The Challenge of War

The evils of our present social order are many in number and serious in their effects. But the security and permanence of our civilization are menaced by two things in particular: (1) the waste of materials and men inherent in the system, and (2) the constant threat of war which grows out of the system. The first evil suggested Stuart Chase’s pamphlet, The Challege of Waste; the second suggests this companion pamphlet in the L. I. D. series of social studies. Like all our pamphlets it has had the benefit of the advice and criticism of many friends of the L. I. D. to whom our thanks are due. It has been written in grave and anxious days. No man can foretell what will eventuate from the French occupation of the Ruhr even before this pamphlet is in print. The possibilities for evil in the still unsettled Near Eastern situation are only less grave. At first sight both these crises seem to illustrate the madness of the nations rather than the working out of economic interest. Behind the war in the Near East lay the age-old feud between Greeks and Turks, racial and religious, with its resulting complex of fear, pride, ambition, and desire for revenge. Behind the Franco-German crisis lies not only the history of centuries of conflict but the fresh memory of the devastated areas of northern France. If the popular desire in France for security is an abnormal and unreasoning obsession which tends to defeat its own ends it is at least not surprising under the circumstances. But if these crises illustrate the appalling psychology of competing nations it is increasingly evident that the destructive forces so much in evidence have been loosed or augmented by the desire for private or national profit. Great Britain and France played with Greek and Turk passions for their own ends and those ends were control of concessions and trade routes. The nearest approach to real unity between the former allies and present rivals in regard to the Near East seems to be a common disposition to protest against the Chester concession which the Turks gave to citizens of a third power! Not considerations of humanity but of power and profit have been dominant in the action of all nations concerned. So, too, were direct economic interests operative in the Ruhr. French industrialists generally united with French militarists in a desire to cripple Germany by striking at her economic life.