It would seem that mankind is fated to a life of strife. This fact was first brought forcibly to the attention of the American public by Harvard University’s noted sociologist, Pitirim Alexandrovitch Sorokin. His studies and those of other American and European scholars demonstrated that the years of war have outnumbered the years of peace by a thirteen to one ratio during the past 3,500 years of recorded history. These studies further reveal the appalling fact that each succeeding century usually had as many individuals involved in war as had all the previous centuries combined. This last generalization held particularly true for the more modern periods. Furthermore, Sorokin stated in his Contemporary Sociological Theories “that from the year 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1860 more than 8,000 treaties of peace, which were meant to remain in force forever, were concluded. The average time that they remained in force was two years.”
In support of the foregoing let us take a glance at the history of our own country. Beginning with King William’s War, 1690- 1697 (our local phase of participation in Europe’s “War of the League of Augsburg”) either as a colony or as an independent nation we were engaged in eleven more or less major wars. The longest interval between the close of one war and the beginning of another was thirty-three years. Those wars were the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. Thus in any generation men could, and did, fight in two wars. An interesting example was Major-General Joseph Wheeler who was an outstanding cavalry leader in the Confederate Army in the Civil War and in the Spanish-American War was a Major-General of Volunteers and commanded cavalry under General Shafter in Cuba.
Another point to consider is that in the event of any future war of worldwide scope, the United States undoubtedly will be among those participating. Professor Edward Mead Earle of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study when queried on this point said in effect that “to date there had been five world wars and we had taken part in all of them, which is a pretty good batting average in any league.” The wars concerned were the Seven Years War, which began, as Professor Earle states, “with some rifle shots on the banks of our own Monongahela River” and was known on this continent as the French and Indian War; the Revolutionary War, which drew in France, Spain, and Holland and was fought in America, Europe, and Asia; the War of 1812, which was a minor side-show to the Napoleonic Wars; and the two World Wars of recent vintage.
“War had become increasingly a habit of the modern world, seeing that the interregnum of peace is devoted to preparation for the next war,” wrote D. R. Davis in his Secular Illusion or Christian Realism. “Since the eighteenth century Europe has never been free either of an actual war or preparing for one. And the preparation for war is just as significant as war itself, as the case of Prussia proves. Judging by the figures above, it would seem that Prussia was the least militant state in the nineteenth century. But we know better to our grave cost. Since Bismarck initiated the policy of uniting Germany by blood and iron, Prussia, with the added power of the German states, has become the most militarist state in the world. . . . There began with Bismarck a crescendo of Prussian militarism which in Hitler roared to a double fortissimo. Between 1864 and 1900, Prussia’s three wars lasted barely two years, but her constantly growing armaments kept Europe in a fever of insecurity. She was always fighting either in a war of guns or a war of nerves, which Hitler developed into a fine art. To a lesser degree the same was true of the rest of Europe. War had become a fundamental part of its psychology. How profoundly wrong, then, is the popular way of thinking of war as occasional and abnormal. Up to the present, it has been one of the most enduring of all social institutions, one of nature’s most characteristic expressions ... it is also, practically, the only institution which has undergone no essential change of form. It remains a permanent problem for mankind, becoming greater for each succeeding generation—that is, becoming more intractable, less soluble. Contrary to the usual expectation the danger of war has not diminished with the so-called progress of the world. On the contrary, it has increased. Occasions of war are greater in our advanced technical society than in any other previous civilization—and also fraught with greater possibilities of universal disaster. For the first time in the history of mankind, the evil of war threatens the whole of humanity with destruction. It is to this that all the glory and creative power of man has at last arrived. And the problem of war presents itself to the twentieth century in essentially the same form as it did in the first—the final inability to compromise the claims of opposing egoisms.” Although it may be a moot point as to whether or not “occasions of war are greater in our advanced technical society,” I think that it is reasonable to conclude that wars are all too frequent for the good of mankind and not much progress has been made in eliminating them.
General Eisenhower, in his Crusade in Europe, speaking of the atom bomb, expresses some thoughts pertinent to the above. He said, “ . . . I gained increased hope that this development of what appeared to be the ultimate in destruction would drive men, in self-preservation, to find a way of eliminating war. Maybe it was only wishful thinking to believe that fear, universal fear, might succeed where statesmanship and religion had not yet won success.”
There can be no denial that wars are a curse to the world. It is not necessary to labor the point with respect to the loss of lives, maiming of soldiers and civilians, and damage and expenditure of materials and natural resources. There is also no denying the fact that the world would be much better off if, in addition to no wars, it would also not be necessary to spend large sums of money for armed forces in peace time.
Our forebears realized this. Witness the 8000 peace treaties mentioned at the beginning of this article and the various attempts to lessen the horrors of war. The Dutch humanist, Hugo Grotius, during the Thirty Year’s War published his On the Law of War and Peace in an effort to formulate rules for protection of non-combatants in time of war, the treatment of the sick and wounded, and the prohibition of wanton pillage and other horrors.
Let us consider some peace efforts since the time of Napoleon. After that man of parts had romped the length and breadth of Europe and his career was in the process of being terminated, the powers of Europe, with even the vanquished French represented by Talleyrand, met at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815. They wanted to preserve the status quo, to assure that there would be no further disturbances from Napoleon or anyone of his like. The Congress reestablished a balance of power among the states of Europe and paved the way for a concert of the Great Powers which succeeded in maintaining the peace of Europe practically undisturbed for forty years.
The deeply religious Czar Alexander I of Russia, one of the chief figures at this Congress of Vienna, was in his “liberal minded” phase. He initiated the formation of the Holy Alliance of which the members “pledged themselves ‘to take for their sole guide the precepts of the Holy Religion, namely, the precepts of Justice, Christian Charity, and Peace’ which could remedy all human imperfection. . . . The manifesto was signed by nearly every ruler in Europe, and constitutes a strange document in diplomatic history. A chorus of criticism and ridicule greeted its publication. It was variously described as a ‘sonorous nothing’ and as a ‘sublime piece of mysticism and nonsense.’ ” In most instances the manifesto was signed with tongue in cheek and afterwards at best was given only lip service. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount set up a code of ethics which, if followed by individuals and governments, would no doubt make for a better world. However, in 1815 the governments were no more ready to conduct their affairs according to such lights than they are now. This may be termed the failure of Christianity; but whatever the designation, it is clear that Christianity is not preventing disputes and wars between countries.
The Congress of Vienna established a balance of the European powers which was upset by the rise of Germany. The story of the conflict of the national aims between Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy need not be reviewed. It can be summarized by saying that in endeavoring to maintain the balance of power an intricate system of alliances was created. These alliances at first were, in the main, defensive, but the situation got out of hand and the whole system was so involved that, once a conflict started, the network of alliances made it inevitable that it would spread all over Europe.
This naturally led to armaments, and Europe groaned under the cost of maintaining them. According to S. S. Schapiro, in his Modern and Contemporary European History, “During the years 1872 to 1912, the military and naval expenditure of Germany increased 335 per cent, of Russia, 214 per cent; of Italy, 185 per cent; of England, 180 per cent; of Austria-Hungary, 155 per cent; and of France, 133 per cent.” This staggering burden produced “deep discontent among all classes. A widespread peace movement made its appearance with the object of substituting arbitration for war as a mode of settling disputes between nations.”
In 1898 support of this peace movement came from another Russian Czar. Nicholas II suggested that an international convention be called to limit “the progressive development of existing armaments” which was ruinous to all countries. What the Czar’s impelling or ulterior motives for initiating this proposal were are not clear. There may have been inability to keep pace with neighboring countries in armament development, economic reasons, internal restlessness, or even altruistic reasons. However, whatever they were, he received credit for starting the disarmament ball rolling at that time. The result was the first Peace Conference at The Hague, at which twenty-six nations were represented. Much was accomplished in this conference and in the second one in 1907 as to laying down rules for the conduct of warfare so as to lessen its horrors. A Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague was set up to which nations could refer their disputes. However, no progress was made as to disarmament. National rivalries were still too strong. The “spirit of competitive nationalism was stronger than that of cooperative internationalism.”
The holocaust of World War I was followed by the League of Nations in which the United States, under President Wilson’s leadership, played the main creative role. Despite the sincere desire to erect an enduring peace structure, there were too many mistakes and too many irreconcilable factors. They were: the type of peace imposed on Germany; the fact that two of the major powers, Russia and Germany, did not participate in the formation of the League; the understandable French quest for security; and the rifts between the former allies. Then to top it off, the United States would not even acknowledge its own child when we didn’t join the League.
The moral leadership that the United States had held was lessened when Wilson compromised on his principles in the deliberations on the Treaty of Versailles and in the formation of the League. It was damaged still further when we refused to join the League. However, we regained much when we fostered the Disarmament Conference in Washington in 1921-1922. We not only initiated it but we also made the greatest sacrifices. In this conference and in the subsequent ones at Geneva and London, although one of the prime motivating factors was the desire to reduce armament expenditure, there was also a sincere desire to draw away from matters warlike. The theme of the conference was to set naval armaments so that they would be adequate for defensive purposes and not for aggression. The race in ship building was halted, but the work of these conferences went by the board at a later date, along with other peace efforts.
The Locarno Pact of 1925 was an extension of the League of Nations. Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a result of this conference, but Russia was still outside the pale.
The Pact of Paris of 1928, a General Treaty for the Renunciation of War (generally known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact), was another high-sounding proclamation— which though conformable with League ideology, had no connection with the League and could therefore attract signatures who were currently not members of the League. It was supposedly originally intended to be no more than a gesture on the part of France toward the United States, in which Briand proposed to outlaw war between the two countries. Kellogg, in return, suggested a world-wide multilateral pact binding all nations to renounce war as an instrument of national policy. This was more than France bargained for, but the idea received wide acclaim and the Pact was duly composed and signed by fifteen countries.
In pursuance of the hopes of the times the next step was a Disarmament Conference. The League Council had appointed a Permanent Advisory Committee on Armaments. Four sessions were held in 1926 and 1927. The Soviet Union sent a delegate for the first time to the fourth session in the person of Litvinov, who proposed a sweeping and immediate disbandment of all armies, navies and air forces. It is not certain yet as to whether his proposals were really sincere or a smoke screen for propaganda purposes. However, due to the Soviet’s efforts to build up their internal economy they probably would have welcomed a reduction in expenditures for armaments. The next conference was in Geneva in 1932 and the final session was at the same place in 1933. There had been little progress. Germany had been demanding equality. The Japanese had landed in Shanghai. Hitler was now Chancellor in Germany, and Japan was about to announce her withdrawal from the League, and Germany announced her withdrawal from the conference and shortly thereafter from the League. This, to all intents and purposes, was the end of all discussion of disarmament before the Second World War.
The League of Nations, although successful in most of its undertakings in nonmilitary fields and having averted a number of wars among minor nations, fell apart along with the Locarno Pact and the Pact of Paris when disturbances were started by larger powers. The beginning of the end of all the elaborate peace structure was when Japan was allowed to violate Manchuria with scarcely more than a frown of disapproval from the League. Germany withdrew from the above mentioned Disarmament Conference in Geneva and then from the League itself. Next she avowed her intention to rearm, and then in early 1935 she introduced conscription. Encouraged by the weakness of the League, Italy started its campaign against Ethiopia. In the latter case the League roused itself and imposed sanctions on Italy, but the members only applied them half-heartedly or not at all. The League, indirectly, had suffered a setback from which it was never to recover.
It is possible that if Great Britain and France had stood together and exercised a firm restraining hand on Italy at that time the League might possibly have survived and played a decisive role in subsequent events. It gives pause for thought in the present situation in Korea. Korea was a similar test to the United Nations. What the outcome will be is still a question, but the United Nations is doing more with respect to aggression in Korea than the League of Nations did concerning the Italian-Ethiopian affair.
The League of Nations did set up a Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague which is still in existence and which is useful for minor disputes. This is known as a “World Court,” but, as pointed out by Chambers, Harris, and Bayley in This Age of Conflict, “In the last analysis, it relied wholly upon the tenuous constraints of good will and good faith.”
Thus we come to the next great effort, the United Nations. It might seem that with the benefit of past experiences this new organization might have a chance of some success. There is a provision for calling up armed forces of its members; but also, like the League of Nations, it is dependent upon “good will and good faith.” At the moment it is the forum of the war of words between communism and democracy.
Communism and democracy may some time be at peace, but there is a big gulf between them now. To view the picture from the reverse side, the Russians probably feel as sure that communism is the answer to the world’s ills as the democracies feel equally sure that their system is the answer. Thus, the communists, in their fanatic zeal, are endeavoring to spread their doctrines by all methods—legal or illegal. Whereas, democracy, by its very nature, is more tolerant and advocates its tenets by more subdued methods.
As for the gulf between Russia and the West, it has always existed to a varying degree, but it has certainly been intensified since the Communists came to power in 1917. They have been and are suspicious of the West and not without some justification for their state of mind. The first widening of the breach came with intervention by armies of the western democracies plus Japan in their civil war in 1918-1920 on the side of the old regime. Even though the United States troops were in Siberia to check the imperialistic aspirations of Japan and in general to take a neutral stand with respect to the Russians, the Russians did not fully understand our position and resented our actions. It all goes to show that a good deed never goes unpunished. Then Russia was left out of the peace discussions which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles, and was not invited to join the League of Nations at the time of its formation. She was left out of the Locarno Pact, which fact left her with the thought that maybe it was directed against her. With respect to the Pact of Paris, she was again left out. Other countries were tardy in recognizing the Soviet Union after the revolution, and the United States didn’t resume diplomatic relations until 1933. During one period, apprehensive of the rise of the militaristic, aggressive Nazi Germany, Russia was trying to establish friendly relations with the West. She joined the League of Nations in 1934 and played down the Third International. Litvinov called repeatedly for stronger peace machinery and led the unsuccessful fight to get the League to take effective action against Italian aggression.
By the time of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, the League of Nations, to all intents and purposes, was a dead duck. It played little, if any role, in that fracas. A Nonintervention Committee, not connected with the League, was set up, but in reality it reacted to the advantage of Franco and his supporters, Germany and Italy.
This war presented Russia with a dilemma. Her natural inclination was to favor the Loyalists; but in line with her previous steps to align herself with the West, she did join the Nonintervention Committee. However, she did not persevere along this line. Germany and Italy were intervening in favor of Franco, and so Russia intervened on the opposite side. But Great Britain, led by that personifier of appeasement, Chamber- lain, and France kept aloof, through weakness rather than virtue. Stalin appears to have felt that the democracies were appeasing the Nazis for possible future use against him. With Russia in this state of mind we come to Munich. At this crisis in European affairs, when Czechoslovakia was shamefully sold down the river, Russia from all accounts was willing to live up to her pledges. According to J. W. Wheeler-Bennett in his Munich: Prologue to Tragedy, she “informed the German government that Russia would honor her pledges to Czechoslovakia, but these pledges only became operative after France had honored her own.” And that “ . . . the Russian guarantees did exist and Moscow had very recently reaffirmed them in Prague and Paris and in Berlin.” However, “the Russian proposals had been pointedly ignored in London and Paris.” Further “ . . . there lay, if not in the mind of Mr. Chamberlain himself, at any rate in the minds of some of his advisors, the secret hope that, if German expansion could be directed toward the East, it would in time come into collision with the rival totalitarian imperialism of Soviet Russia. In the conflict which would ensue, both the forces of National Socialism and of Communism would be exhausted, and since it was believed by those who held these opinions that Bolshevik Russia was of greater danger to Britain than Nazi Germany, the prospect of Hitler’s defeating Stalin, and greatly weakening himself in the process, was not unwelcome.” Is it any wonder that “they convinced Stalin of the impossibility of attempting to continue cooperation with the Western democracies?” This is the understandable background for the Russian effort to look out for themselves and an intensified suspicion of the West. And Stalin expressed the opinion that the districts of Czechoslovakia were yielded to Germany as the prize for the undertaking to launch war on the Soviet Union. Naturally there were other factors involved. There was the general ineptitude of the Western statesmen and the weakness and general pusilanimous attitude of the Anglo-French combine. However, if Stalin and the Russians didn’t actually believe that it was impossible to cooperate with the Western democracies and that these same democracies had endeavored to direct the Nazi aggressions in their direction, they at least had plenty of evidence that they could use for their purposes to make it seem so.
One of the strongest of human emotions is the “wanting to belong.” A great number of people with criminal instincts become that way because they have not found a niche in society. The mental hospitals are filled with people who feel that they are not wanted. Man is a gregarious animal. Note the number of clubs, societies, religions, fads, and isms that attract them. It is one of the well-springs of nationalism. It was one of the great attractions of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. It is one of the great sources of strength of Communism. Thus, now that we have a United Nations with Russia in it, troublesome though she may be, with her long standing suspicions of the West intensified by the Communist organization and ideology and the fact of her oft-reprehensible international conduct, I view with dismay Mr. Hoover’s statement in a speech that the United Nations should be “reorganized without the Communist Nations in it.” Enough trouble has been caused by leaving Russia out of conferences and organizations of the past. Let us not again sharpen her suspicions and again disregard the feeling of “wanting to belong.” The world’s only hope is to reach a workable collective security, and that cannot be attained with one of the major nations outside the framework of the structure. There is some evidence that the Russians had hopes that the United Nations would be an instrument for peace. According to Walter Duranty in his Stalin and Company, Voznesensky, one of the members of the all- powerful Polit-bureau, indicated such in a speech before the Congress of the U.S.S.R. in 1946. Although he was speaking of disarming the aggressors and did stress the necessity for keeping their own defenses strong, he did say “to make the United Nations an organ which will guard world peace and security.” Although Voznesensky may be, or was, a minor cog in the Soviet machine and words are one thing and actions another, it at least was a high sounding and worthwhile sentiment. His ideas may have been along the same line as those expressed by General Zhukov to General Eisenhower, as will be noted later in this paper.
However, we must persist in working for this collective security. In his speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Churchill spoke of “the failure of social and political institutions to keep pace with material and technical change.” If this failure is not redeemed, the world could destroy itself. It could be that the Russians realize that too and thus may retreat from their alledged stand that Communism and Capitalism, as personified by the democracies, cannot exist in the same world.
In the meantime, what is our path? The Soviet Union is the leader in Communism and is endeavoring to spread its doctrines. Communism breeds and thrives on man’s discontent with the inadequate meeting of human needs. "... we quite overlook the fact that humanity’s real battle is against the elements: against hunger, against poverty, and want and human wretchedness. The starved and rickety bodies of a billion of the world’s people who have never known what it is to have enough to eat, are the exhibits of how poorly we have done. . . ”1 To try to stop the spread of communism without attacking its basic causes is like trying to put out an oil fire without shutting off the valve through which the oil is coming. I think the democracies, and particularly the United States, are becoming more aware of the necessity for attacking the basic ills. Steps in the right direction are the Marshall Plan and the Point Four Program.
The millennium will be reached when that day arrives when we will have no more wars and there will be no need for the cop on the corner. In view of past history, it would seem that those desiderata may never occur. However, there must be no lessening of effort to prevent mankind from destroying itself. Christianity or any other religion has not yet been the answer, and the probability of its ever being more than an aid is remote. The old game of balance of power has had occasional successes, but eventually a state of unbalance arrives and frictions ensue. It could be that if several strong nations banded themselves together they could impose peace on the rest of the world. Robert Sherwood has reported that at Teheran, in discussing an organization for the preservation of world peace, Mr. Roosevelt proposed “what he termed—‘The Four Policemen’—The U.S.S.R., U.S., U.K. and China. This, as its name implies, would be the enforcing agency—with power to deal immediately with any threat to the peace or any sudden emergency.” The Russian General Zhukov expressed somewhat the same idea to General Eisenhower, as the latter wrote in Crusade in Europe, “If the United States and Russia will only stand together through thick and thin, success is certain for the United Nations. If we are partners, there are no other countries in the world that would dare to go to war when we forbade it.” However, in effect, they would be dictatorships, and that type of rule seems to have uncertain terminal dates. Then, too, it violates the “wanting to belong” as far as other nations are concerned.
Societies for the prevention of anything have not been too conspicuous in their successes, but it is in such organizations as the League of Nations and the United Nations that we must put our hopes. However, it must be an organization with enough teeth in it to enforce its decisions if necessary. Good will and good faith have not been enough to date. The United Nations has made a step in this direction but has not gone far enough. However, it is well that progress has been made in that respect.
In the meantime we must keep our own armed forces at a strength where we can speak with authority. We can get nowhere talking from a weak position. The chief proponent of the communist group, Russia, respects force, and it could be that when she sees that the United States and other democracies are also willing “to play marbles for keeps” she will be more amenable to discussion. A grave mistake was made at the close of the Second World War when we demobilized and disarmed with what might be called indecent haste. From past history it should have been realized that a respectable force should have been kept under arms so that we could sit in at the peace discussions with a strong hand. Of course the men wanted to get home and their relatives wanted them home, but I feel that if the White House, the State Department, and the Armed Services as a unit had presented the problem, with appropriate reminders of the past to the people of this country, they would have accepted a less precipitate and less complete demobilization. We don’t want forces for aggressive purposes. We don’t want forces to start a preventive war. But we do want enough forces so that it will make it unprofitable for an aggressor to start a war against us. At the same time, we must strive for the common good by endeavoring to correct or alleviate the basic causes of mankind’s discontents. We must strive to set up a workable collective security that will remedy another defect of the League of Nations mentioned by Wendell Willkie in his One World—that it did not “sufficiently seek a solution of the economic problems of the world.” As an influence for good in these respects we must be one of the mightiest in the councils of the mighty, which we hope will lead us to, if not a bigger world, at least a better one.
The opinions or assertions in this article are the private ones of the author, and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or of the naval service at large.
1. “National Security and Military Policy”—LCDR R. E. Williams, Jr., (SC) USN, U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1952.