What They Were Going to Do About It
What They Were Going to Do About It

Huxley’s Peace Pamphlet in Pre-War Hungary

Author(s): Ákos Farkas
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: Aldous Huxley;utopia;Hungary
Summary/Abstract: In 1936, two years after the establishment of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), Britain’s largest pacifist organisation of the twentieth century, one of the organization’s founders, Aldous Huxley, undertook to write a pamphlet to promote the Union and its cause. In the thirty-one-page booklet, Huxley set out to persuade hard-headed opponents of pacifism that peace was not only a desirable, but also a practicable alternative to war. He pleaded that any kind of peace was preferable to any kind of war, even at the cost of rewarding the aggressor: Italy attacking Abyssinia, Japan devastating Manchuria and Germany bent on annexing “Middle Europe”and overrunning Russia.1 Assessing the lessons of ancient and modern history, post-Darwinian biology, advanced economics, and even modern ethnography, Huxley formulated three major postulates: that war is alien to human nature; that war is always the problem and never the solution; and that lasting peace can only be achieved through fairness, mutual understanding, and the generosity of the powerful. The specific conclusion was that Great Britain, one of the “satisfied” powers of the international community—to use, somewhat anachronistically, a term introduced into Britain’s political discourse by George Lansbury a year later, one of the “haves,”—should set a political example to the rest of the world by addressing the justifiable complaints of the “dissatisfied” countries—the “have nots.”2 In the meantime, fair-minded Englishmen and Englishwomen were exhorted by Huxley to set a personal example to their government by supporting the Peace Pledge Union. The answer to the question in the pamphlet’s title, What Are You Going to Do About It? is thus simple: embrace the cause identified in the subtitle by taking immediate action to achieve “Constructive Peace.” Or, as the opening of the booklet advances its thesis, act in the belief that “what is called the utopian dream of pacifism is in fact a practical policy.”

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