THE SOVEREIGN STATE

Grey River Argus, 18 March 1942, Page 7

THE SOVEREIGN STATE

Free Poland, Free Czechoslovakia, Free France, Free Germany—what do these words convey to Socialists, who are engaged m world war for freedom against the Nazi military machine? Do they mean in the minds of the various Socialist leaders that they are still planning to reinstate these countries as independent Sovereign States, with* in whose frontiers the old political .battles are to be resumed, and progress made, or not made, towards Socialism according to the success, or ill-success, of Social Democratic parties of the traditional type? If that is what they do mean, they are thinking nonsensical thoughts, without real substance; for it is certain that these countries, so restored to their pre-war ways of government, would fall speedily into even worse confusion than before, and be utterly incapable of finding solutions for the immense problems which will confront all Europe on the morrow of the war.

What, then, ought Socialists, to be thinking in terms of federal solutions between neighbouring States? Ought they to set about restoring the old Austro-Hungarian Empire as a Danubian Federation of Republics, or at building up a Balkan Federation by linking together the prewar States of Jugoslavia, Roumama, Bulgaria and Greece? This notion is no less fantastic than the other. Put back these countries with their independent sovereignties and, even if they agree at the outset to some form of federation amongst themselves, it will be no time before they are again quarrelling one with another, federal group with federal

group, and State with State inside each separate federation. The idea of nationality as a basis for independent statehood is obsolete. Economic development, including the development of the economic arts of war, has destroyed it finally. The independence of small States, and indeed of all States, save the largest and richest in developed resources, is impracticable, now that a mechanised army and air force belonging to a great State can simply sweep aside all the resistance that they can offer. The utmost “independence” any small State can hope for in the future is a false independence, behind which lies the reality of complete domination by a greater neighbour. That, or existence on mere granting of the desired improvements.

sufferance, or as a buffer between greater neighbours, almost certain to become a battle-ground if those neighbours fall out.

Assume the revival of the pre-war European State system, even with the federations of the smaller and weaker independent countries, what chance would a federated Danubia have of resisting either a united Germany or a united Russia, were either minded to enslave it —that is, except by enslaving itself to the other? For how much would the military might of federated Balkania count in any future European conflict? For nothing, as an independent force. Nor military considerations apart, have such groupings any sufficient basis of economic strength. Can Balkan or Danubian federations solve the problem of peasant poverty? Yet these are the basic problems of all Southern and Eastern Europe, and there will be no stable European order until a solution of them has be6n made possible.—Cole, “Europe, Russia, and The Future.’’