THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20271, 2 December 1927, Page 12

THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.

PEACE OR WAR? DR ANNIE BESANT'S AVARNING. (From Our. Own Correspondent.) LONDON, October 8. Dr Annie Besant delivered the last of a series of lectures in Queen’s Hall last Sunday night. Although 80 years of age, she has spent the summer lecturing throughout the British Isles and in many of the capitals of Europe, doing al! her travelling by aeroplane. Her subject on Sunday night was “ The Future of Europe—Peace or War? ” Dr Besant said that in a flying visit to Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, and France she had had the. opportunity of speaking with men and women who knew their own countries and who enabled her to gauge the conditions which made for peace or war in Europe. So far as Denmark went, she was prosperous and was getting rid of her army. Holland had no warlike tendencies. Thanks to the noble action of the late King Oscar in yeildiag to the wish of Norway to shape her own destiny, despite as he had told her, the great pressure put upon him by the military party to go to war, the northern countries were peaceful and Germany was showing no desire for revenge, but was working industriously to pay the cost of the defeat of her military party, not of the nation.

TREATY OF TRIANON. The peril of war lay in the conditions brought about by the Treaty of Trianon, and unless this was revised by an impartial tribunal war was inevitable. A peace treaty imposed by the victors on the vanquished naturally contained the seeds of a future war, as had been seen in the Versailles Treaty of 1870. The object of this treaty was to isolate Russia, to cripple Germany and Austro-Hungary, and to reward from the spoils of war the countries that aided the Allies. “ Woe to the vanquished ” was the slogan. Let them take a map and see how this policy was carried out. Russia was shut out from the Baltic by four little States, save in a minute space. The barrier between her and Europe was continued by Poland, Bulgaria, and Turkey, closing the Black Sea. Only on her Asiatic side_ could she be active. In Europe, Austria and Hungary were despoiled to enrich Rumania, Czecho-Sloyakia, and Yugo-slavia The worst wrong was inflicted on Hungary, who protested against the war but stood by Austria, whose Emperor was her King. The treaty condemned Hungary to death, a kingdom as old as England. Her area was reduced from 325,411 kilometres to 204,297, and her population from 20,886,000 to 12,906,000. In the area taken from her were all her forests and her mines reducing her to a purely agricultural country, and on agriculture alone no country could live. There cold be no permanent peace in Europe until the wrongs inflicted on Hungary were redressed, wrongs political and economic. Yet Europe owed Hungary much for her resistance to the Turks. The multitude of small States created at Trianon formed a setback to the evo Jution of the United States of Europe The tendency of evolution was to draw small States into nations, as the little.. States of Italy became United Italy. Our aim should be a wide federation of autonomous States; preparation by travel, by abolition of passports and Customs; removal of barriers to trade and coramercej international education; encouragemem of national and international culture; art needed no translation, it was common language; encouragement of friendliness, for war sprang from fear and distrust. “ Brotherhood is the ideal; let us work to realise it.”