" ENCIRCLEMENT " AND THE FACTS
By EDWYN BEVAN
UNDOUBTEDLY the important thing at the present moment is to convince reasonable and peacefully- mindful people in Germany that we have no hostile designs. With this end, continual asseverations are made on our side that encirclement is a " myth." How far is that true? The need is not to deny encirclement, but to define it. Our common contention is that what the Nazi Government and Nazi-controlled Press calls Einkreisung is not "encircle- ment " because we do not want to thwart Germany's legiti- mate activities beyond its own borders. So long as Germans are active economically in foreign countries, or German cul- tural influence is spread by peaceful means, Germany will encounter no resistance from surrounding States. Encircle- ment has no reality: Germany can feel nothing in the way of a barrier: she is free as air. The moment, on the other hand, that Germany's activity takes the form of an attempt to impose its political predominance upon peoples, outside its own frontiers, it will encounter resistance from a whole number of allied Powers, east and west. " Encirclement " with a vengeance!
Germans may fully recognise that our encirclement is intended to be purely defensive, and nevertheless object to it on one or other of at least three grounds. There are, in the first place, Germans who do not believe that their pre- sent Government has any further forcible expansion of German dominion in mind. The subjugation of Czecho- Slovakia appeared indeed at first to be a signal violation of the F dhrer's assurances, but the Government propaganda has now convinced many Germans that Czecho-Slovakia, because of its peculiar geographical position, formed an exception to the rule, and that its seizure does not invalidate the general principle: only peoples of Germany stock to be annexed to the Reich. To attribute to the Nazi Govern- ment designs of extending its dominion beyond these limits is, they think, part of the British and French campaign of lies. Defensive arrangements made by the allied States are a standing false accusation of Germany, as if it harboured aggressive designs! Germany is put quite unjustly in the pillory. Even if the intention of the encircling Powers is purely defensive, this treating of Germany as a criminal to be confined may in the end compel Germany to resort to force to break the ring.
It is unnecessary here to rehearse all that may be said on our side to show what good ground we have for regarding further aggression by the Nazis as so far from being unlikely that arrangements to counter it are inevitable. To excuse the seizure of Czecho-Slovakia, as an answer to encirclement, is an odd reversal of chronology. And so on. But there is another German view, the opposite of the one just described. These Germans do not deny that Germany will try, sooner or later, to extend its dominion beyond its present frontiers. Their contention is that the present frontiers are unfair: they do not afford the German people Lebensraum. If our encirclement is defensive, in the sense that it seeks to per- petuate the status quo, it is a constriction which Germans cannot but feel intolerable. Here again we have an abund- ant answer. What is needed is to clear up the very confused Notion of Lebensraum. In what sense can any people in the present world have a sphere at its disposal in which every member of it can find work and livelihood? Britain has, politically connected with it, a number of great Dominions and Colonies, but emigration into them has been possible in recent years only on the smallest scale, which could not relieve us of our unemployment problem. Suppose there were large uninhabited spaces in Europe into which the sur- plus population of Germany in the future could flow (if there is going to be any surplus population in the future, which is doubtful) then it might be wrong in us to grudge Germany such territorial expansion. As it is, any expansion of Ger- man rule beyond its present frontiers would mean the subjugation of peoples who do not want to be German. We feel that we do right in trying to. prevent that. So far, how- ever, as the complaint about inadequate Lebensraum means that Germany is today at a disadvantage for procuring supplies from outside, as compared with ourselves, it is no doubt well that we should be ready to do anything we can to equalise things, even if it means some sacrifice on our side—so long as it does not mean the subjection of any backward people to Nazi rule. What precise arrangements we could make to equalise things I will not attempt to say ; the important thing, I believe, is that when our Government has made up its mind what offers in this line it is prepared to make (involving perhaps an extension of the Mandate system to all our own colonies) it should put forward these offers as precisely and publicly as possible. Nor should we be discouraged if the Nazis receive such offers with a chorus of ridicule. To have convinced the saner part of the German people that we do not want to deprive Germany of its due place among the nations, might well be, even if seemingly of small practical effect today, of immense consequence in future contingencies.
But there is yet a third ground on which Germans may complain of our encirclement. This is given in a letter which Graf von Pueckler recently sent to the Daily Tele- graph (dated Berlin, June Loth). The Graf argues that close military arrangements between a group of States, even if defensive at the outset, are likely, sooner or later, to become offensive. Suppose, he argues, any one State of the group makes an attack on Germany, all the other States are certain to back up the action of their aggressive ally. In reply to this argument, we should no doubt insist upon the fantastic improbability of Britain or France or Poland or Turkey wanting to attack Germany, so long as Germany does not begin aggression ; and, secondly, we should dispute Graf von Pueckler's supposition that if any State of the group did fly off into aggressive action, our country would feel bound to back it up. But the case is not quite so simple as that— because the line between aggressive action and defensive action is not always easy to draw. The Nazi Government might, for instance, conceivably get possession of Danzig without any overt military action, and the Poles might then take military action which the Germans would regard as aggressive, but which we should regard as defensive. Thus the encirclement would come into force, and the Germans would say " See how right we were all along to object to it! "
In view of such a possibility, which probably is what Graf von Pueckler had in mind, I see no way but that our Govern- ment should make it very plain beforehand, what kind of action on the part of Germany it would regard as justifying the Poles in taking military means to counteract it. The Fiihrer would then take such action only if he were deter- mined to bring on a general war: otherwise he would try to secure any just claims Germany may have by negotiation. One thing at any rate I hope may have been made clear. If we are going to have a Ministry of Information, for the enlightenment of the German people, it will have to carry its demonstration a good deal farther than ingeminating that encirclement is a " myth " because it is defensive.
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