R_eflexions of a Diplomat BOOKS OF THE DAY

By E. H. CARR

Ix one of his early chapters, Count Sforza derides " books which, in scientific manner, describe and define the English, the French and the Italians," and pillories them as-" nothing but novels prompted by a somewhat pedantic imagination. The condemnation is unduly sweeping. Such studies have their value ; and the odd thing is that, in spite of Count Sforza's aphorism, his own book is one of them. Its sub-title is " A Study in Historical Psychology and International Politics " ; and though it is too discursive to be called " scientific," a good part of it is taken up with discussions of those deep-seated differences of mentality which divide Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans and so forth. Indeed, though the above-quoted passage concludes with a con- temptuous reference to those who classify the French as

pre-eminently intellectuals, logicians, Cartesians," the writer himself on a later page contrasts " the powerful, Cartesian light of French rationalism " with the subtler, more shaded quality of Italian thought. Having condemned the game, Count Sforza has none the less succumbed to its fascination.

There is much that is sound, combined with a certain tendency to over-statement, in Count Sforza's analysis of the fundamental characteristics of the principal European nations. French unity has an economic as well as a historical basis. " Alone in Europe, France . . . might isolate herself economically behind an impassable wall, like that which China enjoyed for centuries, and be self-sufficient. A unique ease in Europe, it is matched only by the United States which has almost a continent to draw on." The economic self- sufficiency of France is more and more rapidly ceasing to be a fact. But it is a tradition which still helps to govern the French mind. And economic isolation has become the tradition, not only of France, but of the individual Frenchman. Wealth is for him not so much an instrument of power or a means of realising some material ambition, but " a useful fortress with which to safeguard his personal freedom."

Germany, on the other hand, is not a unit. " Germany is twenty, thirty German ies which clash in harrowing birth- pangs. It is impossible to foresee whether she will crystallise as France did, or whether she will remain for a long time yet an alarming volcano." The conception of German unity was not really born till 1848. Historically, Germany is some four centuries behind Great Britain and France. The frantic effort of Germany to catch up, to make herself a nation, notby slow process of natural growth, but by modern methods of mass-production and publicity, explains modern German history. Its symptoms are " her dreams and her cuporalisme, her fits of humility and of sudden arrogance, her Nazi and racial rabidness that poorly hides a persistent inferiority complex." The great men of modern Germany are those who, by means however crude and brutal, have done something to make Germany one : Bismarck and Herr Hitler. They alone have known how to appeal to the fundamental need of the German political mind. Count Sforza believes that " even Nazi violence and stupidity " may some day beget " something more alive, more real, than the stifling period of William II, when the mixture of artificial paste-board romanticism and Of cold-blooded economic imperialism seemed to us so hateful."

Towards the end of the book is a short chapter devoted to Spain. It was written before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and its opening words deserve quotation : •

" Why do the Spaniards last ? Not because, sheltered behind the Pyrenees, they feel safe from European convulsions—possibly a deceptive illusion of theirs'. • But because, of the whole European continent, they have

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remained the most individualistic people, the people most com- pletely untainted by nationalist slogans and prejudices."

Modern nationalism in its quasi-religious form has never obtained a foothold in Spain, partly, as Count Sforza says, because the strength of the Church has never _been broken there, and partly, as he omits to say, because there has never arisen in Spain a middle-class bourgeoisie strong enough to serve as a cushion between the aristocrat and the labourer, and to create an ideology of its own—that bourgeoisie which

has been responsible for the triumph of nationalism almost everywhere else in Europe. In this respect Spain joins hands with Russia, where the same conditions prevailed ; and that is perhaps why Spain and Russia are the only two countries in Europe where class antagonism has been strong enough to bring about large-scale civil war. In other respects, of course, the divergence between them is complete. The Russian is traditionally communistic, the Spaniard individualistic. The Russian Revolution followed Marx. The Spanish Revolution draws its inspiration from the anarchist Bakunin.

About his own .country, from which he has been an exile since 1925, when the last remnant of the opposition was suppressed, Count Sforza is comprehensibly less inclined to generalise. He himself belongs to the liberal tradition of the Risorgimento ; and Mazzini is the Italian whom he most

often names with admiration. In the foreign policy of Signor Mussolini, who has kept up a perpetual feud with Yugoslavia, antagonised the 'Little Entente, and played fast and loose with both Germany and France, Count Sforza sees only the hand of a bungler. Occasionally, though not often, partisan- ship perverts his cool and detached vision. Few observers will agree that " never were the Italians 'so united, nor 40 determined to resist the enemy, as after Caporetto " ; and it

is really nonsense to ascribe the Italian retreat from Abyssinia after Adowa to " the beauty and nobility of the feeling of the Italian people who disavowed in 1896 what was nothing more than a war of prestige."

Count Sforza, in his long diplomatic career, has seen many men and cities, and is at his most attractive (though perhaps not always at his most reliable) when he is in a reminiscent mood. He records conversations—all of interest, though too long to quote here—with Sun Yat-sen, the Empress Eugenie, Bonar Law, Poineare and Henry White (the last containing an excellent instance of Balfour's mischievous irresponsibility in foreign affairs). He also offers us a few unfamiliar footnotes to history :

" When Stresemann communicated to the British Foreign Office in February, 1925, the draft of the plan which later became the Locarno Pact, Sir Austen Chamberlain discarded it as of no im- portance and informed Stresemann that he thought his idea unwise and premature ': which did not a little later stop his being awarded the Garter as one of the promoters of Locarno."

Every now and then Count. Sforza produces a happy phrase, as when he describes the mandates system as having been,

" like most of the Wilsonian Peace Conference ideas, conceived in generosity, but born in sin." But the book contains too many instances of sloppy writing and slipshod thinking to pass any severe critical test. On p. 165 Count Sforza assures us that " never has there been a more thoughtless and unjust saying" than the dictum that "Europe has been Balkanised." On p. 251 he makes precisely this remark himself. And what

are we-10 think of the statement that it is owing to their " keen sense of observation " that African negroes " refuse to distinguish between English, French and Italians " ? It is, I suppose, in virtue _ of this same keen observation that the average European obstinately refuses to distinguish between different breeds of " niggers."