Allenby of Armageddon

I can’t say I’m terribly familiar with Lord Allenby, either the man or his career (and when I visualise him, he always looks like Jack Hawkins). But in my experience, retired field marshals are more likely to call for national service than a world state,¹ so I was surprised when I came across Allenby’s Last Message: World Police for World Peace, a pamphlet containing an address given by Allenby in his role as Rector of the University of Edinburgh on 28 April 1936. Sadly, he died only a few weeks later; in fact, the pamphlet contains a preface from Allenby dated 14 May 1936, the very day he died. It was published by the New Commonwealth, a society founded by Lord Davies to proselytise for an international police force (meaning an international air force, more or less, rather than something like Interpol), which would step in and stop wars, and hopefully deter them from starting in the first place. The speech is thin on practical details, being more of a call to (collective) arms directed at the rising generation.

First, Allenby outlined the the danger:

There is danger in delay, for it seems likely that, unless an effort in the right direction — a successful effort — is made soon, the present social system will crumble in ruin; and many now alive may witness the hideous wreck. Then will loom the dreadful menace of the dark ages; returning, darker, black, universal in scope, long-lasting.²

‘Recent progress in Science has now given to the machine the mastery over man its maker’,³ Allenby claimed. Scientists everywhere were ‘busily experimenting with new inventions for facilitating slaughter; […] designing more monstrous methods of murdering their fellow men and women’.⁴ There would be no hesitation in attacking civilians with these new weapons in the next war. But science (by which he really means, technology) also gave him hope, for it enlarged people’s horizons:

Man is now able to navigate the atmosphere, plumb the deep seas, travel in three dimensions of space, move anywhere at a speed unimaginable to our fathers. Willingly or unwillingly, he has become a world-citizen; and the duties of that citizenship cannot be evaded; duties calling for the whole-hearted co-operation of every man and woman alive, joined in mind and purpose to promote the good and the advancement of all.⁵

And his solution? A world state and an international police force.

Is it too much to believe that the human intellect is equal to the problem of designing a world state wherein neighbours can live without molestation; in collective security? It does not matter what the state is called; give it any name you please: — League of Nations; Federated Nations; United States of the World. Why should there not be a world police; just as each nation has a national police force?⁶

It’s somehow reassuring that Allenby could retain some measure of faith in the future after fighting the Battle of Armageddon!

1. Though for that matter, in 1930 Allenby did set up the British National Cadet Association in order to help preserve the public school cadet system after the Geddes axe. I’m sure Bobs would have approved.
2. Allenby, Allenby’s Last Message: World Police for World Peace (London: New Commonwealth, 1936), 8.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 9.
6. Ibid.

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