BRITAIN AND THE CONTINENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 408, 18 April 1947, Page 11

BRITAIN AND THE CONTINENT

The last of four talks on British Foreign Policy given in the BBC's

Third Programme

by

A J. P

TAYLOR

, Fellow of Magdalen

College, Oxford.

few weeks about British relations with the two Great Powers, America and Russia. Perhaps you will feel that this is a very narrow way of discussing foreign policy, that I have left out in fact most of the world. The constitution of the United Nations recognises not three Great Powers but five; it includes France and China. All the same, at present-and I have been trying to say all along that foreign policy is an affair of the present, not of the world as it used to be or as we: should like it to be-neither China nor France is a Great ‘Power like the other three: neither is great in power. I do not know enough about the Far East to know whether or when China will become a Great Power; I suspect that America would not welcome a truly independent and powerful China, and perhaps Russia would not either. But it is plain enough that world affairs would be made enormously easier if France recovered something of her old position. The French have more diplomatic skill and experience than any of the present Big Three, and they understand different points of view better. France is both continental and maritime, both revolutionary and conservative, or, if you like, both communist and clerical; and -perhaps most important of all-the French have no illusions about Germany, and Germany is likely to’ be the second biggest problem in international affairs for a long time to come. China is the biggest, of course. It is easy to agree that the recovery of France should be one of the main aims of British foreign policy; but there is really. not much we can do about it-only the French can restore the French spirit. I think-and caring, as I do, for France more than for any other foreign country, I have thought ] HAVE been talking these last

about it a good deal-we can influence French politics in two ways. One thing we can do is to show (I think the present Government is showing) that a planned economy can be built up in a free country-that is something that has never been done before. And the other (and this is more strictly a matter of foreign policy)-the other thing we can do to influence French politics is not to give the impression that we have slipped back into the policy of 20 years ago when we allowed the revival of a strong Germany in order to save ourselves trouble in Europe. The French, and all the European countries who experienced German occupation, still live under the shadow of the German danger, and they are quite right-Germany has still all the resources of industry and manpower which made her the tyrant of Europe. France, too, made plenty of blunders in dealing with Germany before the late war; and the French perhaps emphasise our blunders in order to conceal their own. If we make the recovery of Germany the key to the recovery of Europe, we shall lose Europe and, in so doing, I think, lose our greatest source of strength. Europe is Still Important That brings me on to what I wanted to talk about here, British policy in regard to Europe. It is perfectly true that Europe js not so important in the world as it used to be, but it is still very important to us, in fact more important than it has ever been. What I have been trying to say in previous weeks is that the end of our naval supremacy must involve, sooner or later, a fundamental change in our foreign policy. The world is no longer our oyster. Certainly the more we plan our change of policy, the more gradual it can be. At present, it seems to me, British policy is without a guiding line in the world outside Europe-sometimes it tries to do too much and sometimes too little. On the one hand, in the Middle East, we have been trying to carry a tremendous burden, and defending interests no longer essential to us; or rather not more essential to us than they are to others, that is, both to the Russians and to the Americans. On the other hand, in the Far East, as far as we can tell from reading reports of people back from ‘there recently, we have abdicated altogether, ceased to count or even to try. It is really extraordinary to think that 100 or even 50 years ago we were by far the greatest of Far Eastern powers and now we carry as little weight as Holland, who for 200 years has not claimed to be a Great Power. We have acquiesced in the American monopoly of the Pacific, and of Japan; we have allowed America to become the protector of the present government of China and to impose on China American economic ideas. Of course it is a mistake to think that we could oppose America in the Far East; and incidentally I thought that the Labour critics of foreign policy (with whose views, as you will imagine, I had a good deal of sympathy on other grounds), were asking the impossible ‘when they wanted British policy to make a stand-diplomatically of courseagainst America in China and the Pacific. That is thinking in terms of a balance of

forces which no longer exists. All the same, we could count for something in the Far East and especially we could appeal to that part of American opinion which dislikes the present imperialistic course. Passing of the Balance of Power Still, whether we intend it or not, we are retreating in the outer world and that makes our relations with Europe all the more important. Losing command of | the seas, we are fated to become part of Europe ourselves. .In the past we asked only something. negative of Europe, to be left undisturbed; and the method we used was the Balance of Power. Now the Balance of Power in Europe has gone, never to return. The result of defeating Germany is that we have to have a European policy; this is not a matter of choice, we are in Europe whether we like it or not-the only choice is between having a good policy and having a bad one. The only possible way in which we, and the Americans too, could withdraw from Europe, would be if there was a reconciliation between Germany and France, in fact between Germany and her former victims. Just think what that means: on the one hand, the Germans would have to give-up all idea of renewing their career of conquest and they would. have to give it up in such a way that we all believed it. Do you see any signs of that? Why, even at this moment of extreme prostration, the German political leaders are saying that they will not accept Germany’s eastern frontier-that is a delayed action declaration of war. And the other condition of European union, even if this were achieved, is that the European peoples must-be willing to acquiesce in the gradual German. domination of Europe that is bound to follow from their econdmic supremacy. That will not happen either, I have got here to the heart ofthe European problem: Germany, in my view, must cease to be the economic giant of the European continent. One way, the way that we have tried since Potsdam-though very half-heartedly-is to cut Germany down. Now, we have found that too difficult and, in making our recent bargain with the Americans we have turned against it: we are now preparing to put Germany back on her feet. But that is not a policy: it is a confession of failure. What we are preparing to do is to groom Germany for the third World War. But there is an--other way: not of cutting Germany down but of raising the rest of Europe up. That, in my opinion, is the only possible policy for this country to follow; when I say the only possible policy, I do not mean that we shall necessarily follow it, but that it is the only policy which will give satisfactory results. America is Against Planning Not that it is an easy policy: no policy is that.is trying to control events insttad of being controlled by them. It is a policy which we cannot work with America. America, in her present political mood, has set her face against all forms of planning. American policy is the policy of Canning: "Every nation for itself and God for us all!" a policy possible only for the greatest industrial Power. The most we can hope from the Americans is that they will not oppose plans for the economic reconstruction of Europe-and even that I am not sure (continued on next page)’

BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

(continued from previous page) about. At any rate, the more opposed the Americatis are to a planned Europeati economy, the more we néed to cooperate with Russia. The idea of having a European policy without Russia, or still worsé, which could aim at excluding Russia from Europe does not thake sense: there are enough Communists in every country in Europe to wreck such a scheme. And not only Communists but the great majority of the inhabitants of Europe know that, with Russia left out, a united Europe will give them the Germans as masters and therefore they will not work for it. Advocating such a policy condemns you to the society of Quislings, and Vichyites, the men who originated the plan of excluding Russia from Europe under German leadership; and you've only to look at the sort of people who claim to be pro-British to see where we would land up-we have worked it out to the end in Greece, and the result does no credit to our principles. I am not saying that carrying out a Socialist reconstrtiction of Europe-and that is what it would amount to-would solve all -our difficulties. Of course it would not. It would, I think, go a long way to sodlvirig the ptoblem of our security, which cannot rest any miore on command of the seas. We can now only be secufé if there is a stable European order of which both we and the Russiaris must be a part. But it would be foolish to preted that this. densely populated continent, and still mote densely populated island, can be a_ self-contained, economic unit. That is why we cannot shift over to a new policy overnight. But there is an extension of the European coftifient which in the changing cifcumstahces is likely to bécotne more a part of Europe and less a part of the otiter wotld. That is Africa; that is whére we can find the new undeveloped sources of strétigth which the Americans fotind in theit vast cotitifient and which the Russiatis até beginning to find in Soviet Asia. Whoever develops Africa will alter the balance of world power in his favour; but it is a task beyond the strength of any single Europea power and it is certainly beyond the capacity of private enterprisé. It can only be done by a Socialist Europe, not seeking to exploit

the Africans, but to bting them into Socialist partnership. There, too, there is much that we could learn from Soviet experience. No Illusions About Communism There’s one thing, though, that we cannot learn from Soviet experience and, that other people can learn from us, in fact we owe it to the world to help them to learn it. The main object of British policy must be peace and prosperity; but we should make nonsense of our history if we were satisfied with that. For us-and this is not just a matter of British hypocrisy-a cynical or immoral foreign policy would not be, over a period of years, a possible policy. That is why many people honestly feel that, whatever advantages to the balance of world power there are in co-operating with Russia, we cannot do it; it would compel us to acquiesce in all the tyrannies of communism. I can understand the feeling. Good Lord, I have no illus sions about what life is like under a communist system for anyone who thinks for himself; I would have been liquidated long ago. But all the same, I think that the way to overcome the evils of communism is to work with thé communists and not against them-I do not mean in this couritry, they count for nothing here, I méan on the continent of Europe. The greatest disaster in modern, European history was the failure of the revolutions in 1848; and they failed for a very simple réason: the men who believed jn political liberty-in freedom of expression dnd the right of everyone to vote and so on-turned against the men who wanted better economic conditions (what they called the right to work). We avoided that conflict in this country and that is why we are so much better off politically than anywhere else in the world, But if once we get into the position of saying that free speech and free enterprise go together, we shall not save free enterprise; we shall doom freedom of speech. In other words, men are not prepared any longer to buy free speech at the price of poverty and unemployment. The answer to communism is not anti-communism; the answer is to do without a secret police what the Communists promise to do with a secret ' police-and to do it better.