whether or not the force is being used to execute the
judgment of a court, applying established law in a
concrete case.

If force is used without previously enacted law,
defining clearly the principles of human conduct and
the norms determining such conduct, then the use
of force is arbitrary, an act of violence, war whether
the decision to resort to it be made by a national
representative as a member of an inter-national coun-
cil, by a national legislative assembly, or even by
national referendum.

In the charter of the new world organization,
there is no provision for the creation of law regulating
the relations of the nations. On the contrary, it is

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 217

clearly stated that sovereign power to create law is the
exclusive appanage of die individual nation-states,
and that the international organization is an asso-
ciation of such sovereign nation-states.

There being no law to define human conduct in
inter-national relations, any use of force is arbitrary,
unjustified, an act of war. Such an international or-
ganii ition may succeed in unimportant issues when
force can be used by a major power or by a combina-
tion of powers against a weak and small nation. It is
bound to fail whenever such use of force has to be
resorted to by one power or group of powers against
another power or group of powers with equal or ap-
proximately equal military strength. The application
of force against a great power by a small nation in
case th~ great power commits the aggression is, ab ovo,
unthinkable and need not be discussed.

Such a state of affairs has absolutely nothing to do
with the functioning of a police force in society.
Such an organization as was the League and as the
new international organization drafted at Dumbar-
ton Oaks and San Francisco does not differ in any
except external and formal aspects from the state of
affairs that has always and at all times existed, with-
out a league or any world organization.

Sovereign source of law remains scattered in many
units. This always meant and, by the very force of
things must always mean, violent conflict between
these sovereign units, no matter what their relations,
as long as sovereign power continues to reside in each
separate unit

Peace between die conflicting units is possible only

2i8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

if their relations are regulated by a higher sovereign
authority embracing all of them. Once this is recog-
nized, once developments are under way for the
creation of law in international relations, then the
use of force follows automatically, since real law
implies its application by force.

But without previously enacted laws for inter-
national conduct, any proposal to use force is im-
moral and dangerous in the highest degree. It is an
unforgivably false conception to believe that force
without the pre-existence of law can maintain peace
and prevent war, if the decision as to its application
rests in the individual sovereign nation-states form-
ing the inter-national society, no matter which de-
partment of the sovereign nation-states may be en-
dowed with that power.

The tremendous volume of irresponsible talk on
this most delicate problem has warped the judgment
even of the most illustrious leaders of the United
Nations.

In a speech made on October 21, 1944, President
Roosevelt, warmly advocating the Dumbarton Oaks
agreements, made the following statement:

“The council of the United Nations must have
the power to act quickly and decisively to keep the
peace by force if necessary. I live in a small town* I
always think in small town terms. But this goes in
small towns everywhere. A policeman would not be a
very effective policeman if, when he saw a felon break
into a house, he had to go to the Town Hall and call
a town meeting to issue a warrant before the felon
could be arrested. It is clear that, if the world organi-

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 2,19

zation is to have any reality at all, our American rep
resentative must be endowed in advance by the peo-
ple themselves, by constitutional means through their
representatives in Congress with authority to act”

To compare the role of a policeman in a small town
with the use of force as suggested by the Dumbarton
Oaks documents reveals a complete misunderstanding
of the fundamental principles involved. The police-
man in a small town is endowed with the power to
arrest a felon by previously promulgated laws created
by the sovereign legislative body of the society he
serves. He is the instrument of a legal order and acts
under authority of established law.

The “police force’* suggested by the Dumbarton
Oaks proposals is not the executive organ of a society
having an established legal order based on the sov-
ereignty of that society, but the armed contingents of
the sovereign nation-states, the sovereign units com-
posing a society, which itself remains completely
without sovereign authority. The Dumbarton Oaks
proposals do not contain any suggestions for the
creation of law standing above and binding together
the individual members of the international society.
They do not propose international courts to apply
laws, nor could these hypothetical courts function,
lacking the laws to apply. And they do not propose
police forces to execute such judgments, responsible to
the society itself, nor could such hypothetical force
be a police force without courts to render judgment
according to law.

In a world society organized on the basis of the
Dumbarton Oaks proposals, it may well be that the

220 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

man to do the arresting would be not the policeman
but the felon himself.

This is precisely the problem-

The police force, as conceived at Dumbarton Oaks,
is no different from the legions of the Roman Empire
or the armies of the Holy Alliance. They would be
armed forces of sovereign powers or power groups
and instruments of particular interests.

To revive the old League of Nations or to create
a United Nations council on a similar basis (com-
posed of representatives of sovereign nation-states),
is an extremely simple proposition, although many
people become emotional in debating the role of
great powers and small powers in such a council.

The “idealists” plead for equality between great
powers and small nations in the world organization,
the “realists” want to give a preponderant role to the
great powers, who under any circumstances would
have to assume responsibility for checking aggression.

The realists who welcome the resurrection of the
League of Nations under another name, with den-
tures in it (they say “with teeth”) arrive at the
peculiar conclusion that since no great power would
accept military action against itself without resistance,
the use of force is practicable only against small na-
tions*

So what they really say is that the use of force
against a small nation can preserve peace, but force
could not be applied against a great power because
that would provoke war.

According to them, the use of force against a small
nation is qualitatively different from die use of force

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 221

against a great power because in the first instance
force brings peace, whereas in the second it brings
war.

The hair-raising hypocrisy of mankind is truly
astonishing. What this theory amounts to is that the
theft of a loaf of bread by a poor man is an illegal
act to be prosecuted, but the fraud of a millionaire
banker must remain beyond the authority of law.

The assertion that the use of force against a small
nation is “police power” whereas the same coercion
against a great nation is not “police power’* but war,
is mere abracadabra. It is the result of muddled think-
ing, of ignorance of the meaning of the words and
terms employed. It is not an attempt to shape policy
according to principles; it is an attempt to justify an
immoral and intolerable policy by elevating it to the
level of a principle.

Force is police power when it is used to carry out
the law, whether directed against a small or a great
power, whether against a weak, miserable vagrant
sleeping on a park bench or a strong, organized gang
armed with guns who can shoot back at the police.

And force is not police power when it is not used
to carry out law even if it is applied by the unani-
mous consent of all the powers of the world against
the smallest and weakest.

This great power versus small power controversy
may go on forever, as it has all the characteristics of
a meaningless issue that can be endlessly debated by
an avalanche of words hiding particular interests and
subjective feelings.

THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

From the moral point of view, it is hard indeed to
choose between great powers and small nations.

All great powers behave like gangsters. And all
small nations behave like prostitutes.

They must. Under present conditions Cnot unlike
those of the wild West), each great power mistrusts
the others, must be permanently armed, keep his gun
loaded and within easy reach to shoot it out with the
others, if he wants to survive and keep his position.
And the smaller powers who have no guns and who
would never dare shoot it out with one of the big
fellows, must go with those who promise them most,
and in return for this protection, do whatever is de-
manded of them.

In the face of these realities, an organization of
such sovereign nations, whether on an equal or an
unequal footing, could never prevent another war. It
is idealism raised to the nth degree of naivet6 to be-
lieve otherwise. Such a council of sovereign units
could prevent another war only if it could change
human nature and make it act and react differently
from the way it has been acting and reacting through-
out the ages.

The national interests of the powers, large and
small, do not run parallel, just as the selfish interests
of individuals do not run parallel. If we want to re-
main on a sovereign nation-state basis, then the only
chance of a somewhat longer period without war is to
keep the sovereign nation-states as far apart as pos-
sible, to reduce contact between them to a minimum
and not to bring them together in one organization
where the conflict of their interests will only be in-
tensified.

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 3

Such superficial formalities Lave been debated for
several decades now, the world running around in
circles like a dog chasing its own tail, without even
a glimpse of reality. The era of parchment treaties
signed by the representatives of “peace-loving nations”
or “high contracting powers” is gone, like the age of
powdered wigs.

As long as our purpose is to establish peace be-
tween sovereign nations, it is wholly irrelevant
whether the sovereign national governments maintain
relations by the exchange of ambassadors, by dis-
patching notes to each other via short-wave or pigeon
post, or by sending representatives to meet in an as-
sembly or around a council table, with representa-
tives of other equally sovereign nations. These are
merely differences in method and procedure. None of
them even touches the core of the problem created
by the interdependence of a given number of social
groups with equal, sovereign attributes.

It seems that the first and last maxim of national
governments in quest of peace is “All measures-
short of law/’ As peace is identical with law, it is not
difficult to realize why we are no nearer our goal than
we have been for centuries.

It is a mysterious characteristic of human nature
that we are prepared to spend anything, to sacrifice
everything, to give all we have and are when we wage
war, and that we are never prepared to take more
than an “initial step/’ make more than a “first be-
ginning/’ adopt more than “minimum measures,”
when we seek to organize peace. When will our re-
ligions, our poets and our national leaders give up
“the lie that death is more heroic than life?

224 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The events of the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury and all the national, political, ideological and
economic forces at work today make it inexcusable
for us to continue to delude ourselves, to continue to
listen to false prophets, no matter how good their
intentions, who preach that we may have peace merely
by patching up outworn systems and revising archaic
doctrines that have always led and will continue to
lead to war.

When events and realities conflict with established
principles, we must not always think that such events
and realities are in “violation” of the principles. Often,
the established principles are as false as Ptolemy’s
astronomical principles and can be rectified only by
giving up quixotic ideas and adapting principles to
realities as did Copernicus.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MELEE

THE mob has no ruler more potent than super-
stition/’

Observing the human race running amok against
their own interests today, exposing their own families,
their own cities, their own people and their own coun-
tries to destruction, one must sadly admit the correct-
ness of these words of Curtius.

FALLACY OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY 225

No ultramodern composer could produce shriller
dissonance, more chaotic atonality, greater cacophony,
than the public discussion raging on the surface of
the real problem.

This debate upon the future world order presents
nothing but credulity and sterility on one side and
on the other nothing but destructiveness and sterility.

Credulity is not faith.

Destructive criticism brings neither revolution nor
progress.

Let us examine some of the more popular argu-
ments raised against the rule of law among die
peoples.

In any democratic world organization having
power to create law, China would have three times
as many representatives as the United States, India
ten times as many as Great Britain, Russia five times
as many as France. Would the United States, Great
Britain, France and the other smaller democratic coun-
tries be willing to enter into such a scheme?

Population figures are held up, like a scarecrow,
to frighten us away from our objective.

No Chinese or Indian ever sought representation
in any international organization on the basis of
population.

This very question was hotly debated whenever
and wherever representative government was estab-
lished In the United States of America, although die
population of the state of New York i$ 122 times
larger than that of Nevada, they both send two Sena-
tors to Washington* Even in the House of Repre-
sentatives, the state of New York elects only forty-

226 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

five times as many representatives as Nevada, a third
of what it should, according to population figures. It
is natural that in any universal organization created
today, representation should be determined by actual
responsibilities and according to effective power, in-
dustrial potential, degree of education. Various
proved methods exist and can be applied to work
out this purely technical question.

The very raising of this question shows how little
the problem is understood. Under the present system
of absolute national sovereignty 130 million Amer-
icans, 45 million Britons and not quite 40 million
Frenchmen are each faced with about two billion
other peoples, whose actions and policies they cannot
control or influence in any crisis anyway, except by
means of war.

Under a system of universal law, within a universal
legal order, America, Great Britain, France and every
other individual nation would, for the first time in
history, have legal power to influence the actions of
other nations constituting more than ninety per cent
of mankind and could have a voice in shaping the
behavior of other peoples in their own best interests
without war.

There is not the slightest danger that, in a world
of realities, within a legal order, China with her
numerical superiority in population could outvote
the United States of America, as long as the real
power relationship between the two, countries is as
it prevails today. But, at some future date, should
China become industrialized to an equal extent with
America, should China be able to produce three

THE MELEE 227

times more consumer goods, build up and maintain
a mechanized army, navy and air force three times
greater than the United States, then naturally and
under any circumstances, power and influence would
shift automatically from the United States to China.

If a universal legal order is functioning when such
an eventuality occurs, then the change will take
place peacefully, without violence, by legal adjust-
ments, by shifting of votes and influence. If there is
no universal legal order, then a China three times
more powerful will attack, defeat and conquer the
United States.

Realities can never be circumvented by sleight of
hand. Our choice in adapting our society to existing
and changing realities is merely between law and
violence. We never have a choice between change and
immobility.

Another objection is that should an international
police force be established entirely independently of
the nation-states and under the sole authority of a
world government body, it would have to be larger
than the armed forces of any one nation-state. Would
the United States, would the Soviet Union, would
Great Britain be willing to see an international armed
force greater than their own?

This question also misses the point In the past and
present scheme of things, the combined armed forces
of the other nations those of the Soviet Union,
Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.
were always considerably larger than the armed
forces of the United States. ‘The totality of armed
forces of all the nations has always been imquestion-

2zS THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

ably greater than those of any independent sovereign
nation. And sovereign nations have had absolutely
no control over this overwhelming military superiority
of the other nations.

Only through the establishment of a universal force
to maintain law and order and to prevent violence
between nations, would the United States, the Soviet
Union, Great Britain and any other country, for the
first time in history have direct authority over the
armed forces of other nations, be in a position to exert
influence over them and have a voice in their use.

Objections of this sort to the creation of an inter-
national legal order are endless. They all run along
the same line. All are based on the misconception of
national sovereignty, holding to the misguided notion
that by establishing a universal legal order we give up
something instead of creating something. They are
blind to the fact that it is under the existing system
of absolute national sovereignty that the peoples are
living under a sword of Damocles, subjected to dire
dangers against which they seek effective and perma-
nent protection.

Few people feel that they have “surrendered” their
freedom in allowing the policeman on the street cor-
ner to carry the gun. Of course, in the jungle or on
the American frontier a hundred years ago, nobody
could safely have given up his gun. But life without
a gun in a society having a legal order is infinitely
more secure than life with any number of guns in 3
society without a legal order.

Many people assert that any world-wide social or-
ganization is bound to fail because nations are funda-

THE MELEE 229

mentally disinterested in other nations and are un-
willing to participate in other peoples’ affairs. This
superficial idea lies at the roots of any policy of neu-
trality or isolationism.

Isolationism is a most natural impulse. Every in-
dividual, every family, every nation, once having
reached a certain position, a certain degree of satisfac-
tion, wants to “be left alone” and “not to be disturbed”
by strangers or outsiders. This natural drive is the
root of conservatism. It has existed at all times in all
powerful countries and in all wealthy classes. It is not
a national but a social characteristic. It exists in every
country, wherever men live together in groups.

The grandparents of the most stubborn isolationists
of Missouri and Wisconsin were pioneers, explorers,
adventurers, who went out into foreign lands, ex-
terminated the native inhabitants, took possession of
their lands and settled there. If ever in human history
there was an act of unprovoked aggression, of un-
lawful intervention it was the American conquest of
the West. Three generations later, the descendants
of these expansionists and interventionists have be-
come conservative isolationists.

There is nothing wrong with isolationism. But
there is something very wrong indeed with what to-
day is called the “isolationist policy”: tie policy of
Lodge, Borah, Johnson and Wheeler, who thought
that the American people could live a secure isolated
life through what they called “isolationist policy.”
They presumed that America could mind its own busi-
ness, be left alone and might pursue the American
way of life, if only the Federal government of the

230 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

United States maintained its untrammeled national
sovereignty and if the sovereign Federal government
kept away from any foreign entanglement and com-
mitment.

Within the span of a single generation, two world
wars into which the United States has heen dragged
against the will of Its people prove conclusively the
bankruptcy of such a policy. It also proves the failure
of “splendid isolation’ 1 in England and of neutrality
in Holland, Belgium and many other countries.

The reasons are apparent. Where can an individual
live an isolated life? Certainly not in physical isola-
tion in a tropical jungle. There he has to be on guard
day and night to preserve his life and to fight beasts
and savages ready to prey on him. A man can live an
isolated life much more easily in a civilized city where
his security is guaranteed, where there is a legal order,
where laws, courts and police watch over his physical
existence and individual rights.

Quite certainly no nation can safely live its own
isolated life in the jungle of the present world. The
alternative is not “isolation” or “intervention in the
affairs of other nations/’ If this were the case, and if
nonintervention in foreign affairs could protect
people from foreign wars, then isolationism would
unquestionably be the soundest policy. But the alterna-
tive is a different one. It is “isolationism” or “the pre-
vention of intervention by other nations in one’s own
affairs.”

For instance, it seems elementary that die first con-
dition to safeguard the rights of the American people
to live their own way of life, is security against for-

THE MELEE 231

eign attack, the certainty that German submarines
cannot sink American ships and that Japan cannot
attack American territories by surprise.

The policy advocated by the exponents of isola-
tionism and neutrality is the policy least apt to achieve
such security from foreign aggression or intervention.
Only a constitutional organization regulating the re-
lations between nations by law and strong enough to
protect the nations against foreign attacks would per-
mit the people to “be left alone/’ to “mind their own
business” and to pursue their own way of life, as is
desired not only by isolationists but by the overwhelm-
ing majority of all peoples.

Perhaps long-range robot bombs and radio-propelled
heavy bombers will open the eyes of those who have
always made their political principles dependent on
geographic distance.

Certain people are fearful of broadening the pow-
ers of government, asking whom we could possibly
trust to decide upon issues so vast and vital. Such
fears are very well founded indeed. Upon careful
examination of our contemporaries, it does seem that
there is no one to whom we could blindly entrust
any important public office*

If people in the late eighteenth century could have
discussed the vast powers embodied today in the office
of the President of the United States of America or
that of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, they
would probably have decided that such offices should
not be created, *as no man would be trustworthy or
able to hold them. But we have learned that the ques-
tion of leaders is of secondary importance. In a weB-

232 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

organized and smoothly functioning democratic
society, where the duties and responsibilities of offices
are clearly defined, a great number of men capable
of serving as high officials are always available. There
is no need to worry about who would be members of
a world parliament, a world court or a world executive.
Once the proper, democratically controlled machin-
ery is established, we can safely resort to the old-
fashioned method of electing ordinary, fallible, mortal
men to office.

Any political system in which the fate of the peo-
ple depends upon the wisdom or shortsightedness of
leaders is fundamentally wrong. Great statesmen are
so rare, and among the few born such an infinitesimal
number ever get to power, that we cannot rely upon
leaders of genius. We must resign ourselves to being
governed by mediocre men. Our salvation lies not in
the wisdom of leaders but in die wisdom of laws.

But how are the suggested transformations in the
political construction of the world possible, when the
loyalty and allegiance of all peoples go entirely to
their nation, their country, their national flag? How
in 1940 could Winston Churchill have stopped the
tide of Nazi conquest and aroused the English people
without appealing to their national pride their
loyalty to king and country?

Certainly he could not have done it But neither
would it have been possible for Adolf Hitler to have
aroused the German people and to have driven them
toward brutal aggression and conquest’without appeal-
ing to their national pride and loyalty to their Reich
and flag.

o

THE MELEE 233

Nationalism undoubtedly helped to defend Eng-
land and to inspire die heroic underground resistance
against German conquest in France, Poland, Norway
and other Nazi-occupied countries. But these bene-
ficial effects of nationalism are similar to the effect
of an antitoxin. Because the diphtheria bacillus is
necessary to prepare the serum to fight diphtheria,
this does not justify calling the virus itself beneficial
or useful. At the present stage of bacteriology, the
best we can do to cure diphtheria is to use its virus
for the preparation of an antitoxin. But it would be
much better to destroy and exterminate the causes of
diphtheria, even if, at the same time, we destroyed the
agent to cure the disease.

Many times in history we have seen how easy it is
to change allegiances and loyalties. Within a few
short years, a mixture of every nationality in the world
created the American nation and, in the second World
War, the grandchildren of German immigrants have
been the leading military commanders of the United
States armies against Germany.

We cannot expect loyalty to an institution that
does not exist The institution must be created before
we can demand loyalty to it

There is no reason to doubt that once universal in-
stitutions are established which bring people security,
peace, wealth, which unite them in common ideals
and common interests, the loyalty of the peoples, to-
day claimed by the inefficient institution of the nation-
state, will infallibly turn to them.

Real patriotism, real love of one’s own country, has
no relationship whatsoever to the fetishism of the

234 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

sovereign nation-states. Real patriotism can have but
one single purpose: to protect one’s own country,
one’s own people, from die devastation of war. As war
is the direct result of the nation-state structure, and as
modern aerial and mechanized warfare indiscrimi-
nately destroys women, children, cities and farms, the
nation-state is Enemy No. i of patriotism.

Once larger units are established as sovereign social
units, there is no reason why nationalism, in its orig-
inal conception of patriotism, could not and should not
continue to flourish. Real patriotism actually needs
the protection of law. As soon as people realize that
in fact the ilation-state institution destroys their coun-
tries, devastates their provinces and murders their
kinsmen, true patriots will revolt against that institu-
tion, a threat to everything they love. Nothing is more
incompatible with true patriotism than the present
nation-state structure of the world and its inevitable
consequences.

“If, in despotic statecraft, the supreme and essen-
tial mastery be to hoodwink the subjects, and to mask
thfc fear, which keeps them down, with the specious
garb of religion, so that men may fight as bravely for
slavery as for safety, and count it not shame but high-
est honor to risk their blood and their lives for die
vainglory of a tyrant; yet in a free state no more mis-
chievous expedient could be planned or attempted.
Wholly repugnant to the general freedom are such de-
vices as enthralling men’s minds with prejudice, forc-
ing their judgment, or employing any of the weapons
of quasi-religious sedition; indeed, such seditions only
spring up, when law enters the domain of speculative

THE MELEE 235

thought, and opinions are put on trial and condemned
on the same footing as crimes, while those who defend
and follow them are sacrificed, not to public safety,
but to their opponents’ hatred and cruelty.”

These lines from Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico
Politicus strikingly characterize the tragedy of our
generation, with its noble patriotism degenerated into
blind veneration of the nation-state idol.

Nothing can destroy the nationalist fetishes, prej-
udices and superstitions except the explosive power
of common sense and rational thinking. Only a
struggle in our minds can prevent further struggles
on the battlefields.

The main reason advanced by our present govern-
ment officials, legislators and political philosophers for
continuing the nation-state structure, with all its dis-
astrous consequences, is that people are “different.”
We are told that people cannot form a political entity
until they are first “united in spirit,” that it is impos-
sible to shift loyalties and allegiances from national
to supra-national objectives, that Latins and Anglo-
Saxons, Slavs and Germans, and the many other racial,
linguistic and national groups cannot be merged into
a unified organization or placed under a common law.

These arguments, reiterated only too often by the
most prominent representatives of the nation-states,
are the shallowest of all contemporary sophisms*

Of course people are different.

If they were or could be “united in spirit,* we
would need no legal order, no state organization at
all. It is precisely the differences between men, the
profound differences of character, mentality, creed,

236 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

language, traditions and ideals, which originally neces-
sitated the introduction of law and a legal order in
human society.

The assertion that the manifold differences existing
in the human race prevent the creation of universal
law and order is in flagrant contradiction to facts and
to past and present realities.

Poles and Russians, Hungarians and Rumanians,
Serbs and Bulgars, have disliked and distrusted each
other and have been waging wars in Europe against
each other for centuries. But these very same Poles
and Russians, Hungarians and Rumanians, Serbs and
Bulgars, once having left their countries and settled
in the United States of America, cease fighting and
are perfectly capable of living and working side by
side without waging wars against each other.

Why is this?

TTie biological, racial, religious, historic, tempera-
mental and character differences between them re-
main exactly the same.

The change in one factor alone produced the
miracle.

In Europe, sovereign power is vested in these
nationalities and in their nation-states. In the United
States of America, sovereign power resides, not in
any one of these nationalities, but stands above them
in the Union, under which individuals, irrespective
of existing differences between them, are equal before
the law.

The Germans and the French have distrusted and
disliked each other and waged wars against each other
for centuries. If any two peoples are different, tbes?

THE MELEE 237

are indeed two different peoples. Their language^,
mentalities, ideals, methods of thinking, ways of life,
present great contrasts. If any two nations would
seem incapable of unity, they are Germany and
France.

And yet, situated between the powerful French and
German nation-states whose citizens have been war-
ring with each other throughout their history live
about one minion Frenchmen, as Gallic as any in the
French Republic, and nearly three million Germans,
as Germanic as any in the Reich, who have been liv-
ing side by side in peace for long centuries while
their kinsmen in the neighboring French and Ger-
man states have periodically conquered and destroyed
each other. The biological, racial, religious, cultural
and mental differences between the inhabitants of
Geneva and Lausanne, on the one side, and Bern,
Zurich and Saint-Gall on the other, are exactly the
same as are the biological, racial, religious, cultural
and mental differences between the inhabitants of
Paris, Bordeaux and Marseille on the one side, and
Berlin, Munich and Dresden on the other.

Only one difference exists.

The French people in France and the German peo-
ple in Germany live in sovereign nation-states where
sovereignty is vested respectively in the French nation
and in the German nation. la Switzerland, sover-
eignty is vested, not in the French nationality nor in
the German nationality, but in the union of both,
under which citizens belonging to either nationality
enjoy equal protection, equal rights and equal obli-
gations.

• 3 8 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

It seems, therefore, crystal-clear that friction, con-
*licts and wars between people are caused, not by their
national, racial, religious, social and cultural differ-
ences, but by the single fact that these differences are
galvanized in separate sovereignties which have no
way to settle the conflicts resulting from their differ-
ences except through violent clashes.

Conflicts created by these very same differences
within the human race can be solved without violent
clashes and wars whenever and wherever sovereignty
resides, not in but above the conflicting units.

That manldnd will ever be “united in spirit” or
in interests is an utterly meaningless contention. It
is not even desirable that such uniformity of man-
land should ever be achieved. Uniformity would
mean the end of culture and civilization*

The belief that the world can be united by a single
movement a religion, a language, a political creed,
an economic system has been predominant in the
minds of fanatics all through history. It has been
tried and tried again and has invariably failed. No
conception is more erroneous than to believe that man
must first be united in religion, culture, political out-
look, economic methods, before he can be politically
united in a state, a federation or any unified legal
order.

Any attempt to impose one single cultural, religious,
economic or philosophical conception upon all man-
kind is preposterous and implies an aggressive and
totalitarian world outlook. The wide diversity among
men and groups of men in the fields of philosophy,
art, religion, language, political and economic meth-

THE MELEE 239

ods, constitutes the very essence of culture. These
differences not only should be cherished but must
be protected in every possible way. All through his-
tory, however, such differences have always been self-
destructive when the different groups enjoyed absolute
sovereignty and were not protected by a higher source
of law,

A universal legal order, so badly needed by the
world today, far from endangering in any way these
cultural differences, is the condition for the mainte-
nance and continuous thriving of such differences.
Without union, either the Scots would have extermi-
nated the English or the English would have ex-
terminated the Scots, just as the Romans destroyed
Carthage and the Huns destroyed Rome. Within the
United Kingdom, the Scots are more Scottish in their
traditions and character, and the English are more
English in theirs, than they ever were before that
union when they were killing each other.

Another fallacy is that two different economic sys-
tems, two different conceptions of economic order,
such as Communism in Soviet Russia, and capitalism
in the West, cannot be integrated within one system
of law, within one society*

In France, England, Switzerland and Holland, the
telephone, telegraph, electric light services and many
other economic operations are conducted on a com-
munist basis, owned by the state or other communal
collectivities, just as in the Soviet Union, and aie not
private enterprises as in the U.S.A. On the other
hand, textile, chemical, machine tool and other fac-
tories in these very same countries are privately owned

240 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

as in the U.S.A. and not owned by the government
as in the U.S.S.R,

How can collectively and privately owned enter-
prises coexist in one state, under one system of law?
Very well indeed, as the example of Engknd, France,
Switzerland and Holland prove.

Even in the United States, die most completely
capitalist-individualist country, we see government
created and government-owned enterprises operating
smoothly and advantageously side by side with private
enterprises, as the Tennessee Valley Administration
and many other public works demonstrate. And
should the people of the United States some day de-
cide that the Federal government take over telephone
service from the Bell Telephone Company, telegraph
service from Western Union, railroads from the many
individual private companies, this would in no way
endanger or interfere with private ownership and
privately managed industries in other fields.

Different economic conceptions, different economic
systems, can perfectly well coexist within one political
and social system, under one sovereignty. In fact, the
only way they can coexist peacefully is within one
legal system.

The widespread belief that any unified legal order
between the Soviet Union and the Western democ-
racies is impossible because of the fundamental differ-
ences in their economic systems, is no more valid than
the century-old prejudice that Catholics and Prot-
estants could not live peacefully in the same com-
munity.

What makes the Communist economy of Soviet

THE MELEE 241

Russia “dangerous” to the West, and what makes the
capitalist system of the Western countries “danger-
ous” to the ILS.S.R. is not the difference in their
economic systems but the fact that these different
economic systems are incorporated in different sov-
ereign states and are separate sovereignties. It is the
Soviet nation-state that is a threat to the West and it
is the Western nation-states that are a menace to the
Soviet Union. Not because of hostile intentions, but
because of their very existence as sovereign units.

Conflicts between these sovereign nation-states are
inevitable, not because of differences in their eco-
nomic methods and in their economic systems, but
because of the nonintegrated sovereign power of the
divided social units.

In every document, agreement, charter or com-
munique they issue, our statesmen stubbornly per-
sist in declaring that they want peace by safeguarding
and guaranteeing “the sovereign equality of all na-
tions.” They are unable to realize the contradiction
inherent in this eternally repeated, meaningless
slogan. The coexistence of social groups with equal
sovereign power is precisely the condition of war,
the very condition that can never, under any circum-
stances, bring peace.

Far from being an obstacle to a unified legal order,
the differences between the Russian and Western
economic systems mate an over-all, unified, sovereign
legal order imperative if we want to prevent a violent
clash between them.

One thing is certain. No number of joint dedarar
tions of good will, military alliances, mutual non-

242 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

aggression pacts, divisions of spheres of influence, con-
ferences between the leaders, banquets, toasts and
fireworks, will ever prevent the impending and in-
evitable clash between sovereign social units.

The major and most widespread argument against
the establishment of inter-national law is that it “just
cannot be.” There is no gainsaying the logic and die
practical demand for such a world order, but it “just
cannot be. . . .”

No debate is possible with this class of eternal
skeptics. They bring to mind an old story. According
to legend, Pythagoras, after his discovery that the
sum of the angles of any triangle is equal to two right
angles, out of gratitude to the gods sacrificed one hun-
dred oxen. Since that time, all oxen become panic-
stricken and low in fear when anything new is in
sight.

All those nationalist forces which, in 1919, fought
against Wilson’s League, after having witnessed its
inefficacy during two decades, now f ervently advocate
its restoration in the form of another organization
composed of sovereign nations.

The argument of those who want a repetition of
this historic failure is indeed strange. They say:

1. Our purpose is to prevent a third world war.
2. Any measure proposed which would involve
   delegation of parts of the sovereignty of the peo-
   ples to democratically controlled bodies higher
   than the nation-states is impractical because:
3. Such proposals would not be accepted by the
   present governments of the nation-states.

THE MELEE 243

The persistent opposition to reason and logic in
political matters from those who have no other argu-
ment but “practicality” is the most vulgar manifesta-
tion of human mind and behavior. It would never be
tolerated if the conduct of human affairs were based
on principles and guided by reason.

If our purpose is to prevent another world war,
then the practicality or impracticality of a proposed
method can be judged only in relation to the object
sought: Can it or can it not prevent another world
war?

It is nonsense and illogical to say that a method pro-
posed to prevent another world war is impractical
because of a third element in this peculiar logical
construction, namely: because it will not be accepted
by the national governments now holding power.

If our purpose is to devise methods acceptable to
the existing governments of the nation-states, there
can be no disputing that only methods acceptable to
these national governments are to be regarded as
practical.

But then let us be frank and say that such is our
purpose.

Let us not continue to mislead the public by saying
that such methods will prevent a third world war.
They will not.

What is the meaning of the word “practical* 1 in
political affairs?

Is it something that is actually happening, which
is actually being done in our lifetime? In this case,
nothing is more practical than war. Misery is practical,
suffering is practical, lolling, deportation, oppression,

244 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

persecution, starvation are essentially practical. It
would seem that our endeavor should be to eliminate
these practices from society. They are inseparably
linked with the nation-state structure of society, of
which they are the direct outcome.

How is it possible to measure the practicality or im-
practicality of an ideal, of a doctrine, of a program
aimed at eradicating these evils, by whether or not
they are acceptable to the very same institutions from
which emanate the evils we seek to destroy?

Those who cannot understand the fundamental dif-
ference between a universal legal order and a league
or a council usually urge us to be “practical.” If the
people and the governments are not ready or willing
to accept more than a council composed of sovereign
nation-states, then let us at least take that, runs the
argument. Let us make a first step, a beginning.

It is most reasonable to start by taking a “first step/’
The trouble with league-council proposals, however,
is that a league or a council does not initiate any-
thing.

It is not a first step. It is a continuation. A con-
tinuation of error, of a fatally bad and disastrous
policy.

It is a negative step. It is a step away from our goal.
If we want peace between the nations, then a council
of sovereign nations takes us backwards. A council
of sovereign nations artificially prolongs the life of
the nation-state structure and in consequence is a
step toward war.

The “practical men” who preach that a world or-
ganization of sovereign nation-states is a realistic ap-

THE MELEE 245

proacli to our problem are the finest specimens of
those eternal political reactionaries Disraeli once de-
fined: “A practical man is a man who practices the
errors of his forefathers/’

The innumerable international conferences, which
are held almost every month, are nothing but the
epileptic convulsions of the incurably infirm system
of nation-states. Every few weeks a new crisis arises
in which “public opinion” childishly clamors for an-
other meeting of the leaders, expecting a miracle
an agreement between the national governments that
would cure the disease. Every time, they get an empty,
insignificant “communiqu6” that poultices the im-
mediate pain for a while, but within a month 6r less,
another issue becomes acute, for which no remedy
is known except another conference.

All these meetings of representatives of sovereign
national governments are bound to be futile, as they
take place on a level altogether different from where
the real problem lies. Within such a council of sov-
ereign nation-states, no other course is possible than
that which has been followed in the past.

And we know that nonintervention in international
conflicts always and necessarily means positive inter-
vention on the side of the stronger belligerent to the
detriment of the weaker.

We know that the policy of “balance of power”
can maintain peace between nations only so long as
power is not in balance. Only as long as one nation
or one group of nations has supremacy over the other.
In such a system, as soon as power between tie two

246 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

opposing groups is really “in balance,” war is immi-
nent and inevitable.

And we also know that the policy of spheres of in-
fluence is bound to develop into a policy which seeks
influence in the spheres of others.

It is in the light of these facts that one can judge
the value of the new term which is supposed to have
a devastating effect upon those who have had enough
of living under constant threat of being murdered,
robbed, persecuted and oppressed by the nation-states
and who would like to five a civilized life in peace
under law. The term is: “Perfectionism.”

Anyone who does not believe in the “first step
theory” of the United Nations Organization is branded
a “perfectionist.” And “perfectionism/* of course, is
the most dangerous of all political vices.

No one knows when a universal legal order will be
achieved and no doubt all who are striving toward
that ideal would be perfectly satisfied with a modest
“first step” toward it. But the fact is that our gov-
ernments have not even indicated an intention ever to
take a first step in that direction.

A man wanting to go from New York to Rio de
Janeiro, who discovers after leaving the harbor that
he has been taken on a boat headed for Southampton,
cannot find much consolation in learning that the boat
will make a “first stop” at Cherbourg. He is being
taken in an opposite direction to that which he wishes.
Is it dangerous perfectionism if he insists that it is
not to Cherbourg but to Rio de Janeiro that he wants
to go?

War is the result of unregulated contact between
power units.

THE MELEE 247

Regionalism will only accelerate the tempo of war.
If we organize sovereign nation-states in regional
groups, then all nations of a region will be in contact
with all nations in the other regions, and if relations
between the regions remain on a basis of regional or
national sovereignty then we shall have war.

Did the German Reich, the regional federation of
the German states, bring peace? Has the regional
federation of England, Scotland and Wales, or that
of the forty-eight American states protected their
peoples from war?

Most assuredly, these regional federations stopped
once and for all the wars that had raged “between the
once sovereign units that had merged to become a
federation. Since their union, the peoples of the newly
formed regional sovereign federations no longer needed
to go into battle against each other. But together, as
a regional unit, they continued to be exposed to war,
for the identical reason that had caused wars among
themselves, before their federation. Irrespective of the
federations of regional groups, there continued to exist
several sovereign power units with which the regional
federations were not integrated and with which they
remained in contact.

Today, the interdependence of all the nations on
this small planet is so complete that federations of
regions although they would end wars within the
federated regions cannot possibly protect the peoples
from violent conflicts between the different federa-
tions, if each regional unit remains sovereign unto it-
self and if the relations of these sovereign regional
units continue to be regulated, not by law but by the
old, fallacious methods of diplomacy, foreign policy

248 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

and representation in an inter-national or inter-regional
council.

The problem is not how to bring together nations
which are neighbors, which are of similar heritage and
which like each other. The problem is how to make
possible the peaceful coexistence of peoples who are
different and who dislike each other.

Those who can find no argument against the
logical and urgent necessity of transforming the in-
stitutions of national sovereignty into institutions
capable of creating and maintaining law, not only
within nations but also between them, and yet are
reluctant or unwilling to accept responsibility, seek
escape in the argument that the time is not yet ripe
for such reforms. Perhaps in five hundred years. . . .

Perhaps in one hundred years Perhaps during the

next generation they waver. -But not we and not
now.

The truth is that ever since the beginning of the
twentieth century these reforms have been overdue.

If we used our brains for the purpose for which
they were created for thinking and if we let our
actions be guided by principles arrived at by rational
thinking, these changes in our society would have
been carried out before the events of 1914. The out-
break of the first World War was the clearly visible
symptom that this opportunity had been missed and
that the crisis resulting from the clash between realities
and institutions was entering an acute stage.

The series of violent upheavals and concussions
which, following the first World War, for the first
time in history simultaneously engulfed the entiie

THE MELEE 249

globe in an ever-increasing crescendo, oilminating in
the unparalleled explosions of the second World War,
are symptoms which show, more clearly than any man
could describe, the inadequacy, inefficiency and
senility of the institutions by which we allow our-
selves to be governed.

The same Winston Churchill who, when the dark-
est hour was over and the Battle of Britain won, sub-
scribed to the Atlantic Charter and all the other docu-
ments and declarations that are leading us astray
and strengthening the nation-state structure for the
next war, once performed an act of statesmanship
which makes any excuse for taking the wrong course
now seem perfectly ridiculous. In the hour of gravest
peril, when Hitler’s hordes were victoriously tram-
pling the soil of France, on the very eve of French
capitulation, on June 16, 1940, the British Ambas-
sador to France handed the following draft declara-
tion to the French government:

At this most fateful moment in die history of the
modern world, the Governments of the United King-
dom and the French Republic make this declaration of
indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in then:
common defence of justice and freedom against sub-
jection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of
robots and slaves.

The two Governments declare that France and Great
Britain shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-
British Union. The constitution of the Union will
provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial
and economic policies. Every citizen of France mil
enjoy immediate citizenship of Great Britain, every
British subject will became a citizen of Fiance*

250 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Both countries will share responsibility for the re-
pair of the devastation of war, wherever it occurs in
their territories, and the resources of both shall be
equally, and as one, applied to that purpose.

During the war there shall be a single war Cabinet,
and all die forces of Britain and France, whether on
land, sea or in the air, will be placed under its direc-
tion. It will govern from wherever it best can. The
two Parliaments will be formally associated.

The nations of the British Empire are already form-
ing new armies. France will keep her available forces in
the field, on the sea, and in the air.

The Union appeals to the United States to fortify
the economic resources of the Allies and to bring her
powerful material aid to the common cause.

The Union will concentrate its whole energy
against the power of the enemy no matter where the
battle may be. And thus we shall conquer.

This proposal of union between France and Great
Britain embodies the fundamental principles of
future society, as opposed to the principles of the
past expressed in the Covenant of the League of
Nations, the Atlantic Charter, the Dumbarton Oaks
and San Francisco documents. And it was a concrete,
official proposal made by the British government, pre-
sided over by Winston Churchill, to the government
of the French Republic. Of course, it came at a hope-
lessly inopportune moment. Fiance had already re-
ceived a death blow from the German Army. The
Third Republic was disintegrating. A few hours later
it died.

In view of this historic event, how can it be said
that “the time is not yet ripe” for measures which

THE MELEE 251

were actually and officially proposed by the British
government to the French government, as the only
salvation in a desperate extremity? Is it too much to
expect that people Who, at the point of death and when
it is too late, are willing to take die remedy, will
make use of that very same remedy \vhen still in pos-
session of their full senses and when there is still
time for it to be effective? Or must we become re-
signed and admit that Plato was right in saying that
“human beings never make laws; it is the accidents
and catastrophes of all kinds, happening in every
conceivable way, that make the kws for us”?

The institution of the sovereign nation-state has
been dead now for several decades. We cannot revive
it by refusing to bury the corpse.

There are a number of people holding high govern-
ment office or chairs in universities who understand
perfectly the underlying problem of peace but who
indulge in the puerile excuse that “die time is not
yet ripe/’

History never asks rulers and representatives of an
existing regime when they will consent to institute
the reforms made necessary by progress. Those who
have succeeded, rarely see the need for change nor
of what it will consist. Often in the past, reforms that
seemed imminent were delayed for centuries; on the
other hand, reforms regarded as Utopian became
realities overnight. The great majority of the living
never realize the fundamental changes taking place
during their lifetime.

How can we expect from our governments and
from the self-appointed interpreters of public opinion

THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

in universities, in radio or in the press, any greater
insight into what is going on today than was shown
by their predecessors in other similarly revolutionary
eras? Those who can visualize the realities of tomor-
row only in things and beliefs already existing today
will never be able to solve our problem, will never be
capable of searching for principles nor of shaping the
future according to the principles of tomorrow.

Anatole France tells this wise and profound story
in Sur La Pierre Blanche:

In the days of Nero, in the prosperous Greek city
of Corinth, the Roman proconsul Gallion, was dis-
cussing the future of the world with some of his
Roman and Greek friends, statesmen and scientists.
TTiey all agreed that nobody believed any longer in
the old gods, neither in Egyptian, nor Babylonian,
nor Greek, nor Roman gods. The question was raised:
What will be the new religion? Who will succeed
Jupiter? The distinguished and cultured gathering
spiritedly debated the chances of about a dozen new
gods, when the delightful conversation was inter-
rupted by a noisy quarrel between a strange, haggard
Jew one Saul or Paul of Tarsus and a rabbi of
the synagogue who accused Paul of revolutionizing
the existing law. After the unpleasant incident, Gal-
lion and his friends spent a few moments discussing
the queer and ridiculous faith that this Paul was
spreading, the teaching of an obscure Jewish prophet
called Chrestus, or Cherestus, who had caused so
much trouble to another Roman proconsul in Judea.
One of the guests jokingly wondered if this Chrestus
might not succeed Jupiter. The idea greatly amused

LAW . . . CONQUEST 253

everyone. They unanimously agreed that this would
be absurd indeed. The chances were all in favor of
Hercules. . * .

CHAPTER XV

LAW . . . CONQUEST

Our Laws and Statutes are inherited
From generation to generation,
And spread slowly from place to place
Like a disease that has no end.
Reason to folly, blessings to cuises
Turn. Woe be to usi Heirs of all the Past,
For to our Birthrights, bom with us,
No one gives heed! . . . No one, alas!
(GOETHE: Faust)

THE problem of our twentieth century crisis,
seemingly so vastly complex and inextricable
with its hundreds of national, territorial, religious,
social, economic, political and cultural riddles, can be
reduced to a few simple propositions.

i* From the teachings of history we have learned
that conflicts and wars between social units are in-
evitable whenever and wherever groups of men with
equal sovereignty come into contact,

2. Whenever and wherever social units in any fieW,
   regardless of size and character, tave come into con-
   tact and the resulting friction has led to war, we have

254 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

learned that these conflicts have always ceased after
some part of the sovereignty of the warring units was
transferred to a higher social unit able to create legal
order, a government authority under which the previ-
ously warring groups became equal members of a
broader society and within which conflicts between
groups could be controlled and eradicated by legal
means without the use of force.

3. From the experience thus gained we know that
   within any given group of individuals in contact and
   communication with each other, conflict is inevitable
   whenever and wherever sovereign power resides in
   the individual members or groups of members of
   society, and not in society itself.
4. We further know that, irrespective of the im-
   mediate and apparent causes of conflict among war-
   ring groups, these causes ceased producing wars and
   violent conflicts only through the establishment of a
   legal order, only when die social groups in conflict
   were subjected to a superior system of law, and that,
   in all cases and at all times, the effect of such a superior
   system of law has been the cessation of the use of
   violence among the previously warring groups.
5. Knowing that wars between nonintegrated social
   groups in contact are inevitable, that the coexistence
   of nonintegrated sovereign social groups always and
   in all cases has led to wars, we must realize that peace
   among men, among individuals, or among groups of
   individuals in any sphere, is the result of legal order.
   Peace is identical with the existence of law.

. 6. As the twentieth century crisis is a world-wide
clash between the social units of sovereign nation-
states, the problem of ‘peace in our time is the estab-

LAW . . . CONQUEST 2,55

lishment of a legal order to regulate relations among
men, beyond and above the nation-states. This re*
quires transferring parts of the sovereign authority
of the existing warring national institutions to uni-
versal institutions capable of creating kw and order
in human relations beyond and above the nation-
states.

These propositions are merely the reduction into
elementary formulas of one long line of events in our
history. The task before us is nothing unique. It is
one step further in the same direction, the next step
in our evolution.

That conditions in our present society mate it im-
perative for us to undertake this step without further
delay should by now be clear to everybody.

Within a single generation, two world wars have
ravaged mankind, interfered with peaceful progress
and disrupted the free, democratic way of life of the
entire Western world. In spite of the desire of the
overwhelming majority of the peoples to live and
work in peace, we have been unable to escape war.
For more than three decades, we have been witness-
ing an unprecedented decay and downfall of our
civilization.

To wage this stupendous struggle, we have had to
submit to a hitherto unknown degree of privation,
persecution, degradation, suffering, and have been
forced to change drastically our civilized way of life.
The great majority of the entire human race has been
subjected to regimentation, dictation, fear, serfdom.

Considering this world-shaking catastrophe which
directly affects every home and every individual,

We believe that the progress of science and indus-

256 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

try have rendered national authorities powerless to
safeguard the people against armed aggression or to
prevent devastating wars*

We Believe that peace in any country of the world
cannot be maintained without the existence of an
effective universal government organization to pre-
vent crime in the inter-national field.

We believe that independence of a nation does
not mean untrammeled and unrestricted freedom to do
whatever it wants, and that real independence can
be created only if no nation is free to attack another,
to drag it into war, and to cause such devastating loss
of life and wealth as has been wrought twice in out
lifetime.

We believe that security of a nation, just as security
of an individual, means the co-operation of all ft*
secure the rights of each.

We believe that the relations between nations*
just as the relations between individuals in a com-
munity, can be peaceful only if based upon and regu-
lated by Law.

We believe that the only way to prevent future
world wars is through regulation of the interrelation-
ship of nations, not by unenforceable treaty obliga-
tions, which sovereign nations will always disregard,
but by an enforceable legal order, binding all nations,
giving all nationals equal rights under the established
law, and imposing equal obligations upon each.

We believe that peace and security can be estab-
lished and assured only if we, the sovereign people,
who, for our own safety and well-being have delegated
parts of our sovereignty to cities to handle our munic-

LAW . . . CONQUEST 257

ipai affairs, to departments, counties, provinces, can-
tons or states to take care of departmental, county,
provincial, cantonal or state issues, to our national
governments to attend to our national problems to
protect ourselves against the danger of inter-national
wars, now delegate part of our respective sovereignty
to bodies capable of creating and applying Law in
inter-national relations.

We believe that we can protect ourselves against
inter-national wars only through the establishment of
constitutional life in world affairs, and that such uni-
versal Law must be created in conformity with the
democratic process, by freely elected and responsible
representatives. Creation, application and execution of
the Law must be rigorously controlled by the demo-
cratic process.

We believe that only a world-wide legal order can
insure freedom from fear, and make possible the un-
hindered development of economic energies for the
achievement of freedom from want.

We believe that the natural and inalienable rights
of man must prevail. Under twentieth century reali-
ties they can be preserved only if tiey are protected
by Law against destruction from outside forces.

How can these propositions be translated into in-
stitutions and become the driving force of political
reality?

Nothing is more futile than to work out detailed

258 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

plans and prepare drafts for a constitutional document
of a world government. It would be a simple matter
for a competent individual or group of people to sit
down and work out scores of plans in all detail and in
all variety. Within a few days one could produce
twenty constitutional drafts, each completely differ-
ent from the others, each equally plausihle.

Such procedure would only hinder progress. Noth-
ing is more open to criticism than a constitution, un-
less it be the draft of a constitution.

If at the very inception of democracy, before the
democratic nation-states had been created in the
eighteenth century, a specific draft of a democratic
constitution had been identified with democracy itself,
and put forward for general approval and acceptance,
we should never have had a democratic nation-state
anywhere in the world.

History does not work that way.

The founders of democracy were much wiser and
more politic. They first formulated a small number of
fundamental principles regarded as self-evident and
basic for a democratic society. These principles suc-
ceeded in arousing the vision and inflaming the en-
thusiasm of the peoples who, on the basis of these
fundamental principles, empowered their representa-
tives to translate them into reality and create the ma-
chinery necessary for a permanent legal order, repre-
senting the triumph of these principles.

The constitutions, the fundamental laws of the
new democratic order, were debated after, not before
the acceptance of the elementary principles and the
mandate given by the people to their representatives

LAW . . . CONQUEST 259

for the realization of those principles. So today we
see democracy expressed in systems of great variety
in detail, but nonetheless, deriving from identical
principles.

Democracy in the United States is different from
British democracy. French democracy is different
from the Dutch, and Swiss democracy has institutions
differing greatly from Swedish democracy. In spite of
their differences in detail, they are all workable forms
of democracy, expressing the same fundamental social
conception, the sovereignty of the people as under-
stood a hundred and fifty years ago.

Regarding the creation of universal democratic
legal order, we have not yet reached the stage of con-
ception. We have not yet formulated the principles.
We have not yet set the standards.

To put the problem before national governments
would be a hopeless enterprise, doomed to failure be-
fore even starting. The representatives of the sov-
ereign nation-states are incapable of acting and think-
ing otherwise than according to their nation-centric
conceptions. As such a universal problem cannot be
solved along national lines, certainly and naturally
they would destroy any plan, any draft, of a universal
legal order.

Our national statesmen and legislators, by virtue
of their education, mentality and outlook, are com-
pletely insensitive to the nature of the reform re-
quired. Besides, many high priests of the nation-state
cult look upon international war as an admirable in-
strument of advancement toward wealth, fame, dis-
tinction and immortality-

260 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

Waging war is the easiest thing in the world. It is
a business which has a clearly defined, primitive
aim to destroy the adversary and is based on
simple arithmetic and strategy, easy to learn. To man-
age an enterprise in which one can spend unlimited
amounts of money regardless of income, produce
goods irrespective of markets, monopolize newspaper
space and radio time for self-advertisement, enjoy
dictatorial powers over lives and property, establish an
artificial, ad hoc hierarchy and a high command that
suppresses all criticism, seize all means of production
and communication, creates a situation which ought
to satisfy the caesarmania of any child. Many of our
ministers, generals, diplomats, scientists, engineers,
poets and manufacturers consciously or uncon-
sciously just adore wars. At no other time is it so easy
to achieve success, so easy to obtain the applause and
servile adulation of the rabble.

All these people, while constantly paying pious
tribute to “peace,” are solidly entrenched in the hier-
archy of the nation-state, and will defend to the last
the fetishes, taboos and superstitions of a society with
such unparalleled opportunities for them.

From men who are personal beneficiaries of the old
system incapable of independent thinking and vic-
tims of the scandalous method of teaching history in
all the civilized countries we cannot expect construc-
tive ideas, much less constructive measures.

We must therefore begin at the beginning. And
die beginning is the Word.

This should in no way be discouraging. In this
modern world of ours, with mass-circulation news-

LAW . . . CONQUEST 261

papers, motion pictures and radio, capable of reaching
the entire civilized population of the earth, a decade
is ample time for a movement to bring to triumph the
principles of universal law, if such a movement is
guided by men who have learned from the churches
and the political parties how to propagate ideas and
how to build up a dynamic organization behind an
idea.

The crisis of the twentieth century conclusively
demonstrates that democracy and industrialism can
no longer coexist in a nation-state.

If we insist upon maintaining the nation-state
framework and want to continue with industrial
progress, we are bound to arrive at totalitarian Fascism.

If we believe that a free, democratic way of life
is what we want, and that an intensification of indus-
trialism and mass production is what we need, then
we must remove the barrier blocking the road to that
goal, and replace the archaic nation-state structure
with a universal legal order in which development to-
ward political and economic freedom and wealth can
become a reality.

If we are determined to maintain the nation-state
framework and at the same time endeavor to preserve
democracy, we shall be forced to give up industrial
progress, reduce populations and return to a rural
way of life.

As this Rousseau-like dream of a return to nature
is unthinkable, it can be excluded. The alternative

262 THE AN’ ATOMY OF PEACE

for the future o modern society is: totalitarianism
within the nation-state framework under treaty ar-
rangements, or democracy under universal law, under
government. But for that government to be demo-
cratic, there must first be a government.

The longing for security within the nation-state
structure is the most dangerous of all collective drives.
In the small, interdependent world of today, there are
only two ways for a nation to achieve security.

Law . . . Conquest.

As the nation-state structure excludes a legal order
embracing men living in different sovereign units,
the drive for security directly produces the drive for
conquest

The drive for security is the major cause of im-
perialism.

This has never been admitted by the representatives
of those powers who have actually traveled that road.

It is amusing to hear the anti-imperialist diatribes
of the representatives of the two most virulently im-
perialist nations of the middle twentieth century
U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. Both nations are persuaded that
they are anti-imperialist and that what they want is
nothing but security. To understand this paradox, it
is most enlightening to reread the history of the growth
of the Roman Empire,

Nobody in Rome wanted an empire, nobody wanted
war, nobody was an imperialist. They merely liked

LAW . . . CONQUEST 2.63

and valued their own civilization, their higher culture
and standard of living, and were anxious to preserve
their own way of life. The dominating conception
was as “isolationist” as that of any midwestern Senator
in Washington or central Russian Commissar in Mos*
cow. The Romans wanted only to be left alone, to
enjoy their higher living standards, their superior
civilization.

But unfortunately, the barbarians on their frontiers
did not leave them alone and always made trouble for
them in one way or another. So their deep desire for
security forced the Romans to go beyond their fron-
tiers, to eliminate immediate dangers and to push
their frontiers farther away from Rome to protect
themselves. This desire for security led them finally
to conquer virtually all of the then known world and
to subjugate other peoples, until internal decay and
new, stronger outside forces finally destroyed the
whole structure.

This is the real story of most of die great empires
of world history. It is also the story of the British
Empire, wbich has been built up by the desire for
security of British commercial investments and inter-
ests scattered all over the world, of growing British
industrialism, which was essential t6 the survival of
the British Isles.

Today this very same force is the driving element
behind the policy of die Soviet Union and the United
States. Both are deeply convinced of the superiority
of their own values and standards and the primacy of
their own civilizations. They have vast territories and
are not in need of expansion yer se. Their sincere

264 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

desire is to be left alone, to live peacefully and to be
able to continue to live their own way of life.

But the globe is shrinking, steppes and oceans are
no longer safe frontiers, and other nations are not
willing to let them do what they want. Outside forces
constantly threaten and occasionally attack them.
Therefore, to achieve security they feel obliged to
build up huge armed forces, to defeat and conquer
their immediate enemies and to push ahead f their
ramparts, their defense positions, their bases, their
spheres of influence, farther and farther.

At the end of the second World War, we are seeing
American forces annexing islands and other bases
thousands of miles away from the American mainland
for reasons of security. And we are seeing the Soviet
frontiers pushed forward from the Arctic to the
Mediterranean and from Europe to the Far East, also
for defensive reasons.

It is no use accusing the Soviet or the American
governments of imperialism. They sincerely believe
that these measures are purely security measures.
Just as sincerely they are convinced that superior
armed force in the hands of any other nation would
be dangerous to peace, but a guarantee of peace and
a benefit for all in their own possession. And they are
equally sincere in believing that the dissemination of
their own political doctrines in other nations, the ac-
ceptance by other nations of their own political and
economic conceptions, would strengthen peace and
would be beneficial to all.

All these unmistakable symptoms of present-day
realities indicate that if we insist upon remaining on
the old road of national sovereignty, the drive for

LAW . . . CONQUEST 265

security, inherent in all nations, will push us toward
more violent clashes between the nation-states, com-
pared to which the first and second world wars will
appear as child’s play.

After the liquidation of the second World War,
there remain only three powers capable of creating
and maintaining armed forces in the modern sense:
three empires. The small and medium-sized nations
will inescapably have to become satellites of one of
these three dominating industrial and military powers.

Some incurable dreamers among our statesmen
seriously believe that such a triangular power struc-
ture of our world is possible even desirable. Actually,
it is the mathematical formula for the next, probably
the last phase of the struggle for the conquest of the
world.

In spite of the endlessly repeated anti-imperialist
catch phrases of the representatives of the great pow-
ers, every economic and technological reality of our
epoch, every dynamic force in the world today, every
law of history and logic, indicates that we are on the
verge of a period of empire building of aggregations
more powerful and more centralized than ever before.
There is no virtue in relying on obsolete slogans and
ignoring the forces that today are pushing mankind
toward a more organized control of this earth.

It would be wiser to recognize these realities and to
guide the torrent into democratic channels. If we
leave the concept of sovereign nationalities enshrined
as the test of “freedom” the contradiction between this
fiction and the physical facts will only cause greater
explosions. Unless interdependence, and hence the
need for the centralized rule of law for the freedom

266 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

which comes from equality before the law among
nations as among individuals is recognized, we shall
suffer further and more devastating wars among the
United States, Great Britain, Soviet Russia and what-
ever other nation-states retain any sizable power, in
every possible combination. As in an elimination con-
test, one of these or a combination will achieve by
force that unified control made mandatory by the
times we live in. Of course, it will be a strictly anti-
imperialist imperialism, a kind of very anti-Fascist
Fascism. Intervention will always take place in the
name* of nonintervention, oppression will be called
protection and vassalage will be established by sol-
emnly assuring the conquered nation its right to
choose the form of government it wants.

There is something angelic in the simplicity and
credulity of professional statesmen.

What the two camps destined to wage the coming
struggle for conquest of the world are going to say
about each other’s political intentions, social and
economic systems, how they will explain to others
and justify to themselves the causes of the war
fought, naturally, in sheer self-defense and for self-
preservation by both sides will be sentimental clap-
trap. Pure doggerel. … It will have not the slightest
relation to facts.

In spite of frequent repetitions and parallels, there
exist a great number of unique phenomena in human

LAW . . . CONQUEST 267

From the beginning of history until our days, until
the exploration of the Arctic and Antarctic, people
have discovered new continents, new lands, new
islands. But this seemingly permanent characteristic
of past history is now at an end. The era of geographic
discovery is closed. It is almost certain that we know
every corner of this globe and that no new lands await
the arrival of adventurous navigators. For the first time
since man’s history has been recorded, we possess oui
entire globe. Until and unless we are able to com-
municate with another pknet, the theater of human
history will be limited to geographically determined,
constant and known dimensions.

With this unique and radical change in our
geographical and political outlook, expansion, growth,
conquest and colonization are no longer possible in
virgin territories, but only at each other’s expense.
During the past five centuries, competition in con-
quest was possible without necessarily encroaching
upon the possessions of other powers, through dis-
covery and annexation of new lands, with occasional
naval encounters or local armed skirmishes to discour-
age a competitor.

This period of history is now over. National se-
curity, the urge for conquest, can be satisfied only by
subjugating and appropriating territories and posses-
sions of other nations, thereby destroying their se-
curity.

Until today throughout its entire history, the world
was too vast to be conquered by a single man or a
single power. Technical means have always lagged
behind the objective. The world was always too large
to be conquered entirely, even by tie greatest force.

268 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The planet was too elastic, it seemed to grow con-
stantly. Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, the
Spaniards, the English, Napoleon all failed. They
afl conquered a large part of the world, but never the
entire world.

Now only, for the first time in history, the conquest
of the world by a single power is a geographic, tech-
nical and military possibility.

The world cannot grow any more, it is a known
quantity.

As discoveries ended, the growth of the world was
suddenly brought to a standstill. Technical develop-
ments rapidly caught up and made the globe smaller
and smaller. Today the world is completely engulfed
by modern industrialism. From a technical and mili-
tary point of view, the world of today is considerably
smaller than was the territory held by any one of the
major empires of the past centuries. It is infinitely
easier and quicker for the United States to wage war
in the Far East than it was for Caesar to do so in
Anglia or Egypt.

Modern science has made war a highly mechanized
art which can be mastered only by die major indus-
trial powers.

Only three of these are left.

And any one of the three, by defeating the other
two, would conquer and rule the world.

For the first time in human history, one power can
conquer and rule the world. Indeed but for the in-
dustrial potential of the United States, Hitler might
have done it! Developments may take a different turn.
But technically and militarily, it is a definite possi-
bility.

LAW . . . CONQUEST 269

And politically, it is a definite probability if no legal
order is created to satisfy the instinctive desire of
peoples for security. A decision upon this crucial issue
will probably be reached before the end of the twen-
tieth century.

To put it bluntly, the meaning of the crisis of the
twentieth century is that this planet must to some
degree be brought under unified control. Our task,
our duty, is to attempt to institute this unified control
in a democratic way by first proclaiming its principles,
and to achieve it by persuasion and with the. least pos-
sible bloodshed. If we fail to accomplish this, we can
be certain that the iron law of history will compel us
to wage more and more wars, with more and more
powerful weapons, against more and more powerful
groups, until unified control is finally attained
through conquest.

Political unification of the world by conquest is
expensive, painful, bloody. The goal could be achieved
so much more easily if it were not for that eternal
saboteur of progress human blindness.

But if it is impossible to cure that blindness and if
mankind is unable to face its destiny and to determine
by reason and insight the course of our immediate
future, if our nationalist dogmatism will not permit us
to undertake the organization of a universal legal
order, then at least, let us try not to prolong the agony
of a decaying, dying system of society.

If we cannot attain to universalism and create union
by common consent and democratic methods as a
result of rational thinking then rather than retard
the process, let us precipitate unification by conquest

THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

It serves no reasonable purpose to prolong the death
throes of our decrepit institutions and to postpone
inevitable events only to make the changes more pain-
ful and more costly in blood and suffering. It would
be better to have done with this operation as quickly
as possible so that the fight for the reconquest of lost
human liberties can start within the universal state
without too much loss of time.

The era of inter-national wars will end, just as
everything human ends. It will come to an end with
die establishment of universal law to regulate human
relationship, either by union or by conquest.

The modem Bastille is the nation-state, no matter
whether the jailers are conservative, liberal or socialist.
That symbol of our enslavement must be destroyed if
we ever want to be free again. The great revolution
for the liberation of man has to be fought all over
again.

Nothing characterizes the intellectual poverty and
the creative sterility of our generation more than the
fact that Communism is regarded as the most revolu-
tionary force of the time. Exactly what is revolutionary
in Communism?

Revolution does not mean merely to fight an exist-
ing order, a system, parties and men actually in power.
It does not mean merely to shoot or to use violence to
overthrow a regime. The ‘Tiave nots” will always fight
the “haves”; those who are without influence will

LAW . . . CONQUEST 271

always oppose die powerful. But that is not revolu-
tion.

Revolution means the clear recognition of the roots
of the evils of society at any given moment, the con-
centration of all forces to exterminate these roots, and
to replace a sick society by a new social order that no
longer produces the causes of the evils of the previous
regime.

Communism today an ultranationalist force
does not recognize and does not combat the ultimate
source of the misery of our age: the institution of the
sovereign nation-state. Bureaucracy, militarism, war,
unemployment, poverty, persecution, oppression all
that Communism attributes to capitalism? are in
reality products and effects of the nation-state struc-
ture of the world. In the middle of the twentieth cen-
tury, no movement can be regarded as revolutionary
that does not concentrate its action and its might on
eradicating that tyrannical institution which, for its
own self-perpetuation and self-glorification, trans-
forms men into murderers and slaves.

An essential characteristic of every really revolu-
tionary movement in history is that it breaks down
barriers and creates more human freedom. Often this
was done by violence, bloodshed, terror. But these are
not characteristics of revolutions. Movements produc-
ing violence, bloodshed and terror are not revolu-
tionary, if they do not aim at creating more freedom.
If they actually create less freedom, they are counter-
revolutionary, reactionary, even if they apply revolu-
tionary slogans and tactics and produce violence,
bloodshed and terror.

272, THE ANATOA1Y OF PEACE

Communism, as its doctrine was formulated in the
early part of the nineteenth century and as it is prac-
ticed by the Stalin regime in the Soviet Union, has
absolutely nothing revolutionary in the real sense of
the word. The doctrine ignored the real problem. And
the practice, far from solving it, has created one of the
most formidable Bastilles of the ancien regime, against
which must be concentrated all the truly progressive
and revolutionary forces of the middle twentieth cen-
tury.

That our generation has not yet produced a creed
and a movement more radical and revolutionary than
the creed and movement which were considered
radical and revolutionary in the time of Victoria,
Napoleon III and Bismarck, is a fact this generation
should feel deeply ashamed of.

We must search for tte truth about peace and its
possibilities, regardless of whether certain dogmas and
fetishes now cherished permit or do not permit its
immediate realization. We must understand quite
clearly what peace is and how a peaceful order can be
set up. Then it will be up to the people to decide
whether they want it or not.

But we can no longer afford to believe in false con-
ceptions, in Utopias, in miracles. We can no longer
afford to believe that a piece of paper, or even parch-
ment, called a treaty and signed by the representatives
of groups of people enjoying absolute sovereignty, can

LAW . . . CONQUEST 273

ever secure peace for any considerable period, no
matter what die content of the treaty may be.

History, like botany and zoology, teaches us the
inescapable and immutable law of nature, which
applies to everything living, including human society.
There is either growth or decay* There is no such
thing as immutability, there is nothing static in this
world of ours.

The only historical meaning, the only usefulness
that can be conceded to a league of nations, or indeed
to any organization of nation-states with equal sover-
eignty, is to illustrate that Utopian structures based on
“good will/’ “lasting friendship/* “unity of purpose/*
“common interest” or on any similar fiction cannot
work. The Confederation of the thirteen American
states, with each state jealously guarding its full and
untrammeled sovereignty, was historically justified
only by the proof it gave that it could not work, that
the peaceful coexistence of the peoples of the thirteen
states and the guarantee of their individual security
lay in the Union.

But after all the catastrophic events that followed
the foundation of the League of Nations, is it really
necessary to create another league a hotbed for
coming global wars to prove that it cannot wort?
Are not the first and second world wars enough “ex-
perience”? Do we really need a third global war to
understand the anatomy of peace and to see what
causes war in human society and how it can be pre-
vented?

Let us be dear about one thing. A league of sover-
eign nation-states is not a step, neither the first step

274 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

nor the ninety-ninth, toward peace. Peace is law. The
San Francisco league is the pitiful miscarriage of the
second World War. We shall have to organize peace
independently of the Unholy Alliance stillborn in
San Francisco or else we shall delude ourselves by
believing in a miracle, until the inevitable march of
events into another and greater holocaust teaches us
that equal and sovereign power units can never, under
any circumstances, under any conditions, coexist
peacefully.

After dissecting the body of human society and see-
ing clearly the anatomy of peace, one is compelled to
cry out in desperation: Must we blindly and help-
lessly endure die coining Armageddon between the
surviving giant nation-states to endow the world with
a constitution?

After a disastrous half a century of antirationalism,
guided by mysticism, transcendental emotions and
so-called intuition, we must return to the lost road of
rationalism, if we want to prevent complete destruc-
tion of our civilization.

The task is by no means easy. The deceptions
caused by rationalism are real and understandable.
Yet, to try to escape the complexities of life revealed
to us by reason by seeling refuge in irrationalism and
to let our actions be determined by superstitions,
dogmas and intuition, is sheer suicide. We must re-
sign ourselves to the fact that there is no other fate
for us than to climb the long, hard, steep and stony
road guided by the only thing that makes us different
from animals: reason.

LAW . . . CONQUEST 275

We cannot be held back by certain traditions re-
garded as sacred. After all, what is tradition?

Sometimes we have to follow it for a century* Some-
times we have to create it to be followed by another
century.

Sovereignty of the community and regulation of the
interdependence of peoples in society by universal law
are the two central pillars upon which the cathedral
of democracy rests.

If we want to build this cathedral and live as free
men in security, let us bear in mind the profound
words of Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum:

It is idle to expect any great advancement m
sciences from the superinducing and engrafting of
new things upon old. We must “begin anew from the
very foundation, unless we would revolve forever in
a circle with mean and contemptible progress.

It would be mean and contemptible progress indeed
and we should be revolving in a circle if, instead of
beginning to construct the new world society based
on universal law, we again try to superinduce and
engraft another league or council of sovereign nations
upon the old.

POSTSCRIPT

A FEW weeks after the publication of this book
the first atomic bomb exploded over the city of
Hiroshima. It ended the second World War.

But it was an end that brought no joy or relief. It
brought instead fear of atomic war.

That the year 1945 of the Christian era produced
the atomic bomb for military purposes and the San
Francisco Charter for political purposes, is a paradox
for historians of the future to ponder.

On every hand, suggestions are made .to “outlaw,”
“abolish/* “control” or “keep secret” this incredibly
destructive force. As a result of several months* debate
among scientists, statesmen, industrialists and com-
mentators, the following facts would seem to be
agreed upon:

1. At present and in the immediate future no reli-
   able defense against atomic destruction can be
   foreseen.
2. Within a very few years, several nations will
   produce atomic bombs.
3. The atomic bomb is merely the destructive side
   of nuclear physics and research in the use of
   atomic energy for constructive industrial pur-
   poses can and should be unrelentingly pursued*

277

278 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

4. International control of atomic research or of
   the production of atomic bombs is impractical
   because:

a. In capitalist countries such control is contrary
to the practices and habits of free competi-
tive enterprise,

b. In totalitarian countries such control would
be unreliable.

c. Only if the nation-states grant each other
complete freedom of industrial and military
espionage (which is hardly conceivable)
could such control be effective.

d. So long as the danger of war between nation-
states exists, some if not all governments will
try to prevent international bodies on which
potential enemy states are represented, from
inspecting and supervising their laboratories
and industries. Each great power will always
do its utmost to lead in military science.
Atom bomb production in remote parts of the
American West, in Siberia, in the Sahara, in
Patagonia, in underground factories any-
where, can never be effectively controlled, if,
in spite of pledges, the governments of the
respective nation-states decide on secrecy.

Any effective control or inspection of armaments
and research presupposes the sincere and whole-
hearted collaboration of the governments of the nation-
states. If this were possible, there would be no danger
of war and no need for any control. The future cannot

POSTSCRIPT 279

be based on a hypothetical assumption, the actual
cause of our difficulty.

Once we recognize the impossibility, or at least the
insurmountable difficulty of effective international
control of scientific research and industrial production,
the question arises: Is such control necessary or even
desirable?

Nobody in the United States is afraid of atomic
bombs or rockets produced within the sovereign
nation-state of the United States of America. Nor is
any Soviet citizen afraid of atomic bombs or other
devastating weapons produced within the sovereign
nation-state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Repub-
lics. But the people of the United States feel that
atomic bombs produced in the Soviet Union represent
a potential danger to them, and the Soviet people feel
the same way about atomic bombs produced in the
United States.

What does this mean? It means that BO atomic
bomb, no weapon that the genius of man can conceive
is dangerous in itself. Weapons only become “danger-
ous” when they are in the hands of sovereign states
other than one’s own. It follows that the ultimate
source of danger is not atomic energy but the sov-
ereign nation-state. The problem is not technical, it
is purely political.

The problem of preventing an atomic war is the
problem of preventing War, no more, no less. Once
war breaks out and nations are fighting fear their
existence, they will use every conceivable weapon to
achieve victory*

The release of atomic energy aad the horrible night-

280 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

mare of atomic war has greatly intensified the debate
on world government. Many people have changed
their minds overnight, declaring die San Francisco
Charter outdated and inadequate to sope with the
problem created by the atomic bomb. Of course, this
revolutionary discovery in nuclear physics changed
nothing of the necessity, imperative now for several
decades, to organize human society under universal
law. But it unquestionably dramatized and made it
appear more urgent to the complacent millions who
needed an atomic explosion to wake them.

This new physical fact has changed nothing in the
situation this book deals with. Although written and
published before the explosion in Hiroshima, nothing
in it would have been said differently had it been
written after August 6, 1945.

There is only one method that can create security
against destruction by the atomic bomb. This is the
same method that gives the states of New York and
California (nonproducers of the atomic bomb) se-
curity against being erased from the surface of the
earth by the states of Tennessee and New Mexico
(producers of the atomic bomb). This security is real.
It is the security given by a common sovereign order
of law. Outside of that, any security is but an illusion.

Many of the scientists who released atomic energy,
frightened by the consequences of this new force,
warn us of the dangers that will result if several sov-
ereign states possess atomic weapons, and urge control
of it by the United Nations Security Council.

But what is the United Nations Security Council,
except “several sovereign states”?

POSTSCRIPT 281

What is the reality of the Security Council beyond
the reality of the sovereign nation-states that com-
pose it?

What matters it if the American Secretary of State,
the Soviet Foreign Commissar and His Majesty’s
Foreign Secretary meet as members of the United
Nations Security Council or outside that organization
in a “Conference of Foreign Ministers'”? In either
case they are but the sworn representatives of three
conflicting sovereign nation-states; in either case the
final decisions rest with Washington, London and
Moscow. These representatives can only arrive at
agreements or treaties and are without power to create
law applicable to the individuals of their respective
nation-states.

Many of those who realize the inadequacy of the
San Francisco organization feel that the people must
not be disillusioned, that their faith in the organiza-
tion must not be destroyed.

If that faith is not justified, it must be destroyed.
It is criminal to mislead the people and teach them
to rely on a false hope.

The pathetic defenders argue that the UNO is all
we have and we should be practical and start from
what we have. A reasonable suggestion. It is scarcely
possible to start from anywhere except from where
we are. If a man has measles, no matter what he plans
to do, he must start with the measles. But this does
not mean that measles is an asset, a welcome con-
dition, and that he could not do things better without
measles. The mere fact of having something does not
automatically mate it valuable.

282 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

The San Francisco Charter is a multilateral treaty.
That and nothing else. Each party to it can withdraw
the moment it desires, and war alone can force the
member states to fulfill their obligations under the
treaty. For several thousand years man has given in-
numerable chances to treaty structures between sover-
eign power units to demonstrate that they can prevent
war. With the possibility of atomic war facing us, we
cannot risk reliance upon a method that has failed
miserably hundreds of times and never succeeded
once.

A realization that this method can never prevent
war is the first condition of peace. Law and only law
can bring peace among men; treaties never can.

We can never arrive at a legal order by amending
a treaty structure. To realize the task before us, the
heated debates of Hamilton, Madison and Jay in
Philadelphia should be read and reread in every home
and every school. They demonstrated that the Articles
of Confederation (based on the same principles as
the United Nations Organization) could not prevent
war between the states, that amendment of these
articles could not solve the problem, that the Articles
of Confederation had to be discarded and a new
constitution created and adopted, establishing an over-
all federal government with power to legislate, apply
and execute law on individuals in the United States.
That was the only remedy then and it is the only
remedy now.

Such criticism of the United Nations Organization
may shock people who have been persuaded that the
UNO is an instrument for maintaining peace.

POSTSCRIPT

The San Francisco league is not a first step toward
a universal legal order. To change from a treaty basis
to law is one step, one operation, and it is impossible
to break it into parts or fractions. This decision has
to be made and the operation carried out at one time.
There is no “first step” toward world government.
World government is the first step.

Some remark patronizingly: ‘But this is idealism
Let us be realistic, let us make the San Francisco
organization work/’

What is idealism? And what is realism? Is it real-
istic to believe that treaties which have been tried
again and again and have always failed will now
miraculously work? And is it idealistic to believe that
law which has always succeeded wherever and
whenever it was applied will continue to work?

Every time our Foreign Ministers or the heads of
our governments meet and decide not to decide, hurry
to postpone, and commit themselves to no commit-
ments, the official heralds proclaim jubilantly to the
universe: ‘This is a hopeful beginning/’ “This is a
first step in the right direction.”

We are always beginning. . . We never continue,
never carry on, complete or conclude. We never take
a second step or God forbid a third step. Our in-
ternational life is composed of an unending sequence
of beginnings that don’t begin, of first steps that lead
nowhere. When are we going to tire of this game?

It is of utmost importance to look at these things in
their proper perspective. We must reject the exhorta-
tions of reactionaries who say: “Of course, world

284 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

government is the ultimate goal. But we can’t get it
now. We must proceed slowly, step by step/’

World government is not an “ultimate goal” but an
immediate necessity. In fact, it has been overdue since

1914. The convulsions of the past decades are the
      clear symptoms of a dead and decaying political
      system.

The ultimate goal of our efforts must be the solution
of our economic and social problems. What two
thousand million men and women really want on this
wretched earth is enough food, better housing, cloth-
ing, medical care and education, more enjoyment of
culture and a little leisure. These are the real goals of
human society, the aspirations of ordinary men and
women everywhere. All of us could have these things.
But we cannot have any of them if every ten or
twenty years we allow ourselves to be driven by our
institutions to slaughter each other and to destroy
each others wealth. A world-wide system of govern-
ment is merely the primary condition to achieving
these practical and essential social and economic aims.
It is in no way a remote goal

Whether the change from treaty structure to a legal
order takes place independently of the United Nations
Organization or within it is irrelevant. To amend the
San Francisco Charter if that is the road we choose
we will have to rewrite it so drastically to get what
we need that nothing of the document will remain
except the two opening words: “Chapter One/’ The
change has to come about in our minds, in our out-
look. Once we know what we want, it makes no
difference whether the reform is carried out on top of

POSTSCRIPT 285

the Eiffel Tower, in the bleachers of the Yankee
Stadium, or on the floor of the United Nations
Assembly.

The stumbling block to transforming the San
Francisco league into a governmental institution is the
charters basic conception expressed in the first phrase
of the first chapter: “Members are the states/*

This makes the charter a multilateral treaty. No
amendment of the text can alter that fact until the
very foundation is changed to the effect that the
institution will have direct relationship, not with
states but with individuals.

But argue the defenders of the charter the pre-
amble says, * We, the people . . . “

Suppose someone publishes a proclamation open-
ing, “I, the Emperor of China . . .” Would this make
him the Emperor of China? Such an action would
more probably land him in a lunatic asylum than on
the throne of China. ‘We, the people . . . ” these
symbolic words of democratic government do not
belong in the San Francisco Charter. Their use in the
preamble is in total contradiction to everything else
in it, and only historians will be able to decide whether
they were used from lack of knowledge or kck of
honesty. The simple truth requires that ‘We, the
people . . ” in the preamble of the charter be ac-
curately read: ‘We, the High Contracting Powers * . .”

The most vulgar of all objections, of course, is the
meaningless assertion made by so many “public fig-
ures”: “The people are not yet ready for world feder-
ation/*

One can only wonder how they know. Have they

286 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

themselves ever advocated world federation? Do they
themselves believe in it? Have they ever tried to
explain to the people what makes war and what is the
mechanism of peace in human society? And, after
having understood the problem, have the people re-
jected the solution and decided they did not want
peace by law and government but preferred war by
national sovereignty? Until this happens, no one has
the right to pretend he knows what the people are
ready for. Ideals always seem premature until they
become obsolete. Everybody has a perfect right to say
that he does not believe in federal world government
and does not want it. But without having faith in it
and without having tried it, nobody has the right to
preclude the decision of the people.

Certain statesmen say that it is criminal to talk
about the possibility of a war between the Russian and
Anglo-American spheres. This is a matter of opinion,
I believe it is criminal not to talk about it. Nobody
ever saved the life of a sick person by refusing to
diagnose the disease or to attempt to cure it. The
people of the world must understand the forces driv-
ing them toward the coming holocaust. It has nothing
whatever to do with Communism or capitalism, with
individualism or collectivism. It is the inevitable con-
flict between nonintegrated sovereignties in contact.
We could put a Communist in the White House or
establish the purest Jeffersonian democracy in Russia
and the situation would be the same. Unless an over-
all world government organization can be established
in time by persuasion and consent, no diplomatic
magic will prevent the explosion.

POSTSCRIPT 287

Drifting toward a perfectly evitable cataclysm is
unworthy of reasonable men. Hundreds of millions of
civilized human beings, good-humored, music- and
dance-loving, industrious working people who could
peacefully collaborate and enjoy life within one
sovereignty, as the chained slaves of their respective
sovereign nation-states, guided by fear and super-
stition, are being hoodwinked and bullied into sense-
less war. No amount of negotiating, of “good will” or
wishful thinking will change this course. Only a clear
realization by the people as to what is driving them
into that conflict can bring about its eradication and
cure.

What chance have we to create a world govern-
ment before the next war? Not much. Suppose we do
make the problem clear to the democratic peoples is
it likely that Soviet Russia would accept a suggestion
to enter into a common government organization with
us? I believe the answer to be no. Is it possible?
Perhaps. But the alternative another world war re-
sulting in the destruction of all individual liberties
and in the rule of a totalitarian state, either ours or
Russia’s is a prospect that leaves no room for hesita-
tion as to the action we must undertake.

If war, horrible war, between the two groups of
sovereign nations dominated by die U.S.A. and the
U.S.S.R. has to be fought, at least let it be civil war.
Let us not go to battle for bases, territories, prestige,
boundaries. Let us at least fight for an ideal. The end
of such a struggle ought automatically to end inter-
national wars and bring victory for world federation.

The reality we most constantly keep in mind in

288 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

striving for peace is clearly expressed by Alexander
Hamilton in his Federalist No. 6: ‘To look for a
continuation of harmony between a number of inde-
pendent, unconnected sovereignties, situated in the
same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uni-
form course of human events, and to set at defiance
the accumulated experience of ages/’

History demonstrates how right Hamilton was and
how wrong were those “first steppers” who thought
that the American people could prosper and live in
peace under a loose confederation of sovereign states.

How can we reach our goaP

Five stages are clearly visible on the road from idea
to realization.

1. The first step is the conception of the idea, the
   proclamation of principles, the formulation of
   the doctrine*
2. The doctrine must be spread in the same way
   Christianity, democracy and every other success-
   ful doctrine has been diffused.
3. Once all of us understand the problem, once we
   realize what creates peace in human society and
   know we want it, our next task is to elect repre-
   sentatives, delegating to them the power to put
   into practice the new principles.
4. It is for these elected delegates who by then
   will have received the mandate from the people
   to organize world government for preventing
   wars between the nation-states to debate pro-
   grams, to fight out details and to arrive at solu-
   tions. Such solutions will naturally be compro-

POSTSCRIPT 289

mises; they will probably be far from perfect, but
we cannot expect paradise on this earth.

5. Once this first constitutional step is taken, de-
   velopments will start in the right direction. But
   the foundation will by then have been laid, and
   a great number of solutions will be more or less
   workable. Passionate debates on programs and
   details before the will of the people is clearly
   expressed as to the goal will only create obstacles
   and they are likely to destroy the ideal before its
   birth.

Two per cent of the money and effort spent for
research and production of the atomic bomb would
be sufficient to carry out an educational movement
that would make clear to the people what the virus of
war is and how peace can be attained in human
society.

Undoubtedly, if the inhabitants of Mars or another
planet suddenly descended upon the earth and threat-
ened to conquer us, all the nations of our small world
would immediately get together. We would forget all
our ridiculous inter-national quarrels and would will-
ingly and gladly place ourselves under one rule of law
for sheer survival. Are we certain that the unleashing
and national use of atomic energy, the apocalypse of
an atomic world war, is not an equal threat to our
civilization and to mankind, imperatively requiring us
to rise above our outdated inter-national conflicts and
to organize human society politically so that an atomic
world war could be checked?

We have very little time to prevent the next war

2 9 o THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

and to stop our drifting toward totalitarianism. We
have to get to work at once. Every citizen who believes
in law and government in inter-national relations
must persuade ten other citizens of the same belief,
and urge each to persuade, on his behalf, ten more.
The nuclear physicists have explained that atomic
energy is released by what is called a chain reaction.
One atom is split. The released particles split other
atoms and so on. The force of ideas always explodes
in the form of such a chain reaction.

We must persuade as many newspapers as possible
to adopt the federal outlook as their editorial policy.
This principle must also be constantly disseminated
on the radio and in films. We must get this problem
discussed in groups, meetings and on platforms. Uni-
versalism and the imperative need for universal law
must resound in all houses of God. The universal
outlook of political and social matters must be taught
in all schools. We should elect nobody to public office
who has not pledged himself in advance to work
wholeheartedly to prevent the next war by the estab-
lishment of peace through law and government.

An irresistible popular demand must be made artic-
ulate in every country as soon as possible. And when
in two or more countries the people have clearly
expressed their will, the process of federation must
start. Naturally the ideal solution would be if all the
people of the world were persuaded simultaneously.
But such a course is unlikely. The process must start
at the earliest possible moment, even with a minimum
of two countries, because no argument can compare
with the overwhelming persuasive power of events.

POSTSCRIPT 291

TTiere can be no question that once the process of
inter-national integration starts, its attraction will be
so great that more and more nations will join until
finally, by the force of events, we shall arrive at a
federal world government.

If we ourselves sincerely want a world-wide legal
order and wholeheartedly begin work on the problem
of creating governmental institutions which would
permit different national groups to continue to shape
their own religious, cultural, social and economic lives
the way they choose and which would protect them
by force of law from interference of others in their
local and national matters, we have no reason to
assume that Russia will stubbornly refuse to partici-
pate. If, under any conditions, she does not want to
join, then let this be her decision. But let us not make
our own actions dependent upon the hypothetical
behavior of someone else. With such lack of faith,
with such lack of courage, no progress is possible.

We must be as much perfectionists in our pursuit
of peace as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Church-
ill and Joseph Stalin were perfectionists in their
pursuit of victory in war. They did not say: “Let us
build a few hundred planes, let us win a first little
battle and then be content with it and wait.” They
raised standards and when they proclaimed that we
wanted complete, total victory, unconditional sur-
render in the shortest possible time, hundreds of
millions of us followed enthusiastically*

When we wanted the atomic bomb, we did not say
it was “impossible,” “impractical,” “unrealistic,” we did
not say that “the people are not ready for it.” We said

292 THE ANATOMY OF PEACE

we want it, we need, it, and we have to have it. And
we went all out for it with the utmost perfection-
ism. We constructed entire new cities, used two hun-
dred thousand workers, spent two billion dollars and
telescoped into three or four years the work of half a
century. The result of this perfectionism was a perfect
result. The “impossible” became reality, the “imprac-
tical” exploded over Hiroshima and the “unrealistic”
brought what we wanted: Victory.

No human problem has ever been solved by any
method other than perfectionism. In every field of
human effort we aim at perfection. We want the best
car, the finest radio set, the very best medical care.
We admire the world’s champion prizefighter and
best football player. We pay homage to the best
painter and pianist. We award the highest decoration
to our greatest war heroes. It Is the fundamental drive
in Western man to aim at the maximum, not the
minimum. We want perfection. We do not always
achieve it, but we proudly announce that perfection
is what we want. Yet, when we are faced with the
problem of peace, perfection becomes a smear word.

We cannot achieve peace a much more arduous
and an even more heroic undertaking than war if
all of a sudden we become modest and satisfied with
what is complacently accepted as a “first step” and if,
disregarding all the past, we indulge in the hopeless
hope that something can now work which Hamilton
rightly said would be to “disregard the uniform course
of human events.” We shall never have peace if we
do not have the courage to understand what it is, if
we do not want to pay the price it costs and if, instead

POSTSCRIPT 293

of working for its realization with the utmost deter-
mination, we are so cowardly as to resign ourselves
smugly to an inherited, unworkable system enslaving
us all.

We must clarify principles among ourselves and
arrive at axiomatic definitions as to what causes war
and what creates peace in human society. Once we
agree on these principles, the absolutely indispensable
condition of their spreading and materialization is our
own unshakable faith in them. How things have
actually happened on this earth no man has ever
realized or experienced, just as no one can realize or
experience the moment of birth or the moment o
death, nor the moment even of awakening or falling
asleep. Such transitions take place imperceptibly and
we cannot foresee them or visualize them with ex-
actness.

Pascal said that opinion is the real ruler of the
world. And in starting our great fight for a better
world, we must be guided by the wisdom of Sun-Yat-
Sen: The difficulty is to know, to understand; with
understanding, action is easy.

Therefore the problem is: How willing are we to
fight for the dissemination in schools, churches, meet-
ings, the press, the movies and on the radio, of a new
faith, a new political outlook, which cannot take
practical shape until enough people understand it,
believe in it and want it?