1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 9the events of the previous ten days had cast doubt on his assumption that
there was a strong desire to attain the ideal of inaugurating in interna-
tional relations ‘the reign of justice through a combination of peaceful
change with collective security’ on the understanding that the alternative
to this was social collapse. In view of this, Toynbee stated the following:
‘To-night, I am afraid, after what has been happening during the last ten
days, we have to ask ourselves a preliminary question: does the British
Empire want an orderly world? That is, want it at the necessary cost of
taking the risk involved in collective security and making the sacrifices
involved in peaceful change?’.^30 In commencing his presentation and
before moving on to make observations additional to those made in his
paper as it was originally drafted, Toynbee insisted on the dual nature of
the task that had been thrust upon world actors in light of current inter-
national conditions, stating in this regard the following:
In a number of recent pronouncements and discussions, official and
unofficial, on the present critical state of international affairs, it has been
pointed out that if we are to avert a catastrophe, we have to achieve two
things simultaneously. We have not only to establish and maintain a sys-
tem of ‘collective security’ which will safeguard the existing international
order against attempts to change it by violence; we have also, pari passu, to
work out some method of ‘peaceful change’ as an alternative to the violent
method of change which, in the international field, has hitherto been pro-
vided by war.^31Toynbee went on to observe that an ‘insistence upon the twofold
nature of our task’ had been a prominent feature of a speech delivered
by Hoare at the assembly on September 11 as well as of an address given
by the foreign secretary at the annual dinner of RIIA on November
- Toynbee added that the same insistence had appeared in an address
given by Sir Herbert Samuel at Chatham House on October 17 and
‘in the scientific study of international affairs’ being undertaken by the
International Studies Conference (ISC) in which, Toynbee was pleased
to note, the RIIA was an active participant.’^32
(^30) Ibid., 27–8.
(^31) Ibid., 26.
(^32) Ibid.