THE OUTLOOK FOR EUROPE
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—The peace of Europe waits upon the readiness to face squarely the stark realities of the embroiled situation. The veriest vicious circle the Powers are enacting in trying to dispel the war-breeding atmosphere. Consider : Agreements are not being kept, so that they meet to make agreements again. Can anything exceed such procedure for futile circularity ?
If the Powers are in real earnest why don't they enter into the reason of the chronic defection, and effectively deal with that element of the situation ? Now, the surest way to find this out is to put themselves in the place of the violators. Let England, France or any of the Powers sincerely ask themselves what their own attitude would be upon having been mutilated and humiliated, deservedly or not. Then they would realize how those who have been so dealt with must feel, and what therefore must constantly be in the back of their mind. Nations never forget.
No : Promises will not lead to Peace ; only Intentions will. That is to say, a change of heart, not a verbal pledge. Even if the present spokesman of a nation actually means what he says, be he Hitler himself, still it will make no difference as to the aggrieved nation's underlying attitude, with its periodic outbreaks of unilateral actions.
Unilateral actions are elemental actions. Nothing shows forth more patently the demoralized state in which the world is floundering than the prevalence, in varied forms, of the spirit of direct, unilateral action. And it all, let us be frank, has its roots in the unilateral character of the Peace Treaties.
Not until Negotiated Peace Treaties are substituted for Dictated Treaties can there be reasonable expectation of peace. Such a move, replacing exactions with concessions, would bring the Treaties in line with human nature, and economic exigencies, and that alone is a safe foundation of
peace.--Yours faithfully, • GABRIEL WELLS. 145 West 57th Street, New York.
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