War: The Cause and the Cure

Bertrand Russell

The following excerpts are from Russell’s 1914 article ‘War: The Cause and the Cure’, first published in The Labour Leader (24 September 1914) and re-published in Bertrand Russell: A Pacifist at War (Ed. Nicholas Griffin, Spokesman Books)

In every nation, by secrecy of diplomacy, by cooperation of the Press with the manufacturers of armaments, by the desire of the rich and the educated to distract the attention of the working classes from social injustice, suspicion of other nations is carefully cultivated, until a state of nightmare terror is produced, and men are prepared to attack the enemy at once, before he is ready to inflict the ruin which he is believed to be contemplating. In sudden vertigo, the nations rush into the dreaded horror; reason is called treachery, mercy is called weakness, and universal delerium drives the world to destruction.

All the nations suffer by the war, and knew in advance that they would suffer. In all the nations, the bulk of ordinary men and women must have dreaded war. Yet all felt the war thrust upon them by the absolute necessity of preserving themselves from invasion and national extinction

... [The] nations, fearing that they might at any time be exposed to sudden attack, perfected the machinery for rapid mobilisation, and allowed their Governments the power of putting this machinery in motion at a moment’s notice. Thus the issue of peace or war rested, not with the people, who have to suffer the evils of war, but with men who would not suffer by war, who, on the contrary, would gain in importance and prestige. These men, by their constant practice of diplomacy, had become filled with the spirit of competition between rival States, and had come to think it more shameful to their country to allow diplomatic triumph to another country than to bring about the devastation of Europe.

... If, when this war is ended, the world is to enjoy a secure peace, the nations must be relieved of the intolerable fear which has weighed them down and driven them into the present horror. Not only must armaments be immensely reduced, but the machinery of mobilisation must be everywhere rendered more cumbrous and more democratic, the diplomacy must be conducted more publicly and by [people] more in touch with the people, and arbitration treaties must bind nations to seek a peaceful settlement of their differences before appealing to brute force ... none will be secured if the negotiations are left in the hands of the men who made the war.