A Baltic-Aegean Confederation
A joint declaration signed by the delegates of Poland, Czecho- slovakia, Yugoslavia and Greece to the I.L.O. Conference in New York illustrates the manner in which the course of a future Peace Conference may be eased by agreements reached step by step in advance. One such step is the British plan for providing food and raw materials for the Continent. Another has been the understanding between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Yet a third, and a most significant one, is the agreement now reached by these four Central and South-Eastern States to form a bloc to serve as a basis after the war for a confederation of peoples from the Baltic to the Aegean. The plan is that, while retaining their separate sovereignties, they should work as a unit for economic purposes, and for certain common political and social objectives. To make the bloc geographically and economically complete, they would need the adhesion of Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria. Such a confederation of a number of relatively small States, primarily, it may be assumed, for economic purposes, is not to be confused with vague aspirations for a Federal Union of Europe. It would bring together regions great parts of which were once united under the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, before the last War, Austria-Hungary had sound economic reasons, only vitiated by political ambitions, for desiring to link itself up with the Aegean. The bloc would be even more natural, from an economic though perhaps not a political point of view, if it included Austria. That may yet come.
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