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Author : Douglas Clifford Hugh
Title : The brief for the prosecution
Year : 1945

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Preface. THE tendency to argue from the particular to the general is a special case of the sequence from materialism to collectivism. If the universe is reduced to molecules, ultimately we can dispense with a catalogue and a dictionary; all things are the same thing, and all words are just sounds—molecules in motion. That is the ultimate meaning of "Equality"—having no quality. There is a close connection between this mental attitude and the curious failure to notice the outstanding feature of our time. We know that our society is very sick; some, at least, of the causes of the disease have been isolated; we observe the great difficulty which is experienced in obtaining effective action in any one country in regard to these social poisons; but we rarely devote any attention to the question which transcends in importance any other with which we have to deal on this earth. Why is it becoming more difficult to bring peace upon earth, and to make effective, goodwill between men? What is the dynamism which will encourage the conquest of the earth, the sea and the air, but will only permit the substitution of poverty by slavery? Why does the mouthing of the phrase "the Common Good" merely ensue in individual evil? More particularly at this time, there is a tendency to exalt War into a cause instead of a symptom. The more closely the structure and psychology of war is studied, however, the more clearly it appears that war is neither a cause nor a symptom, but a method. In the words of Clausewitz, "War is the pursuit of policy by other means." Once this fundamental idea is grasped, the fact that wars occur in the face of the expressed desire of all but a small fraction of the world's population to remain at peace, takes on a new aspect. What is it which is strong enough to plunge the world into a cataclysm of destruction at decreasing intervals, against "the common will"? We shall find the answer to this question, if at all, in the period of uneasy truce between 1918 and 1939. C. H. DOUGLAS. Perthshire, 1945. ...