My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleynormal city life. It will then certainly be found that to win a war which is basically awar of ideas it is necessary first to have an idea. This main thesis of The EuropeanSituation was developed within the ambience of a general situation which I describedas the age of the paralysed giants, meaning that the deterrent of nuclear weaponswould be so great that it would inhibit full-scale war.I wrote: 'It has often been said that wars would end because they would become toodangerous. That prophecy has never yet proved true. It would be a delusion ofoptimism to believe that it is now true. But it is possible, and even probable, that warsin the old style will now end for this reason. What state will declare war, or attack anddestroy another state, if it also is certain to be destroyed? A fight in which bothparticipants are certain to be killed is unlikely to take place. Has the world reachedthis point? From the evidence it appears to be so. It seems that any concentration ofindustry or life itself can now be destroyed by any state which has the technical meansto produce sufficient hydrogen bombs and to ensure their delivery. The protectioneven of space and the power of dispersal begins to disappear in face of such weapons.The life of any modern state, or even of a substantial community, becomes impossibleunder this attack.'Do these weapons, therefore, encourage such attack? On the contrary, a weaponwhich can destroy everything may be a deterrent, but it is not a winner of wars. Theattacker may destroy his opponent, but the counter-blow can still be delivered, and hehimself will be destroyed. At present this is the only answer, but it is effective. TheSoviets cannot impose communism on the rest of the world with this weapon, even ifthey can obtain it. They can only make the rest of the world a desert. That is why warsbetween states in the old style may come to an end. Neither of the great power groupswill dare to move because that would mean death to both. We are reaching the periodof the paralysed giants.'Three and a half years after I published this view Sir Winston Churchill said in theHouse of Commons on November 3, 1953: 'It may be that the annihilating characterof new weapons may bring an utterly unforeseeable security to mankind. When theadvance of destructive weapons enables everyone to kill everyone else, no one willwant to kill anyone at all.' Three years later, on May 21, 1956, Mr. Walter Lippmannwrote in the NewYork Herald Tribune: 'Thanks to Churchill's genius, the West wasahead of the Soviets in realising the political consequences of the second militaryrevolution, that of the hydrogen bomb. This second revolution has led us to theacknowledgment at the summit meeting in Geneva that the great nuclear powersthemselves are in military stalemate and that they cannot contemplate war as aninstrument of their policies.' How much can be saved if facts are recognised sooner?Britain should not tour the Far East with nuclear guarantees or equivocal evasions, butgive a clear definition of its own position and suggest constructive policies designedto secure a new equilibrium. China is a fact in the Far East and its natural sphere ofinfluence is among related peoples in south-east Asia. What matters is to prevent itgoing any further by force of arms; the idea of communism we should always beready to match with a better and a stronger idea. Once spheres of influence areestablished and maintained, if necessary by the power of arms, the future can bedecided by a battle of ideas reinforced by the success or weakened by the failure ofpolitical systems within the respective spheres of influence, and rightly so.398 of 424