Europe: A Continent in Travail
I
NOTHING is more contagious than panic. Ten years after what was to be the last war, Europeans are talking of nothing but the next. Nations live in constant apprehension. No one desires war; everyone fears it. From what quarter it might spring no one knows, but people think of nothing else.
Curiously enough, it is not the defeated of yesterday, disarmed onesidedly by the peace treaties, who live in terror. On the contrary, they inspire terror. It is the victors, who have preserved their arms intact, the strong, who fear the hostility of the weak. Indeed a law of history seems to be at work, a curse attendant on triumph, for previous to 1914 it was the Germans who were afraid of France.
The French state of mind is explainable on both psychological and practical grounds. The war of 1914 took France by surprise at the moment when she least expected it. She paid for it by ghastly devastation, and her people have not yet emerged from their fright. Our generation will be forever marked by the stigmata of those years, like men who have experienced some violent shock in their lives and tremble long afterward at every noise.
Practically the French, for better or for worse, feel themselves the only guardians of the treaty of peace. They perceive that their former allies no longer feel any enthusiasm in supporting this document, and they find themselves standing guard along all the frontiers of Europe, their 40,000,000 inhabitants and exhausted resources menaced by much more populous nations. Far from being dictated by an imperialistic frame of mind or an ambition for conquest, the concern for security which animates the entire French nation really springs from a sense of guardianship. Instead of revealing a conviction of strength, it really betrays weakness.
But even though the desire for security is pacific in nature and inspired by a profound hatred of war, it is dangerous for Europe. It is dangerous, first of all, because fear of war often in the course of history has led nations to catastrophe. It never would have been possible in 1914 for the Germans to be flung against France and Russia unless they had been previously persuaded that they were going to be attacked. In the second place, the sense of insecurity places a formidable obstacle in the way of confidence, of the reconciliation of peoples, of disarmament, of the destruction of customs barriers,of all the measures that might supply a foundation for durable peace, and without which peace is impossible. More than all else, it distracts attention from the real dangers that beset Europe, and which are not international, but internal, not military and political, but economic and social.
II
Whatever may be the folly of the human race, a war presupposes a cause. At the moment it is hard to find a genuine and sufficient cause for war in Europe.
Without doubt our continent can show problems badly solved or not solved at all — for example, the question of Vilna, the Polish Corridor, the Hungarian frontiers, Macedonia; but none of these questions in itself is capable of precipitating war. Most of them are the consequences, and not the cause, of a state of international tension.
Suppose we take, for example, the question of the Polish Corridor. I am familiar with it, for I made a study of it on the spot last summer. If a solution is sought in any change of frontiers, the question remains insoluble. For not only is the corridor necessary to Poland economically as an outlet to the sea; it is also inhabited by a Polish population who before the war sent to the German Reichstag Polish deputies. To modify boundaries will not decide the question, but will only give it a new lease of life or create a fresh one.
On the other hand this question, insoluble by war, could be easily settled by the collaboration of the peoples involved. What makes the corridor economically insupportable to Germany is that its frontiers are hermetically sealed, not to traffic, but to trade. And it is insupportable also because the Germans claim the territory, and Poland is afraid of Germany. Open the frontiers, stop saying every day that Eastern Prussia is dying, and you will see capital flow back into this atrophied member and bring it life. Much the same can be said, mutatis mutandis, of Vilna, Hungary, and Macedonia. None of these problems can be solved by force, but they will yield easily to a regime of international friendship. Europe has solved such problems before, or has seen them solved, by understanding. But good will is required for that, and we shall hear it said that in this more than one nation is lacking. True, but there is no need to exaggerate.
The danger of a war springing from Soviet Russia is nonexistent. This is so in the first place because, if war were imminent, the Soviet Government would be incapable of mobilizing a Red army. The internal situation of Russia would prevent it. To distribute arms to the peasants would be enough to put an end to the Soviet régime. This is a danger which Stalin will not run, and the more so because he does not count on war to overthrow the world, but on revolution. His methods are not those of the capitalist governments. They are none the less formidable, but they are different.
Germany is no more in a condition to make war than Russia. No one knows how much of an army she has, but one thing is sure — it is by no means as easy to build up an army secretly as it is in the open. As for such irregular organizations as the Stahlhelm, everyone will grant that they are better for parade than for war, and that it is much easier to teach men to drill than to hold on to themselves in the face of a machine gun.
Moreover, the real reason why Germany is actually in no condition to make war is to be found elsewhere. It is the internal situation of the country, to which we shall return later. War in Germany, as in Russia, would signify an immediate revolution.
There remains Italy — here perhaps is the most genuine danger, and yet it is not the danger of war. The political, economic, and social condition of Italy is less distraught than that of Germany, but, in order to fight, still other things are needed: a cause, a will to fight, and, especially, powerful resources. None of these things exist at the moment in Italy.
Naval parity is not a real cause for war between France and Italy. Everyone understands that this is entirely a question of prestige on both sides. It would be inconceivable that France and Italy could serve up a little fight of their own in the Mediterranean — that is to say, on the principal line of communication of the British Empire — without interference from England. She would either put an end to the business or take part in it, and then the question of naval parity would become purely theoretical.
The real difficulty of the question is that Italy asks France to recognize that the course of centuries no longer counts, and that the two nations are perfectly equal, despite the fact that France is proud of her past and cannot admit in her heart that she is on a footing with this upstart. But nations do not take up arms for that.
The question could be easily solved were it not complicated, as so often happens, by the exigencies of internal politics. What Mussolini so vitally needs is moral prestige, not so much perhaps for Italy as for the Fascist régime. He wishes to convince his countrymen that he has been able to obtain more than preceding governments, and that under his direction Italy has become a great nation to whom others bow in homage. This is exactly what the French Government is unable to concede. It would never be forgiven by the Right for according naval equality to Italy, or by the Left for allowing Mussolini thus to strengthen Fascism. What might be possible under a different régime is out of the question while Mussolini is in power; a French Government which took the risk would be immediately overthrown.
The Fran co-Italian quarrel is not without its inconvenience. It divides Europe in two, as before the war. It inflames the hopes of discontented peoples, hungry for a change, prevents tranquillity of mind, aggravates the uneasiness of the French, puts an obstacle in the way of disarmament, and complicates all the problems of Europe. But, granted all this, it would be a great mistake to imagine that the speeches of Mussolini are inspired by a real will toward war. Mussolini when he speaks in public is the reflection of the crowd whom he is addressing. Polemical in temper, a journalist at heart, he loves to be provocative. Especially, all his effort within his own borders consists in trying to galvanize the Italian people, in trying to give them an ardor which they have so often lacked in the past. In order to do this he must supply objects for the energy he seeks to arouse. At the same time Mussolini is a diplomat of the old school, for nothing is so reactionary as the international methods of a dictator posing as a revolutionist. He believes in the efficacy of the menacing gesture in negotiation, but he has no intention of putting it in practice.
This method is not without danger. But it can be said without paradox that the speeches of Mussolini are themselves a proof of the impossibility of war. If Europe were really sitting on a stick of dynamite no responsible statesman would ever speak in this fashion. He would fight or keep still. In the domain of diplomacy a man does not announce what he means to do. But Mussolini, knowing that war is impossible, and that his powder is damp, can talk of it with impunity, and so at small expense give to the Italian people the impression that he is a strong man, and that his courage is indomitable.
And this is not all. His speeches are really the product of a sense of weakness. All the principal European nations, beginning with Spain and ending with Germany, have tried at some moment in their history to exercise the hegemony of the continent. All have failed, but all have tried excepting only one — Italy, the latest comer. She to-day feels an eager blood stirring in her veins. The hour of glory seems at last to have struck for her, the hour to show what she can do; and she finds all outlets barred against her. On ne passe pas! War is forbidden; hegemony impossible. Too late! Reflections of this kind produce in the Italians that belligerent eloquence which masks a great historic delusion.
But, it will still be asked, why is war impossible in Europe ? For a variety of reasons, judicial, moral, and political. People frequently compare our own times with Europe before the war and believe that they have found resemblances. But they overlook the fact that, while forces tending toward war are always in existence, the forces that oppose it are to-day infinitely greater than before. In 1914, war was still considered, under international law, a legitimate act. Pacifist, propaganda had not penetrated all nations alike, nor had a number of them come to think of war with profound abhorrence. Moreover, no diplomatic machinery was at hand making it possible for statesmen to come together rapidly for deliberation in case of danger.
To-day war has been outlawed. It deeply repels all peoples without exception, and the League of Nations makes possible immediate measures to prevent it. If, in 1914, a place had been available where the various foreign ministers could have met on neutral ground, war would not have broken out, and this despite the fact that it was not at that time prohibited. To-day it is prohibited. The text of the Kellogg treaties is of a kind to place on any government which took the initiative of war a crushing responsibility, for no one could be sure that the treaties might not be applied to his own country, and if they were so applied the aggressor would be compelled to fight alone against the entire world. Not a single state in Europe is prepared to run such a risk. Not a political leader would think of taking the responsibility for it.
These are the reasons — and plenty of others might be adduced which we cannot discuss here — why the danger that war might again suddenly burst out ‘joyous, fresh, and clear’ on the model of wars of other days seems to me extremely slight. This is not to say that Europe is out of danger. It means rather that we must look in another direction and in a different order of ideas for the perils that threaten us.
III
Europe at the present hour is in a deplorable economic situation. The efforts toward recovery which she has made these twelve years past have seemed only to leave her in a worse pickle than ever. At the close of the war it was believed that an era of prosperity was at hand, but this was quickly interrupted by the depression of 1921, which lasted several years and brought to absolute ruin t he currency of a number of countries. Once the monetary system had been purged in these countries, with the sacrifices which this process exacted, it was thought that normal conditions would return. Now prosperity, barely recovered again, is once more interrupted by a crisis that shows itself in the decline of prices, unemployment in industry, paralysis of markets in agriculture, and the disorganization of credit.
It is impossible in this space to analyze in detail the causes of unemployment, which in Germany and in England has become truly alarming. Probably this phenomenon has been in part exaggerated, in the sense that many women are working in the factories in place of men. These displaced men swell the statistics of unemployment despite the fact that before the war the same women who are now working in the factories kept house, and no one thought of considering them unemployed. Probably also modern social legislation, — unemployment insurance in particular, — which has been rapidly developed in our days, has had the effect of increasing the evil which it was intended to cure. But this point matters little. Whatever may be the causes of unemployment, as soon as it is felt it becomes an economic and social fact with which the state has to reckon. Economically, because the unemployed live necessarily in one way or another on the collective reserve; socially, because discontent spreads easily among the unemployed and turns them into an element of social unrest — even, in extremity, of revolution.
The agricultural crisis is in certain respects less grave, and in others even more so. It is less alarming in that peasants themselves, if they are tillable to sell their products, at least are not threatened with hunger. But it is more dangerous in that the peasants in most countries form the conservative element, the stable basis of society, and if discontent begins to spread among them the very foundation of the state is likely to be shaken by it.
The agricultural crisis is partly due to a scries of exceptional crops which have brought down the prices of the products that farmers have to sell without affecting the prices of what they have to buy, so that the cost of agricultural production has remained unchanged. But it is also due to two other causes, one financial, the other political.
From the financial point of view the agricultural crisis is mainly traceable to an unsatisfactory organization of credit. A good harvest should not be a catastrophe for Europe. Indeed, it should be the opposite, if the peasants were in a condition to conserve their surplus production to provide against mediocre years. For this they need silos, and money. The silos would be built quickly enough if the money were available.
As a matter of fact, it is available. It is to bo had so readily in certain countries — for example, France, Switzerland, and Holland — that the rate of interest there has fallen almost to nothing at the very moment when the borrower must pay 14, 16, or even 20 per cent in the countries of Eastern Europe.
One of the objects of the Bank for International Settlements is indirectly to come to the aid of countries whose capital is insufficient, and to regulate international credit. But this, with the resources which the Bank has in hand, is a long and arduous task which is only at its beginning. The one prompt and effectual remedy would be to make the capitalists of prosperous countries understand that their true interest is to help the poverty-stricken lands, and that their money runs much greater risks in their own countries if revolution breaks out across the border than it does in the most unsettled region if it helps to avert revolution there. Unhappily, the world, which is beginning to be keenly attentive to the evils of national tariff barriers and to the defective circulation of goods, does not yet show signs of understanding that in the domain of finance the effects of nationalism are even more deplorable.
Another cause of the agricultural crisis on which a few words must be said is the recent dumping by the Soviets. Russia at the present moment is the only country in the world which can set its sales prices without regard to net cost, and which besides can sell abroad products of which it has not enough for its own normal consumption. These are altogether extraordinary conditions, due to a political régime brutal and arbitrary to a degree previously unknown in history. But then it happens that the Soviet Government, far from finding its interest, like other lands, in the stability and peace of the world, is concerned with revolution and upheaval.
From the first hour of the inauguration of the Bolshevist regime its leaders have taken account of the fact that they could not sustain the communist economy permanently in an altogether capitalistic world. Some day an adjustment must inevitably be made by one means or another. If Russia did not succeed in Sovietizing the capitalistic world, the capitalistic world must eventually overthrow Bolshevism in Russia. The Soviet leaders are apostolic by necessity, and it can be shown that each of the internal crises through which Bolshevism has passed has corresponded with a period of economic consolidation in other countries, while each of the economic crises in the world at large has coincided with a period of great activity in Soviet Russia. One can point in this way to the disturbances of 1921 in Germany during the crisis of that time; then the New Economic Policy when Europe had recovered from it. To-day the Bolsheviki believe that they have discovered a means of aggravating the present crisis by throwing, at the psychological moment, quantities of exports at cut prices on markets already saturated.
The effects of this method should not be exaggerated. First of all it has not yet been possible to develop it on a scale sufficiently large to play a decisive rôle in the present situation. Again, it has not been possible to apply it to all products and to all countries at once. But if excessive pessimism is unwise, excessive optimism is no less dangerous. For if the Bolsheviki are able at certain points and at certain times to disorganize the marketing of a number of staples such as wheat, they have the means of provoking irreparable catastrophes in a Europe which is already extremely unsettled.
IV
There is no doubt that of all European countries Germany is most severely threatened, both economically and socially. The risks that she runs are greater than elsewhere, and her forces of resistance much weaker. In England, where the social dangers are considerable, the forces of resistance are strong, and in the agricultural countries of Eastern Europe, where the forces of resistance are almost nonexistent, the dangers of revolution are much less great.
It is a serious mistake frequently committed by the press to consider the problems of Germany primarily from an international standpoint. It may be that for tactical reasons the German political parties at election times put this aspect of things foremost, which leads to demagoguery; but as a matter of fact the international aspect of Germany’s problems is secondary. The ordinary German, the man in the street, gives little thought to the eastern frontiers of Germany, or to the question of the war guilt. He is thinking of his job and his taxes.
Perhaps he believes, because there are interested parties to tell him so, that if his taxes have been raised and if he cannot find work it is because of reparations, or because the Young Plan imposes on the country an insupportable burden which raises the cost of production and prevents industry from exporting its products. This is false. The Young Plan does not represent 10 per cent of the German budget, and the total of arrears of the Debt do not exceed 24 per cent, while in France they rise to 51 per cent and in England to 56 per cent of the budget. The truth is that Germany, after the disaster of revolution, is in a particularly favorable situation in this respect.
But if inflation alleviated the public debt it also reduced the fortune of individuals, and here is one of the profound causes of the real trouble in Germany. Germany has survived two successive catastrophes such as find few equals in history—’the war, with four years of blockade, then inflation. The result has been a social reshuffling which has destroyed from top to bottom the ancient bourgeoisie, the very prop of the state. To-day it is calculated that 70 per cent of the German population is proletarian, of which a part still has traces of a bourgeois consciousness, but finds its interests now identical with those of the workers. Indeed, by force of circumstance this is the class on whom unemployment has fallen with the greatest severity, first of all because they were not prepared for manual toil, and not apt in accommodating themselves to it, again because those wrho once belonged to the official ranks have found it very difficult to establish themselves again in economic life, and finally because the number of young intellectuals is disproportionate to the needs of the nation.
It is from this class that the National-Socialist Party is recruited; its lists are composed of intellectuals and former officials. Add the NationalSocialists to the Communists and the Socialists, and it can be shown that 55 per cent of the deputies in the Reichstag arc to-day hostile to the capitalist system and won to the idea of revolution.
Indeed the social unrest is doubly nourished by the economic crisis on one hand and the political crisis on the other. There is no need to be astonished that Germany should be the country most permanently affected by the economic crisis. In the first place, Germany, of all the European states, depends most for her prosperity on what she sells abroad. Her invisible exports are small, and she must send out large quantities of visible exports in order to preserve her balance of payments. This is especially true since her foreign debt is relatively important, and the payment of reparations can only be financed by means of her exportable surplus. Besides, Germany indulged, in her period of prosperity, in the luxury of social legislation, for which she suffered no inconvenience as long as things were going well, but which weighed heavily on production as soon as they took a turn for the worse. The cost of production was encumbered by a series of incidental expenses which, at a time when the margin of profit was necessarily small, made the life of German industry extremely difficult.
In the political domain the situation is no less hard. At the close of the war, Germany improvised in an hour of madness a constitution in no way adapted to her traditions or her needs. The parliamentary system, which already does not function particularly well in other countries, does not function at all in a nation where parties are numerous, rigidly disciplined, with a majority in none, and where the only power of government is that which results from coalitions among adversaries equally determined in their programmes. The central government is, moreover, the more feeble because the constitution, by an inexplicable anomaly, makes it responsible for the receipts of the federated states without giving it any control over their expenditure, so that the German budget is scarcely balanced when a fresh deficit confronts the treasury, and everything has to be begun again.
Everyone in Germany acknowledges the defects of the constitution, but nobody sees any way to remedy them by legal means, and so it comes about, naturally enough, that the fomenters of dictatorships and revolutions win the ear of the crowd. If the government of Herr Brüning, which has no majority in the Reichstag and which depends on the good will of the Socialists, should collapse to-morrow, no one would know how to replace it. A dictatorship of the Right would be improbable, because it would precipitate a general strike. A dictatorship of the Left would run foul of the Reichswehr. As long as Marshal Hindenburg lives and exerts his energy, he may be able to preserve the balance of power. But the future is dark, because Germany, with her 4,000,000 unemployed, faces prolonged hardships. She vitally needs a powerful government and does not have it.
If we were at the lowest point, of the economic crisis it would be possible to hope that the impending alleviation would be reflected in men’s minds, but a number of portents show that we have not yet reached the bottom of the curve. A collapse of prices is always followed by a host of failures, which have not yet occurred. If the low price level continues, if the relief of credit is not accomplished soon, one can only wonder if the social structure of Germany will stand until the return of prosperity.
If it should not stand, what will happen in other countries? If the situation in Germany is exceptional in its gravity, it is not so in its nature. The Foreign Minister of a European state recently said to me, ‘In all this part of the continent, there is only one sound government — my own.’ This is not saying a great deal, yet one could question whether this gentleman was not more clairvoyant about other countries than about the one that he governs himself. As a matter of fact, it is not hard to see that the social condition of Austria is no more favorable than that of Germany, and for the same reasons. The political condition of Poland, governed by a fantastic dictatorship, presents no very great guaranty of stability. The other agricultural states, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria, are plunged in internal troubles which are increasing, and Yugoslavia is already torn by national strife.
I am not engaged here in making predictions. It is impossible to tell in advance what effect on the rest of Europe the outbreak of revolution in some harassed country would have, and it is equally impossible to foresee what would be the nature and circumstances of such a revolution. But we cannot be self-deceived in declaring that any social disturbance arising anywhere in Europe would upset the entire continent and render it highly inflammable. For nothing is more contagious than revolution, a fact which has just been freshly illustrated in South America.
V
The reader will ask, no doubt, if statesmen are not aware of so grave a situation, and if they have done nothing to alleviate it.
That most of them have, as a matter of fact, had their attention drawn to the dangers I have enumerated is past question. The statesmen of to-day are generally better than their reputation. Most of them are well-informed and well-meaning. The period of Machiavellian conspiracies and of plots looking toward remote fulfillment has passed, for no minister to-day can count on what to-morrow will bring forth, and all governments are compelled to live from hand to mouth. Every statesman sees individually what he ought to do, but most of them are without power, overwhelmed at once by the public opinion of those whom they represent and by the immensity of the problems which they face.
Public opinion in most European states lags noticeably behind the progress of government. We no longer live in the time when ministers had not caught up with ideas or facts. To-day, on the contrary, it is the journalists and members of parliament, and, generally speaking, all the educators of the people, who have not adjusted their minds to a world which is moving too rapidly. Public opinion has everywhere to-day a purely national character, while all economic problems have an international character, since the life of peoples rests on exchange with other peoples and every event reverberates instantly from one end of the planet to the other. When a problem arises it is envisaged solely from the point of view of national interest; no one seems to imagine for an instant that the solution adopted may have repercussions in other lands or that the prosperity of a neighbor may itself be to the national interest. When statesmen arrive at Geneva, it becomes obvious there that every problem has two sides, and often many more, and that in order to find its solution large sacrifices of national interest must be made. But they depend on governments who in turn depend on parliaments and who reflect, a public opinion of exactly the opposite belief, with no thought except to resist all along the line, and to refuse every concession.
To this difficulty, the practical manifestation of which is found in questions of parliamentary majority, — that is, of the life and death of governments, — must be added the immensity of the problems to be met, which no human brain in our times can conceive in their entirety. For a dozen years past, governments harried by difficulties incessantly renewed and incessantly changing have tried to cope day by day with the most urgent. They have intervened in every domain of economic life. They have taken measures, passed laws, each one of which could be justified in itself, but which have had repercussions no one could have foreseen. We have observed that social legislation the best grounded in justice ends by working against the interests of the laborers it seeks to protect. It would not be difficult to find in the economic domain a hundred examples, beginning with customs barriers, to show that the protection of the state is no more than a momentary protection, and ends by enfeebling and disorganizing the whole economy. Economic nationalism, with its frontiers multiplied and hampered by customs, has been a formidable agent of division and disintegration in Europe. Its effects are aggravated when measures of internal intervention are added, and to-day, when some means to relieve the economic crisis of Europe is sought, we make no end of investigations, we multiply findings, and all for the sake of arriving finally at new schemes of intervention, and so at a fresh aggravation of the trouble.
It would be unjust to end on such a pessimistic note. As a matter of fact, something has been accomplished in several directions, and we may hope that good will come of it. But all that has been done has been done slowly, and the situation is urgent.
First of all, the states most affected have gathered to discuss their common interests. They have sought to adjust them. The Conference of Budapest, followed by that of Sinaia, considered the creation of a customs union between Rumania and Yugoslavia. Czechoslovakia and Austria have asked whether it would not be to their interest to join this union. Hungary, where the conditions of production are similar to those of Rumania, no doubt would be unable to remain outside it. In this proposal, affecting a very important part of Europe from the political point of view, is a fermentation, a birth travail, the results of which cannot yet be appreciated, but which will probably form one of the essential features of the new face of Europe.
In a state of mind somewhat different, but on a larger base, Poland in her turn has summoned delegations of all the agricultural countries, and asked them to draw up a common programme for collective action.
This programme, as is generally known, looks to the establishment of a preferential treatment of the agricultural products of Europeans in Europe. But the bare announcement of such an idea immediately suggests a host of difficulties. First of all, what is Europe, and is England a part of it? Again, is it possible to reconcile preferential treatment with the mostfavored-nation clause which appears in the greater part of the commercial treaties signed by European states? And this brings us back to Geneva, where for several years these problems have been studied and where for some time past there has seemed to be a real disposition to bring them to a head. The League of Nations has often been reproached with its failures in the economic domain. When this reproach is made categorical it is very unjust; for, if the League of Nations has not accomplished all that it might have wished, it is not the fault of the League, but of the governments of which it is composed. The League, indeed, has wrought well at many points, and more than is known. What is true is that its efforts have not been crowned with success in the essential field of international economic relations, the tariff. The conference on the customs truce last spring arrived at nothing but half-measures, and the Assembly of the League in September gave an impression of weakness.
We may hope that the recent and impending meetings at Geneva of November, January, and March will have a better result. Europe has felt in her bones the chill of death, and that perhaps will make her statesmen more accessible to the idea of radical solutions. But there is no use denying that the problem as it confronts them is by its very nature extremely difficult.
VI
Europe is composed, in fact, of two kinds of states. Those mainly industrial are grouped in the central part of the continent; the rest, mainly agricultural, are distributed about the borders. At first sight this situation seems favorable, since it makes exchange possible between those countries which are industrial and consume agricultural products and those countries which arc agricultural and consume industrial products. It would be only too well if all were as simple as this. The unfortunate thing is that the industrial states, for reasons of internal politics, are governed by the peasant class. The social revolution of the nineteenth century inspired the wealthy bourgeoisie with such fear that they allied themselves in every industrial country — except in, perhaps, England — with the agricultural class, and the latter, the most numerous of the enfranchised masses, saw to it that the political régime was directed entirely according to their own interest. The result is that the industrial states arc compelled to set up an agrarian protectionism, and to shut their doors against agricultural products from outside. If they did not do this their peasant classes, which produce under difficult economic conditions, would no doubt be submerged. The social and political foundation of the state would be profoundly altered, and the nation would be drifting toward the unknown.
Conversely the agricultural states, while they have little in the way of industry, have a decided interest in developing it, because industry to-day, much more than money, is the ‘nerve of war.’ As long as nations do not truly believe in peace, as long as they must prepare for possible conflicts, they cannot give up developing their industries to the full extent of their power, and even beyond it, and making themselves as independent economically of other nations as they can. The upshot of all this is that for different reasons, but with the same result, the agricultural countries close their frontiers to industrial products and the industrial countries to agricultural products. The ideal basis of exchange which seems to exist is destroyed by its very perfection.
At bottom the problem does not seem insoluble. The quantities of products which agricultural Europe raises beyond what she can market without difficulty are small and probably not of a kind actually to threaten the existence of the peasant class in the industrial countries. In the same way the margin of production in these industrial lands is extremely limited, and a better-organized distribution of goods throughout Europe would probably suffice to put an end to a problem more serious in its nature than in its extent. But this presupposes an entente among European countries, and this in turn presupposes that the countries of other continents would not be opposed to such an agreement. These are condit ions which have by no means been realized, and there is no sign on the political horizon that they can be realized in the near future.
To tell the truth, Europe as such docs not exist either as an economic or as a political entity. It does not exist economically, because it depends for its subsistence in essential matters, for the replenishment of part of its food and for some of its industrial importations, on other continents, and cannot isolate itself from them. It depends on them especially for its exports, since Europe produces more than it can itself consume.
Politically also Europe docs not exist. It is a geographical expression which does not correspond to any true sense of community, to any feeling of solidarity among countries which everything serves to divide, especially their history and their interests. The result is that the problems which European countries face can he solved no better by the purely European plan through which M. Briand would deal with them than they can be within the larger frame of the League of Nations. The difficulties lie in the problems themselves; they belong to the European sphere, and nothing is to be gained by treating them separately. On the contrary, this would probably make their solution still more difficult.
Far from trying to settle European problems by isolation, it is proper to ask what influence could be brought to bear on them by the United States. I am not one of those who believe in isolation, and it is certainly true that a serious crisis in Europe would have its repercussions in America. Accordingly, the United States has an obvious interest from the beginning in gauging the importance of European problems.
In whatever concerns the sense of security, the United States could exercise on the European situation an altogether helpful influence, if it could be persuaded to let the world know what its policy would be toward an eventual aggressor. The efficacy of the Kellogg treaties, whose bearing is mainly preventive, would be considerably reenforced by this action, and its effect would be to make disarmament much easier and to facilitate a customs union among European countries.
But it is particularly in the economic region that the United States might exert a propitious influence in Europe. I am not thinking in the first, place of the question of the debts. Whatever its moral importance may be, it is relatively secondary to the granting of private credits to the most exhausted European states. The most acute social danger, as we have seen, exists in those countries where capital is insufficient and money rates extremely high. The gravity of the agricultural and industrial crisis has at bottom no other cause. To facilitate credit in just those states which are most exhausted would be enough to relieve a dangerous tension in the situation. This would seem on the surface a dangerous undertaking for American finance, but in actuality no operation could be more sound, for what value have the shrewdest investments if revolution breaks out in some distracted land and spreads to others?
The American bankers who granted Germany at a crucial hour a loan of $125,000,000 rendered a signal service to all of Europe. They retarded the crisis; the future will show whether they prevented it. My own feeling is that this policy to be really effective should have been extended to other exhausted countries of Eastern Europe, and followed systematically for a time.
VII
To sum up, I believe that in the domain of international relations the situation of Europe is much less discouraging than is generally thought, while in the social and economic realm it is a great, deal worse than it seems at first glance. But, to tell the truth, it is impossible to draw so sharp a distinction between the two realms, since any war would bring immediate revolution in its train, and any revolution would run the risk of provoking war.
Europe to-day is in this respect in the same situation as pre-war Russia. There is no country which could mobilize its troops without the danger of seeing them march back from the front with the Red flag at their head. But she is also in the same situation as the Europe of 1792, which the French Revolution plunged into a long series of bloody conflicts.
Yet, if there is a kind of equation between war and revolution, it does not follow that they both represent dangers of equal urgency, it seems clear to my eyes that in constantly directing the minds of European peoples toward the danger of war, pushing them toward armaments, and talking on every occasion about security, their leaders divert their attention from what ought to be the object, of their constant thoughts — the social problem. Thus they are not only kept from considering steps which might mitigate the economic crisis, the mother of discontent and social upheaval; in the attempt to make themselves economically independent, and to avert the danger of war, they are pushed into taking measures which, in the economic domain, go exactly contrary to these ends and inflame the difficulty. If industrial countries are unwilling to open their frontiers to agricultural products, it is first of all because they wish in time of war to supply their larders themselves, and if agricultural states keep their borders closed, it is because in view of war they too wish to be economically independent and selfsufficient. Thus the fear of war not only prevents military disarmament, it prevents also economic disarmament, which is a necessary foundation for the prosperity of Europe. It tends indirectly but surely to aggravate the danger of revolution — that is to say, of war.
I do not assert, because it is not my belief, that the German revolution, the preface to revolution throughout Europe, is foreordained. Nothing is inevitable in the world’s history. The German revolution has not yet occurred. It threatens, it may break out to-morrow, but again it may not break out. That depends above all else on the duration of the economic crisis. We have already survived other crises, and have emerged from them. We shall emerge also from this — but when? Everything is contained in that.
President Wilson said one day during one of the sessions of the Versailles Conference, ‘We are watching a race between peace and revolution.’ Never have these words been more strictly true than at the present hour.