Toward a New Central Europe

4. Central Europe in East-West Relations

BRITAIN AND EASTERN EUROPE

C. A. MACARTNEY

FOR well-nigh two centuries - ever since it began to take an active interest in the area - British policy towards central and eastern Europe has been constant in its objectives, while varying with the changing conditions in the ways by which it has sought to achieve them. It has constantly opposed, as dangerous to its own interests, the establishment in this quarter of Europe, of a single, over-strong and expansive Power. At the end of the 18th century, when British statesmen first preoccupied themselves carefully with the "Eastern question," the danger presented itself in the form. of Russia's expansive urge towards the warm waters, which was held to constitute a threat to Britain's naval communications, and this aspect of it remained the dominant one throughout most of the 19th century, more than ever, after the opening of the Suez Canal. But it was not a policy directed against Russia as such, but only against that Power which happened at the time to look the dangerous one. Round the turn of the 19-20th centuries, when Germany appeared on the scene, united, martial and aggressive, and seeking to acquire a dangerous influence over Turkey, Britain came to terms with Russia ;and entered a system of alliances for containing Germany. And meanwhile the scope of the problem had widened from the mere defense of the Straits. The immediate occasion of France's and Britain's entry into World War II was Germanyís attack on Poland, which Britain had guaranteed, and the reasons for the guarantee policy are nowhere more clearly stated than in a memorandum by the Foreign Office, composed in the summer of 1939, which submitted that it was essential to prevent Hitler from "expanding easterwards, and obtaining control of the resources of Central and Eastern Europe," which would enable him "to turn upon the Western countries with overwhelming force.',

Britain has, then, always held it to be her interest that this area should be held by a Power or Powers strong enough to maintain its own real independence, but not strong enough itself to be aggressive. It was because the Ottoman Empire answered this definition in the

19th century that Britain regularly tried to prop up its rule, in spite of the inhumanity of a regime which often caused British Liberal opinion to dissent from the official policy, as cynical and even immoral. It was just the same considerations that caused Britain also consistently to support the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, although there was much also in the structure of the Monarchy which British progressives disliked. In 1848 there was strong popular feeling among us against the Austrian regime, and very lively sympathy for Hungary, and our Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, fully shared both feelings, but while willing, as he said, to do everything possible for the Hungarians, he refused to do anything for Hungary, because he held that Austria in the absence of Hungary would be too weak to fulfill] her role of barrier against Russia and factor in the European balance of power, and that Hungary without Austria would be too weak to take her place. For the same reasons, Britain hesitated long in the First World War (as did France and the USA) before consenting to a policy which aimed at the break-up of Austria-Hungary, and only agreed to that policy in the Spring of 1918, under the pressure of extreme military necessity and after it had appeared that the Monarchy had surrendered its independence so far under the Spa Agreement that she would thence forward be a mere satellite of Germany's.

But the enthusiasm for the idea of national self-determination was by that time very strong, and the Foreign Office had argued that if Eastern Europe was reorganized on a basis of independent national states, those States would "prove an efficient barrier against Russian preponderance in Europe and German extension towards the Near East, because they would be happy and contended in the realization of their national aspirations, and strong as regards their economic future." The solution would thus combine expediency with morality.

The event, of course, proved that the authors of this memorandum had been over-optimistic. They had underestimated the complexities of ethnic conditions in Eastern Europe. It proved impossible, at that stage, to make all the peoples of the area happy and contented at the same time, still less, economically secure. In fact, they remained miserable and disunited, and Germany, Italy and Russia ate them up one by one.

What is the lesson to be drawn from the history of the last forty years? Certainly not, that object of British policy, from Pitt to Chamberlain, was mistaken. On the contrary, everything that has happened since 1945 has merely emphasized how much happier and more secure the whole civilized world would feel - leaving the happiness of the peoples themselves out of account - if Eastern Europe were freed from the grip of Power capable of exploiting its resources and using it as a base for aggression. All our interests demand that this great and vital area should be its own master, and should be strong enough to defend its independence (and by strength I do not

necessarily mean military strength; the good-will of the world which Switzerland enjoys has been a tar greater protection to her than her own armies could ever have been). But how should East Europe be organized - if ever the chance comes to organize it anew - to fulfill these requirements? It seems to me that we must consider the history of the years between the two world wars dispassionately, picking out to preserve what stood the test in them and ruthlessly discarding what was shown to be mistaken.

It would surely be hopeless to try to go back behind the principle of national freedom. The peoples which have once tasted it will never again be content without it National freedom is the basis on which Eastern Europe must rest.

But it must be national freedom for all: a complete equality. There were times in the past when a State could justify the supremacy of one national element in it, because its peoples were really at different stages in their social, political and economic development. That differentiation has largely passed - that has been one of the benefits brought by those years to the future, at whatever cost to the present in terms of human welfare and justice. Today, total equality is the only firm basis, and to it all sentimental or historical considerations, however humanly justifiable, need to be sacrificed, no matter whether their title-deeds are a thousand years old, or forty.

Equality between all, and freedom for all. But freedom does not necessarily mean complete, self-degrading autarchy, in the sense that each people should exercise all the attributes of sovereignty which West European thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries chose to attach to that word. The solution for an area such as Eastern Europe, if not for Europe as a whole, is surely that of a multinational community, in which all its peoples can participate freely in their common interests, while retaining their complete self-government in such matters as concern themselves alone. It will be a difficult thing to create, but if the difficulties are great, so is the need, since everything else has failed, and so will be the reward.

Toward a New Central Europe