Читать книгу What are you going to do about it? The Case for Constructive Peace - Aldous Leonard Huxley - Страница 4

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Generals who inspect the O.T.C.'s of public schools are fond of telling their youthful audiences that "man is a fighting animal." Now, in the sense that, like stags, men quarrel for love, like white-throats, for property, and, like barn-door fowls, for position in society, this statement may be regarded as true. Like even the mildest animals—and it is probable that our pre-human ancestors were gentle creatures something like the tarsias of to-day—men have always done a good deal of "scrapping." In some places and at some epochs of history this "scrapping" was a violent and savage affair; at others, relatively harmless: it has been entirely a matter of convention. Thus, in Europe, three hundred years ago, "the best people" were expected to fight a duel on the slightest provocation; now they are not expected to do so. Within the life-time of men still with us, games of rugby football ended, and were meant to end, in broken legs. On the modern football field broken legs are no longer in fashion. The rules for casual individual "scrapping" and for those organized group-contests which we call sport, have been changed, on the whole, for the better. The rules of war, on the contrary, have changed in every way for the worse. In the eighteenth century Marlborough gave a day's notice before beginning the bombardment of a town. To-day even a formal declaration of war is coming to be regarded as unnecessary. (Italy, for example, dispensed with it completely when attacking Abyssinia.) "A declaration of war," writes General Ludendorff, "is a waste of time and also it sometimes unfortunately, brands the nation who makes it." Therefore, if we want to win and at the same time to avoid being stigmatized as aggressors, we should attack without warning.

To sum up, man is a fighting animal in the sense that he is a "scrapping animal." It is for man and man alone to decide whether he shall do his "scrapping" murderously or according to rules which limit the amount of violence used or even, as in the case of non-violent resistance, abolish it altogether. Mass murder is no more a necessity than individual murder. In 1600 duelling must have seemed to many intelligent people a law of nature. But the fact remains that we have abolished duelling. There is no reason why we should not abolish war.