Europe in the Era of Two World Wars

[Dave Monroe]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 3:14 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> Europe in the Era of Two World Wars:
> From Militarism and Genocide to Civil Society, 1900-1950
> Volker R. Berghahn
>
> http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8042.html

In addition to the small number of pure pacifists, there was a larger
group of liberals who did not reject war and violence as a matter of
principle, but viewed military conflicts as self-destructive
andtherefore impossible to justify rationally, at least as far as the
great powers that had fully developed industries and were involved in
international trade were concerned. In Britain, the "first industrial
nation," Richard Cobden and John Bright argued as early as the
mid-nineteenth century that war and industry were incompatible.
Similar points were later made by liberals such as Herbert Spencer and
Norman Angell, whose books were widely discussed and translated into
other European languages....

Angell in his best-selling The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation
of Military Power in Nations to Their Economic and Social Advantage,
an expanded version of his Europe's Optical Illusion and published in
1910, added the idea that the interdependencies that industry,
commerce, and banking had created between the nations had become so
great that war between them was no longer thinkable. Such a war, he
warned, would disrupt the flow of peaceful trade and the production of
civilian goods to such an extent that even the victors in a military
conflict would in effect be among the losers. This insight, he
thought, would in the future keep the great powers from entering into
war with each other. They would all recognize the greater benefits of
peaceful exchange, consumption, and prosperity for all. If there were
dangers of war they emanated, according to Angell, from countries that
lagged behind the progressive nations in the development of trade and
industry. Once they had joined the circle of the latter, major wars
would be phenomena of the past.42 In the meantime, structures of
international law, mediation, and conflict resolution needed to be
developed....

> http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8042.html
> http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8042.pdf

Vs. ...

"Don't forget the real business of the War is buying and selling."
(GR, Pt. I, p. 105)

http://books.google.com/books?id=iPDGp7VT8H8C&pg=PA105&lpg=PA105