BRITAIN AND A NEW ORDER SIR,—The letters you publish under
the above heading are written !under a certain limitation or illusion. Britain neither has nor will have, nor desires to have, the power to foist a new order on Europe or on the world. May I briefly put the basic facts which we ought to keep in mind always in discussing the above subject? One is, that economically the world is a single whole. All the Powers in the world cannot alter that. The other is that politically the world is not a single whole, and probably never will be. It is divided by Nature into various pieces by oceans and mountains and rivers. In the process of evolution the human race, largely controlled by these barriers, has evolved what we call nations. These barriers have been modified by the ingenuity of man in his evolution, but they have not been destroyed. The most nearly successful attempt to destroy them was made by the Roman Empire when the known world was much smaller than it is now. It failed, and the nations which had been
evolved by the permanent natural divisions in the world took its place. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, and the discovery of "new worlds" (i.e., the discovery and exploration of unknown parts of the world) the principle of nationality has been the governing factor in human history. It is the key to the history of the world in the last few centuries. It is working all round us now.
Mr. Bevan writes: "The first question confronting the nations under the German yoke . . . will be to what extent and in what way they will combine." The answer is being given now. Poland and Czecho-Slovakia have already arranged a closer co-operation after the war. Russia has been drawn closer to Czecho-Slovakia and is apparently drawing closer to Poland and abandoning her economic internationalism for political nationalism. Mr. Mander, after quoting the vague statements of Lord Halifax and Mr. Roosevelt on war-aims, says: "At this stage precise frontiers cannot be laid down" —" precise" in its narrowest sense they cannot be. But the frontiers have been laid down long since by Nature and evolution. They must be respected and economic and military frontiers ignored if a harassed world is to have any, even lengthy, peace.—Yours faithfully,
W. M. CROOK.
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