In the closing months of 1929, M. Briand, Foreign Minister of France, with the sanction of the French Government, formulated his now-famous project for the creation of a Pan-Europa, to be christened “The United States of Europe.”
This proposed Pan-Europa is confessedly an image of Pan-Americanism; that is, Briand derived his concept of a federated Europe from our Federal Union of forty-eight states. The friends of Briand’s unique scheme ardently hope that its realization will bring to that war-torn continent the international peace, the political, economic, and commercial coöperation, that prevail between the States of the American Union. The editor of the Manchester Guardian, a British weekly, says apropos of Briand’s project: “Briand’s aim is to divert European states from the barren contemplation of past enmities to constructive coöperation in the tasks of peace, especially in the economic field.” Briand, however, insists that before Europe can be united industrially and economically she must first be united and harmonized politically.
Those who are conversant with present-day Europe are aware that its numerous distinct national units are commercially torn apart by tariff walls so high as to render international trade and industrial coöperation as troublesome and financially unattractive as can be imagined. Between our amalgamated American States commerce is not only absolutely free, but enormously profitable. Accordingly, it is argued that between the federated nations of Europe commerce would become automatically free, and hence vastly more lucrative. Most Democratic newspapers in America and the more radical Republican papers declare that the Briand project is a defensive action against the Hawley-Smoot Tariff recently enacted into law. It should be stated, however, that Briand has declared repeatedly that his proposal is not aimed at anything distinctly American.
MEMORANDUM SENT TO POWERS
It was in May of the present year that Briand formulated his widely discussed “Memorandum,”—a syllabus of his plan for federating the twenty-seven outstanding states of Europe. To each of those powers, except France, he sent a copy of the Memorandum for criticism and suggestion. The time chosen by Briand for disclosing to the powers of Europe his unprecedented scheme for that continent he declared to be most propitious by reason of the fact that the Young Plan had just gone into effect; the Bank of International Settlements, in Geneva, was about to open its doors; and the French troops had almost completed their evacuation of the Rhineland.
Each of the nations addressed by Briand through the medium of his six-thousand-word Memorandum has returned to the French Government a statement of its criticism and suggestions, and also its acceptance of the French Government’s invitation to send one or more representatives to the special European Conference, which will convene in Geneva in September, primarily for the purpose of giving due thought and discussion to the question of the expediency and feasibility of making the Briand scheme an ultimate actuality.
Seventeen of the twenty-six powers receiving the Memorandum have submitted somewhat drastic objections to many of its proposals, declaring their conviction that the ends sought by the Briand project could be more effectively dealt with by the existing machinery of the League of Nations. The British Government declares further that the organs of the League have already begun work on virtually the whole program of practical action that the Memorandum sets forth. It is felt, too, by the British authorities, that an exclusive and independent union in Europe might foster intercontinental rivalries and even hostilities. Nine of the powers included in their suggestions that Russia and Turkey be included in any possible European federation. Only three of the twenty-six powers accepted M. Briand’s proposals without reservations. The Manchester Guardian declares that it would be difficult to find anything new or hopeful in Briand’s proposals. “They have now been criticized from various angles by the leading European powers,” says the Guardian, and adds: “It would be a matter for neither surprise nor regret if the answer of the British Government led to their final abandonment before the next meeting of the League Assembly.”
PITFALLS BLOCK REALIZATION
The analogies that Briand and his sympathizers see between the United States of America and the projected United States of Europe seem to many political experts to be altogether illusory. Each of the European powers, with two or three exceptions, has its own distinctive language, its exclusive traditions; in most cases, its own national religion, its sharply differentiated coinage, its peculiar stamps; and, in most instances, its exclusive national cookery, dress, manners, and customs. Each European political entity is a body in which a unique nation is, and has long been, incarnated.
Such a heterogeneous coterie of political units can assuredly possess no integrating affinity that would permanently unite its members. The exact converse is true in respect to our American States. They have a common language, common modes of dress, common customs, the same monetary coins and symbols. Every state government is an almost exact replica of every other; there is a common national, or federal, government around which they revolve. Our interstate forces are centripetal, and, of course, cling together; while the corresponding European forces are centrifugal, and so they tend to fly and hold apart.11
Will the Premier of France be successful in piecing together into a harmonious and composite whole the puzzle map of Europe?
A dispatch, of August 21, from Geneva to the leading American newspapers, makes this initial statement: “The League of Nations is seeking to sidestep Minister Briand’s proposal for a United States of Europe.” The reason is the fact that the devotees of the League foresee in the Briand project the probability that it would permanently close the door against America’s entrance into the League. They still cherish the faint hope that the United States may yet be induced to join the League. They perceive—so they aver—that as an offset to a federated Europe, anchored to the League, there might be set up in the Western Hemisphere an analogous organization of American powers. The interests of the two would be almost sure to be at variance, and, accordingly, forever widen the gulf between the United States and the League. The distinguished Spanish writer, Madariaga, an ardent friend of the League, declared in the January (1930) Forum that he regarded Briand’s dream of a United Europe as nothing more substantial than a mirage on the political horizon.
FRANCO-ITALIAN TENSION
Since the close of the Great War a bitter controversy has developed between France and Italy, and it is admittedly growing more virulent as time moves on. This Franco-Italian tension springs largely from the fact that France has set her heart upon preserving indefinitely the status quo as established by the Versailles Treaty, which ended the Great War. Italy is equally insistent that the Treaty shall be so amended as would result in conferring upon her certain definite social, diplomatic, and strategic advantages, which she passionately claims to be her just dues.
In a recent interview published in a French journal, Mussolini declared that before Briand’s projected European federation can be actualized, the Versailles Treaty must be radically revised. As all the world knows, Italy insistently protests her right to naval parity with France. France continues to dismiss Italy’s demand with no little contempt. Italy contends that the complete recovery of the Italia Irredenta, begun in the middle of the last century, cannot be accomplished until France shall have ceded back to her Corsica, Nice, and Savoy. Other disputed points enter into their famed controversy, but lack of space precludes our considering any of its further details. We simply call attention to it as a force bound to prove hostile to any attempt to federate the political units that comprise Europe.
Think, too, of the seething rancor that marks the mutual attitude of Prussia and Poland because of the Polish Corridor. And there are now fourteen additional disputed frontiers in Europe. The League, too, is powerless to change any of these boundaries without the consent of the parties to the treaties defining such boundaries. “France and her Allies feel that any relinquishment of territory ceded by the 1919 treaties may be the beginning of a movement to overthrow the whole peace settlement.” Despite the guarantee given by the Versailles Treaty, minorities in many European states are today victims of oppression,—a prolific cause of international ill will.
In the face of the foregoing facts, so prejudicial to a politically united Europe, does it not look as if the prospect of concretely realizing the United States of Europe is exceedingly remote? Even if such a federation should become a reality, could it achieve its fundamental objective, namely, permanent world peace? We shall now look to inspired prediction for the inerrant answer.
OMNISCIENCE SPEAKS
In Jeremiah 25:31 it is clearly stated that the time will come when the Lord will have “a controversy with the nations,” and “will give them that are wicked to the sword.” At the same time He will “utter His voice from His holy habitation; . . . against all the inhabitants of the earth.” Verse 30. Note the term “sword;” it is invariably a symbol of war when employed generically, as it is here. As a consequence, the slain of the Lord will be dispersed over all the earth, as declared in the thirty-third verse. That will be the one time in which the victims of the battlefield will not be buried, but shall be refuse upon the ground. Why not buried? The answer is obvious. All impenitent sinners will have perished, and the righteous will have been taken to their supernal home.
Read thoughtfully Joel 3:9-16, and observe that at the very time when Jehovah, by the power of His voice, shakes the heavens and the earth, He proclaims war among the heathen, or unbelievers. He commands them to “prepare war,” to beat their plowshares into swords, and their pruning hooks into spears. At that time even the weak shall say, “I am strong.” Not many years have passed since the Chinese and the Japanese were hopelessly weak martially. But to-day they say, not in mere words, but in deeds and actions, “I am strong.” It is a matter of common knowledge that all nations are feverishly preparing for that awful experience when “multitudes” shall be drawn into “the valley of decision,” that is, the valley of threshing, of cutting apart or to pieces, as the term “decision” originally meant. In verse 12 the valley is identified as that of Jehoshaphat. The ancient battlefield of Armageddon lies in close proximity to that valley. In Revelation 16:16 this same battle of mass slaughter is named Armageddon, a battle divinely destined to be the culminating event in the history of our world of sin and death. Let us not fail to note that a rainbow of promise arches those black thunderclouds of war,—a promise found in Joel 3:16,—in radiant words of divine assurance, as follows: “The Lord will be the hope of His people.” It is in that darkest hour of this world’s history that the following divinely given assurance will be fulfilled to every living believer: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come12nigh thee.” Psalm 91:7. In verse 9 is given the reason why each trusting child of God shall be so gloriously delivered in that hour of the world’s supreme tragedy: “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation.”
In chapter 16 of the Revelation we are told that “spirits of devils” go forth to the rulers of the whole world to draw their armies into the Battle of Armageddon,—the culminating tragedy, the crowning horror, of the reign of sin. War is the supreme curse, and every curse is the spawn of sin. It follows, then, that only the end of sin can bring the end of war. Naturally, then, sin’s long dominion is destined to end in an orgy of war. Neither the United States of Europe nor all other multitudinous peace agencies of these last days can bring into this war-cursed world the beatific gift of endless peace. But when our world shall forever have been brought under the heavenly sway of the Christ of God, the Prince of Peace, then shall her peace be “as a river,” and her “righteousness as the waves of the sea.” Isaiah 48:18. Then “the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.” Isaiah 32:17.
