Europe—Whither Bound? (quo Vadis Europa?)

Part 1

Produced by Al Haines

EUROPE--WHITHER BOUND?

(Quo Vadis Europa?)

Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921

STEPHEN GRAHAM

THE RYERSON PRESS

TORONTO

1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PREFATORY NOTE

The Author's gratitude is due to many people in connexion with this book--to Bishop Nicholas of Zicca and the Rev. Hugh Chapman, of the Savoy, and Col. Treloar and Major-General Sir Fabian Ware, and the Editor of the "Narodny Listi," at Prague, and Mr. Hyka,--to these and many others who helped a traveller on his way.

The letters from each capital were published in "Country Life" under the general title of Quo Vadis Europa? A few after-thoughts have now been written on "Extra Leaves," and sewn in between these letters.

No effort at an exhaustive study of any country is made here. The object of the author was to make a rapid tour from capital to capital, "keeping the taxi waiting," so to say, and thus obtain an idea of Europe as a whole. It is perhaps one of the first books of travel written from the point of view of Europe as a unity, and it is hoped it will help to make us all good Europeans.

CONTENTS

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

I. FROM ATHENS

EXTRA LEAVES

(i) On Passports and "Circulation"

II. FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (I) III. FROM CONSTANTINOPLE (II)

EXTRA LEAVES

(ii) On "Charity" and the Stagnation of Peoples

IV. FROM SOFIA V. FROM BELGRADE (I) VI. FROM BELGRADE (II) VII. FROM BUDAPEST VIII. FROM VIENNA

EXTRA LEAVES

(iii) On Money and League of Nations Currency

IX. FROM PRAGUE X. FROM WARSAW

EXTRA LEAVES

(iv) On Nationality and an Armistice Baby

Part 2

XI. FROM MUNICH XII. FROM BERLIN (I) XIII. FROM BERLIN (II)

EXTRA LEAVES

(v) On "Clay Sparrows" and the Failure of Freedom

XIV. FROM ROME XV. FROM MONTE CARLO XVI. FROM LONDON XVII. FROM PARIS

EUROPE--WHITHER BOUND?

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

I. FROM ATHENS

Europe, whither goest thou?--the poignant question of to-day. The pride of Christian culture, the greatest human achievement in history, with, as we thought before 1914, the seal of immortality set upon her, is now perhaps moving towards dissolution and death. Europe has begun a rapid decline, though no one dares to think that she will continue in it downward until she reaches the chaos and misery and barbarity from which she sprang. Affairs will presently take a turn for the better, Europe will recover her balance and resume the road of progress which she left seven years ago--prompts Hope.

"Europe must die in order to be re-born as something better"; "all must be destroyed," say the theorists of revolution. "She staggers and falls and falls and plunges," seem to say the facts with the inexorableness of Fate.

Prophecy can be left to all men--it does not alter the course of events. The historian in the future will ask what was the actual condition of Europe at this time, and it is possible to assume that he would grasp eagerly at an account of a visit by an impartial observer to all the principal capitals of Europe in the year 1921. An effort to record what Europe looks like now, a series of true reflections and verbal photographs of swirling humanity at the great congregating places, the capitals, cannot but be of value. So with the motto: "See all: reserve your judgment," let us proceed.

The winds of the mountains traverse the well-shod civilization of a great city. At the end of each of the long streets rises a mountain, and on the mountain rest the clouds and the sky. You walk outwards, and climb the nearest and most prominent of the heights to the Acropolis, to the mighty slabs of the marble of the Parthenon, simple and pure in the mountain air, a point of view where it is always morning, and you look down from the ancient Athens to the new. Your eyes rest on modern Athens all built in white stone, and extensive and handsome in a setting of mountains and sea, but the heart refuses to travel with the eyes. The heart remains in the ancient city, and there, somehow, is perfect happiness, and it is a place in which to abide.

Not without some sacred thought does one place one's feet upon the bare rock where walked the bright spirits of ancient Athens. The morning sun of Europe, the dawning vision of all that we Europeans could be or mean, dawns again in the soul. As an old or invalid man, or one at least who in middle years has sinned and gone astray, one looks back to the innocence and promise of childhood. Here shone the light of our being undimmed; here was kindled in Europe the faith of the ideal. Yonder is Mars Hill from which St. Paul showed the new way when the light was growing dim. For Greece identified man in part with the Divine, but the new religion gave forgetful humanity its altar of remembrance, affirming that we do not belong to the beasts that perish but are affiliated to the Almighty.

It is perhaps strange that to-day the city which was the cradle of the ideal is a city where there are no ideals at all--either old or new, where Plato now means nothing, where even Bolshevism is not heard of. S----, who took his bachelorate on divinity at Oxford, is writing a sympathetic treatise on Nietzsche and Christianity for his doctorate at the University of Athens. But what a mistake! What an unfortunate choice of place and theme! Who was Nietzsche? "I have changed my title to 'Nietzsche as the Devil'" says S----. "Ah, that's better," says his professor, "that we can understand."

You come down from the heights into the modern city, and you behold the rising civilization of a new Greece. Here without question is a most pleasant city, with acacia avenues and white houses and full-bosomed abundant orange-trees hanging their golden fruits. Thus happily bowered, merchants and bankers pursue their avocations, and shopkeepers display their wares in a pleasant array of modern shops. On the streets walk leisurely an indolent and elegant people; the dark women are especially chic and it must be said refined and restrained, and not so seductive in appearance as the South would suggest. You see also at the many open-air cafes and in the street a very distinguished-looking type of man with finely cut features and plentiful iron-grey hair. You surmise that you are looking upon the most indolent people in the world--not lazy like Russians or Irish, but elegantly indolent, walking so slowly, playing meditatively with their beads--for nearly every man carries his string of jet or amber beads, which he mechanically tells, though without a thought of prayer. They walk with half-closed eyes, and whilst they seem to be thinking, they are but taking a passive pleasure in existence. They sit down together at their cafes which debouch upon the streets, and sip the sweetest of coffee, and light their cigarettes, and regard the world which passes slowly by. There are all manner of mendicants and of musicians flitting to and fro in the sun, like shabby butterflies, and the elegant Greek says "No" to them, not by sound of voice, but by the slightest elevation of the eyebrows and movement of the eye. He sits and looks occasionally at the wonderful hills above him, so fresh, so virginal; but he does not, as an Englishman might do, pay quickly and go out and go up. The modern Greek would never build so high as the Acropolis.

You do not hear a good word said for the Greek by any race in Europe. Italians, French, Serbs, Bulgars, Turks, and even British are all more or less anti-Greek. Whilst it seems true to say that you scarcely find any nation that likes any other nation, yet the antipathy towards the Greek seems more marked than most others. Whatever illfeeling or irritative may be in the air is readily vented upon the Greek. Despite all this, however, the new Greeks are a slowly but steadily rising and prospering people. One hundred years ago they obtained their liberation from the Turk. The Turkish mind was shown to be incapable of absorbing Europeanism. The light of the nineteenth century scared the night-bird back to Asia, and there arose Serbs, and Bulgars, and Roumanians as European nations, and Greece once more arose. Modern civilization suits the Greek much more than it does the Turk. He can understand it and utilize it. Because of it he has risen and perchance will rise. The Greeks are by far the cleverest people in the Balkans, and are perhaps the cleverest of the Mediterranean nations as well.

The Greek temperament swings between the dead calm and passionless on the one hand, to the violent and maniacal on the other. The nation is still convalescent, its development is slow, and it is impossible to say how far new Greece will develop. But its strength lies in its serpentine stillness and ancient unforgotten craft, and its weakness in that absence of ideals and in the sudden violence of partizanship which suggest pathological decay. What Greece does is generally subtle and shrewd; what she says is often madness. She has little sense of humour, and takes offence where other nations would laugh. Thus she wins by statecraft and loses by politics. In thought, and in the spoken word, Greece is outmatched for instance by the Slavs; but in silent action and in administrative policy Greece more often excels her neighbours. You will always hear odious comparisons made in the Near East between Greek and Turk, to the disadvantage of the former. But it seems rather absurd. The Turk, at his best, is a child or a legendary hero--not one of ourselves--whereas the Greek is a serious European with a race-consciousness of civilization thousands of years old.

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