NEW ORDER FOR EUROPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1941, Page 7

NEW ORDER FOR EUROPE

PRACTICAL DIFFICULTIES. FACTOR OF CO-OPERATION. The contention that Britain should announce a concrete plan for a New Order for Europe is taken by a correspondent in the “Spectator.” Those who raise this cry do not seem to me, he writes, to recognise the vital distinction between the British position in regard to a New Order and Hitler’s. Hitler can state precisely what the New Order of Europe is to be because he conceives of himself imposing that order. On the other hand, the whole point of our contention is that we do not desire to impose any order, but secure the liberty for the several nations to determine their own political life. No doubt we ought already to be considering what action we are going to take in the event of our beating Nazidom. But it is in regard to our own affairs that we shall have freedom of choice, and our immediate problem will be how to order our own national life so that it may be free from the evils which have beset it in the past. True, our own national life cannot be happy unless the world as a whole is in a satisfactory state, but in regard to other nations we can do no more than suggest the order which appears to us the best, and intimate our willingness to- conform to that order if they are willing. It is, I think, an illusion that we can at this stage put forward a “blueprint.” The first question . confronting the nations now under the German yoke, if they are set free, will be to what extent and in what way they will combine. But this question cannot be answered till we know what kind of Germany we are going to have. If Germany remains a danger, some kind of combination among the other nations—league of federation—will be a necessity. But if the German danger is eliminated there seems no reason why the variety of numerous separate sovereign States should not continue in Europe, provided they make, general arrangements for affairs of common interest on the analogy of our postal arrangements before the war.