LETTERS
Power struggle
Sir: Your leading article of 10 August is a very one-sided view of the history of this century.
The late entry of America into the 1914-18 war was not to Europe's advan- tage; it started a process of decolonisation which has been greatly to Europe's detri- ment. Were it not for American influence at the end of the Great War, the whole of Arabia, indeed the whole of the Middle East, would have been under French/British rule following the Sykes–Picot pact, and all the resulting wealth from that part of the world would have gone to France and Britain.
Again, the late entry of America into the 1939-45 war completed the process of decolonisation, leaving Britain, especially, quite isolated. The whole of Eastern Europe, which had been the cause of the war, was given on a plate to the Russians, making them for the first time a world superpower. It is arguable that at the end of the 1939-45 war Eastern Europe jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire.
Since then the European Union has tried to make some sense of Europe as a world power. Britain has consistently dragged her feet without having any positive direction in which to go. Becoming a state of the Unit- ed States of America is scarcely an option, becoming a state of a Federal Europe is anathema to most of the British press, and becoming a powerful independent power on the lines of Japan, alas, does not seem to be an option.
N.B.B. Davie-Thornhill
Stanton Hall, Stanton-in-Peak, Nr Matlock, Derbyshire
Previous page
