Peaceless Europe | Page 3

darkened
and overcast by intrigues, secret agreements and dissimulated plots:
fresh menaces of war and fresh explosions of dissatisfaction.
Nothing can help the cause of peace more than giving a full knowledge
of the real situation to the various peoples. Errors thrive in darkness
while truth walks abroad in the full light of day. It has been my
intention to lay before the public those great controversies which
cannot merely form the object of diplomatic notes or of posthumous
books presented to Parliament in a more or less incomplete condition
after events have become irreparable.
The sense of a common danger, threatening all alike, will prove the
most persuasive factor in swerving us from the perilous route which we
are now following.
As a result of the War the bonds of economic solidarity have been torn
asunder: the losers in the War must not only make good their own
losses, but, according to the treaties, are expected to pay for all the
damage which the War has caused. Meanwhile all the countries of
Europe have only one prevailing fear: German competition. In order to
pay the indemnities imposed upon her (and she can only do it by
exporting goods), Germany is obliged to produce at the lowest possible
cost, which necessitates the maximum of technical progress. But
exports at low cost must in the long run prove detrimental, if not
destructive, to the commerce of neutral countries, and even to that of
the victors. Thus in all tariffs which have already been published or
which are in course of preparation there is one prevailing object in view:

that of reducing German competition, which practically amounts to
rendering it impossible for her to pay the War indemnity.
If winners and losers were to abandon war-time ideas for a while, and,
rather, were to persuade themselves that the oppression of the
vanquished cannot be lasting, and that there is no other logical way out
of the difficulty but that of small indemnities payable in a few years,
debiting to the losers in tolerable proportion all debts contracted
towards Great Britain and the United States, the European situation
would immediately improve.
Why is Europe still in such a state of economic disorder? Because the
confusion of moral ideas persists. In many countries nerves are still as
tense as a bowstring, and the language of hatred still prevails. For some
countries, as for some social groups, war has not yet ceased to be. One
hears now in the countries of the victors the same arguments used as
were current coin in Germany before the War and during the first
phases of the War; only now and then, more as a question of habit than
because they are truly felt, we hear the words justice, peace, and
democracy.
Why is the present state of discomfort and dissatisfaction on the
increase? Because almost everywhere in Continental Europe, in the
countries which have emerged from the War, the rate of production is
below the rate of consumption, and many social groups, instead of
producing more, plan to possess themselves with violence of the wealth
produced by others. At home, the social classes, unable to resist, are
threatened; abroad, the vanquished, equally unable to resist, are
menaced, but in the very menace it is easy to discern the anxiety of the
winners. Confusion, discomfort and dissatisfaction thus grow apace.
The problem of Europe is above all a moral problem. A great step
toward its solution will have been accomplished when winners and
losers persuade themselves that only by a common effort can they be
saved, and that the best enemy indemnity consists in peace and joint
labour. Now that the enemy has lost all he possessed and threatens to
make us lose the fruits of victory, one thing is above all others
necessary: the resumption, not only of the language, but of the ideas of

peace;
During one of the last international conferences at which I was present,
and over which I presided, at San Remo, after a long exchange of views
with the British and French Premiers, Lloyd George and Millerand, the
American journalists asked me to give them my ideas on peace: "What
is the most necessary thing for the maintenance of peace?" they
inquired.
"One thing only," I replied, "is necessary. Europe must smile once
more." Smiles have vanished from every lip; nothing has remained but
hatred, menaces and nervous excitement.
When Europe shall smile again she will "rediscover" her political peace
ideas and will drink once more at the spring of life. Class struggles at
home, in their acutest form, are like the competition of nationalism
abroad: explosions of cupidity, masked by the pretext of the country's
greatness.
The deeply rooted economic crisis, which threatens and prepares new
wars, the deeply rooted social crisis, which threatens