SECURrrY.
Whatever Security may mean in Anglo-American relations, there can be little doubt as to its meaning for large parts of Europe. Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, to take random instances, illustrate it admirably. Czecho-Slovakia, on first mpression, stnies the observer as a well-ordered country, where enterprise and initiative are encouraged, where racial
and other feuds are allowed to die down, where the finer impulses in art and literature can make themselves felt--in a ,word, a healthy, happy country. Poland, on the other hand, equally new, equally Slav, would strike the same observer as exactly the reverse. Yet in both countries official opinion, and probably that of large sections of the population, is haunted by the fear that their new-found freedom may at any moment be taken from them. That such feeling may be so very largely groundless is beside the point. No amount of persuasion can exorcise it. Contrast with this the situation of Canada and the United States. Both peoples live in security on either side of an unprotected frontier, and no one has a moment's misgiving about it. Some day it is to be hoped Poland and Czecho-Slovakia will feel thus about their neighbours, but at the moment the ugly facts must be taken as they are.
Previous page
