Leonard Cheshire - talking at the College of Defence Studies on the morality of force

Leonard Cheshire - talking at the College of Defence Studies on the morality of force

Starts by defining morality and physical and moral laws. Comments on his own experience and describes why WW2 started. Talks of the rationale of atomic bombing of Japan. Goes on to discuss pacifism. Goes on to discuss war and the decision to use force. Applies his thesis to situation in Vietnam and Northern Ireland. In conclusion discusses duty of military professionals and the challenges faced. Submitted with caption 'Leonard Cheshire presentation at the College of Defence Studies: The Morality of Force. 11/1/1972. Written on cassette case "Side 1 College of Defence Studies 11.1.1972 Questions & Answers (unfinished). Side 2: College of Defence Studies 11.1.72 Talk: The Morality of Force"'.

1972-01-11

Audio recording 00:47:07

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SCheshireGL72021v20028-0002, SCheshireGL72021v20028-Transcript

Leonard Cheshire Resonate Project
File title: GLC talking at the College of Defence Studies on the morality of force, 11.1.1972
Duration: 47:11
Transcription Date: 02/07/20
Archive Number: AV-S:568

Start of Transcription

00:00 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire: January 11th, talk to Imperial Defence College.
00:07 GLC: Hello… Commandant, gentlemen. I’d like to say first and foremost that I do count it a very great privilege to be invited to talk at all at this distinguished college and let alone on this particular subject. A subject that I know is very close to all our hearts and of great relevance to every single one of us, whatever our profession, or walk in life.
00:47: I’d also like to say that, for me, it presents a challenge that I think, down in my heart, I’ve wanted, and looked for over the years. Because… although I have thought about it, I’ve never really faced up to it properly. And this occasion has made me do so. And I feel that, at the end of it all, when our discussion and questions are finished, the issues will be clearer in my mind.
01:28: And I would like to treat the talk, the first part of this morning’s session, if I might… as a preparation for the discussion. In other words, I’m not going to attempt to give a completed, final talk, ending in a firm conclusion. I do want to end in certain conclusions if I can succeed in emerging from the other side of the wood. But I look upon the talk as more of a preparation for discussion and exchange of views between us.
02:14: The Commandant in his kind and welcoming address told you certain things about me – he fortunately selected perhaps some of the better. But he didn’t tell you that I too, once, did the staff course. I was sent to Granville, in the war, for three weeks. I think… pending a decision by the postings officer as to where I would be least inconvenient to the Air Force, or perhaps awaiting a return from his annual leave.
03:02: And of that three weeks, I have two clear memories in my mind – both of which relate to the art of public speaking. And the first is that the art of public speaking consists primarily in concealing from your audience the fact that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. And the second is that you should so cover your subject in such depth, and so successfully, that there’s no room for any questions at the end of it. But in doing so that you still retain 90% of your knowledge undisclosed.
03:48: Well today, if you will agree, I would like to treat the subject from a personal point of view, rather than philosophically or dialectically. Because I feel that’s the only way, I can do it. And first and foremost, I want to try and be honest, and sincere. I would like to try, without becoming too personalised, in going through and describing the different phases of thought and outlook that I have experienced since, after leaving university, I went into the Air Force and into the war. But, before I start that, there’s just one or two definitions and distinctions that I think need to be made so we are clear about what we mean in some of the terms we use.
05:02: Well the subject is the morality of force and violence. So first of all, we have the question of morality. By what standard, by what preset do we judge the morality of any particular act? And I know that human views differ upon this point. Well, my own starting point, though what I have to say will not entirely depend upon this, is that we are all members of the one human family… no matter what our nationality, or belief, or station in life, we are all equal in the eyes of God. We are all destined for the same life and role in eternity. We live here on earth, for how long none of us know, in order to equip ourselves for that life and role. And that the world has been given two sets of laws – the physical laws that govern the physical universe, and the moral law that holds society together, and enables it to operate.
06:41: Of those laws, some, a few, are absolute; others are relative. That is to say, we will accept that there is a law that we may not steal. But if the father of a family sees his family starving to death, then, certainly in the view of my church, and I think in the view of most people, he would have a right to steal if that was the only way of saving the lives of his children.
07:24: We live in the world, in concrete situations, not in ideal situations We see in the world, and in ourselves, a conflict between good and evil. Each of us knows, in our own hearts, that the two fight against each other. The things that we know we should do; we don’t always do. We can see that into the harmony and order of the creation has intruded disorder. And that very seldom are we able to do what is absolutely and completely good. We are normally faced, or anyway often faced, with the alternative of the better of two goods, neither of which is perfect: sometimes, the lesser of two evils.
08:28: And so, into our decision comes not only a knowledge of what the moral law consists of, which is to complex a question, I imagine, to discuss today. There comes also the intellectual ability to calculate the consequences of an action, to assess the circumstances in which one finds oneself, so that one may take the best decision. But there also comes the other side – the question of whether or not we can control our emotions, whether we can really look at it objectively. Whether some passion, or some annoyance, or some human failing intrudes into our intellectual assessment. And when we look at history, we can see that many decisions have been spoiled, or vitiated, because the person taking the decision has been disrupted by some emotional weakness. In other words, the human being is both mind and heart – there is behaviour as well as intelligence.
10:00: Well now, coming to the personal side, I left university in 1939 to join the Air Force. And contrary to what I wanted; I was posted to Bomber Command. So, I served, throughout the war, in Bomber Command. Looking back on those days, I think one can say that we realise that that war, granted the situation in 1939, had to be fought. The evil that was in Nazism, and in what Hitler intended to do to Eastern Europe, to the Jews, the gypsies, and others, was such that it was clear that he had to be stopped. And what he was doing to Eastern Europe and others, he was also doing to those in his own country who opposed him.
11:17: We went to war specifically in defence of a treaty that we’d signed with Poland. But, over and above that, we went to war, as we believed, to obtain a lasting peace. We really and absolutely believed that. It’s what we were told by the leaders of the country. We believed that when the war was won, there would be peace that would last. We were motivated, in order words, whatever our human failings, by a great ideal. And it was very noticeable that in the country there was an extraordinary unity and sense of purpose. We knew absolutely what, as a nation, we were doing. And that gave to us an energy, an ability, as well as a unity, that made it possible to overcome a great many obstacles. And then finally, there came the atom bomb – which, as the Commandant told you… part of which, I myself served as an observer.
12:50: Now I know it’s difficult to be objective and honest, and to go back 25 years, or whatever it is, and really remember what your feelings were. But I’m quite certain of this: that when we set out on that mission, flying out of Tinian in the Marianas, we had no thought, no ambition, other than the drop that bomb and finish the war. In fact, I remember one or two of us saying, myself included, that if the war ended that day, we would still go off and drop it. And I know that I personally have been criticised for saying that. It is, of course, a hyperbole. What we meant was that for five years, we had fought a desperate war. In the concentration camps of Nazism, 20 million people not connected with the war had been put to death. All in all, as we now know, 50 million people died in that war. Every day that the war was going on, not only were more lives being lost, but more bitterness, and hatred, and frustration was building up.
14:38: We know that orders were signed that if one Allied foot landed on Japanese soil, every prisoner of war – Allied prisoner of war – was to be put to death. Those were the circumstances in 1945, August 9th, 1945. And so, it’s small wonder that all one wanted to do was to end that war. The alternative, as far as anybody knew, to dropping that bomb, was the island by island invasion of Japan. And according to American estimates, that was going to cost 2 million Japanese lives and 1 million Allied lives. So, if you set 80,000 dead at Nagasaki and Hiroshima against an estimated 3 million, which do you choose? I know that it’s very easy, in the peace of today, particularly for those who took no part in that, who did not know what one’s feelings were, to criticise that bomb. I criticise it, not because it was dropped, but because of the manner in which it was dropped.
16:15: I have always held that it was not necessary to drop the bomb on a city. It was not the 80,000 lives that won the war, it was the fact that the Allies held the bomb. The argument against that is that, had it not been dropped on a city, the Japanese would not have believed it. Well all right, I accept that. But if they did not believe it, and if having been given the opportunity to surrender – they didn’t – then the responsibility would have been on their shoulders. And I think that history would have been different. Because today, in the eyes of the young, it is not so much the concentration camps that are remembered, and that loom large; it’s not other atrocities and intentions that were manifested in the far east, it’s the bombing of Dresden, and it’s the dropping of the atom bombs.
17:34: And so, to a degree, what was undoubtedly a just and a noble cause, in which a number of Germans themselves participated, has been weakened in the eyes of the resent generation. And in that weakening has also been weakened the respect that some people have for the armed forces.
18:06: Well, at the end of the dropping of the bomb, the one thing that loomed in my mind was the urgency of seeing that all the sacrifice in the war – those 55 million lives of so many nationalities – was not to be in vain. The urgency of seeing that we did achieve peace, and by peace I understand a peace that comprises freedom and justice, and all the other values that we know the human race needs.
18:53: I was convinced, at that time, that the only way of achieving such a peace was along the lines of the Roman Empire. In other words, that the Allies would hold such overwhelming military supremacy that nobody could fight them. And when I came back to London to make my report to Downing Street - I would mention that in Downing Street there are several offices, just in case anybody is jumping to a particular conclusion as to where I went – I began to propound this point of view. And I remember saying that the future would depend upon nuclear armament. That it was not the bombs themselves that mattered, because any country would eventually be capable of building its bombs, but the message of delivery. And I said that probably the ideal way of delivering them was to build a station in space, put them up there, and call them down when required.
20:14: Well whatever other pearls awaiting to see the light of day never came forth, because that particular observation, relative to the parking of manmade objects in space, the interview came to a remarkably abrupt close. I found myself being warmly thanked for everything I’d done, propelled out of the door, and walking back across St James’ Park.
20:47: Coming from the Manhattan Project, space seemed a very natural follow up to what we had seen. In London, with the domestic and other problems, I don’t think that it did. I walked away realising that Britain was not going to put a major effort into entering the space age. And with it, for me, came a disappointment. Because at that time, I could not see how else we could preserve the fragile peace that we had succeeded in winning. But as time went on, my ideas began to change. I could see that nuclear bombs and armament play a major part in peace. But the peace is really governed by the attitude of men’s minds. And so, I moved to the other extreme. And I became intensely interested in precisely that: our attitude towards our fellow human beings.
22:14: And there came a time when I sat down and tried to work it out and came to the conclusion that the only answer was pacifism; was not to resort to force. I remember having written all this out, showing it to my father – I might perhaps be allowed to say without betraying any family secrets that my father had the advantage of being born with the ability, the capability, of logical thought. And having embraced an academic profession, was able to sustain it for quite a long period – at times, I think, even up to one hour. And I thought that he had a duty to pass this ability on to his son. And I’ve always resented the fact that he appears to think that the omission is entirely my own fault.
23:26: And so, when I worked out this very able thesis, I showed it to him. I thought to myself, “Now, for once, he’s going to see that I can work something out properly”. He looked at it, he said “I don’t agree with your premise”, and he said, “even if we grant your premise, the conclusion is false”. And eventually I was – annoyed though I was at the time – quietly forced to agree that he was right. And I would like for a moment to consider that argument, which we very often meet, which in fact we used to meet in the 1930s at Oxford, and I supposed elsewhere. Pacifism, the argument is, reduced to its simplest terms, that there is never a situation under which an individual or a state is entitled to take life, no matter what is at stake, or what the cause. The argument goes along the lines that since our objective is peace, and goodwill, one cannot achieve that by arms. Therefore, one can only achieve it by passive resistance and by setting an example.
25:12: It’s a seductive argument, to which many people subscribe. But I cannot accept it. I cannot accept that if another man’s life, or woman’s life, is threatened, that one does not have the duty to go to his help. I do not believe that even the most ardent pacifist, if he were to see a member of his family, or somebody else’s wife being attacked, that he would not feel that he had a duty to go to her help. And in fact, I once asked one of the most ardent supporters of it, Lord Soper, “if somebody walked into this studio with intent to kill the interviewer of the programme, what would you do?”. And he wouldn’t answer it. He evaded the issue. If he had said, “I would do nothing”, I think he would lose credibility. If he had said, “I would go to his help”, in fact his argument is defeated. You’re then thrown back onto the position of having to decide at what point you’re entitled to take life, if that is the only way out, and beyond what point you may not take human life.
26:55 Moreover, as I said, we live in a concrete situation. We live in a world in which there is malice, as well as human weakness, and injustice. And we are often aced with a situation in which we only have one alternative, in which there are only two courses of action. And I feel that the test by which we should judge what to do, is this – perhaps not precisely worded, by anyway in its essence, this – that having regard to all the circumstances, having regard to all the future foreseeable consequences of our alternative actions, is the use of force within certain limits going to provide for the better good of those concerns? In other words, is the use of force going to lead to less injustice, is it going to operate for the greater good of humanity, or is it not?
28:38: It may be easy to lay that principle down, but I know that it is not easy to apply it. In the case of 1939 it was simple, because there was no alternative: that war had to be fought. The tragedy is that we, in this country, Britain, ever allowed Hitler to get to that position. And I for one can never get overt he fact that those who were responsible, government and opposition, and the government departments, do not acknowledge that they were wrong – they defend the action at Munich.
29:33: I do not want to go into detail into that historical situation, but it is clear that if we had presented a firm front, if we had believed in the ideal that one nation cannot attack another, and subjugate its people, Hitler could never have got to the position where he was. The truth is that we were concerned with other things – one party did not want to get involved I foreign matters, another party believed to a large extent in pacifism. Nobody wanted war, and therefore evidence that came to light to the effect that war was probable was largely discounted. I know it’s easy to talk after the event, but there were many people at the time who saw what was coming. Hitler’s generals himself said, “you cannot do it, you will not get away with it”, and he answered, “they won’t fight”. And we didn’t.
30:46: But had we, at any step along that way, the five nations concerned, together, then that war might have had to have been fought, but under very different conditions – with the odds on our side and not on the other side. And there would not have been 50 million men and women who lost their lives. And so, I say, that to withhold force, sometimes, leads to greater injustice and greater loss of life.
31:27: But there is another test that I think we should apply. And that is this overriding one, that our objective is the peace of the world. We live here in order to advance the good of our fellow men. We live here in order to see that injustice is put right, that all men, no matter where they come from, have the freedom and the opportunity to lead their lives as they want to. And whatever we do, whether in our careers, or outside our careers as individuals, should be clearly seen to be aimed at that. If we really want not just our own security of our own nation; not just the prosperity of our own family, or our own community; not just the prevalence of our own particular ideology, whatever it may be, but the good of all men equally – if we are prepared to subjugate our own hopes, even our own good to a certain extent, for the good of somebody else, then the world will see that our motives are good. And when we are faced with a situation, even if we have to use force, I think that the person on whom that force is used will understand in his heart, whatever his feelings at the time, that we were fair. That we were honest. That what we had to do was our duty. And so, in the end, good will prevail.
33:46: And there are instances where force has been used, but were it had been used fairly, not excessively. In this I see the difference between the two terms force and violence. Violence, to me, indicates where force is excessive. Where it was used either too forcefully or where it was used viciously. And so, I repeat that we should never lose sight of that great goal in front of us – the peace and good of the human family. And we should manifest in all our actions that this is what we desire, that this is what we are struggling for despite our human limitations and our human weaknesses.
34:51: I think it’s fair to say, if I may be specific, that in the recent conflict in East Pakistan, we saw a just use of force. Nobody could say – without going into the question of what prompted that action – nobody could say that force was excessive. Nobody could say that advantage was taken of victory; it wasn’t. In the first war, unfortunately, a certain advantage was taken out of that victory, however just the cause might have been. There was an injustice in the Treat of Versailles, and in my view, that injustice tipped the scales. Because when Hitler came to power there was a certain justice in some of the things that he said and set out to do. There was a sense of grievance. And in man, there being both good and evil, it is impossible, in my view, for a whole community or a whole nation, to be led astray by something that is totally unjust. Most dictators, most rulers, will see to it that there is some justice in what they are proclaiming. And that justice will obscure for a time the injustice that is really behind them.
36:49: And so we, in this country, and our lives, must bear some responsibility for what happened in the 1930s. I remember on a purely personal note, very vividly, a moment in my life when I wanted to do something which really was very stupid. And I had an argument with, as it happens, a Catholic priest. And he was usually going for me about something. And so, I tended to resent what he had to tell me. But on this particular occasion, he argued with me, he put his case, and I was looking for something to hang on to which I could say was unjust, was unfair, was a dig. But to my surprise it never came – there wasn’t a single word, a single sentence that I could seize on and say, “that’s unfair”. If I had been able to, I would have rejected everything he said, because having seen one bit of unfairness, I would have applied that to the rest. And although, like most human beings, I didn’t end the argument by saying “you’re right”, in fact his words carried with me. Quietly, and in my own time, I decided that I wouldn’t do what I was proposing to do. And I think that this principle does apply to everything that we as individuals, or we as a nation, do. We must see to it that there is no injustice in the manner in which we apply force, and in the manner in which we negotiate our victories.
38:58: But now, one final point. The sad thing is that most situations into which the armed forces are called, for instance Northern Ireland, and also Vietnam, have their origins far back in history. And for the most part we don’t know those origins. We don’t understand the fears, the grievances that exist in the people with whom we become involved. And what seems to be crucial is that first step. Once a nation decides to send in its armed forces, on however limited a scale, one is committed. And then the situation is different. From that moment on, sides become polarised; positions taken from which it is very difficult to retreat – from which, if one does retreat, it may well be that serious consequences will follow.
40:17: And for this, the responsibility must lie on the politicians and those who advise them. Theirs is the more difficult task. But they also have the greatest responsibility to make certain that they do foresee all the consequences. It apparently was not foreseen when the British army went into Northern Ireland to protect, what they though, the minority in that country. But in fact, the situation would be turned against them, that we would appear to many people now to be protecting the majority against a minority that has a sense of grievance.
41:13: If I may express an opinion, I do feel that in the statement that are issued about Northern Ireland, a great deal, rightly, is said about the terrorists, but not as much as might be is said about the desire to put injustices right. If it could be clearer, in people’s minds, that that is what we wanted – to put injustice right, to leave a whole community free and able to decide its own destiny, then the task of a solider would be easier. And I personally can’t help resenting the fact that the solider is put into that situation. That he’s gone there in good faith, in danger, in discomfort, to achieve the best but through no fault of his own, he is put in the middle of a crossfire.
42:31: At the end of the war, I asked myself the question, “what, as an individual, with no public position, can we do to see that peace is established on earth? That what we fought for, so hard, and with such loss of life, is achieved?”. I’ve come to the conclusion that first; our duty is to do our own particular job in the best and most professional possible manner. We must live our jobs, we must know it inside out, we must be wholly and absolutely professional and dedicated.
43:21: Over and above that, we have a duty as individuals within our opportunities, within our resources, to do something to make the world a little better for somebody else; at home, as well as far away. I’ve come to believe that today, as in the 30s, we are threatened by a threat that can be just as serious as the threat of Hitler then, but a different one. And the threat is the growing gap between the rich and the poor. And that so long as we allow this gap to exist and to grow, our peace is threatened. We have got to go out and see that the poorer parts of the world are enabled to become economically viable, are enabled to have the same opportunities as ourselves. We have got to put their good, give their good the same priority as we do ours. But we don’t. Business has its vested interests. Countries have their vested interests. The poor – the countries that don’t have the same opportunities have barriers set up against them. They have aid given to them, when in fact they should be given the opportunity of standing on their own feet and competing equally with us.
45:12: This, to me, is our challenge. This, to me, is what we have got to go out and do, each in our own way, and according to our opportunities. So that the world can see that we are just, that we are not after our own interests, but after the interest of the human family as a whole. And if somebody says, “what can I do? What is the little that I can do worth?”, the answer is that it’s the precisely the little acts that count. The little acts multiplied by as many times as there are human beings.
45:59: And although it is not given to an Air Force officer to praise another service, I’ve never forgotten hearing about the moment on the beaches of Dunkirk, when there was panic in 1940. And a small platoon of the guards marched on, and they saw what was happening, and so they formed up and they drilled. We would say, “well what’s the object of that? Why didn’t they dig in and get out of the way of enemy bombs?”. No, they drilled. And the effect of that was to restore calm to the beachhead. In other words, we will never know the final repercussions of any one of our actions, whether for good or for bad. We should never be put off from doing something because we think it’s too inadequate. The human individual has the ability and the power to change a situation. Thank you.
47:08: Speech ends
47:11: End of recording

End of transcription