Page:Gregg - Pacifist Program in Time of War.pdf/7



This discussion is based on two related assumptions. The first is that pacifism must be an effort to create by non-violent methods a new and better civilization. Pacifism is not just an attempt to postpone any threatened war, nor merely to create a permanent condition of non-war, leaving the rest of our institutions and customs just as they are. We must build a new order. All of the ways and institutions of such a new order would be very different from what we are accustomed to. They would be different not merely because that new civilization would be free from war, its accompaniments and results, but because it would necessarily embody much more respect for personality, interest in people, justice, tolerance, freedom, and love than we now have.

Our second assumption is the reason for this enlarged task of pacifism. War is an important and necessary institution of our present civilization. War is not just an ugly excrescence, or superficial illness, or occasional maladjustment, or temporary personal mistake of a few leaders of an otherwise fair and healthy society; war is an inherent, inevitable, essential element of the kind of civilization in which we live. For that statement there is ample authority from statesmen, economists, sociologists, historians and philosophers of the Left, Right and Center. War is of the very tissue of our civilization, and the only way to do away with it is to change, non violently and deeply, the motives, functions and structures of our civilization. Such change is required in order to meet successfully the vast changes of our environment during the past two hundred years. We must alter many habits and change many routines and expectancies. We cannot eliminate all conflicts, but we can reduce their number and use non-violent methods of settling them before they reach a violent stage. Our present order produces war. We must make