THE FUTURE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 146, 25 August 1941, Page 5

THE FUTURE

WE MUST NOT BE ILLOGICAL

"It is illogical to proclaim on the J one hand our passionate faith in individual freedom, and at the l same time to hint that we hope to see that freedom restricted by some supranational organisation to which European nations are to be compelled to belong and which will therefore deprive men of political freedom at its highest potential. We have, thank goodness, done nothing so foolish and we shall not do so. We have yet, however, to make clear to our potential. allies in the struggle against .Germany that we repudiate such ideas emphatically and finally as part of our war aims. If it took half a century of controversy, and a bitter civil war, of which the scars still remain 70 years after, to maintain the American Union, where the conditions were the most favourable ever known in history for a federal experiment, and if even our own British Commonwealth contains dissident minorities in two Dominions, what chance is there of creating a European Federation in our day and generation? In Europe there is no common language, the economic interests of the different regions are entirely different, and there are cleavages of race, religion and culture which have deepened steadily for centuries. The history

-uDo OAif }s«i oij} guunp aclojnvr To luries is the history of the birth, growth and consolidation of nation states. The era of nationality may he an interim stage in the long process of historical evolution, but it is certainly not a stage which has yet been passed in Europe."-—Mr Douglas Jerrokl, in his new book, *'Bri.fain and Europe, 1900-1940."