Minority report on Europe

JEFFERSON CHASE

How assurance of a peaceful Europe throughout the next decade should inspire us to attempt a separate recovery

■ Back in the days when the Big Stick was a Rooseveltian symbol, when the Big Powers went ahead on the theory that one more little colony wouldn't do them any harm, and before the World War had raised the parliamentary howl to the level of enlightened and liberal statesmanship, we had a very wholesome fear of Europe. We recollected that every great European shake-up had been fought, in part, on American soil, from the days of Philip of Spain to those of Napoleon. We knew that every period of European peace had been punctuated by an absent-minded sort of process in which large hunks of Asia and Africa were handed over to the Great Powers of Europe, and we sensed, dimly, that the Balance of Power in Europe corresponded to Keyserling's definition of marriage—"a tragic tension".

■ In the dear dead days between the Boxer Rebellion and the Serajevo murder, we had

no illusion that we had any duty towards Europe, other than to watch her hands carefully as the cards were dealt, and to explain politely that we preferred double dummy to poker whenever we were asked to sit in at the game. We were too busy guarding the Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door to engage in the higher statesmanship. We were looking eastward, with a vengeance, not to discern our moral duty, but to preserve our goods and chattels from the imperial knee-jerks and diplomatic reflexes of European aggrandizement.

Then came the war, with its opportunities for salesmanship and its relief from direct European pressure. The Continent which had shipped us a million immigrants a year was relieving its population problems by direct action. Both sides embarked on advertising campaigns to make us conscious of our duty to the Old World, and by the time we were able to recollect what it was we had ordered at the har, we had won the war, spent thirtyfive billion dollars, and had planted the Great Powers firmly in the flypaper of the League of Nations, where they have been buzzing ever since. It was a neat trick and done entirely without the aid of mirrors. In fact. Dr. Wilson's materia medica had consisted of little more than the Old Testament and a portable typewriter.

* So the fun began. The salvation of Europe depended upon our membership in the League of Nations, upon our joining the World Court, upon consultative pacts and Geneva Protocols, and above all upon our lending large sums of money. We side-stepped the pacts, but our perspicacious bankers saw no reason to avoid lending our money to Europe for a fat commission, and it wasn't until 1929 that the game came to an end in the mad days of the October Panic and the complete demonstration of the fact that we would have no more money to lend.

At first, there was a period of pained and angry surprise. The air and Dr. Butler rang with shrill yelps of protest. Montagu Norman went on a Cook's Tour and the Bank of France began gathering rosebuds while it might. Then the statesmen began seeing things at night and we were warned that peace— nay, civilization—depended on our doing something about it. We ordered a fresh round of drinks on the house, in the shape of the Hoover Moratorium of June, 1931. but Japan stopped playing the game and went into Manchuria with a battle-axe and a cheque book, and the European Powers began applauding from the side-lines. As usual, the American people caught the idea at least six months ahead of their politicians and we reverted to our old posture of watchful waiting towards the Old World and its knavish tricks. And so today, with American prosperity on the junk-heap and with the Administration absolved in the painful task of economic reconstruction. the European Problem has boiled down to one simple question, so far as the Americans are concerned. That question is: Can the United States embark on the necessary ten years of social and economic reconstruction free from fear of European interruption?

B In this sense, foreign policy has become a local issue in the United States, although nobody realizes it. If there is danger of another European or World War, we shall have to tax ourselves heavily to maintain our navy and shall have to build up a solid nationalistic front as a means of self-preservation. If the communist world-revolution gets away to a running start in Europe, we shall have to inhibit all manner of necessary reforms in order to preserve the foundations of our social system. If Europe is headed for economic collapse, our banking system will hit the skids so hard that the period of 1929-32 will look like unparalleled prosperity. Hitherto, American statesmanship has assumed that all these things will happen. We have gone rushing in where European statesmen fear to tread, with our Kellogg Pacts and Disarmament Conferences. We have built up, since the Bolshevik coup d'etat of 1917, an almost impermeable sales-resistance to the arguments (many of them logical and humane) for socialism and communism, until today there are many sections of the country where a smart district attorney can convict a man of anything from mayhem to manslaughter simply by proving that he is a communist. And our bankers have gone on passing out long term, short term and commercial credits to Europeans—while the corner-grocer can't get his note renewed—under the vague theory that thereby the capitalistic system was being preserved.

Every one of these assumptions is fundamentally false. We have been so fascinated by the mechanism of European life that we have failed to appreciate its essence. We have been more concerned with the squeaky valve than with the functioning of the engine itself. While our own system has been going tickertape and while Wall Street has been making a spirited attempt to give the country back to the Indians, we have been furrowing our brows over the size of the German Reichswehr and the Roumanian gold reserve. While 11.000,000 Americans have been out of work, we have been dreadfully upset over England's retention of the dole and over the forced labor in Soviet Russia.

The time has come to realize that Europe is not our direct responsibility and that we need dread no major European disturbance during the period required to put our own house in order. During the period 1932-1942 there will not be a major European war, there will not be a general communist revolution in Europe, and European economy will stand the strain much better than our own.

The central political fact in contemporary Europe is war-weariness. An entire European generation has been shot away and—what is more important—their graves are still tended and green. The accumulated capital of generations has been wiped out until today only two countries—peasant France and peasant Russia—are in any sort of condition to create and employ fresh capital. The vanquished were dismembered and the victors realize that a fresh war might result in their own dismemberment. Half-starvation, disease and over-work has sapped the energy of the war-generation. The new generations are not ready to replace it. Granted that there are deep and bitter grievances in Europe, there is no war-spirit. Granted that there are heavy armaments in Europe, there is no desire to provoke their use. The Old World lost so heavily in terms of individual and collective power that today neither Russia nor Great Britain—the traditional enemies of European unity—bothers much about the minutiae of continental diplomacy. Italy, despite the bellicose dogma of Fascism and the bold leadership of a genius, can stir not a finger without the consent of the British Navy which commands Italian supplies of raw materials. The French and Jugo-Slav armies, between them, could make a hash of northern Italy. Italy will not start a war and if Italy should be mad enough to do so, the war would not last three months. Germany has been badly burned and dreads the fire of militarism. Neither Hitler nor Von Papen desire war. Hitler desires reconciliation with France, a diplomatic settlement of the Polish Corridor, and the general reduction and limitation of armaments. If ever again the decision of war-or-peace rests with the German Government, Germany will vote for peace. Soviet Russia does not want war and a war of the capitalistic nations against the "Socialist Fatherland" would expose capitalism to a threat from the rear in the form of strikes and working class revolts, as well as to the unpredictable risks of a campaign on the steppes. Europe wants peace and will maintain peace, for at least another decade.

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The threat of social revolution has been completely discounted in Europe. The real and terrible sufferings (accidental, in part) of the Russian people under communism have frightened the European workers. Such a country as Hungary, which was communist in 1919, will not try it again. The full weight of the Catholic Church, which is still the greatest social force on the Continent, is thrown dead against Bolshevism. This means that France, Italy, Austria, South Germany and Poland are fortified from within against the gospel according to Karl Marx. The Protestant doctrine of individualism is still dominant in North Germany, Scandinavia and Great Britain, and the enforced collectivism of communism is still spiritually repugnant to the masses in the Protestant countries. Moreover, the device of State Socialism is proving an effective if temporary answer to serious economic suffering and social unrest in Western Europe. The Dole has saved and is saving England from revolution. Even von Papen and his North German aristocrats possess the same sort of social conscience as that which led Bismarck to space vanquished France. Old age pensions and unemployment insurance in the modern sense originated in Germany, and Germany is today the most considerate Western nation in its treatment of the working classes. Italy, under Mussolini, has embarked upon a bold collective policy, which is indistinguishable from communism except in its retention of the principle of collaboration between the classes. On the whole, Europe is socialistic and has adopted the principle of social insurance in order to remove the incentive to revolution. No serious student of European affairs today has any real fear of social revolution. The Russian object lesson, Europe's spiritual heritage and the stop-gap of social democracy have balked the Bolshevic bugaboo.

Finally, Europe's economic system still rests on the firm foundation of peasant life. It is organized for disaster and has always survived disaster. The peasant system grew up after the fall of the Roman Empire, and a structure which survived the barbarian invasions and the dark ages will survive the age of Versailles and Ivar Kreuger. Wherever you go in modern Europe, you see well tended farms, good crops and sturdy, hard-working people. The cities may starve and industrial areas may be desolate, banks may crash and tariff walls may soar like the Tower of Babel, but the peasantry will remain, as either the saviors or survivors of Europe. Moreover, the very tariff walls—the octrois—which our economists deride, represent an instinct for self-preservation. They are insurance against being again exposed to the hazards of economic independence in an age of political unrest and British blockades. The premium may be almost prohibitive but a generation which can remember the starvation of the blockade may well be pardoned for ignoring the appeals of British economists for lower tariffs and freer trade. The European masses are determined to survive and they will do so. They are healthier, better housed and better fed than we are, and if there is any doubt of economic recovery, the doubt applies here rather than there.

For Europe has entered upon a new phase. For the first time since 1492, there is no extra European outlet for her surplus population. Emigration has stopped and will not be renewed, in mass, as America and the British Empire wrestle with the unemployment problem. For the first time since Peter the Great, Europe is free of the direct interference of the three Empires—the Russian Empire, the British Empire and the Ottoman Empire. For the first time since 1914, Europe has abandoned the hope that American power and dollars will come to tin; aid of one or another of her systems of alliances. So European energies have been released for the complete reconstruction of the Old World. In this reconstruction, nothing will be barred: Franco-German union, Danubian Confederacy, MittelEuropa and Eastern European alliances, cartels, trade agreements, customs unions, credit pools, rationalization. For at least ten years and probably longer, the European nations will not have the energy to engage in war, the will to revolution or the incentive to permit economic catastrophe. During this decade, the United States will have a chance to put its own house in order, to change gears, refuel and reorganize. It wrill probably be our last chance in the twentieth century, so we had better make the most of it, for when Europe comes back it will not be as the great and powerful continent which has held us on the defensive for the first century and a half of our national existence.