Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Nellie McClung: Victory against aggression a simple matter of co-operation

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on June 21, 1941. During all the changing scenes of life since the last Great War, our complacency has received many shocks.

This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on June 21, 1941.

During all the changing scenes of life since the last Great War, our complacency has received many shocks. Great books have been written and good formulas have been given us for our guidance; we have attended conferences and round-table discussion, but in spite of all we are still asking the old question — what must we do?

Let us admit at once that we have returned too often to the old cities of refuge, as the smoke-blinded horse fights his way back into the burning stable.

Years ago, we used to talk about co-operation, going back to primitive man who, finding it impossible to be an individualist when he wanted to kill a bear, discovered it was safer to have a friend to assist him. When two men watched at the mouth of the cave and attacked the bear from both sides, their success was more certain. Sometimes, of course, there was difficulty when it came to dividing up the meat, and when each one wanted the best cuts.

Co-operation in the life of the farmer in modern times works very well in the “beef rings,” which made it possible for us to have fresh meat all the year around. Looking at the success of the co-operative movement in England and the Scandinavian countries, as well as here in Canada, it seems strange we have not learned the lesson yet in the larger sense of national affairs.

The most spectacular writer of modern times on this matter of co-operation is one who approached the question obliquely, giving the other side of the story. In that neglected book, Mein Kampf, we read something like this:

“It is true that we Germans have only 80,000,000 people against the 350,000,000 people in Europe, but we are united and they are not. We can defeat our neighbours one by one and do so without difficulty. We can begin with the first of say 13 countries and the other 14 will declare their neutrality and say that the assault on No. 1 has nothing to do with them. Having disposed of No. 1, we can take No. 2, and so we will proceed down the list and we will destroy them and dominate them.” And although all this was written down and translated, we did not take warning, and even today we have the spectacle of nations standing apart, believing that their neutrality will save them.

For 30 years, Sir Norman Angell has been pleading with the democracies to stand together. He has ever been one of the clearest exponents of the principle underlying the League of Nations. He saw that the League was man’s attempt to create among the nations something of the security we enjoyed in our cities and municipalities, where lives and property are protected because we are united. In these smaller units, we believe in force to restrain criminals. We even kill mad dogs when they threaten our safety. And in the rightness of this procedure there are no dissenting voices. But in the League of Nations there was no provision for the implementation of their demands, and so when the showdown came, the League was powerless and it broke up into a sorry spectacle of every nation for itself and no help for the weak ones.

Let us as Canadians be glad that as members of the British Commonwealth of Nations we did not hesitate in September 1939. Suppose we had stood out as neutrals, as Ireland is doing now. We might have sold all humanity into Nazi slavery. We did not hesitate because it was our own people who were involved, but the great lesson we must learn, that great stretch our minds must take, is that all humanity is one family.

Unprotested aggression invites greater aggression. The aggression in Abyssinia and in China (both of whom were members in good standing of the League of Nations) should have received our immediate protest; but while we were sorry for the victims, we were not sorry enough to do anything. We might even have said by way of excuse that they were not our people. If we had done for China and Ethiopia what we undertook to do for Poland, we would perhaps not now be in a war.

But whatever have been our sins of indifference we are now atoning for them. Today our men are fighting for the very breath of life, which is freedom — the four freedoms outlined by President Franklin Roosevelt, and we are confident that we are going to win. Humanity cannot be defeated in the long run of history. But if we do not learn this great secret of co-operation, how can we be sure that this will be the last war.?

Let us take comfort when we think about the new way of life in Britain. How all classes are merged into one class, that is defenders of their country. Our hearts are torn with sorrow as we think of all the lovely things destroyed by Nazi fury — churches, libraries, art galleries, all mingling now in the rubble of destruction. But out of it comes a great new spirit, a radiant hope that men and women are finding the truth that Christ brought to earth when He prayed for His people that they might all be one.

The great problem for all of us is to win the war. Unless we do that, we know what to expect. But while we are doing that, and without relaxing our efforts, we must practise that new spirit which alone will save us from past mistakes. We must have a faith to live by, never going back to the pagan doctrine of every man for himself.

It is trite to say we must have co-operation instead of competition. That worn phrase is like an elastic band that has been stretched too far. But, nevertheless, the truth lies in it. This matter of co-operation holds the secret of peace, security and progress, and it has to begin now. And we have to know that humanity is one family.

A change of heart has come to many people in these hard days and a new faith is coming to mankind. God is somewhere behind the shadows, keeping watch above His own. He did not make the world, and then go away and leave it.

We have but little knowledge; the gatherings of a lifetime are like the pebbles a child picks up on the shore, but we must have faith and hope — infinite faith and eternal hope.

Some of McClung’s columns from the 1930s and 1940s have been collected in a book, The Valiant Nellie McClung: Selected Writings by Canada’s Most Famous Suffragist, by Barbara Smith.