Shortage Of Victory Cause And Cure

Shortage of Victory Foreword THE liberation of French Africa, which was made possible by the British victory in Egypt, the counter-offensive of the Russian armies following the opening of a Mediter ranean front, and the magnificent defiance of German might by the French Navy at Toulon furnish a happy climax to the story told in this book. The deceptive victory of 1918 notwithstanding, the shortage of victory for the democracies has now lasted some twenty-five years. During the long retreat of the western powers before the onslaught of German and Japanese arms there was much con fused thinking on the decisive factors in this war. It was said that the armies of France were defeated because of French decadence, political and military treason after the loss of To bruk by the British in the summer of 1942, Mr. Harold J. Laski expressed the opinion that the defeat was due to the conserva tism of the Churchill government and failure to open a second front in Europe gave rise to widespread suspicion that a spirit of solidarity was lacking among the United Nations. Now, however, the democracies, more efficient in the pro duction of armaments than the totalitarian, have turned the tide. From now on it is likely that the armament industries of the United Nations will rapidly outstrip the Axis powers in the quantity and quality of the sinews of war. The democracies have just begun to fight, and the shoe is already on the other foot. The battle could not have turned in favor of the democracies a day earlier than it did. Before a counter-offensive against a well-prepared totalitarian state can be launched, it is obviously necessary to switch over from the mass production of consumer vii viii FOREWORDgoods to the mass production of armaments. But democratic governments can obtain the consent of the governed for such a radical change in the national economy only when the enemy, fully prepared, launches the assault. All history is a conflict between forces of liberation and forces of oppression. Our own time is but a variation on this theme. While the theme is as old as mankind, there are nevertheless constant variations in the theme, and these are determined by material forces. The industrial revolution during the long armistice, brought about by the development of the conveyer belt in industry, has thus a direct bearing on the as yet unrecognized or unadmitted necessity of formulating new principles of international rela tionships. Hitherto it has been axiomatic that an act of aggres sion was committed only when the armies of the aggressor in vaded some neighboring territory. But this doctrine has been rendered obsolete by the development of mass production in industry. The history of our times compels the conclusion that any nation which gives itself a totalitarian form of government has thereby committed an act of aggression against its neigh bors in renouncing liberty, a nation gives its government a dear mandate to wage war. The totalitarian state, when unhampered by either internal or external forces, makes full use of that mandate. Wherever and whenever a totalitarian state has come into being and no matter under what pretext, it has invariably increased the means of warfare and decreased for the common man the means of sat isfying his economic needs. From the moment of its creation it is possible to calculate with a high degree of probability the year, and even the month, when the totalitarian state will as sault its neighbors. Moreover, with the constant progress of in dustry and invention, it must become increasingly difficult to organize a defense against the well-prepared armies of the ag gressor. As long as the peaceful people of this world adhere to Qie principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of sover eign states, the totalitarian state will always have the time to develop a war economy while remaining nominally at peace FOREWORD ix with its neighbors. Well-prepared, it invariably wins the first battles...