The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1929 DOOMED TO WITHER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 764, 10 September 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1929 DOOMED TO WITHER

ANOTHER pretty flower of international idealism has been **■ proffered in the bud to the Assembly of the League of Nations at Geneva. This is the attractive idea of M. Briand, Premier of France, that there should be established a “United States of Europe” with, no doubt, Peace ruling as President. It is by no means a new idea, but if idealists keep striving toward their goal, there is always a chance of old ideas becoming new. The present bud of European federation may open and bloom well for a short season in the September sunshine of Switzerland, but there is every reason to expect that its fragile beauty will not last very long. Already, it is doomed to wither. There is a repoi't from Geneva today that the delegates to the Assembly are somewhat embarrassed by the French Premier’s offer. They probably do not look on M. Briand as the “Brer Fox” in the fable, but most of the delegates, it is said, are at least adopting the policy of “Brer Rabbit.” They prefer “to lay low and say nuthin’.” The cabled report uses the word “lie,” but in diplomacy that verb is supposed to he unknown. In any case, the Assembly, as a whole, does not appear to he enthusiastic about the charming idea. And there is the touch of historic irony in the reported fact that M. Briand’s plan for a United States of Europe appeared among the secret papers of M. Caillaux, a former Premier who, during the World War, was charged with treason. Ilis documents were found in a burgled safe at Florence. It is true, as an English commentator observed when M. Caillaux returned to Paris for the purpose of financially saving France, that the suspected statesman had “emerged from a political sewer,” but obviously one of his secret papers at least was good enough to keep its owner from the guillotine or a firing party, and is sufficiently noble now to be offered as the best means of saving Europe from war. Occasionally, beautiful flowering plants are raised from muck to perfection. A frank discussion of M. Briand’s suggestion will not do any harm. If all the great and little Powers he determined and are honest in their determination to outlaw war and disarm, the idea of a United States of Europe is anything hut far-fetched or foolish. It is difficult, however, to see how the nations of Europe could bring such idealism down to the field of practical polities and cultivate it as the finest flower in post-war history. In other times something of the kind was achieved, first by the Roman Empire and next by the Holy Roman Empire. Still, the ancient achievement was neither complete nbr permanent; the flower, as it were, withered and passed away. Also, for many years, it looked as though the Napoleonic conquests would make Paris greater than the Rome of ancient history, but Waterloo intervened and ended a dream of something even greater than a European Empire or a United States of Europe. Today, such a gorgeous dream is shattered at its beginning by tall tariff fences. Since the war no less than seven thousand miles of new tariff frontiers have come into existence, with protective duties raised on the average by 30 per cent. What chance has the Assembly of the League of Nations to eliminate these fiscal frontiers in order to establish commercial and industrial harmony within the wide and diverse boundaries of a United States of Europe? It has little or no prospect at all of achieving anything of the kind.

Possibly there is a strong desire among European statesmen to compose their difficulties and differences by setting up a federation of all the rival States on the Continent, with a supreme Government or Council controlling affairs from Geneva, the citadel of international idealism. Everything considered, this ideal must be placed among the remote glories and delights of posterity. In far-off days ahead civilisation may create not only a United States of Europe, but a wonderful structure of international unity; in the meantime, however, national politics holds sway, and in many of its practices it does not represent an idealistic civilisation. Before the highest achievement may be looked for, the nations of Europe will have to uproot and destroy a tremendous growth of racial and other kinds of antagonism. Enoueh at the moment to strengthen the frayed bonds of friendship.