File:Advance to Barbarism.pdf

Template:FileProv

The Development of Total Warfare from Serajevo to Hiroshima

Foreword, By The Very Rev. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s

An early version of this book was first published in England in 1948. A second revised and greatly enlarged version appeared in the United States in 1953. This version was then translated into German and published in Hamburg in 1954; and a second edition was published in Wiesbaden in 1962. The present edition is a major revision of the earlier versions.

I am glad that a new edition of Advance to Barbarism is called for. In this book, first published in England in 1948 under the nom de plume “A. Jurist”, the author, Mr. F. J. P. Veale, said, and said very well, what needed to be said by someone, and, we may add, what in 1948 in most countries nobody would have been allowed to say.

I disliked the Nuremberg Trials for three reasons: First, trials of the vanquished by the victors are never satisfactory and are generally unfair. Secondly, the execution of the political and military leaders of a beaten side by the victors sets a most dangerous precedent. The Germans were certainly guilty of “crimes against humanity”; but war is not a humane business and it would always be possible for the victors in any way to find enough examples of atrocities to justify vindictive punishments. After the next war, if there is one, trials and hangings will follow as a matter of course. We may go further. One of the indictments of the German leaders was not that they waged war inhumanly, but that they made war aggressively. They did; they desired large annexations of territory in the East. But have we not heard of other nations who have acquired extensive empires without consulting the wishes of the inhabitants? Thirdly, one of the judges — Russia — ought certainly to have been in the dock and not on the bench.

The main object of Advance to Barbarism is to call attention to the terrible retrogression of civilized humanity towards the worst cruelties of barbarism. The so-called Wars of Religion were sometimes savage, but in the eighteenth century it was possible to talk of civilized warfare, in which certain humane conventions were observed. Gibbon notices this advance in decent behaviour with complacency. A writer in the eighteenth century might reasonably speak of war as a relic of barbarism which might soon be abolished altogether. The Napoleonic Wars, except the guerilla fighting in Spain, were not fertile in atrocities; the decadence came later.

I comforted myself at one time by thinking that these horrors were confined to three nations, Germany, Spain and Russia. Nothing can be said to extenuate the excesses practised by the Germans. The only fair questions were, who were the culprits? and who ought to be the judges? It is not usual to hang officers for obeying cruel orders. The citizens in a police state in abdicating their rights as men have ceased to admit the duty of obeying conscience. As for Spain, it is high time to resume friendly relations with a noble people. But it must be admitted that there is a strain of cruelty in the Spanish character. In the country of the Inquisition and the bull-ring, civil war was not likely to be gentle. In speaking of Russia, one cannot do better than quote what Amiel, whose perspicacity is never at fault, wrote as early as 1856:

“The harsh gifts of late have left their stamp on the race of the Muscovites. A certain sombre obstinacy, a sort of primitive ferocity, a background of savage harshness, which under the sway of circumstances might become implacable and even ruthless, a coldly indomitable force that would rather wreck the world than yield, the indestructible instinct of the barbarian horde still persisting in a half-civilized nation.… What terrible masters would the Russians be if ever they should spread the might of their rule over the southern countries! A polar despotism, a tyranny such as the world has not yet known, silent as the darkness, keen as ice, unfeeling as bronze, a slavery without compensation or relief.”

Perhaps in times to come, not so far distant, it may not be so readily forgotten that this was the enemy against whom the Germans fought.

But are there only three culprits, two of whom may plead some excuse? What of the destruction of Hiroshima by the Americans, of Dresden by the British, when the war was practically over? It is not pleasant to think of these things.

We must not speak too positively of retrogression. There was another side to European humanity before the insanity of nationalism. In dealing with “inferior races” the record was not good. The Irish have not forgotten the Tudors and Oliver Cromwell. Or listen to this horrible extract from the Daily Journal of March 1737: “They write from Antigua that they continued executing the Negroes concerned in the plot to murder all the inhabitants of the island: sixty-nine had been executed, of whom five had been broken on the wheel, six were hung upon gibbets and starved to death, of whom one lived nine nights and eight days and fifty-eight were chained to stakes and burnt.” Or think of the tortures inflicted on the assailant of Louis XV, which were gleefully witnessed by at least one English gentleman. Our ancestors were not all saints.

Some of us hope that now that war has been divested of all romance and chivalry, it may soon go the way of cannibalism and human sacrifice. It is a matter of life or death for civilization.