PROBLEMS IN EUROPE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20869, 11 May 1931, Page 6

PROBLEMS IN EUROPE.

ECONOMIC/ CONFUSION.

RUSSIA'S NEW COMPETITION. (COHESION ESSENTIAL TO SAFETY. HY TAUL PAINLEVE, (President of the League of Nations Institute of Intellectual Co-operation. Two grave and confusing crises, one economic, the other political, torment the peoples of Europe. Certain agitated prophets proclaim that cither the nations will settle their differences, adjust their frontiers, disarm and forget their rancour, ''rr war is inevitable, with a reign of ;yiolenco and revolution.

It is a dangerous impatience in which those who want to avoid war and those ,who dream of revenge are mingling paradoxically. Tho former sincerely fear that persistent animosities, territorial revindications and growth of armaments will lead to war. Tho latter, with clearer l/ut. Machiavellian insight, know that the way to exasperate resentment to a tragic point is to stress prematurely and in the heat of passion the most acute problems that divide nations. Never more than to-day have the statesmen responsible for Europe needed to bo endowed with patience, clear vision and self-control, i'atienco ought to be the first attribute of the man who loves peace. But in Which direction should it bo exercised ? Taking the Long View.

' Let lis first gain a perspective. Let us Sscapo from the hold of the immediate, imperious though it may be, to penetrate tho constant or eternal. What a lesson for a human brain if it could review in an hour in logical sequence tho important events of the past 150 years! Is there an event more striking, more decisive—apparently—than the victory of Napoleon at Austerlitz ? What was left of it 10 years later, beyond an historical memory ? When we apply tho constant or the eternal, is thero an event of world significance greater tha ; n the continuous, quiet nnd prodigious development of the United States since the Civil War ?

Every enterprise, however powerful or brutal, which goes counter to the inner law of our civilisation may do violence to flic present, but will fail in the future. Yet, when it acts along the lines of natural development, its effects, however modest in the beginning, como to full bloom in time. It is a question, therefore, amid present agitations and movements, of discovering tho way left open by tho forces in our presence, which, patiently continued, must bring Europe into calmer waters. The First Task to be Done. Tf wo coulcl interview some genial, absolutely impartial spirit—a sort of supefupecialist in European unrest —is it not obvious that his attention would be attracted first by the economic crisis? Ife would say: "Upset conditions in production and exchange which condemn certain nations to famine, reduce millions of workers- to unemployment and disturb and wear down countries less affected. There is' the great trouble which first must _be cured. What do quarrels over prestige and frontiers matter in comparison with that question?" Europe must learn that her life is in danger and that her fate is in her own hands.

For centuries this little peninsula, attached to an enormous Eurasia, has played a princely role in the world, a rolo that can bo compared (on a. grander Fcale) only to that of Greece in the Mediterranean. During the past 100 years, along with America, her filial giant, she has by application of her scientific inventions subjugated the East, the Par East and Africa. ' The duration and the brilliance of this prestige give to Europe the illusion that it is in itself eternal. Unrest in Asia and Africa.

,Let. her.open her eyes! The war and its aftermath brought about in the masses of Asia and Africa an evolution that was already smouldering in 1914, but which has strangely accelerated since the war. From the economic point of view, those masses are no longer the timid and docile customers through whom Occidental industry got. rid of its surplus; they are producers who arc beginning to be sufficient/unto themselves, even to coping with competitors. The principles spread by the war made the guardianship of the w'hite man weigh heavily upon them, but in the face of the persistent lack of balance in Europe, Bolshevism pours out for them a more intoxicating liquor. Bolshevism is a peril.

When the younger generation express astonishment "at the economic, nnrest of our day and are told that the cause is overproduction, they are justly indignant, for this is one of the scandals of our civilisation. It is because there is too much wheat, too much meat, too many clothes —too much well-being—that humanity becomes more and more miserable! If to such a confession of incapacity, to such a-lack of organisation, there is juxtaposed the hope of a new order, a Five-Year Plan like that of the Soviets, at the end of which harmony would reign, the keenest intellects aie fascinated. Any new system seems to them preferable to the void that they abandon. And why should not this attraction react still more forcibly upon the inexperienced peoples who have no joy at air in their lives '! Pressure Upon Europe. Thus world conditions outside of Europe impose on her a mighty effort of cohesion and economic reconstruction. Interior conditions impose this effort still more imperiously. Before the war a balance had been * established on the basis of territorial stature. Russia, gradually equipped by the great industrial col ? n J tries, exported her natural products with lazv 'regularity. The huge market of the .Danube, with its/ monetary capital at Vienna, stabilised exchange between Central and Eastern Europe. To-day, Soviet Russia is pressing down the general economy with the whole weight of her unique commercial front, with products whose cheapness neither wages nor middlemen's profits affect. How are neighbouring countries, dislocated and disintegrated as they_ are, to resist this strong, quiet infiltration ? In liberating the Slav and the Rumanian peoples' of Austria and Hungaiy, the Treaty of Versailles accomplished a great political work. But it was unable to guard against the economic consequences of this .dismembering, or to reconcile the essential roles of Prague and Vienna. Germany, overrun with Russian goods, and having lost her Danubian and Balkan customers, is wrestling with unemployment. There, in short, among many others, we have a few of the deep causes of the poverty of Europe. ) Frank Facing of Facts. To find a. remedy, the first condition is to look at die fnc's in their rigid irulh; not to seek now motives for hatred and discord in present evils; not to point the finger at another nation, saying unjustly: "That is the country which caused all your misfortunes." Before all, it is necessary to spread the conviction that no nation would be benefited by another's ruin. It is not in division, but in cohesion, that safety lies. Europe must find this cohesion in the will to sn<-e herself. It is impossible that the political crisis should not trespass on the economic crisis. But patience and moderation are necessary for the political, even more than for the economic, problems. For the salvation of its will Europe know how to ii'npose upon herself this effort of discipline? Private interests, for less noble ends, have given her examples of it.' If she were to fail in this essential duty it would be the race to destruction. But the first to fall into the abyss would bo those who had been the first to chooso the wrong road.