EUROPEAN REFLECTIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 50, 27 August 1938, Page 19

EUROPEAN REFLECTIONS

A thoughtful article in "The Queen" sets forth reasonably the view taken at the other end of the world of the "present European situation. The writer is simply "A Woman." and her views will interest many readers. The! article is as follows: —. \ Lord Palmerston used to say that j there were only three men in Europe who understood the Schleswig-Holstein problem. One was dead; one had gone mad; the third had forgotten. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, one may well think, after racking one's brains over the tangled animosities of the new Europe. To take only the immediate complications that fill the newspapers, we are asked to master the rival claims and grievances of Czechs and Slovaks, Sudeten-Germans, Hungarians, and Poles: all the history of Europe seems to be involved, and most of its geography. Fervently we hope that the statesmen and diplomatists of all countries who have to handle these momentous affairs are profoundly learned in both sciences; but the hope is qualified by an uneasy recollection that their predecessors, who drafted the treaties of 1919, do not seem to have been very good at either. Meanwhile we read in other columns of the newspapers how every nation in the world is piling up aeroplanes, and tanks, and guns, and more guns; how learned tempers are being frayed over the delicate distinction between non-intervention and neutrality, and less sophisticated tempers provoked by loud-voiced orators proclaiming the iniquities of Bolshevists, Fascists, non-Aryans, and even the perfidious English. What is one woman to make of it all, who has only the newspapers to guide her, and who does not move — what woman does? —in the inner circles of the Chancelleries that know, and try to control, all the hidden currents of intrigue?: Must she laboriously trace out, from her limited knowledge, some solution for each of the intricate problems of diplomacy, formulate some answer to each of the appeals to hate, and believe that if in any one case the responsible statesmen fail to find; the solution, or the orators of hate find a more than usually inflammable audience, her whole world may be brought crashing about her ears, and civilisation collapse, perhaps for ever? Or can she stand back from these immediate menaces, take a longer, broader, and simpler view, and find in the larger aspect of events something outside all these detailed urgencies which makes for peace? I believe that such a force exists in the world today, that it is stronger than at any other crisis in history, and much stronger than is understood by the . men who think they hold in their hands the threads of peace and war. It comes first and foremost from the fact that we all know what war is. I hear often, I read more often, that the atmosphere of Europe is today exactly what it was in July, 1914. I do not believe it. The first element of all is altogether changed: there is no longer any mystery about what war means, and therefore there is diffused in the minds of men and women everywhere an active faith in peace as a positive thing. I remember 1914; there was nothing like this then. A few men of great -knowledge,.

A DISTURBED WORLD

like Sir Edward Grey, understood and were agonised by the possibilities. But to ordinary people war was something to be read about in history books, which* might as a bare possibility, grim but slightly fascinating, recur. again, but which had a little of the attraction of an unknown adventure. It all seemed so remote and unreal that people who belonged to peace societies were regarded as cranks. It is not so now. All men and women of good will are now one great peace society, whether they enrol in associations and pay subscriptions or not. Peace is thought of as something to be actively worked for; and I believe that it is that feeling in the minds of common humanity, more than any work done by professional diplomacy, that has prevented the peoples who played the principal parts in the tragedy of 1914 from grappling with one another again. Any man who served in the trenches in those years will tell you that there was some

strange spirit, born of the hardships that both sides endured in common, that drew men of the opposing armies together in mutual understanding; and that spirit I believe still lives.

But over against the survival of that spirit has to be set the emergence of the -dictators. So at least it seems to

us; but if! you talk with a subject of one of tbue totalitarian States she will tell you tijiat it is Communism that .is destroying} the brotherhood of peoples. If her bog.y is imaginary, perhaps ours is not so rjeal as we think. But even if it is, haye these few men-the power to change the temper of Europe and convert a spirit working for peace into an eagerness for war? In the short run, perhaps they have. There is n«? blinking the fact that the military p;tesions are being roused again in thK dictatorial countries, and the sabre as being rattled as never since 1914. It might be drawn very soon, let m« not delude ourselves; the guns might- go off suddenly. But I believe that; every day the great volcano of Eurjope remains quiescent, the | less likely i|t is ever to come to eruption. For thcjre is about all this marching and counter-marching of earnest young men, intoxicated with dreams jof glory, something that every woman who possesses a nursery ought to recognise immediEVtely. It is the enthusiasm of a chiM with a new toy. There ; is quite a iiik that he will break the windows witlti it. But if he is going/ to do so, it isr-likely to happen on thf first day. T,he first rapture wears ofr quickly, and after that it will not be long before the new and dangerous treasure is loft neglected in the cupboard. Something .t>f the same kind I believe to be happening in totalitarian Europe, with the added complication that the toy has been for a long time forbidden. The fascination of making the utmost commotion with it is all the greater; but tlfie greater the excitement the sooner it -wears off. And lam not sure that this ils not as true of the rulers as of their people. Dictators do not live for ever; not only are they not immortal, but, like lesser men, they grow old. Ah-they, grow old, they are likely to lose the careless rapture of nursery days, ;and acquire that irksome sense of responsibility which leads the middle-aged to* think less of what they have to gain Il,han1l,han of what they have to lose. Let ijs give credit to the dictators for the immense and admirable work they have done for the internal welfare of their peoples; and let us realise what it. all means for us. No one can visit Germany today without receiving a profound impression of a people buildinjg itself up to dignity, with great roads and factories and monuments of peace. It is all being done at present with a sense of struggle against adversity. As yet, there has hardly been time to realise the results of these efforts, ,but one day this great people will disccover that they have again become ome of the greatest possessing nations of the earth, with all the weight of their responsibilities. The rich do r-fot seek adventure, not because they a:re contented, for contentment does ntot come of great possessions, but because they have too much to lose. I believe that every day which passe;B, making the dictators a day older, their people a day more substantial, ancl their stake in the future of civilisation greater, is a day gained, not for the postponement of war, but for the consolidation of permanent peace. Somewhere in ,one of his novels, Sir Arthur Quiller-Clouch writes of the graces of England, and first among them he places "her spacious and beautiful sense of tir,ne as builder, healer, and only perfectejr of worldly things." Through all the perplexities of these anxious days, I <tling to that English sense that time works on the side of peace.

(By "A Woman."),