B. War

Huxley and war

Because Huxley was almost blind, he was declared unfit for military service during the First World War. He wrote a lot of essays about  war. He was deeply worried by the upheavals happening in the western civilization and wrote a lot of novels during this period. He was against war and nationalism and also a pacifist and a humanist (as in Eyeless in Gaza in which Huxley deals with pacifist theme). After the World War II, he asked for the American nationality, but he couldn’t have it because he had refused to fight to defend the USA.

Starting from this period, Huxley began writing and editing non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including Ends and mean, An Encyclopedia of Pacifism, and Pacifism and Philosophy, and was an active member of the Peace Pledge Union (which is a British non-governmental organization. If you join the PPU pledge, you sign this: "I renounce war, and am therefore determined not to support any kind of war. I am also determined to work for the removal of all causes of war." Its members work for a world without war and promote peaceful and non-violent solutions to conflict.

A quotation from Huxley about the war: “The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own”

Many of his writings are about the philosophy of pacifism which is the only way to bring the peace according to him. War can’t bring the peace because violent methods can’t create non-violent result. He said “People love to talk about a war to end war; they do not love to talk about a peace to end war”. Huxley developed these ideas in books such as Ends and Mean, and in articles gathered in Pacifism and Philosophy. Huxley wrote:“Our end is peace. How do we propose to realize this end? Experience makes it abundantly clear that, if we want to be treated with trust and affection by others, we must ourselves treat those others with trust and affection. If we play dirty tricks on them, we shall engender resentment, fear and hatred. Politicians affirm their desire to preserve peace; but the means they use are wholly inappropriate.”

Huxley also wrote about war: “War is not a law of nature, nor even a law of human nature. It exists because men wish it to exist....It is enormously difficult for us to change our wishes in this matter; but the enormously difficult is not the impossible.”

Huxley thought that the tendency to make war began when groups of people gathered around leaders who wanted domination. Huxley was in favor of an abolition of arms industry. Huxley said that:”What is needed is the complete abolition of the arms industry. It is possible: simply, abolition will come when the majorities wish it to come”.

In 1937, Huxley was disappointed by the League of Nation because it failed to achieve world peace and he criticized the way in which the League of Nation intervenes in conflict because it provides a military help to a victim of aggression, and as he said before, war is not a solution for peace. He said:”War is so radically wrong that any international agreement which provides for the extension of hostilities from a limited area to the whole world is manifestly based on unsound principles. Modern war destroys with the maximum of efficiency and the maximum of indiscrimination, and therefore entails the commission of injustices far more numerous and far worse than any it is intended to redress.”

Huxley has no doubt:”War cannot be stopped by more war. All that more war can do is widening the area of destruction and place new obstacles in the way of reaching a just and humane settlement of international disputes.”

In the essay Ends and Mean there’s a chapter called “War” which is a description of how nationalism, communism, religion and other 'idolatries' can give people a misleading sensation of meaning and purpose. People have been ready, as a result, mistakenly 'to make sacrifices, accept hardships, display courage and fortitude - and indeed all the virtues except the primary ones: love and awareness'. Without these crucial qualities - genuine humaneness and caring - we are doomed to stay on the wrong road, the road that leads to violence and war. Huxley wrote that peaceful future depends on what people do on their own and in groups.        
He said that nonviolence “can be used by quite ordinary people and even, on occasion, by those morally sub-human beings, kings, politicians, diplomats and the other representatives of national groups, considered in their professional capacity.... Out of business hours these beings may live up to the most exacting ethical standards.”