A STATE OF FLUX

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 55, 6 March 1934, Page 7

A STATE OF FLUX

POLITICAL TURMOIL

CASE OF SPAIN AND AUSTRIA

"STATE-PLANNING"

I dp not know how they teach geography nowadays, writes Vernon Bartlett in '' The Listener," but I have kept in my mind a fairly vivid picture, picked up, I suppose, from some schoolmaster a long time ago,'of the crust of the world gradually cooling and hardening, but with certain areas still bubbling and seething; oceans appearing or disappearing; mountains toeing pushed up out of plains, and all that sort of thing—what public speakers like to call "a state of flux." We have got over that physically except for an earthquake or two, but we certainly have not done so politically. There are still areas seething with political conflicts and one cannot tell to what extent they can still cause political earth-' quakes in other parts of the world which generally seem safe and stable. Think for a second how the acute nationalism which bubbled up and swamped Italy when Mussolini came into power in 1922 has affected politics all over the world. It has had. the most definite influence in Germany and Japan. In both countries there is the same anti-materialist, anti-big-business feeling, the same belief that the State counts for everything and the individual for nothing. Even in countries where individualism was strongest, in the United States for example, you now have State-planning on a huge scale. The bitterest struggles are no longer between the Conservatives, who used to argue that the State should control nothing, and the Socialists, who wanted it to control everything, but between two systems of State-planning, Socialist and Fascist, and it is not always easy to see which is which. In Austria you even have a struggle between two forms of Fascism. Our values change so rapidly that the old labels cease to mean anything, or rather-they have different meanings for different "people. LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES. My dictionary, for example, defines a Liberal as a man who '' advocates greater freedom from restraint, especially in politics and religious matters." But if that is so, why are Liberals so keen on advocating the League of Nations which seeks to impose restraint on Governments and to prevent them from taking the law into their own hands'? A Conservative, according to the -dictionary, _" holds intermediate or moderate opinions in politics and desires to maintain existing institutions and customs." But many younger Conservatives favour national planning on a scale which is going to revolutionise existing institutions and customs. The political world' is passing through an upheaval which alters its whole outline, and people who tell me dogmatically thaf Fascism means this, or Communism means that, make me feel that they would have gone on insisting that they lived on a plain, even if there had been a sudden wrinkling of the earth's crust which had pushed their plain up into a range of mountains. The only real division I can find in politics is between people who try to look forward in order to be ready for whatever may be coming, and those who say that it is no good meeting troubles halfway and that they will muddle through somehow. I should certainly put myself in the first of these two categories, but that is as far as I should dare to go, because it seems to me as stupid to pin labels to people as to countries. THE DRAMA IN SPAIN. Take Spain for example. For years, until the revolution nearly three years ago, we talked of Spain as a country so behind the times that one went back a couple of centuries as soon as one crossed the Pyrenees. Then in the space of two years Senor Azana put through legislation which was more advanced than that of any other country except Eussia. Now, since the last election, there is every probability that quite a lot of this legislation will be cancelled. What label can you attach to a country in that fluid state? "When I was in Madrid some months ago I felt it fairly safe to prophesy that Sonor Azana would be in power for a long time to come. He was out of it in six months. I think he will still play a very important pan in Spanish politics, but I would no longer prophesy, as I did then, that there would be no king in Madrid for fifteen years. Some people tell me that Alphonso XIII will be back in power in a few months, since Senor Gil Bobles, the young leader of "the Accion Popular, the largest party since the elections, is a Monarchist. Others tell me that the present Government, if it goes out of its way to please the Catholics and the Monarchists, will be overthrown by a revolutionary movement from the Left. AUSTRIAN SURPRISES. I only mention Spain as one example of this mania for pinning labels to countries and of the misleading results that come from it. What is one to say of Austria? It has always seemed safe to declare that the Austrians were charming and easy-going. So they are as a rule. And yet this same acute nationalism is leading some of them •who happen, to have turned Nazi to throw bombs about, and others who happen to have turned Fascist to demand a form of Government which I should expect to see anywhere in the world sooner than in Austria or Great Britain. In a very confused Austrian situation one thing alone is clear, and it is that what we know as democracy is being ground to nothing between tho upper millstone of Fascism and the lower millstone of, Hitlerism. At the elections in 1930 the Social Democrats were shown to be still much, the largest party in the country. The welfare work carried out by the Socialist Municipality of Vienna, the housing schemes, the hospitals, the swimming baths, and so on have brought admiring visitors from all r Over the world. The Provinces have -complained that these experiments in "Vienna were carried out at their expense, and the friction between the capital and the countryside has been, a source of danger to Austria ever since the Treaty of Saint Germain so cut the country down that the population of Vienna amounted to almost one-third of the total instead of one-twenty-fifth. The dispute between the Heimwehr, representing the country districts, and the Schutzbund, representing the Socialists in Vienna, was acute before most of us had ever heard of Hitler and his National Socialists. DOLLFUS3 AND THE SOCIALISTS. Dr. Dollfuss, the "pocket Chancellor," is himself a peasant, but he has been very careful hitherto to avoid an open quarrel with the Socialists. They have been equally careful to avoid a quarrel with him, because he had built the only barricade between them and the Nazis. But more and more in the struggle with the Nazis he has had to turn to the Heimwehr for support, while the Socialists looked on with increasing anxiety. Once or twice they have vaguely threatened a general strike, but their threats have come to nothing. Their unofficial army, the Schutzbund, has been dissolved long ago. Their newspapers have been suppressed. And the Heimwehr, their defence against National Socialism, has become more and more hostile to them (and perhaps less hostile to National Socialism). There is no end to the ways in which the Nazis have made life difficult for Di. Bottfuss. 3L imagine that

at times the swastika must figure inj his nightmares. However vigorously the police, the army, or the Heimwehr try to suppress it, this Nazi sign keeps on appearing. Sometimes it is tarred on the mountainside, sometimes toy balloons, tied together to form its hated shape, float across on favourable winds from Germany. Sometimes a change of method is tried, and at some mysterious sign, every Nazi in the main street of Vienna stops and gives the Hitler salute. Tempers must have worn very thin in one of the best-tempered countries in Europe. Now, at last, Dr. Dollfuss has surrendered entirely to the Heimwehr, and Major Fey, the ViceChancellor of the Hepublic, and ono of the principal Heimwehr leaders, is placed in command of the army and the police. For tho moment the campaign against the Nazis is being made much more vigorous, and most of tho prominent Nazi leaders have gone back to gaol. But in the long run Social Democracy and the Jews will be the victims. Months ago I suggested that since the Nazis and the Heimwehr shared a hatred for democracy, they would, sooner or later, combine'against it. Their present struggle is not over a question of principle, but over one of leadership. Prince Starhemberg, the Heimwehr leader, wants Austria to be ruled entirely on a Mussolini model, but he took part in Hitler's first attempt in Munich in 1D23 to overthrow the German Republic. One of the most important Heimwehr leaders was arrested last week for fraternising with the enemy, and there has been a good deal of humour about a Nazi-llciin-wehr agreement. If it comes —and it probably .will come—Social Democracy in Austria will find itself faced by the same tragic difficulties as Social.Democracy in Germany a year ago. NAZISM INFECTS RUMANIA. In Rumania the National Socialist movement, with the same hatred against the Jews as you find in Germany, has h,een giving the country a very bad quarter of an hour. King Carol is much more interested in the welfare of his country than some of our newspapers suggest, but he has been rather tempted in the past to play with the idea of dictatorship, and, as far as one can see from here, some of his. closer friends have rather encouraged National Socialism in Rumania. Besides, Rumania only escaped from the rule of the Turks seventy years ago, and the democratic system has not worked particularly well in a country where so many of the people cannot read or write. But the murder of M. Duca, the Prime Minister, by one of these young National Socialists has led to an important change. M. Titulescu, who was for years Rumanian Minister in London, and who is one of tho cleverest politicians alive today, felt that the Iron Guard—the name given to Rumania's Nazis—could not be stamped out while those friends of the King who believed in dictatorship still held influential posts. There has'been a bitter struggle between two men of outstanding personality, and M. Titulescu seems io have won. In future the King's friends are not to interfere in the government of the country and Iron Guards are to be vigorously suppressed.