The world as I see it - Albert Einstein (easy books to read .txt) 📗

court of arbitration, and to enter into a treaty to this
effect without reserve, is not really resolved to avoid war. It is a case of
all or nothing.

It is undeniable that previous attempts to ensure peace have failed
through aiming at inadequate compromises.

Disarmament and security are only to be had in combination. The one
guarantee of security is an undertaking by all nations to give effect to the
decisions of the international authority.

We stand, therefore, at the parting of the ways. Whether we find the
way of peace or continue along the old road of brute force, so unworthy of
our civilization, depends on ourselves. On the one side the freedom of the
individual and the security of society beckon to us, on the other slavery
for the individual and the annihilation of our civilization threaten us. Our
fate will be according to our deserts.

The Disarmament Conference of 1932

I

May I begin with an article of political faith? It runs as follows: The
State is made for man, not man for the State. And in this respect science
resembles the State. These are old sayings, coined by men for whom human
personality was the highest human good. I should shrink from repeating them,
were it not that they are for ever threatening to fall into oblivion,
particularly in these days of organization and mechanization. I regard it as
the chief duty of the State to protect the individual and give him the
opportunity to develop into a creative personality.

That is to say, the State should be our servant and not we its slaves.
The State transgresses this commandment when it compels us by force to
engage in military and war service, the more so since the object and the
effect of this slavish service is to kill people belonging to other
countries or interfere with their freedom of development. We are only to
make such sacrifices to the State as will promote the free development of
individual human beings. To any American all this may be a platitude, but
not to any European. Hence we may hope that the fight against war will find
strong support among Americans.

And now for the Disarmament Conference. Ought one to laugh, weep, or
hope when one thinks of it? Imagine a city inhabited by fiery-tempered,
dishonest, and quarrelsome citizens. The constant danger to life there is
felt as a serious handicap which makes all healthy development impossible.
The magistrate desires to remedy this abominable state of affairs, although
all his counsellors and the rest of the citizens insist on continuing to
carry a dagger in their girdles. After years of preparation the magistrate
determines to compromise and raises the question, how long and how sharp the
dagger is allowed to be which anyone may carry in his belt when he goes out.
As long as the cunning citizens do not suppress knifing by legislation, the
courts, and the police, things go on in the old way, of course. A definition
of the length and sharpness of the permitted dagger will help only the
strongest and most turbulent and leave the weaker at their mercy. You will
all understand the meaning of this parable. It is true that we have a League
of Nations and a Court of Arbitration. But the League is not much more than
a meeting-hall, and the Court has no means of enforcing its decisions. These
institutions provide no security for any country in case of an attack on it.
If you bear this in mind, you will judge the attitude of the French, their
refusal to disarm without security, less harshly than it is usually judged
at present.

Unless we can agree to limit the sovereignty of the individual State by
all binding ourselves to take joint action against any country which openly
or secretly resists a judgment of the Court of Arbitration, we shall never
get out of a state of universal anarchy and terror. No sleight of hand can
reconcile the unlimited sovereignty of the individual country with security
against attack. Will it need new disasters to induce the countries to
undertake to enforce every decision of the recognized international court?
The progress of events so far scarcely justifies us in hoping for anything
better in the near future. But everyone who cares for civilization and
justice must exert all his strength to convince his fellows of the necessity
for laying all countries under an international obligation of this kind.

It will be urged against this notion, not without a certain
justification, that it over-estimates the efficacy of machinery, and
neglects the psychological, or rather the moral, factor. Spiritual
disarmament, people insist, must precede material disarmament. They say
further, and truly, that the greatest obstacle to international order is
that monstrously exaggerated spirit of nationalism which also goes by the
fair-sounding but misused name of patriotism. During the last century and a
half this idol has acquired an uncanny and exceedingly pernicious power
everywhere.

To estimate this objection at its proper worth, one must realize that a
reciprocal relation exists between external machinery and internal states of
mind. Not only does the machinery depend on traditional modes of feeling and
owe its origin and its survival to them, but the existing machinery in its
turn exercises a powerful influence on national modes of feeling.

The present deplorably high development of nationalism everywhere is,
in my opinion, intimately connected with the institution of compulsory
military service or, to call it by its less offensive name, national armies.
A country which demands military service of its inhabitants is compelled to
cultivate a nationalistic spirit in them, which provides the psychological
foundation of military efficiency. Along with this religion it has to hold
up its instrument, brute force, to the admiration of the youth in its
schools.

The introduction of compulsory service is therefore, to my mind, the
prime cause of the moral collapse of the white race, which seriously
threatens not merely the survival of our civilization but our very
existence. This curse, along with great social blessings, started with the
French Revolution, and before long dragged all the other nations in its
train.

Therefore those who desire to encourage the growth of an international
spirit and to combat chauvinism must take their stand against compulsory
service. Is the severe persecution to which conscientious objectors to
military service are subjected to-day a whit less disgraceful to the
community than those to which the martyrs of religion were exposed in former
centuries? Can you, as the Kellogg Pact does, condemn war and at the same
time leave the individual to the tender mercies of the war machine in each
country?

If, in view of the Disarmament Conference, we are not to restrict
ourselves to the technical problems of organization involved but also to
tackle the psychological question more directly from educational motives, we
must try on international lines to invent some legal way by which the
individual can refuse to serve in the army. Such a regulation would
undoubtedly produce a great moral effect.

This is my position in a nutshell: Mere agreements to limit armaments
furnish no sort of security. Compulsory arbitration must be supported by an
executive force, guaranteed by all the participating countries, which is
ready to proceed against the disturber of the peace with economic and
military sanctions. Compulsory service, as the bulwark of unhealthy
nationalism, must be combated; most important of all, conscientious
objectors must be protected on an international basis.


Finally, I would draw your attention to a book, War again To-morrow, by
Ludwig Bauer, which discusses the issues here involved in an acute and
unprejudiced manner and with great psychological insight.

II

The benefits that the inventive genius of man has conferred on us in
the last hundred years could make life happy and care-free if organization
had been able to keep pace with technical progress. As it is, these hard-won
achievements in the hands of our generation are like a razor in the hands of
a child of three. The possession of marvellous means of production has
brought care and hunger instead of freedom.

The results of technical progress are most baleful where they furnish
means for the destruction of human life and the hard-won fruits of toil, as
we of the older generation experienced to our horror in the Great War. More
dreadful even than the destruction, in my opinion, is the humiliating
slavery into which war plunges the individual. Is it not a terrible thing to
be forced by the community to do things which every individual regards as
abominable crimes? Only a few had the moral greatness to resist; them I
regard as the real heroes of the Great War.

There is one ray of hope. I believe that the responsible leaders of the
nations do, in the main, honestly desire to abolish war. The resistance to
this essential step forward comes from those unfortunate national traditions
which are handed on like a hereditary disease from generation to generation
through the workings of the educational system. The principal vehicle of
this tradition is military training and its