[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — If, in spite of
our desires and all efforts to avert it, war should break out, great as that disaster would be for civilisation, a Nazi victory would be greater. Since, in that dread event, the only hope for a better future would rest in the defeat of Nazi-ism, it is clear that the best service which the individual citizen could render to the future would be to do all in his or her power to effect that defeat.
But we should have to be clear as to what we were fighting for, and what we intended to do with the victory when won.
The only object in fighting would be to eradicate, in Europe at any rate, the root cause of war, namely, the sovereign State. If we have to fight we must do so, not as British or French or Czechs, but as Europeans. We must fight for a united Europe, and with our victory adjust the archaic and anarchic political system of Europe, which at present is strangling it economically, culturally, and morally, to the realities of the twentieth-century world.
It would be made clear that the new Europe would be a good member of the League of Nations, or States' Parliament, and that the rest of the world would find it a good neighbour.
A peace in which both victor and vanquished renounced the right to sovereignty in arms, handing them over to a federal authority on which they were represented, based on a consti- tution which they had hammered out together and agreed to, would be a just and lasting peace, and lay the foundation upon which our common European civilisation could build securely.
Not only this, but the European idea is a living alternative to nationalism, and would evoke similar passionate, patriotic loyalty and service. It would also include all that is best in our cultural and spiritual heritage.
Are we big enough to see and embrace this vision as our cause—war or no war ?—Yours faithfully,
GORDON P. EVANS.
The International Club, Haymarket House, Newcastle-on-Tyne 2.
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