PEACE OR WAR?

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20464, 2 April 1938, Page 15 (Supplement)

PEACE OR WAR?

America Holds Scales :: Europe on the Watch

ESPITE ITS OWN serious preI \ occupation of many kinds, Europe I J is watching America with the most intense and sustained interest. There are two main causes for the unusual eagerness with which European eyes are following developments in the United States. One, more immediate and concrete, is curiosity over the American reaction to the Japanese threat in the Far East. The other, more fundamental but less actual, is a vague but growing conviction that America’s action—or inaction—will ultimately turn the scales toward World Peace or World War. It is an accepted maxim that nations, like individuals, unite and collaborate most easily and quickly when faced with a common danger. In the eyes of most Europeans, America to-day faces the same peril as Europe—the peril of being forced into war by the aggressively expansionist policy of a dissatisfied authoritarian Power. Certainly in France, the opinion prevails very generally that the United States must soon meet the challenge of the “totalitarian mentality” in the Pacific as France and other 'democratic countries on the Continent have to cope with it on the Rhine and in the Mediterranean. Will the result be that “common front” of the “three great democracies” for which France has yearned so long ? W ill America collaborate actively with Great Britain and the French Republic in opposing the “Fascist menace”? These are the questions How being asked in France. The unhappy outcome of the Brussels conference should forewarn Frenchmen against any hasty conclusions as to the answer to these questions. But it is also true that in at least two instances since the collapse of the Nine-Power parley. President Roosevelt has revived the theme of his Chicago speech: co-operation of the democratic countries to preserve peace. This ensemble of statements surely cannot be considered negligible. Taken together, they certainly appear to furnish a basis for France’s hope that Washington iis moving slowly, perhaps, but surely, toward the cherished ideal of a bloc of the "Three Great Democracies.” Thus it is hardly surprising that the average Frenchman—and the same could doubtless be said for the average European, at least in the democratic countries—is keeping an unusually watchful eye on developments in America. This new £uro- ▼ pean interest in the United States of America is naturally relative, uneven, intermittent. Haltingly, as if staggering under its heavy load of armaments and its heavier burden of fearful distrust; tentatively, as if uncertain which road to take;

(Mallory Brown in Christian Science Monitor.)

fitfully, with frequent impatient returns to its own narrower preoccupations—but nevertheless persistently and hopefully, Europe is looking to-day toward the New World. There are many manifestations of this phenomenon. Perhaps the most significant and the most human is the very real interest which the people, as individual men and women, reveal in what is going on in the United States. In France, for instance, I very seldom have even a brief conversation with a Frenchman, be he cabinet minister, diplomat, shop-keeper or taxi-driver, that he does not ask me eagerly about America: about President Roosevelt and his New Deal, about America’s attitude toward Japan, about American neutrality and about the prospects of the President taking some new Peace Initiative in Europe. The underlying reason for all this is clear —clearer, no doubt, to an international observer than to the various European nationalities themselves. It is essentially this: that most of the peoples of Europe to-day still have a deep-seated feeling or conviction—which is sometimes confused and beclouded but is there just the same—that real and lasting peace and prosperity for all must be built on democratic ideals, and that therefore America’s efforts to-day to work out these ideals of democracy, liberty and unity on a continental scale are of supreme importance. _ Thus there are two distinct aspects of Europe’s renewed interest in America. The various continental governments keenly realise, and very frankly recognise, the potential strength of the United States in war—its tremendous, in fact its decisive, military, naval, and air power. In this sense, and as a dominant financial factor, America is ever present in the calculations of European statesmen—dictatorial as well as democratic. The other aspect is the belief in “Pax Democratica”—that is, in the Rooseveltian doctrine that, ultimately, Peace Must Be Based on Democracy. This implies, however, that democratic government itself must be made to work, to function more efficiently in the face of changed economic and social conditions. The true “democratic front against Fascism,” must it not be active co-operation in proving that democracy is the best human form of government, rather than an all-but-impossible alliance directed against certain totalitarian powers ? It is with these ideas in thought that France and other countries of Europe are looking earnestly westward, to discern how successfully America is going to solve the problem of meeting the collectivist challenge to democracy both within its own borders and in the world.