G.K. Chesterton’s Thoughts on War

G.K Chesterton was an eclectic fellow, and to summarize what he would have to say on any particular political issue is a task that should be approached with fear and trembling. Towards the end of Chesterton’s life, Hitler achieved power in Germany and tensions were once again on the rise in Europe. A nationalist who was fond of saying “England is good enough for me”, Chesterton was also a vocal critic of Imperialistic wars. He put it best himself by saying “Patriotism has a parody that is called Jingoism.”

However, in the early 1930s he emerged as one of the first critics of Hitler when many were still trying to make sense of the situation in Europe. He amusingly noted that “There are some who wonder how I came to pick up the strange fancy that Hitler and his colleagues are as warlike as they say they are.” 

Chesterton, who died in 1936, did not live to see many of his prophecies come true. Before he died, he wrote a piece to memorialize Armistice Day in which he reflected on the first War, predicted the next, and criticized both those who were anxious for war and those who would run from it.

This is an edited version of that editorial. The reader will no doubt find it contains something for everyone.

In this matter I belong to a small group or school in England, which may now possibly be listened to again; or rather begin for the first time to be listened to at all. We were in a special state of obscurity and insignificance; for we were a minority swallowed up in a majority. That is, we agreed with our countrymen about the rightness of fighting, but we almost entirely disagreed with them about the reasons for doing it.

What we said before the War and during the War, what we said during the pacifist reaction against the War, what we say now during the reaction against the pacifist reaction, has nothing to do with newspaper stunts or even with national passions. It is something not only older than the newspapers, but older than the nations; it was there when the political parties had no labels and even most of the people had no names. As a man may say, as a scientific fact, that there is in Northern China a well of petroleum, we said that there is in Northern Europe a fountain of poison. It is a fact; and it continues to flow. It is obviously nonsense to call it Germany. It is not really satisfactory to call it Prussia. It is much more satisfactory simply to call it Pride. It is a thing of the spirit; it is not a nation; it is a heresy.

The world unwisely allowed this unnatural thing to grow stronger and stronger in Europe throughout the nineteenth century. It was nearly cut short by Napoleon at Jena; it could easily have been checked when it began to steal from Poland and Denmark and France. It was allowed to grow so enormously strong that it took the strength of four nations to inflict on it a belated and a badly-managed defeat. The defeat was badly managed, because the victors did not understand what they were fighting. They went by labels again, and thought they were fighting a nation when they were fighting a notion – but a notion that was a nightmare… The Allies were right and did not know it; and they did almost everything that was wrong… They made every mistake they possibly could; but then again you must remember that their policy was managed by practical business men.

There are  those radiant sermons on Love and Brotherhood and Unity, which have in late years been poured out so copiously by the great and wise, and especially the wealthy; and all those who think that a war should never be waged except very occasionally, for money, against a small and defenseless State. Many of these moralists will add that, even then, it is more truly Christian to starve the people to death by some economic boycott or blockade, rather than sink to the cynical level of risking our own lives in order to kill them. In all these higher moral sentiments I feel I shall be found sadly wanting.

The Pacifists are right in insisting that Peace, like War, is made by the will of man; and they are therefore right in adding that a moral responsibility in the matter lies on all sorts and conditions of men. Where they are generally wrong is, first, in assuming that all those who anticipate war necessarily approve of war, or even actually desire it; and, second, in supposing that those who did approve of a particular war necessarily approved of it for the particular reasons given by the richest or most successful rascals in journalism or commercial politics. They will have to think a great deal more honestly than that, if we are to avoid war or even escape out of it alive if it comes.

But for us, who celebrate the Armistice, there is surely a nobler and more humane way of celebrating it. Let us forget for a day whatever we may think of the faults of others; and pray that we may not again wreck the hope of the world by faults of our own. Let us pray that if the challenge does come again, we may not meet it by random slander or roaring self-righteousness; that we may test the quarrel by the history of nations as studied by sincere and serious men, and not by nonsense made up in a newspaper-office on a principle of inverted advertisement; or the theory that propagandists may say anything so long as it is abuse, as salesmen may say anything so long as it is flattery. Let us pray to be delivered from the vice and vulgarities of our own civilization; and all the more if we sincerely believe that it is still a civilization, and may need to be defended from something that is still a savagery. It is a fine thing to be swift to forgive our enemies; but it is a finer thing not to be too eager to forgive ourselves. If the ruin that fell on the great House of Hohenzollern was, as I still believe, a doom earned and provoked by the dehumanized pride of Prussia, we must not forget that the vast economic collapse that has affected the victors has almost as much the quality of a great historical judgment; and the rebuke of fate to our own mercantile and mechanical culture. In so far as modern men can face such facts frankly, they will be worthy to find peace, or fitted to face war.