Page:The Hero in History.djvu/174

174 an absolute pacifism like Tolstoy’s be the solution to the problem? Let us grant that if everyone, or almost everyone, actually adopted the Tolstoyian or Gandhian position, war would be impossible. We shall consider the proposal only from the point of view of its efficacy in bringing about the desired results.

It is logically not inconceivable that enough human beings may be converted to pacifist doctrine to prevent wars in the future. But there are so many "laws” of social behaviour that would have to be suspended for the doctrine to spread, that the prospect of its adoption must be dismissed as Utopian. Some men will risk their lives because of the intrinsic nobility of an ideal or the truth of a doctrine. But the vast majority of individuals, past and present, have fought for ideals in order to further interests of a more concrete kind, like security, a longer life, or a materially better one. It is not absolutely excluded that in time the vast majority of men might be won to the position of Tolstoy that to be holy is better than to be, and that to forgive one’s enemies is better than to insist on justice from them. But long before enough have been converted, the situation will enable some unpacific men to further their existing interests by profiting from the non-resisting behaviour of those who practise absolute pacifism. The latter will not fight for their own lives and possessions or for the lives and possessions of friends, children, and countrymen. In that case, others, perhaps from countries and regions in which the ideals of pacifism are held in scorn, will discover that it is truly to their interest to be aggressively militant and to cut down and enslave the pacifists. The pacifist argument that it pays everyone not to have wars runs up against the fact that it would pay some people, in a world where others were pacifist, to make war on the pacifists. Consequently, for the pacifist position to be truly effective, the vast majority of mankind would have to adopt it at once in order to achieve its universal benefits. For until it is adopted by everyone, it pays those who are not pacifists to reject it. The only kind of war that is always profitable is a war against pacifists.

What is the chance that everyone, or almost everyone,would adopt the pacifist position at once? So small that it would be the height of foolishness to rely upon it in order to prevent war. The more want, the more boredom, the more fear there is in the world, the smaller the chance. We must therefore declare that, as a practical means of preventing war, absolute pacifism is bound to fail, barring a miraculous change in the natures of men