BR / VICTOR GOLLANCZ / GILBERT MURRAY TO THE TIMES, 12 APR. 1947
BRACERS 132621. TL(CAR) (Draft). McMaster. B&R F47.02
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Boar’s Hill, Oxford,
April 12.

To the editor of The Times

Sir, —

In view of the Moscow discussions on Germany, we venture to suggest a few principles, neglect of which can only perpetuate the cycle of uneasy peace and ever more frightful war.

(1) Annexations of almost any kind are always dangerous. They inflame the passion of nationalism, encourage agitators, and lead to wars of recovery and revenge. If they are accompanied by wholesale expulsions of the population, and if these expulsions are effected without regard for the minimum dictates of humanity, the danger is correspondingly increased.
(2) Any attempt to fix an upper limit — any upper limit, no matter what it may be — to the living standards of a numerous and hard-working European people must react adversely on the total prosperity of Europe and the world. Eventually, also, it must fail; but the sense of frustration it will meanwhile have produced will menace peace.
(3) Nowadays, it is foolish to expect that reparations, however large, can repair the damage done by war. Excessive reparations, even when justly exacted, defeat their own object. Sooner or later, therefore, they will always be abandoned; but the hatred they occasion will outlive them.
(4) A constitution imposed from without is unlikely to endure. To impose one, moreover, is inconsistent with democratic professions.
(5) While safeguards must be taken against an initial possibility of domination by Fascists, a free and law-abiding society cannot be fostered by ticketing millions of people on the score of what they have done, said, or even thought in the past, and penalizing them accordingly. These are totalitarian methods. A free and law-abiding society can be fostered only by providing a soil and climate congenial to its growth.
(6) You render a man aggressive by harping on his wickedness. You ruin a man’s character by depriving him of hope. Pariahs, whether individuals or nations, make bad neighbours.
(7) The re-education of a people must be that people’s own work. Friendly help from outside may be useful and, indeed, indispensable; but inculcation by a conquering enemy can do nothing but harm. Example is the best educator.
(8) When a nation has been defeated, the problem is not “to make it impossible for her to do it again”. Such an aim can never be achieved in a world that is constantly changing. The problem is twofold: first, so to settle with the defeated that they will not be driven by despair or seduced by the prospect of easy success to risk another attempt; and secondly, to devise means of dealing, not with particular aggressors, for aggressors come and go, but with aggression and the fear of it, which are secular. To concentrate on the most recent aggressor is to run away, often half deliberately, from the larger issue.

Yours, etc.,
Gilbert Murray, Russell, Victor Gollancz.