The Sickness of Europe HERE are three books about Europe
by men who look on it from very different angles, but are agreed in one thing : that it is mortally sick. None of them makes cheerful reading, but all are worth a glance, and one deserves very careful considera- tion.
That one is naturally the work of Dr. Schacht who, as President of the Reichsbank from 1923 to 1930, is a European figure of no-small importance. For nearly seven years he was the most important influence in German financial policy, both domestic and foreign, and he is entitled to respectful hearing when, as now, he writes on German finance and on the Repara- tions problem.
Respect does not, of course, necessarily mean agreement. Dr. Schacht's whole career has been that of a fighter, and his book now is very largely a polemic. He falls foul, successively and impartially, of the Allied Governments, the Agent General for Reparations, Socialism in theory and practice, a whole series of German Governments, the Bank of International Settlements, and, in a more general fashion, of all politicians at all times and in all places. His great burden is the necessity of leaving financial problems to be settled by financiers without political interference, although why, but for political con- siderations, there should be any reason for reparations at all he does not explain. His pages have a refreshingly militant character, for it is always agreeable to read that other people, especially people with big reputations, are fools or knaves, and, according to Dr. Schacht, practically everyone with whom he was in contact during his seven years of office was both of these things. One is bound, however, to say that the interest of much of his book must be more vivid, if more pain- ful, for German readers than for English. So much of it is really simply the fighting over again, in print, of a past quarrel, and it is difficult not to wonder whether the principles at stake would have seemed quite so important to Dr. Schacht if he had been a looker-on. Particularly is this the ease with what he makes the very kernel of his indictment of the German Government, and over which he, in fact, resigned his post in 1930. This is the insertion at the second Hague Conference of a " sanctions clause " which had not been present in the earlier agreement. The Young Plan (which was the work of a body of experts) had stated that in the opinion of its authors the basis of security for the payment of the annuities was " the solemn undertaking of the German Government," and that all existing securities, &.c., ought to be abandoned. The final plan, as signed by the Governments, did abandon all pledges and securities, but it added that in the unlikely event of Germany's " committing acts revealing its determination to destroy the New Plan," her creditors must resume their liberty of action.
Dr. Schacht finds an arrangement between creditor and debtor inequitable which provides for sanctions only in the case of a default by the debtor, but he does not explain how a creditor can default. He even quibbles at some length over a verbal difference, the German text rendering the English " destroy " by zerreissen," literally " tear up." One can only feel that
if the German Government had been thinking of sailing so near the wind as to do the one without And other, the " sanc- tions clause " was a wise precaution. And yet, according to him, this clause " cancels " the Young Plan and means " the end of reparations."
His final chapters are much less unworthy. What he has to say about Germany's financial position, about the.mechanism of the reparations payments, and about the sad dilemma to which they are leading her creditors, is as interesting as it is authoritative. He shows that Germany has paid her repara- tions bill hitherto by raising loans from private sources, largely in America. This can probably not go on, and is in any case a clumsy and expensive method, involving an unpre- cedented dislocation of the money market. She can only continue to pay, he argues, by increasing the present dimensions of her foreign trade by one half, and this can only be done at the expense of other countries. Thus the reparations will do no one any good if they are ever really paid, and meanwhile, they are doing everybody harm. After this sad conclusion, which a great many peOple might ponder with advantage, he ends with a genuinely constructive chapter on a great develop. ment plan in which the industry, finance and agriculture of Europe and of the undeveloped countries of the world might co-operate.
Mr. de Chair's work is altogether lighter metal, and it is in no discourteous spirit that we say that its chief value will probably be to draw attention to Mr. de Chair himself as a spirited young thinker. His anthropology is dashing, his political knowledge patchy, and he undervalues altogether the difficulties of the problems about which he writes. It is all very well to talk about splitting off Croatia-Slavonia from Serbia, who need not mind because she will still be twice as big as before the War. But why should the Bulgarians be left without their slice, and where will Serbia's philosophy give out ? It would be nice to pacify Germany by giving her back the Polish Corridor, but there really is a Polish case too, of which Mr. de Chair does not seem to have heard. And if—. Mr. de Chair's great discovery—the Young Plan does -couple War debts and reparations, it cuts down the latter propor- tionately. Nevertheless, Mr. de Chair is refreshing, and he does seem aware that Russia is doing something, which has almost escaped the notice of Dr. Schacht. He has some very sound things to say about general world political tendencies and the League of Nations, and comes to- conclusions about the future oddly similar to Dr. Schacht's.
Mr. Tillman has written an enormous volume to prove the atrocities which occur under dictatorships. He has collected a mass of material which I, for one, found quite unreadable for its horror. It is well that these things should not be forgotten, lest we sink into a too easy complacency with ourselves, and his work will be valuable as a macabre book of reference. It is, however, doubtful whether it proves what seems to be Mr. Tiltman's main contention, the superiority of democracy. He has omitted to give what experimenters call the " control," the record of democracies at a similar stage of cultural develop- ment with the autocracies whose misdeeds he describes. But no form of government should tolerate the things which he describes.
C. A. MACARTNEY.
Previous page
