The Distempers of Europe

I

THIS is written at Geneva. It is a holiday, and beneath my window the comfortable citizenry parade the waterfront with their children and dogs. Beyond them the blue-green lake narrows into the Rhone; beyond the lake the old town of Calvin climbs up to its great cathedral; beyond it again the Alps of Savoy fade away into the heat haze.

It is an outlook of changeless normality. Except for motors instead of horses, it is exactly as I first saw it when the century was young and we Europeans were as untroubled about the future as you Americans were during your postwar boom. Yet Switzerland lies in the middle of the danger zone. To the north is Germany, to the south Italy, and to the east are the enigmatic insecurities of Austria. Economically dependent on the outside world, Switzerland feels every change of the barometer of commerce and finance. She is, as during the Great War, a cockpit for the intrigues of her neighbors. Herr Hitler’s agents talk fusion with her German population; Signor Mussolini tries to organize her Italians; her French cantons watch suspiciously the alleged Communists in their midst. Her government responds by preventive laws and by joining in the orgy of armament expenditure. But the solid citizenry beneath my window remain outwardly unmoved, and, like nature, follow the accustomed cycle of their ways.

The determination of the average man, of the small bourgeois, the peasant, 374 and the farmer, to maintain a life as intact as possible from the problems and pressures of the age is a salient feature of contemporary Europe. Everywhere it contrasts sharply with the immense confusions of politics and economics. We saw the contrast as we motored across France when the franc was sliding and the future of the government was uncertain. It was comforting, after reading in the Paris press of the hopelessness of things national and international, to find the farmer planting new vines for his children’s wine. We saw it again in Italy, where the venomous press polemics against England has not contaminated the habitual Italian courtesy towards English people. We shall find it again in Germany unless there has been a great change since last year. The more the traveler sees of Europe, the more he feels that one of the strongest factors for sanity in its affairs is the determination of the literate masses to cling to the right of pursuing happiness for themselves and their families and to the advantages that nineteenth-century liberalism brought them.

One needs the encouragement of that belief. The outlook for the Old World is this summer as uncertain as ever. Better international trade and a measure of internal prosperity in most countries do not greatly brighten the outlook. The return of prosperity comes too largely from the race in armaments, the continued acceleration of which in itself reveals the political situation as fundamentally rotten. Already people are beginning anxiously to ask themselves what will happen if, when rearmament reaches its inevitable close, statesmanship has still failed to restore the normal economic processes and to relieve international strains.

In the Atlantic Monthly of January, I stressed three characteristics of the European situation — first, the ominous return of the pre-war alignment of the great nations; secondly, the continual discomfiture of the diplomacy of the democracies at the hands of the dictatorships; thirdly, the controversy in England as to whether Great Britain should try to recapture the initiative for the democracies by reviving the League of Nations and by proclaiming that she would in the future be ready to play her part in the protection of peace by force, if necessary, wherever it might be threatened in Europe. Since then things have moved quickly. In England our duty towards the League and Europe continues on paper and on the platform, but has in practice ended in the definite defeat of those who wanted strong British participation in a strong League of Nations for Europe. Mr. Eden remains at the Foreign Office. He still, together with his colleagues of the British Cabinet, proclaims that the first plank in British foreign policy is faithfulness to League of Nations principles. The countries of the British Empire did the same at the end of the Imperial Conference held in London early in the summer. The colossal British rearmament programme, which has brought our income tax up to the war-emergency level of a basic 25 per cent, is justified by the necessity of making Great Britain better able to support the League. But all this deceives no one.

Millions of Englishmen and others who hoped that Mr. Eden would prove the effective champion of the younger but war-depleted generation, and would impose upon his elderly and less imaginative colleagues a vigorous and constructive foreign policy, have been disappointed. What I called in my last article the Western European school have won hands down not only in the British Cabinet but also in the Imperial Conference. So far as can be judged from the vague utterances of the British Foreign Minister and other government spokesmen, Great Britain, while recognizing that a disturbance of the peace in Eastern Europe might well bring on a universal war as it did in 1914, is definitely unready to promise to do her share in the policing of the whole continent. In regard to Western Europe, she still hopes to persuade Germany to join a Western security pact to revive the guarantee of the Pact of Locarno against unprovoked aggression, and will if necessary fight to preserve the Rhone frontiers. But in regard to Eastern Europe she will judge each infraction or threatened infraction of the peace on its merits.

Mr. Chamberlain and his colleagues have been influenced by the belief that British public opinion would not accept the enlarged responsibilities implied by the abandonment of the ‘free hand’ in Eastern Europe. The soundness of this belief is questionable: it is true that it is shared by a weighty conservative element which includes many authorities of anything but reactionary tendencies. On the other hand, the result of Lord Cecil’s famous Peace Ballot, the immense majority of the National Government in the 1935 election when for a short time it was believed to favor a strong League of Nations, the fact that the Labor and Liberal Oppositions, which together command a large popular vote, put an effective League in the forefront of their foreign policy, all point in the other direction. In any case it can hardly be doubted that, if the National Government had during the past six years educated the voters as to the need of a strong European policy, Mr. Eden and his admirable aspirations would not have been forced into the background. But one of the worst handicaps that European democracy in general and British democracy in particular are under in their diplomatic passages with the dictatorships is that, whereas the dictatorships have only to push buttons to mobilize their policies, the democracies have to consult national opinions not yet adequately educated in the intricacies of foreign affairs.

II

Germany and Italy have been quick to take advantage of the weakening of the League, the indecisiveness of British foreign policy, and the domestic difficulties of France. In Spain as elsewhere they are playing the same policy as before the war, only on a more grandiose scale. They feel themselves hemmed in and frustrated. Germany sees herself encircled by France and Russia, with Great Britain supporting the encirclement in the background. Italy considers that Great Britain — and to a less extent France — blocks, or may block, the fulfillment of imperial aspirations which a cursory glance at the Italian press shows that the annexation of Ethiopia has left unsatisfied. Why, the Fascist propagandists ask their compatriots, should England, long since effete, be allowed to stand in the way of the resuscitation by modern Italy of the Empire of ancient Rome?

Urged by their encirclement complexes, the dictatorships are adapting to diplomacy the familiar maxim of mobile warfare: When outflanked, outflank in turn. Germany tries to encircle Russia by her Japanese Treaty of last fall; both, with Italy in the lead because the Mediterranean is her affair, — mare nostro, in the patter of Fascism, — try to give Madrid a dictatorial government. They hope to kill two birds with one stone. The encirclement of France by Fascist Powers, except for Belgium, would have been completed; Great Britain’s Mediterranean lines of communication would be more than ever at the mercy of Italy and her allies, and Fascism would have its submarine and air bases on the Atlantic.

The desire to encircle their encirclers is naturally not the only motive that drives the dictatorships to power politics. It would certainly be unfair to accuse Herr Hitler and his lieutenants of planning a war in the sense that they are saying to each other that on such and such a date or in such and such circumstances they will fight so and so. It would probably be unfair to accuse Signor Mussolini of anything so coldblooded, in spite of his bombast about bayonets and the dangerous doctrines of force triumphant with which he tries to infect his countrymen. But the emphasis which the dictators place respectively upon Aryan supremacy and the destiny of the new Rome cannot obscure the fact that the thesis of the ‘haves’ versus the ‘have-nots’ remains as true as it was when the late Mr. Frank Simonds expounded it in the Atlantic. Herr Hitler says in Mein Kampf that if Germany cannot feed her people, then, and then only, would she be justified in beating the ploughshare back into the sword, and it was Signor Mussolini who coined the phrase ‘Expand or explode.’ To judge from what one hears in Italy, it is still doubtful whether Ethiopia will provide a sufficient outlet and source of supply for Italy, while in Germany the demand for colonies and the clamor about sources of raw materials are unabated. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that, in pursuing their game of power politics, the dictatorships have their eye upon the possible necessity for wars of economic expansion and also upon the danger, never absent from the European mind, of some accident, some more than usually egregious diplomatic blunder, precipitating the ultimate catastrophe.

In the realm of pure politics the dictatorships continue to get the best of it in the balance-of-power game. The FrancoBritish nonintervention policy for Spain is, as this is written, in yet another of its periodical crises, and it is therefore impossible to pass final judgment upon it. All that can be said is that its efficacy, wisdom, and fairness are as much questioned in Europe as I found them to be in the United States last winter. Even Mr. Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, has admitted in the House of Commons that nonintervention has so far failed. It was meant to prevent foreigners interfering in Spain partly on grounds of humanity, but still more to reduce to a minimum the danger of the war spreading beyond the Pyrenees. It has not prevented foreigners from interfering in Spain, and, though it has not led to anything like warfare outside Spain, the action of Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini in flouting it and in blandly helping General Franco how and when they have seen fit has greatly increased international tension. So have the French and other volunteers on the side of Madrid, to say nothing of more official Russian assistance to Madrid. And, last but not least, the failure of Madrid to assert itself hardly helps the policy of Paris or London — namely, opposition to the efforts of the dictators to increase their general influence.

What made France and Great Britain risk over Spain a rebuff from the dictatorships, a rebuff which threatens to be at least as damaging and as humiliating as that which they suffered over Ethiopia, unless their nonintervention policy can assert itself at the eleventh hour or, what is more likely, the dictatorships are prevented from establishing and consolidating the Francoists at Madrid by the resistance of the Spanish people? One answer is the political situation in France a year ago. M. Blum has wished to keep as aloof as possible from Spain, lest his own Fascists and anti-Fascists should be tempted to take sides and should come to blows in France. But that is only a partial answer. It does not sufficiently explain Mr. Eden’s attitude. Why has he struggled so pertinaciously for the continuance of the Franco-British nonintervention policy during all the months when it was so obviously helping General Franco? To judge from his utterances, he would seem — at the outset, at any rate — to have underestimated or ignored the balance-of-power aspects of the Fascist intervention.

The British Foreign Minister has been a principal proponent of the current doctrine of the ‘ideological fronts.’ There are, however, two versions of that doctrine. There is the version promulgated by Herr Hitler. ‘It is impossible,’ cried the Führer, in March 1036, ‘to build a bridge between the Bolshevist revolution and neighboring states. Europe is divided into two parts — the area dominated by the national cultures of the Western world and the area of government by that intolerable Bolshevist doctrine which preaches destruction.’ One has only to read his writings to realize the sincerity of Herr Hitler’s antiBolshevist convictions. But they are also useful convictions from the propaganda point of view. The Russian menace is obviously the best of arguments to make the German people less loath to put their money into guns instead of butter, and less restive under the regimentation of the great Nazi national self-sufficiency campaign. Abroad, too, in Western Europe, the United States, and the British Empire, it helps Herr Hitler to have Germany advertised as the barrier between Bolshevism and our civilization.

Mr. Eden seems to have been impressed by this propaganda to the extent of believing, not that Fascism justifies itself as a bulwark against Communism, but that European democracy is in greater danger of being ground between the millstones of Fascism and Communism than it is from the power politics of the dictatorial have-not nations. Confronted by what looked to him like the outbreak of a struggle between Fascism and Communism in Spain, alarmed by signs of dictatorial interference on the Fascist side, and discovering that M. Blum feared the same ideological clash for rather different reasons, he joined France in the promulgation of the nonintervention policy.

III

One cannot travel far in Europe without realizing that the confrontation of democracy by dictatorship on the field of the balance of power is the ideological struggle that counts. The CommunistFascist confrontation, on the other hand, impinges itself upon one’s observation only when studying German and Italian propaganda literature or when talking to conservatives who are frightened of losing their money. Even Russia is no longer regarded, outside the propaganda offices of Fascism and the headquarters of stand-pat conservatism, primarily in terms of the Communist menace. So far as foreign policy goes, Stalin has become the heir of the Tsar rather than of Lenin. Russia is once more associated with the Western Powers as against the Central Powers because, like the Western Powers, she is afraid of the Central Powers.

Even in Italy and Germany there is now a tendency to sacrifice ideological prejudices to the realities of power politics. All the capitals of Europe know that the leaders of the German army are playing with the idea of a rapprochement with Moscow. The German soldiers want it because they believe, as Bismarck did, that good relations with Russia are essential for Germany if she wishes to dominate Europe, and the domination of Europe is an avowed and not unnatural Nazi aspiration. The discomfiture of the Italian arms in Spain this spring has fed their desire. The Italian connection is not popular in Germany. Germans have never forgotten or forgiven what they regard as the Italian betrayals of 1914 and 1915, and the war left them with little respect for Italian fighting qualities. Ethiopia did something to make them think better of the Fascist army until the Italian reverses in Spain this spring.

Russia, too, would offer Germany, as a friend, economic and other advantages of which she is badly in need. The possibility of a German-Russian rapprochement is not, of course, imminent. Herr Hitler still, so far as anyone knows, sees red when he gazes towards Moscow. Nor does there seem any reason to doubt that Stalin killed the leaders of his army not only because they had played with Trotskyism, but also because they had listened to voices from Berlin. On the other hand, the Russian autocracy is now obviously less Communist than it was, and it must never be forgotten that from 1922 until the coming of Herr Hitler into power the liaison between Moscow and Berlin was very close indeed. Also Stalin’s murderous savagery has palpably weakened the never comfortable association between Russia and the capitalist democracies of the West.

Nor is there much danger of the domestic affairs of the democracies being compromised by a clash between Fascism and Communism. The present state of Europe indeed encourages the conclusion that both brands of totalitarianism are to the body politic much what pneumonia is to the human body; that they attack it only when it has been prostrated by other causes. It is at any rate increasingly clear that they are as powerless with a healthy polity as pneumonia germs are with a healthy human. During the last year, since economic conditions began to pick up, Communism — never a serious menace since the immediate post-war period — has been on the downgrade, and Fascist movements have been collapsing in all directions. In England, Sir Oswald Mosley’s handful of followers have been deprived by Parliament of their shirts; in Belgium, Rexism has been heavily set back; in Holland, local Fascism has had a similar rebuff; in Eastern Europe, where parliamentary government is at a discount, Communism has not advanced and Fascism is feared or courted not as ail ideology but as the symbol and instrument of the militant nationalisms of Germany and Italy.

The posture of the small countries of the Danubian basin affords, indeed, the best possible proof that it is power politics rather than ideologies that matters. It also shows that the political successes of the dictatorships are beginning to be compromised by their economic weakness. The eyes of the Danubian countries are turned towards Germany and Italy and Great Britain and France. The strength of the two former, their relations to each other, the prospect that the Western Powers may still be able to do something constructive for appeasement, are continually and anxiously canvassed. A short time ago the economic and political domination of one or both of the Central Powers was principally feared; now the tendency is rather to wonder whether, if the present economic constrictions are not relieved, they may not try some desperate throw in the hope of recouping themselves by conquest.

In recent months this fear has grown, and not only in the Danubian capitals. The rise in prices threatens to check the profitable trade which the dictatorships worked up in Central Europe during the depression, when they could drive profitable bargains with the small countries unable to sell their surplus products. They bought from those countries and paid in their own manufactures. Latterly the rise in prices has enabled the small countries to sell elsewhere for real money, and has at the same time made the raw-material situation of the dictatorships more diflicult.

Germany and Italy are ill prepared to stand the loss with which this change threatens them. The success of their diplomacy and the ebullience of their propaganda fail to hide their growing doubts about the ultimate efficacy of economic nationalism and about the feasibility of economic self-sufficiency. Visitors to Berlin this summer have been impressed by the nervousness of the business world and by its evident dissatisfaction with the regimentation of industry. Skepticism is becoming noticeable as to the ability of the dictatorships indefinitely to stand the strain of competition in armaments with Great Britain, Russia, and even France. In Germany the workers are said to be losing their first enthusiasm for the employment-giving capacity of the Nazi régime. Their hours increase and their wages do not keep pace with the rise in the cost of living, and are drastically reduced by so-called voluntary contributions. Behind the drive and efficiency of the Nazi régime a growing disquiet as to the future can be sensed.

It is the same in Italy. Superficially the new Italy is a wonderful achievement. Its roads are the best in Europe. Great stretches of them are reserved for motor traffic and are carried over or under rivers, railroads, and other roads. They are often bordered by flowers; their grass edges are carefully groomed. The farmlands they traverse have been improved beyond recognition. The great plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, for instance, combine the richness of Indiana or Iowa with the neatness of England. The large towns have during the last ten years had the same outbreak — on a smaller scale, of course — of opulent and artistic stations, new avenues, apartment houses, office buildings, and so on, as visited the United States in the twenties.

But beneath the surface there is the same questioning as in Germany, the same distrust of currency and trade returns, the same doubts about the future, the same dislike of isolation from the rest of the world, and the same lurking fear that, if embarrassments grow, their leaders may plunge them into the desperate gamble of war. This danger cannot be overlooked. Luckily there are good reasons for believing that anything like an economic collapse of the dictatorships is still distant.

When it comes to the question of war, there is also in both countries the restraining influence of the fear of their populations of cataclysmic changes, and above all of another war. In Germany the extent of this influence is demonstrated by the well-known fact that one of the strongest factors for peace is the German army. That is one of the great differences between the Reich of Herr Hitler and the Reich of the Kaiser. In the old days the army was a privileged class and was not against the adventure of war. Now it has been largely democratized, is regarded by the people as part of themselves, and shares their desire for peace. In Italy the unpopularity of Signor Mussolini’s Spanish venture and also of the Ethiopian venture until Great Britain stepped in with sanctions and made its success a matter of patriotic pride teaches the same lesson. Only incredible bad luck, in fact, is likely to bring Europe to war in anything like the immediate future.

IV

The democracies have still time to recapture the leadership of Europe. And, as is beginning to be recognized from one end of the continent to the other, President Roosevelt and Mr. Hull have given them the opportunity to do so. Two years ago, and even last year, the United States was outside the European picture. One might occasionally be asked whether she still expected to collect her war debts, but that was all. Now, thanks to Mr. Hull’s speeches, to Mr. Runciman’s visit to President Roosevelt last winter and the subsequent visit of M. Van Zeeland, the Belgian Prime Minister, and thanks also to the Franco-British-American currency agreement, everybody is discussing the possibility of a concerted economic attack upon the ills of the world, since the direct political attack has so clearly failed. It is realized, however, that even in regard to economic matters the United States cannot be expected to take the initiative or any serious measure of direct responsibility on her side of the Atlantic. The question, therefore, is whether Great Britain will do so after accepting Mr. Hull’s offer of a closer economic relationship with herself and the rest of the Empire. It is noted that the British Government is continually stressing the necessity for freer trading. But it is at the same time remembered that it was equally eloquent on the subject of British belief in a strong League of Nations.

Europe consequently is watching for some indication of the progress of the Anglo-American negotiations for a trade treaty. If the treaty is concluded and a common front of economic endeavor is reached between the United States and the British Empire, then the democratic countries will begin to forget these disappointments with the divagations of Franco-British diplomacy, and even in the dictatorial countries large bodies of opinion will begin to hope for better things. In the meantime the activities of M. Van Zeeland and of his colleagues of the smaller countries are not being confined to propaganda and consultation. In the North, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, the so-called Oslo group, have taken the first steps towards the abolition of trade barriers. In the Southeast, under the leadership of Dr. Hodza, Czech Prime Minister, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Jugoslavia are trying — a difficult matter — to forget their differences and prejudices and lower their trade barriers.

If these efforts succeed, if, under the leadership of the United States and Great Britain, the great freer-trading areas of the Western Hemisphere and the British Empire, between which Canada is already a link, can come together, then there is a chance that Germany and Italy will take the line which the majority of their people would probably like them to follow and join their neighbors in the work of economic reconstruction, and try to cure their economic difficulties by coöperation rather than by the desperate expedient of war or by joining up with Russia or by some other shift of balance-of-power politics. Then the continuation of the disarmament conference would again be feasible; the much-talked-of economic conference for the final laying of economic nationalism and for the settlement of the just grievances of the have-not countries could be held; and the League of Nations, with Germany again a member, might again function in Old World politics.

Such is the European dream of 1937. It will probably be some time before it is possible to appraise the chances of its realization. The negotiations for the Anglo-American trade treaty, the success of which Europe is right in deeming essential to an effective attack upon economic nationalism, are likely to go slowly. They hinge, as everyone knows, largely upon the ability of Great Britain to lower duties in favor of certain American primary products, which in turn depends upon the willingness of the Dominion Governments to allow the United States to share the advantages of imperial preference in the English market, which again depends upon the ability of the Dominion Governments (all of whom, like the London Government, have enthusiastically accepted the Hull programme in principle) to persuade their voters to subordinate immediate material interests to the cause of world prosperity and peace. Nor, it must be confessed, was the necessity of making this sacrifice of the lesser to the greater altogether recognized by all the English interests concerned when I left London.

Delay, however, may have its advantages. The distempers of Europe aree in a sense contributing to their own cure. In the dictatorial countries they are causing doubts as to the ultimate efficacy of power politics and ultra-nationalism; in the democratic countries they tend to counteract that static complacency which the return of relative prosperity is so apt to bring; and in all countries they work to increase popular resistance to policies and practices which make for disturbance, and it is doubtful whether, in a modern literate community, even the strongest, of dictators can indefinitely put himself athwart the instincts of the mass of his countrymen.