ESSAYS 



659 



WAR— A PLEA FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH (Major General 

 Charles Ross, C.B., D.S.O. (ret.)) 



PART I 



It is evident that war is one of the worst, if not the most terrible, of all the scourges 

 which afflict the human race. For not only are untold horrors inflicted on those 

 communities which are invaded, not only does the victor, even, lose large numbers 

 of his best men, but the conflict is, almost invariably, accompanied and followed 

 by starvation, disease, and revolution, the last being the most savage and 

 ferocious of all forms of war. Who shall compute the total losses and suffering 

 resulting from this last great war ? 



While a vast and scientific literature has grown up throughout the centuries on 

 the conduct of war, there have been few, if any, serious attempts to study scientifi- 

 cally the causes of war as a necessary preliminary to their elimination. The place 

 of such scientific study has been taken by more or less acrimonious abuse of 

 "militarism"— which is glibly accounted the sole cause of war, whereas it may be 

 but a mere and inevitable consequence of the conditions under which humanity 

 exists. 



The causes of war are extremely difficult to ascertain, for the reason that every 

 nation ascribes its participation to the noblest of motives — self-defence, the defence 

 of weaker nations, idealism, and the like — and will never admit that it was actuated 

 by the baser motives of self-interest, ambition, revenge or fear. The motives are 

 also often closely bound up with religious views and convictions and are, accord- 

 ingly, such dangerous ground that men hesitate to tread it. There is, for instance, 

 a general belief that the Almighty permits these awful horrors to continue, but 

 will, in His own good time, put an end to them by the triumph of good over evil ; 

 and we forget that this view is analogous to the discredited custom of the Middle 

 and Dark Ages in which ordeal by battle was called upon to decide the justice or 

 injustice of private feuds and quarrels. Extreme exponents of this view go further 

 and maintain that war is sent as a just punishment for our sins, and that it is, 

 therefore, impious in us to attempt either to avert or prepare for it. These, pre- 

 sumably, would kneel down and permit a ruthless enemy to trample them under- 

 foot. Others, again, are convinced that " Heaven helps those who help them- 

 selves " — " to other people's property," adds the free-thinker — that it is incumbent 

 on us to take all necessary precautions, to make essential preparations, to do our 

 utmost up to a certain point to avert war, but in the last resort to throw in our 

 whole power in the fight for justice and freedom. 



In contrast to these opinions, there are the strictly materialistic views. The 

 one, that of the so-called " Pacifist " who regards war as a relic of barbarism, a 

 manifestation of criminal lunacy, unworthy of our present stage of civilisation. 

 The exponents of this view maintain that war can, and must, be averted, or that 

 civilisation will be destroyed ; that co-operation must replace competition, that 

 nations must take each other on trust ; that the world must be democratised : 

 that the lion must have teeth and claws drawn and the lamb encouraged to lie 

 down in confidence by his side. War is to be averted by the reduction or abolition 

 of armaments, except only the necessary police forces ; above all, General Staffs, 

 with their plans for wars, secret diplomacy with its treaties founded on the 

 employment of force, must be definitely repressed. In a word, they believe in 

 the balance of impotence for war. 



Opposed to this view is that of the militarist. He argues that not only must the 

 teeth and claws of the lion be drawn, but the whole nature of the animal changed 



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