THE FATE OF EUROPE
THERE can be no sane person in these islands who does not realise that within a space to be measured rather by weeks than by months—perhaps rather by days than by weeks—Great Britain may find itself at war. Alarming though that statement is it is not alarmist. It is implicit in every syllable of the references to the present international situation in Sir John Simon's speech on Saturday. That speech reaffirmed, on the basis of deep deliberation between the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the Prime Minister had said, after deep deliberation by the Cabinet, five months before, and the Cabinet added its confirmation again this week. If Germany resorts to force against Czechoslovakia, if France and Russia honour their obligations and go to Czechoslovakia's aid, if in consequence France and Germany are at war, the arguments in favour of our joining France in arms may well seem irresistible. Nothing less than the fate of Europe is at stake.
In such circumstances there must be no misunder- standing as to what the issue is. Nominally it is the degree of autonomy to be conceded to the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia ; actually it is whether the next step in German expansion is to be taken, by force or under the threat of force, at Czechoslovakia's expense. The decision lies with Herr Hider, not Herr Henlein. It is only since Germany seized Austria by a successful threat of force that the Sudeten German question has become acute ; till then it was being dis- cussed on reasonable lines between the Sudeten Germans and the Government at Prague. Now it is with Berlin that Prague has to reckon. Any proposals put before Herr Henlein must be referred by him to a higher arbiter. It is the Leader of a country which has chosen this moment to put a million and a quarter men on a war-footing, and whose Press under official orders is carrying on a campaign of unexampled foulness and mendacity against a neighbouring State, who will decide between peace and war in Europe. Mr. Churchill made a telling point when he said on Saturday that a few months ago Herr Henlein told him what his con- ditions were, and he knew they were such as the Govern- ment would concede. But unless the public opinion of the world, and warnings such as Sir John Simon sounded at Lanark, are sufficient to neutralise pressure from Berlin, concessions will be irrelevant. A settle- ment, by all the indications, would be far less welcome to the Nazi leaders in Berlin than a breakdown that could be laid at the door of Prague.
But even in Germany public opinion counts for some- thing. Naked aggression against Czechoslovakia would be generally condemned. If by any means possible, the Czechs must be provoked into some action that could be represented as itself aggressive ; then the technique applied against Austria, a march to the rescue of down- trodden fellow-countrymen, could operate at once. Hence the fantastic conversion by the Berlin Press of tavern brawls into what the Angriff calls " bloody terror." There is no secret about what is happening in the Sudeten areas. Czechoslovakia is full of British and French and American journalists, and the British Government has special observers there ; if in fact a bloody terror, or anything resembling it, were being created it would not be left for the German Press alone to discover it. Minor disturbances there are ; serious trouble there is not. The Sudeten Germans are not downtrodden. They have political grievances which may be termed by courtesy substantial, though the word in reality exag- gerates the facts. Lord Runciman has made it perfectly clear that if it were a question simply of Dr. Hodza and Herr Henlein, not of Dr. Hodza and Herr Hider, a settlement could be reached with relative ease. But to settle with a man whose mind seems set on a casus belli is no simple matter.
At this moment the latest and greatest concessions offered by the Czechs—from whose side alone any talk of concession has come—are under discussion. The Sudeten Germans and their Berlin patrons have been talking throughout of self-government on the model of Switzerland. Dr. Hodza now has gravely embarrassed them by offering precisely that. The details of his scheme have not been published, but it is known that it provides for the division of the country into some twenty or more cantons, in some of which the Germans will be in a large majority, with a central Federal Govern- ment as in Switzerland ; it is known, too, that British Ministers, whose chief concern it has been to press the Czechs to the utmost limit of concession, having seen the scheme, pronounce it just and generous. • But the Germans, having asked for the Swiss model and got it, are now demanding the Irish model, and with a wholesale disregard of geography, history and politics are drawing a fantastic analogy between the position of Sudeten- deutschland and Southern Ireland. Utterly misleading as such analogies always are, some approximation to a comparison may be attempted. Imagine a Celtic Wales —not Ireland—not bounded on the west by seas com- manded by a British fleet, but divided only by a frontier- line from a nation of 70,000,000 Celts, bitterly hostile to England, using Wales as an instrument against Eng- land, enlisting every newspaper within its borders in a campaign of vituperative misrepresentation of every article of English policy : imagine that, and ask then whether an England to which sovereignty and self-defence meant anything could grant Wales an independence which gave her control of police and frontiers and constitu- ted her in fact an advance guard of the greater Wales beyond. For that is broadly what independence on the Irish model would mean.
That demand may be simply a bargaining-counter. At least the cantonal proposal has not been rejected as these words are written. A settlement may conceivably be arrived at on that basis, for by it the Czechs have assuredly conceded enough to enable Herr Hitler at Nuremberg next week to claim a bloodless victory. The Nazi Congress, indeed, may well be the decisive fac- tor. The Fiihrer cannot afford to admit a check. Either he must accept a settlement and hail it as a triumph, or he must launch his country on an adventure so desperate as to threaten himself and his whole regime with ruin. Czechoslovakia, of course, could never survive a German attack unaided, but she is no mean adversary none the less, and with the pledged support of France and Russia, and the almost inevitable implication of Britain in the conflict, she would become the centre of a European War in which her territory—and first and foremost the territory of the Sudetendeutsch—would be ravaged and her cities destroyed, but the defeat of the assailant would be certain. The consequences for Europe of such a conflict would be appalling beyond all imagination. Herr Hitler is capable of imagining something of what they would be for Germany. In that lies the continent's chief hope. The fear of German aggression has called into being in resistance to it a defensive front of three Great Powers. If their firmness turns the scale Lord Halifax might perhaps reflect on the fact as he travels to Geneva this month, for those Powers will have achieved security through collective action by precisely the methods of tie League.
Why, it may with reason be asked, could that not have been achieved through the League itself ? The advan- tages would have been obvious. If the three Great Powers had been working together at Geneva in full harmony for a common purpose, and a purpose not merely consonant with, but actually enjoined by, the Covenant, they would unquestionably have secured the support of many, perhaps of all, the secondary State; of Europe which still are members of the League. That would have been no negligible gain. There were, no doubt, arguments against that course. There was a desire to avoid precipitating a crisis such as the sudden convoca- tion of the League Council might create. The despatch of Lord Runciman as mediator seemed a better way. It may have been. But if the present danger passes, and it becomes clear that the firmness and unity of three League Powers was the prime factor in preserving peace, then action at the coming Assembly for the rehabilitation of the League will be a natural and important sequel. Sir John Simon may have had something like that in mind when he paid pointed tribute at Lanark to the League ideal.
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