Part 4

During the Triple Alliance Italy built up all her industries, she consolidated her national unity and prepared her economic transformation, which was fraught with considerable difficulties. Suddenly her sons spread all over the world, stimulated by the fecundity of their race and by the narrowness of their fields.

The greater States were surrounded by minor nations which had achieved considerable wealth and great prosperity.

Europe throughout her history had never been so rich, so far advanced on the road to progress, above all so united and living in her unity; as regards production and exchanges she was really a living unity. The vital lymph was not limited to this or that country, but flowed with an even current through the veins and arteries of the various nations through the great organizations of capital and labour, promoting a continuous and increasing solidarity among all the parties concerned.

In fact, the idea of solidarity had greatly progressed: economic, moral and spiritual solidarity.

Moreover, the idea of peace, although threatened by military oligarchies and by industrial corners, was firmly based on the sentiments of the great majority. The strain of barbaric blood which still ferments in many populations of Central Europe constituted--it is true--a standing menace; but no one dreamt that the threat was about to be followed, lightning like, by facts, and that we were on the eve of a catastrophe.

Europe had forgotten what hunger meant. Never had Europe had at her disposal such abundant economic resources or a greater increase in wealth.

Wealth is not our final object in life. But a minimum of means is an indispensable condition of life and happiness. Excessive wealth may lead both to moral elevation and to depression and ruin.

Europe had not only increased her wealth but developed the solidarity of her interests. Europe is a small continent, about as large as Canada or the United States of America. But her economic ties and interests had been steadily on the increase.

Now the development of her wealth meant for Europe the development of her moral ideas and of her social life and aspirations. We admire a country not so much for its wealth as for the works of civilization which that wealth enables it to accomplish.

Although peace be the aspiration of all peoples, even as physical health is the aspiration of all living beings, there are wars which cannot be avoided, as there are diseases which help us to overcome an organic crisis to which we might otherwise succumb. War and peace cannot be regarded as absolutely bad or absolutely good and desirable; war is often waged in order to secure peace. In certain cases war is not only a necessary condition of life but may be an indispensable condition towards progress.

We must consider and analyse the sentiments and psychological causes which bring about a war. A war waged to redeem its independence by a nation downtrodden by another nation is perfectly legitimate, even from the point of view of abstract morality. A war which has for its object the conquest of political or religious liberty cannot be condemned even by the most confirmed pacificist.

Taken as a whole, the wars fought in the nineteenth century, wars of nationality, of independence, of unity, even colonial wars, were of a character far less odious than that of the great conflict which has devastated Europe and upset the economic conditions of the world. It has not only been the greatest war in history, but in its consequences it threatens to prove the worst war which has ravaged Europe in modern times.

After nearly every nineteenth-century war there has been a marked revival of human activity. But this unprecedented clash of peoples has reduced the energy of all; it has darkened the minds of men, and spread the spirit of violence.

Europe will be able to make up for her losses in lives and wealth. Time heals even the most painful wounds. But one thing she has lost which, if she does not succeed in recovering it, must necessarily lead to her decline and fall: the spirit of solidarity.

After the victory of the Entente the microbes of hate have developed and flourished in special cultures, consisting of national egotism, imperialism, and a mania for conquest and expansion.

The peace treaties imposed on the vanquished are nothing but arms of oppression. What more could Germany herself have done had she won the War? Perhaps her terms would have been more lenient, certainly not harder, as she would have understood that conditions such as we have imposed on the losers are simply inapplicable.

Three years have elapsed since the end of the War, two since the conclusion of peace, nevertheless Europe has still more men under arms than in pre-war times. The sentiment of nationality, twisted and transformed into nationalism, aims at the subjugation and depression of other peoples. No civilized co-existence is possible where each nation proposes to harm instead of helping its neighbour.

The spread of hatred among peoples has everywhere rendered more difficult the internal relations between social classes and the economic life of each country. Fearing a repetition of armed conflicts, and owing to that spirit of unrest and intolerance engendered everywhere by the War, workers are becoming every day more exacting. They, too, claim their share of the spoils; they, too, clamour for enemy indemnities. The same manifestations of hate, the same violence of language, spread from people to people and from class to class.

This tremendous War, which the peoples of Europe have fought and suffered, has not only bled the losers almost to death, but it has deeply perturbed the very life and existence of the victors. It has not produced a single manifestation of art or a single moral affirmation. For the last seven years the universities of Europe appear to be stricken with paralysis: not one outstanding personality has been revealed.

In almost every country the War has brought a sense of internal dissolution: everywhere this disquieting phenomenon is more or less noticeable. With the exception, perhaps, of Great Britain, whose privileged insular situation, enormous mercantile navy and flourishing trade in coal have enabled her to resume her pre-war economic existence almost entirely, no country has emerged scatheless from the War. The rates of exchange soar daily to fantastic heights, and insuperable barriers to the commerce of European nations are being created. People work less than they did in pre-war times, but everywhere a tendency is noticeable to consume more. Austria, Germany, Italy, France are not different phenomena, but different manifestations and phases of the same phenomenon.

Before the War Europe, in spite of her great sub-divisions, represented a living economic whole. To-day there are not only victors and vanquished, but currents of hate, ferments of violence, a hungering after conquests, an unscrupulous cornering of raw materials carried out brutally and almost ostentatiously in the name of the rights of victory: a situation which renders production, let alone its development and increase, utterly impossible.

The treaty system as applied after the War has divided Europe into two distinct parts: the losers, held under the military and economic control of the victors, are expected to produce not only enough for their own needs, but to provide a super-production in order to indemnify the winners for all the losses and damages sustained on account of the War. The victors, bound together in what is supposed to be a permanent alliance for the protection of their common interests, are supposed to exercise a military action of oppression and control over the losers until the full payment of the indemnity. Another part of Europe is in a state of revolutionary ferment, and the Entente Powers have, by their attitude, rather tended to aggravate than to improve the situation.

Europe can only recover her peace of mind by remembering that the War is over and done with. Unfortunately, the treaty system not only prevents us from remembering that the War is finished, but determines a state of permanent war.

Clemenceau bluntly declared to the French Chamber that treaties were a means of continuing the War. He was perfectly right, for war is being waged more bitterly than ever and peace is as remote as it ever was.

The problem with which modern statesmen are confronted is very simple: can Europe continue in her decline without involving the ruin of civilization? And is it possible to stop this process of decay without finding some form of civil symbiosis which will ensure for all men a more human mode of living? In the affirmative case what course should we take, and is it presumable that there should be an immediate change for the better in the situation, given the national and economic interests now openly and bitterly in conflict?

We have before us a problem, or rather a series of problems, which call for impartiality and calm if a satisfactory solution is to be arrived at. Perhaps if some fundamental truths were brought home to the people, or, to be more exact, to the peoples now at loggerheads with each other, a notion of the peril equally impending upon all concerned and the conviction that an indefinite prolongation of the present state of things is impossible, would prove decisive factors in restoring a spirit of peace and in reviving that spirit of solidarity which now appears spent or slumbering.

But in the first place it is necessary to review the situation, such as it is at the present moment:

Firstly, Europe, which was the creditor of all other continents, has now become their debtor.