EUROPEAN CONFEDERATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1941, Page 6

EUROPEAN CONFEDERATION

POSSIBILITIES OF CO-OPERATION.

“How are we going to make a ’ system of peace with the Germans, so poisoned on the one hand, and all the other nations loathing them? It is going to be a big job,” said the late Dr. Ramsay Muir in an address at Birmingham. “The problem cannot be solved by passing sentimental resolutions or indulging in easy idealism. My own particular solution is one which President Benes has adopted. In the first 'place, the impotence of the little States must be amended by bringing about federations of those that are sufficiently near to one another and akin in ideas. At the end of the war these States will be more ready to consider the possibility of co-operation. What are we going to do with Germany? Some people suggest splitting her up into a lot of small States. But they would still be neighbours, and would all value the memory of the days when Germany was great and strong. In a few years they would come together again, feeling bitter toward those who had undone the work of the 19th century. That is one thing we shall never succeed in carrying out, and I hope we shall never try. I believe if you cut off from Prussia all those parts of the real old Germany west of the Elbe, you would reduce Prussia and Berlin to their proper proportions in Germany, and make Prussia a separate State in a Germanic federation. Such a Germany would still be strong, and we should have to have safeguards against the growth of this insane megalomania. For that purpose we need not a federation, but a confederation of Governments, bound by strict treaty terms for any case when military force is required. I believe a confederation of Europe, or something of that order, is the only way in which the danger that will haunt us in Germany for half a century will be averted. The danger from any similar quarter will also be averted. When we think about the future, let. us realise the frantic difficulties of the problem we have to deal with, and the extraordinary danger of allowing ourselves to be satisfied by vague abstractions. Let us remember that some practical, constructive scheme is not beyond the wit ot man.