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ALBERT EINSTEIN

Caputh near Potsdam, 30th July, 1932.

Dear Professor Freud,

THE proposal of the League of Nations and
its International Institute of Intellectual Co-
operation at Paris that I should invite a
person, to be chosen by myself, to a frank ex-
change of views on any problem that I might
select affords me a very welcome opportunity of
conferring with you upon a question which, as
things now are, seems the most insistent of all the
problems civilisation has to face. This is the pro-
blem : Is there any way of delivering mankind
from the menace of war ? It is common knowledge
that, with the advance of modern science, this issue
has come to mean a matter of life and death for
civilisation as we know it ; nevertheless, for all the
zeal displayed, every attempt at its solution has
ended in a lamentable breakdown.

I believe, moreover, that those whose duty it is
to tackle the problem professionally and practically
are growing only too aware of their impotence to
deal with it, and have now a very lively desire to
learn the views of men who, absorbed in the pursuit
of science, can see world-problems in the perspec-
tive distance lends. As for me, the normal objec-
tive of my thought affords no insight into the dark

4

WHY WAR ?

places of human will and feeling. Thus, in the
enquiry now proposed, I can do little more than
seek to clarify the question at issue and, clearing the
ground of the more obvious solutions, enable you
to bring the light of your far-reaching knowledge
of man’s instinctive life to bear upon the problem.
There are certain psychological obstacles whose
existence a layman in the mental sciences may
dimly surmise, but whose interrelations and vagaries
he is incompetent to fathom ; you, I am convinced,
will be able to suggest educative methods, lying
more or less outside the scope of politics, which will
eliminate these obstacles.

As one immune from nationalist bias, I
personally see a simple way of dealing with the
superficial (i.e. administrative) aspect of the pro-
blem : the setting up, by international consent, of
a legislative and judicial body to settle every con-
flict arising between nations. Each nation would
undertake to abide by the orders issued by this
legislative body, to invoke its decision in every dis-
pute, to accept its judgments unreservedly and to
carry out every measure the tribunal deems neces-
sary for the execution of its decrees. But here, at
the outset, I come up against a difficulty ; a tribunal
is a human institution which, in proportion as the
power at its disposal is inadequate to enforce its
verdicts, is all the more prone to suffer these to be
deflected by extrajudicial pressure. This is a fact
with which we have to reckon ; law and might in-
evitably go hand in hand, and juridical decisions
approach more nearly the ideal justice demanded
by the community (in whose name and interests

5

these verdicts are pronounced) in so far as the com-
munity has effective power to compel respect of its
juridical ideal. But at present we are far from
possessing any supranational organisation com-
petent to render verdicts of incontestable authority
and enforce absolute submission to the execution
of its verdicts. Thus I am led to my first axiom :
the quest of international security involves the un-
conditional surrender by every nation, in a certain
measure, of its liberty of action, its sovereignty that
is to say, and it is clear beyond all doubt that no
other road can lead to such security.

The ill-success, despite their obvious sincerity,
of all the efforts made during the last decade to
reach this goal leaves us no room to doubt that
strong psychological factors are at work, which
paralyse these efforts. Some of these factors are
not far to seek. The craving for power which
characterises the governing class in every nation is
hostile to any limitation of the national sovereignty.
This political power-hunger is wont to batten on the
activities of another group, whose aspirations are
on purely mercenary, economic lines. I have
specially in mind that small but determined group,
active in every nation, composed of individuals
who, indifferent to social considerations and re-
straints, regard warfare, the manufacture and sale
of arms, simply as an occasion to advance their
personal interests and enlarge their personal
authority.

But recognition of this obvious fact is merely
the first step towards an appreciation of the actual
state of affairs. Another question follows hard upon

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WHY WAR ?

it : How is it possible for this small clique to bend
the will of the majority, who stand to lose and suffer
by a state of war, to the service of their ambitions ?
(In speaking of the majority, I do not exclude
soldiers of every rank who have chosen war as their
profession, in the belief that they are serving to
defend the highest interests of their race, and that
attack is often the best method of defence.) An
obvious answer to this question would seem to be
that the minority, the ruling class at present, has
the schools and press, usually the Church as well,
under its thumb. This enables it to organise and
sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool
of them.

Yet even this answer does not provide a com-
plete solution. Another question arises from it :
How is it these devices succeed so well in rousing
men to such wild enthusiasm, even to sacrifice their
lives ? Only one answer is possible. Because man
has within him a lust for hatred and destruction.
In normal times this passion exists in a latent state,
it emerges only in unusual circumstances; but it is a
comparatively easy task to call it into play and raise
it to the power of a collective psychosis. Here lies,
perhaps, the crux of all the complex of factors we
are considering, an enigma that only the expert in
the lore of human instincts can resolve.

And so we come to our last question. Is it
possible to control man's mental evolution so as to
make him proof against the psychoses of hate and
destructiveness ? Here I am thinking by no means
only of the so-called uncultured masses. Experience
proves that it is rather the so-called “Intelligentzia”

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that is most apt to yield to these disastrous collec-
tive suggestions, since the intellectual has no direct
contact with life in the raw, but encounters it in its
easiest, synthetic form–upon the printed page.

To conclude : I have so far been speaking only
of wars between nations; what are known as inter-
national conflicts. But I am well aware that the
aggressive instinct operates under other forms and
in other circumstances. (I am thinking of civil
wars, for instance, due in earlier days to religious
zeal, but nowadays to social factors; or, again, the
persecution of racial minorities.) But my insistence
on what is the most typical, most cruel and extra-
vagant form of conflict between man and man was
deliberate, for here we have the best occasion of
discovering ways and means to render all armed
conflicts impossible.

I know that in your writings we may find answers,
explicit or implied, to all the issues of this urgent
and absorbing problem. But it would be of the
greatest service to us all were you to present the
problem of world peace in the light of your most
recent discoveries, for such a presentation well
might blaze the trail for new and fruitful modes of
action.

Yours very sincerely,

A. EINSTEIN.