EUROPEAN TENSION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 46, 24 February 1936, Page 6

EUROPEAN TENSION.

NATIONALIST ASPIRATIONS.

(To the Editor.)

After seventeen years' respite from war Europe is now visibly headed for another conflict. For many years Germany has been demanding an end* to the intolerable situation in which the peace treaties had placed her as an unarmed nation surrounded by heavilyarmed neighbours. While Germany desired equality in armaments she did not offer to modify in any respect her demands for treaty revision —demands which envisaged depriving her neighbours of millions of citizens an(f vast areas of territory. Europe now faces two possibilities —a long period of uneasy peace while Germany prepares, or else a brief span of restless truce eventually broken by a swift attack upon Germany by the neighbours whose lives she endangers. The old system of balance of power proves that the World War has not made any definite changes in the nationalistic aspirations of peoples. European peace has always been a political question. It has always turned upon the eventual menace to European independence immanent in disproportionate German strength. It has, in fact, always remained what it has been since the sixteenth century, when the European States system took modern form. Thus Europe has remained Europe and the World War has not made it receptive of foreign ideas. The League of Nations, which was founded upon the assumption tlijit all peoples after the experience of 1914 were equally prepared to sacrifice their national ambitions upon the altar of international peace, lias failed because the nations have demonstrated their unwillingness to do anything of the sort. Once the great shock of war had passed, the nations reverted to their pre-war mentality and policies, resulting in the present bitter disillusionment. P. H. PEARSON.