World Patriotism
BY SIR EVELYN WRENCH.
Tmore I look round the world at the moment, 1 whether it be to China or to America and Central Europe or to Great Britain, the clearer it seems that what is really the matter is that, despite all the talk about political and economic troubles being world- wide, most nations are still approaching the problems solely from their own point of view. It may appear too simple to say that what the world has been suffering from during the past twelve months is an inability to see the other side's point of view, but this is really what I think is the matter with us. Japan acts in Manchuria according to what she believes are Japanese interests ; each faction in China acts in its own supposed interests. Nearer home Mr. de Valera is a good example of a patriotic Irishman, who in his dealings with Great Britain is largely thinking in terms of what Ireland wants, and somehow or other he has been unable to see things from the British point of view. On the other hand, in talking to British statesmen about Ireland you would imagine that Ireland had no case at all.
Then if you turn to Europe's major problems, Repara- tions and War Debts, you are also struck by the fact that each country is persuaded that it has all the right on its side. Each country is harbouring grievances and cannot understand why it is that the other side does not see its position. In the knotty question of Franco-German relations, Germany, remembering events since the Armis- tice, thinks that France wants to keep her in a permanent state of subordination. On the other hand, the Germans very often fail to understand the French point of view ; for France cannot help thinking about security after her past experiences. Then if we extend our picture to the other side of the Atlantic, we find the United States irritated with Europe all round. The average farmer in the Middle-West of America knows only that he has been going through the worst economic crisis in the memory of the present generation and that practically all his savings are gone. As he sees it, " Uncle Sam" is being called a usurer because he is asking for the payment of money that is due to him. The nations of Europe, on their side, whatever their feelings about one another may be, seem to be pretty well united in the conviction that the United States has not given them a square deal.
In the question of Disarmament, perhaps one of the reasons that we have not made more headway is that each country, through its experts at the discussions, is thinking what is the minimum defence force that it requires to safeguard its national interests, forgetting that unless we disarm we shall none of us have any national interests to safeguard after the next war. Here again in a changed world we are studying these problems in the pre-War terminology of national safety.
What then has gone wrong with the world in these last few years, apart, of course, from the financial crisis through which we have been going and the mar-adjust- ment of our system of distribution which permits a surfeit of necessities in one place and starvation in another ? What is really the matter, I think, is that we arc trying to run the twentieth-century world with eighteenth-century minds. The world has contracted ; space has been practically annihilated in our lives. To-day we can ring up New Zealand or Aus- tralia on the telephone ; we can listen on the wireless to concerts or talks in another hemisphere ; we can fly to Morocco for dinner. Science has given us this mar- vellous gift of the annihilation of distance, and what do we proceed to do with it ? We, many of us in all coun- tries, continue to talk in terms of " ourselves alone," of National self-interest : " let is mind our own business and ignore the foreigner." We are told by some that the citizen should be a National patriot first, last, and all the time. What we really need is a few of those professors of Foresight about whom Mr. H. G. Wells talked to us the other day. The world has really been caught napping. Doctrines of Economic Nationalism and " no trade with the foreigner " were all very well a hundred years ago, but they won't serve to-day.
Let me not be misunderstood. I am not suggesting that we should not be patriots, but the opposite. But I want our patriotism to be enlarged. My first duty is obviously to the town or county in which I was born and then to my country. But I have two more duties --- as an Englishman to the British Empire as a whole, and then finally to the world. There should be nothing conflicting between these allegiances. Each one should dovetail into the other.
In ordinary life the citizen, for the sake of the ecmmon good, has to submit to a curtailment of his liberty in many directions. The golfer might like to drive through the couple ahead of him, or the motorist might like to go " all out " down the Mall, but it never occurs to them to do it. Every hour of the day there are prohibitions to which we willingly submit so that the wheels of the life- machine may turn more easily. But when it comes to Nations we talk about Complete Sovereignty. I suppose the rulers of fortified towns in the middle ages enjoyed a more or less complete sovereignty over their underlings. But in an air age when one can fly over half the countries of Europe in a day, that kind of isolation has gone. As we advance towards Empire unity and World unity, each nation will have to submit to a restriction of its liberties for the common good.
If one looks back at the history of the past twenty-five years, surely the chief lesson to be learnt is that unre- stricted nationalism will not work. I know there arc some people who think that if only we could organize the world into five or six great political systems, instead of fifty or sixty separate nations, that we should hasten the day of universal peace. But what assurance have we that, even if we did succeed, we should be any better off than we are to-day, so long as we held to the divine right of unrestricted Nationalism ? I was talking to a public-spirited man the other (lay, an ardent Imperialist, and he said something like this to me : " I can't under- stand your enthusiasm for the cause of World Unity -- it is too visionary for me." And I replied : " I don't • agree. You are an Englishman. You say that you arc an enthusiastic worker for the unity of the British Empire, and you are working to promote understanding and personal contact between one-fourth of the popula- tion of the globe, inhabiting one-fifth of the earth ; you are ready to take within your orbit Englishmen and Esquimaux, Hindus and Hottentots, Australian Aboriginals and Arab traders, Scotsmen, Irish, French (in Canada and Mauritius), Dutch (in South Africa) : in fact there is hardly a race, creed or colour you do not include. Why is it then that if you are ready to work for the unity of the quarter, you will not stretch your mind a little and take in the whole ? " My friend shook his head and said : " I can't follow you."
And now a few words about World Organization and World Patriotism and how we are to bring them about. Here are a few of the reformi I would start with : A unified railway system, conducted in the interest of Europe as a whole, an international currency, which would be accepted as legal tender in all countries, a common rule of the road and a common system of pic- torial road signs, so that even a child could understand them, a common system of weights and measures and, of course, the introduction of the decimal system, the compulsory humane slaughter of animals, the abolition of visas on passports, the introduction of a universal thermometer in all countries. Then there is the exchange
of schoolboys and girls and teachers on a large and hitherto unattempted scale—(why should not we exchange 100,000 school visits every year ?)—the introduction of a World language, the exchange of a hundred journalists in every country every year, and the creation of a World Society which would seek to establish personal contact between ordinary mortals in all nations.
Along those lines, I am convinced, we could make world patriotism an immediate reality.
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