Is Peace Possible? by Kathleen Lonsdale

[p031] Pacifist ‘Realism’ Is Peace Possible?, by Kathleen Lonsdale (Penguin Books, 2s. 6d.) PROFESSOR LONSDALE is a Quaker and an atomic scien- tist of renown and great ability. This earnest and very sincere book—the product of one who, as she says in her Foreword, ‘feels a sense of corporate guilt and responsibility that scientific knowledge should have been so misused’—is a pacifist’s attempt to give what she calls a ‘realistic’ answer to the great- est problem of our generation: how can the world live with- out the H-bomb? Professor Lonsdale’s righteous anger against the madmen who continue to play great power politics with H-bombs, guided missiles and the whole range of modern frightfulness, is all times evident behind her consciously restrained writing, a fact which makes her book all the more gripping. Her first six chapters make valuable reading. In these, and in some later chapters also, with all the elegance of a mathematical proof, she states the dilemma posed by the division of the world into independent national States and power blocs at a stage of scientific, technical and population growth which makes world planning and the elimination of all artificial barriers to the growth of industrial and agricultural produc- tion an absolute necessity. With the direct and simple logic of the natural scientist, she conveys the information available on the short and long-term effects of nuclear bombs and dissects the pompous inanities of such institutions as Civil Defence. For example on evacuation she writes: ‘If a dozen such bombs [rigged H-bombs] were strategic- ally dropped on the British Isles, there would be no place to go. The pasture would be radioactive, the vegetation would be radioactive, the cows’ milk would be radioactive. the buildings would be radioactive. To spend millions on Civil Defence in the face of such facts is so fantastically stupid that one wonders who is making a good thing out of it. That, and that alone, would make sense.’ This last remark shows that Professor Lonsdale is not only a scientist but also has a very good supply of horse sense. Even when she comes to the sections where her science leaves her for pious wishful thinking, her horse sense, like her innate cheerfulness, will keep on breaking through. Yet though she seems well aware of some of the economic 28 causes of war, Professor Lonsdale cannot bring herself to denounce capitalism as the cause of war. Basically, according to her view, wars are caused by the failure of governments and peoples to act according to Christian moral standards. Her remedy for war accordingly consists of persuading individuals and even governments of ‘goodwill’ to persuade the govern- ments and peoples of the world, by individualist and unilateral actions, that wars are not only morally wrong but from every point of view stupid, wasteful and ineffective. We have here in fact a modernized Christianized version of Sir Norman Angell’s pre-1914 and still unheeded sermon, The Great Illu- sion. But has Professor Lonsdale ever sat down and, with the objectivity of a scientist, tried to answer the question—why do capitalist governments in spite of all rational exhortation consistently refuse to change their modes of behaviour—to give up war policies, to agree to disarm, to co-operate peace- fully with all other nations? Is it sheer stupidity? Is it man’s natural greed and wickedness? Or can it be that the behaviour of governments is determined by the objective laws operating within the various types of social systems—just as there are objective laws of physics which determine that a weighted block of wood will float on paraffin but sink in water? It is here, I suspect, that Professor Lonsdale consciously aban- dons her science and hands over to religious intuition. Take her example from another field of politics: ‘It has been rightly pointed out that Britain gave up slavery just in time: before the industrial revolution. If slaves had become machine-minders, the abolition of slavery and of the slave-trade would have become more difficult by an order of magnitude. The fact that some other nations have not yet eliminated slavery did not prevent Britain from doing so once the wrongness of slavery had become apparent. We can engage in unilateral action even to our own dis- advantage when our national conscience is touched.’ (p. 110) She goes on to say that we could do the same again about war ‘once we realize the utter folly of our present way of action’. A slave operating modern industrial plants, indeed! Does Professor Lonsdale seriously believe that this was ever a technical possibility and that only moral fervour prevented it? There is a mountain of factual evidence pointing to the absolute necessity of converting slaves or serfs into ‘free’ prole- tarians before modern industrial machinery could ever be put into use. This is the explanation for Britain’s anti-slavery crusade in the 19th century; the moral platitudes were mainly the propaganda form of this economic necessity. Similarly war, and the preparation for new wars, are the ‘rational’ mode of existence of imperialism.

[p032] BOOK REVIEWS In opposing war, moral sermons can, unfortunately, often be worse than useless. For if Professor Lonsdale’s moral fervour succeeds in dissuading any worker from giving all his energies to fighting for international socalism, on the excuse that peace is a more urgent topic, she will have helped to preserve that very social order, modern imperialism, which so long as it remains will drive on to a solution of its difficulties in world war—H-bombs, radioactive dust, guided missiles, bacteria: the lot. I know that this is the last thing that Professor Lonsdale would wish to happen. I suggest. therefore, that what she needs, like all of us, is not less science but more science and particularly an enrichment of the social science whose chief subject-matter is how capitalism can be destroyed—and with it the real causes of war.