BOOKS OF THE DAY
Facts for the " Big Three
19
Eastern Europe Between the Wars 1918-41 By Hugh Seton- Watson. (Cambridge University Press .1s.)
Most-, if not all, of the problems dealt with by Hugh Seton-Watson in this book are now confronting the representatives of the Three Great Powers meeting in Berlin. What is to be the future of the countries lying between the powerful colossus of Russia on one hand and the now prostrate ruin of Germany on the other? What form of Governments do they need and how far do their present Governments answer to the wish of the peoples themselves rather than to the will of the Soviet Union? Do they genuinely desire a communist revolution? Are they ripe for democracy? How are the territorial problems created by small Power imperialisms "- the questions of Macedonia, Fiume, Albania, Upper Silesia, etc., to be solved on a just and lasting basis? What is to happen to national minorities after the palpable failure of the Minorities Treaties in the 1919 Settlement?
All these problems and a thousand others are treated vigorously, objectively and intelligently by young Seton-Watson, but while utter secrecy dominates all the Councils of the Big Powers, the purpose of his book—to inform British public opinion on " one of the major problems of our age "—is abortive. It is not to be hoped that the statesmen making the decisions in Berlin will have either the time or the humility to read a work by a young intelligence officer, so lately their servant. For Hugh Seton-Watson, elder son of a dis- tinguished father, has had unique experience of this part of the world. Armed• with a name which will open any door- from the Carpathians to the Black Sea and Adriatic, gifted with an unusual facility for speaking foreign languages and consorting eagerly with men of alt classes, races and callings, Hugh Seton-Watson has spent nearly all the war years either in the countries concerned or at vantage points, in many cases uncomfortably near to them.
He has put his experience to good use and written a book which ranks not only among the best ever written on Eastern Europe, but is probably unique in its comprehensiveness, its frankness and its fearlessness. For he has hard words to say not only of the national regimes which his father did so much to get recognised, but even for leading figures like Julius Maniu, whose name must have been a household word in the years when he was growing up. " A large share of the responsibility for the tragedy of Roumania falls on two men. The first is Carol II. . . . The second is Maniu. His fault is not that he refused to accept the political terms of the King, but that he did so little to further the cause of democracy. . . . His followers were ready to risk their future in the cause of freedom, but he would not put himself at their head. . . . He was an ana- chronism in times when only resolute resistance could save the liberties in which he so firmly believed. . . . But the main cause of Roumania's collapse was the bottomless chasm which separated rulers from ruled."
This "bottomless chasm" Hugh Seton-Watson exposes in one country after another, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, throughout Eastern Europe. Poland was ruled by a feudal aristoc- racy completely out of touch with the times and utterly selfish ; Yugoslavia by an upstart- Serbian bourgeoisie and a dictator (Prince Paul) completely out of sympathy with his people ; Hungary, "a social structure with remnants of Feudalism and an official ideology made up of medieval Clericalism and Romanticism, have brought the Hungarian people to a point where it is, faced with national extinc- tion." Everywhere—always excepting Czechoslovakia—it is the same story of an inefficient, corrupt and chauvinistic regime draw- ing its life-blood from the miseries of oppressed and. half-starving peasants. "Oppression, robbery, discontent and disunity," he writes, " were greater throughout Eastern Europe in 1939 than they had been in 1918."
But, in spite of this depressing picture, Hugh Seton-Watson is not without hope for the future, and his hopes are founded on a profound synipathy with, and even admiration for, the common people of all the countries under review. " What the people want," he writes, " is more to eat, more land, more justice and more per- sonal security. What the people needs is better agriculture, better prospects of employment in industry, better bureacracy and better law courts . . . popular representation in Government, and popular influences on policy should be increased . ." and, finally, "The most essential condition of all for the establishment of democratic
Government in Eastern Europe is an improvement and intensli- cation of general education."
It is not too much to say that the rising generation of Eastern Europe has as good a friend in Hugh Seton-Watson as the older generation had in his father, and that the rising generation in this country is producing men no less fitted to inform and to form British foreign policy than that distinguished scholar and historian, Professor Seton-Watson.
SHIELA GRANT DUFF.
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