WAR AND PACIFISM
419
Geer1e Orwell:
Since I don't suppose you want to fill an entire number of PR with
squalid controversies imported from across the Atlantic, I will lump to·
gether the various letters you have sent on to me (from Messrs. Savage,
Woodcock and Comfort), as the central issue in all of them is the same.
But I must afterwards deal separately with some points of fact raised in
various of the letters.
Pacifism.
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary
common sense.
If
you hamper the war-effort of one side you automatically
help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such
a war as the present one. In practice, "he that is not with me is against
me." The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to
the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their
lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr.
Savage remarks that "according to this type of reasoning, a German or
Japanese pacifist would he 'objectively pro-British'." But of course he
would he! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those coun·
tries (in both of them the penalty is, or can he, beheading) while both the
Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of
pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a
spurious "freedom" station which serves out pacifist propaganda indis·
tinguishable from that of the PPU. They would stimulate pacifism in
Russia as well if they could, hut in that case they have tougher babies to
deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only
he effective
against
those countries where a certain amount of freedom
of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
I am not interested in pacifism as a "moral phenomenon."
If
Mr.
Savage and others imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German
army by lying on one's hack, let them go on imagining it, hut let them also
wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too
much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually
happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with
laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success
of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in
Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British govern·
ment. So he will he to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments
can stand "moral force" till the cows come home; what they fear is physi·
cal force. But though not much interested in the "theory" of pacifism, I
am
interested in the psychological processes by which pacifists who have
started out with an alleged horror of violence end up with a marked
tendency to he fascinated by the success and power of Nazism. Even paci–
fists who wouldn't own to any such fascination are beginning to claim that
a Nazi victory is desirable in itself.
In
the letter you sent on to me, Mr.
Comfort considers that an artist in occupied territory ought to "protest
against such evils as he sees," hut considers that this is best done by
"temporarily accepting the status quo" (like Deat or Bergery, for in–
stance?) A few weeks hack he was hoping for a Nazi victory because of
the stimulating effect it would have upon the Arts:
