On the Prevention of War, by John Strachey

[p041] On the Prevention of War. By John Strachey. Macmillan & Co., Cloth 40s., Paper 15s. A former Secretary of State for War who crawled round the Malayan jungle with a band of imported head- hunters and then reported that he had enjoyed every minute, is just the man to write about the prevention of war. This is Mr. Strachey’s only qualifi- cation—unless you count his pre-war books, for which this may be some sort of atonement. He is a bitter opponent of unilateralism, though with the usual guff about having ‘deep respect for the traditional pacifist view’. In fact, he equates unilateralism with pacifism all the way through and ignores the growing number of unilateralists who are not pacifists but militant socialists. According to Strachey, unilateral- ism equals pacifism which equals ‘surrender to Communist Authority’. It is therefore unattainable, since it is impossible to persuade ‘the West’ to accept it. Nor can it appeal to the Western working class since ‘the wage-earning majority of the Western World has just achieved material security’ (pay attention, there, you railwaymen!). Therefore it follows that ‘there is really no workable alternative to the present position in which the custody of the nuclear warheads is centralized in American hands’. Strachey does, however, leave a hope for world peace. This lies in the growing together of the American and Russian economic systems. ‘It is an open secret amongst the more sophisticated economists and socio- logists . . . that the differences be- LABOUR REVIEW—Winter 1963 Book Reviews tween the two economic systems are tending to decrease.’ The Russian bureaucrats and the Western execu- tives are brothers under the skin’. (One up for the State Capitalists! They do manage to provide comfort- able theories for right-wing politi- cians if nothing else.) And how will this ‘coming-together’ work out? Why, the two worlds must first ‘live together in a balance of power’ and then ‘learn just suffi- ciently to co-operate to enable them to organise an authority capable of keeping the peace’. So we’re back to that hoary old chestnut — a ‘World Executive’. Hardly worth writing a whole book about. Especially since Strachey concludes, logically enough, that such an ‘executive’ would have to be based on the nuclear capabilities of the super powers. So it’s Thank God for the H-bomb. A friend in disguise after all. Strachey does, however, produce one very telling point. He explains, with evidence from Russell’s own writings, how the venerable philo- sopher himself arrives at the very same conclusion—a world power armed with the most powerful weapons available. This is undeniably Russell’s view as any reading of Must Man Survive will show. GG. A comfortable bleat