WE DIE FOR THE STATUS QUO?

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 257, 10 November 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

WE DIE FOR THE STATUS QUO?

way, down to picturesque midgetstates like Liechtenstein. Like the bears in the fairy tale, Europe's big, middle-sized and baby “bears” all have very positive ideas about which chairs, beds and porridge-bowls belong to them. The relationship of big bear to little bear and of big bears to each other is known as the status quo. It is taut, delicate, and incredibly complex. 1 ... 100 YEAR “FREEZE” > The pattern imposed on ‘.the Continent by Metternich at the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 lasted exactly a hundred years. It worked, after a fashion. There were plenty of local wars, but no big one until the World War. Meanwhile the French, penned up in Europe, had escaped through a back door and built up a flourishing overseas empire. In 1848, in a wave of democratic nationalism, they swept out their peace-loving king and proclaimed a Republic. . . . FIRST FASCIST? The new President, Louis Napoleon (who later staged a coup d’etat and became Emperor Napoleon III.) was a rather comic fellow. Elected on the strength of his name and some socialistic pamphlets he had written in jail, he took office at a time when France was suffering from two ills: business stagnation, and Red scares. Safely in power, Louis Napoleon quickly made himself a dictator. For support, he relied on the great industrialists and land owners. Vast public works were undertaken. Meanwhile, to keep his people from thinking about their lack of freedom,, the Emperor regaled them with festivals and, in 1855, with a great world's fair.

Though he continually proclaimed his fondness for peace, Louis Napoleon acted like an aggressor. A rash, headstrong dreamer, he made one blunder after another. Finally, in 1870, he blundered into declaring war on Prussia. Britain stayed neutral. France was crushingly defeated.

... IMPERIALISM Under the Third Republic, i France crawled painfully back to I health. Once again found comfort in her empire. Frenchmen began to send troops and money to Tunisia, in North Africa, to Somaliland and Madagascar. Bismarck united Prussia with the smaller German states into a Greater Germany, and the new nation became the cock of the European walk. All the little nations remodelled their armies on the German model. Young Wilhelm 11. ascended the throne and Germans began to talk of Pan-Germanism, of the Drang nach Osten —a drive to the Balkan and Mohammedan East — and of a Mitteleuropa that would unite all the countries of central Europe under German economic tutelage. By the end of last century Europe was in much the’same kind of mess that it is in to-day. Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, had pushed into Russia’s historic sphere of influence, the Balkans. Russia had countered by allying herself with France. Britain and Italy, though they had reached an agreement on the Mediterranean j status quo, were warily eyeing : each other’s every move. The air k v.-fl*;:-filll.of- fear and fatalism. »our, Tsar Nicholas g which, for dramonly be compared Roosevelt’s recent (f and Mussolini h assurances that noc invade the terrif torv or possessions of thirty-one : nations (including every indepen--1 dent state in Europe and parts of L. Asia and Africa) and pledging the United States to take part in trade and disarmament conferences. Nicholas’s surprising act was to invite the nations to lay down their arms by concerted action.

A conference met at 1 he Hague in 1899. It did not lead to disarmament. It did not prevent the Boer war in 1899. or the RussoJapanese war in 1905, or the Italian expedition on Libya in 1911, or the Balkan wars of 1912 and ’ls. It did, however, hold off a world-wide explosion for fifteen years, and it created the Permanent Court of International Justice the first permanent, instrument in the history of the world set up to adjust disputes by international law rather than to redistribute territory won by arms. It was the embryo of Woodrow Wilson’s vision; the first step to a status quo based on co-operation, not force . . . VERSAILLES . What happened when the explosion came is an old story. At

Versailles, France destroyed the: Metternich system once and for; all arid, imposed oneprif' her: o#ri.J Its aim : to of, France and serve peace by foundly militarised tion. In vain W pleaded that “peace foT'ceiffliipbri the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished, would rest upon quicksand.” In vain lie prophesied: . “The passions of this world are not dead; the rivalries of the world .. have not cooled; they have heen rendered hotter than ever. Unless there is sureness of combined action before wrong is attempted, wrong will be attempted just as soon as the mbsf"ambitious nations can recover from the financial stress of war.” Wilson's words were smothered by the thinking habits of centuries. France, despised and encircled by Germans since the Napoleonic wars, wanted revenge. Austria, one of the six.,big prewar Powers, was chopped down to a fragment and forbidden to join Germany. Three sizeable new French allies Poland, Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia were set up in central Europe to keep Germany in her place. Bits of Germany’s north and west borders were chipped off a&d given to Belgium, Denmark France herself. The whole ne ; W map was sanctified by the coveriant of the League of Nations. The United States —the one nation which, by its detached point of view, might have made the League genuinely co-operative • refused to join, and Geneva became a mere annex for the French and British Foreign Offices.

. . . HITLER Now it was France who strutted in the limelight; the French army whose pattern all the little nations copied. Germany humiliated, starving and exposed on every frontier—became a Republic, and in time found for herself a Louis Napoleon. He was a comic little fellow who had gone to jail and written a book, and who had a dream of empire. So far, Adolf Hitler has been considerably more successful in his foreign policy than Napoleon 111 ever was, but his methods are about the same, with modern improvements.

The spectacle of a world-war is like a slow motion movie of a dynamited mountain. Bit by bit, the status quo crumbles as dictators’ troops march into Ethiopia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Albania. A forgotten boulder, whose name is Spain, detaches itself and goes roaring down the mountain. A crack appears in Palestine, a deep fissure in China. Naturally, the smallest and weakest go first. In Europe, three countries have gone already. Over the seventeen small nations left on the Continent, the muzzle of a cannon looms. Most of these small Powers fall logically into two groups: contented and ambitious. The Contented Seven lie on or near the Atlantic Coast. Five of them have overseas possessions, and one —the Netherlands —owns an empire of enormous wealth. The sympathies of all seven are secretly with their good friend, customer and fellow-democracy. Britain, but as historic neutrals

ijthey hope to avoid choosing jfejjijles. After the capital of Norssy, they call themselves the Qslo Powers: Belgium, Luxemibtirg, the Netherlands, Finland, [Denmark, Norway and Sweden. s|sThe six ambitious small Powers r bf Europe lie in central Europe, between Russia and Germany. All are poor countries with primitive living standards. All are admitted or veiled dictatorships. Their names are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, I3ulgaria and Greece. Four small nations decline to be classified: Portugal is a small country, but her tattered colonial empire includes bits of India, China, Africa, an island off Australia and scattered islands in the Atlantic. In 1926 a military coup d’etat dislodged the democratic government and Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, an ex-professor of economics, became dictator. Though Portugal staunchly supported Nationalist Spain during the civil war, she is polishing up an old alliance with Britain these days, as Italy’s occupation of Albania proves that even friends of the Rome-Berlin axis are in danger, if they happen to be small friends.

Turkey, straddling the Dardanelles, is territorially a small Power in Europe, but a big Power in Asia Minor. By her position between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, she is one of the most strategically important countries on earth. Her trade is chiefly with Germany, but her security is with the Allies.

Switzerland, astride the Alps, has been since 1291 a free confederation run by the purest form of democracy—the hand vote and the town meeting. Contented rather than ambitious, Switzerland nonetheless does not belong to the Oslo group because her neutrality is so passionate that she will not even line up with other neutrals.

Liechtenstein, between ' Switzerland and Austria, hardly deserves to be called a Power at all, except that it was mentioned by Roosevelt in the list of thirtyone independent States which he asked Hitler and Mussolini not to invade. Like Andorra (between France and Spain), Monaco (on the French Riviera), San Marino (completely surrounded by Italy), and to some extent Luxemburg, Liechtenstein is more of an historical curiosity than a factor in the status quo. As the situation stands, Germany and Italy are unquestionably poor and overcrowded countries. Britain and France certainly won their empires by methods as tough as those of any totalitarian government. Honestly confused, many Americans would like to cry to Europe: “A plague o’ both your houses!” Unfortunately, isolation is not easy. America’s most elemental instincts of self-pre-servation put her sympathies with the status quo Powers, for these are the Powers that want peace, and peace is what America wants. To side with the antistatus quo Powers would be to foster a form of government abhorring every liberty that Americans hold dear. And yet a status quo glaring with inequalities will breed war, even if a few nations want peace.