During the early years of this century it was generally accepted that the political organization of the world consisted of eight Great Powers and numerous small, or minor countries. The Great Powers, recognized as such, were Austria- Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States. These were the nations whose policies dominated world affairs, economic and political. Great Britain, with her far-flung Empire, mistress of the seas by virtue of the powerful fleet which supported the transportation network necessary to the maintenance of the industrial economy of the home country, was conceded to be the greatest of the Great Powers. Her chief rival was Germany, newly united and dominated by a youthful ambition to expand, both economically and geographically.
Over a period of comparatively few years, these two great rivals divided most of the world into two opposing groups. Great Britain wanted preservation of the status quo, and her desire was backed by France, Japan, and Russia. Germany wanted to upset existing conditions in order that she might establish a colonial empire rivaling the British, in a world where all territory available for colonization already had been allocated. She was backed by Austria- Hungary and Italy. Each of these groups was joined by many of the minor countries, according to what appeared to them to be their own best interests. Of all the Great Powers, only the United States remained aloof, in splendid isolation, unused to the responsibilities inherent to her newly acknowledged status as a Great Power.
By 1914, Germany felt that she was ready to obtain her “place in the sun,” by force of arms, and World War I began. Four years later the fighting ended and a new political organization of the world began to take form. Now there were only five Great Powers, and the number of minor countries had been increased. France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States retained their status as Great Powers, but Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia were now of lesser stature.
Austria-Hungary
Because World War I developed as a struggle between greater powers, there has perhaps been too little consideration given to the part played by Austria-Hungary in the origin of that war. The assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife was not an isolated event which provided a convenient excuse for starting a major war. It was the culmination of a phase of history which ended with the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy by the Treaty of St. Germain in 1919.
Austria-Hungary was the last of the great “family empires” of which there have been many in the history of Europe. The House of Hapsburg had reached the stage where Rudolph, head of the family, had become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire when, in 1272, Ottocar, Duke of Austria and Styria, refused to acknowledge his overlordship. There began a ten year struggle which resulted in the death of Ottocar in 1278 and by 1282 the Hapsburgs were established as rulers of Austria and continued as such until the end of World War I. In the ups and downs of the family history, the Hapsburg possessions at one time or another included most parts of western and central Europe and large areas in eastern Europe. Within the boundaries of Austria-Hungary as they existed just prior to World War I, there was no homogeneity of people and culture. The empire consisted of two parts, each independent of the other except in diplomatic, military, and naval matters. The Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria was also King of Hungary.
The population of this Dual Monarchy was quite mixed. About forty five per cent were Slavs, but because of the many subdivisions among these Slavic peoples, they did not wield the influence which their numbers would seem to indicate they should have. The German element made up about twenty- five per cent of the population, but the Germans were so scattered through the empire that effective action by this racial group was impossible. The Magyars, about sixteen per cent of the population, were the largest homogeneous racial group and wielded the greatest influence in determination of imperial policies.
In the end it was the Slav population which caused the downfall of the Hapsburg dynasty and the elimination of Austria- Hungary as a Great Power. Being geographically surrounded and outnumbered by Slavs, the Magyars of Hungary felt that the preservation of their country demanded that the Slavs be kept in a state of subjection. In the southern part of the empire there was a strong feeling of kinship among the Slavs for their racial brothers in the Kingdom of Serbia. This feeling was particularly strong in the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were not actually annexed by Austria- Hungary until 1908. It was the “cold war” struggle for these provinces, between Austria- Hungary and Serbia, which erupted into a “shooting war” following the murders of the heir to the thrones of the Dual Monarchy and his wife.
Because Russia had assumed a position as protector of the small Slav countries in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary could not declare war on Serbia following this incident without risking war with Russia. This risk she was able to take only because she was assured that Germany would come to her rescue in such an eventuality. Germany would do this because she hoped to expand her territories in eastern Europe. In the end, Austria- Hungary, and the Hapsburg family, were the heaviest losers in the situation which resulted.
2
As we now know, elimination of Germany and Russia from the list of Great Powers following World War I was only temporary. Germany, leader of the defeated faction, was apparently reduced to a position of comparative impotence. She was deprived of her colonial possessions, and her' territory in Europe was somewhat reduced from that included within her prewar boundaries. Yet, although history showed that Germany had been a disturber of the peace of Europe for centuries, she was allowed to rebuild and to rearm within a brief period of twenty years. The Powers which were victorious in World War I did not intend that this should happen. The treaties which ended the war provided adequate measures for preventing Germany from regaining her former position and again destroying the peace of the world but two principal factors permitted her to overcome the obstacles placed in her way.
The first of these factors was the continued failure of the United States to recognize her responsibility as a leader in world affairs. Instead of actively supporting the League of Nations and assisting in enforcing the restrictions placed upon Germany, the United States refused to become a member of the League and attempted to withdraw to her traditional position of isolation from the affairs of the Old World. It took an expensive lesson to teach the American people that this could no longer be done.
The second factor was the wave of antimilitarism which swept over France and Great Britain. The intense abhorrence of war felt by the peoples of these countries caused them to try to maintain world peace by reason and appeasement. As the growth of a new military power in Germany became apparent, the French and the British failed to face the situation realistically and declined to use military power to enforce the restraints which had been placed upon Germany.
These two factors gave Germany her chance. All that was lacking was a leader, and the leader appeared in the person of Adolph Hitler. The rapid rebuilding of German power required a superlative effort. This effort was produced as a result of the leadership of Hitler, which inspired in a large part of the German population a fanatical will to regain her former greatness for their country. By completely ruthless methods, unhampered by any code of morals or ethics, the job was done, and by the late 1930s Germany had again become recognized as one of the Great Powers.
The fact that Russia was no longer considered to be a Great Power following World War I was due to her internal troubles. The government of the Czars was not one which commanded a high degree of loyalty on the part of the people. Because there was little or no opportunity for a man to rise above the position in life to which he was born, the country was a fertile field for the growth of Communism, and a considerable portion of the population was willing to follow any leaders who would promise to better their conditions of life. With the Czar’s armies badly battered in the conflict with Germany, the leaders of world Communism saw their opportunity and they organized and staged the revolution of 1917. After much internal struggle and bloodletting, coupled with some external interference by her former allies of World War I, Russia emerged as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, under a Communist government far from what the people had been promised. Instead of the improved conditions which had been promised, the Russian Empire now was ruled by a dictatorship far more absolute and ruthless than that of the Czars had been since the earliest days of their rule.
The return of Russia to the status of a Great Power was as rapid as that of Germany, and accomplished by similar means. No code of morals or ethics hampered Stalin and his cohorts, any more than was the case with Hitler in Germany. Although Stalin could not display the same inspirational leadership that Hitler used to whip his people to a frenzy of effort, he made even greater use of the fear factor than did Hitler. Neither of these men had any scruples about killing people in large or small numbers, but whereas Hitler could accomplish much by appealing for a rebuilding of the Fatherland, Stalin depended more on the threat of death or imprisonment and forced labor to accomplish his ends. By the late 1930s, Russia, too, was again recognized as a Great Power.
Thus, just prior to World War II, there were seven recognized Great Powers; France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States. Again, as before World War I, Great Britain was considered to be the greatest of these, and her principal rival was Germany. And again the world was to a great extent divided into two opposing groups, Great Britain and France, and their supporters, on the one hand, Germany, Italy and Japan, with their supporters, on the other. But now the cause of the division was largely ideological, democracy versus totalitarianism.
The Communist government of Russia was not on particularly friendly terms with either group. It was problematical which side she would join in case of another world war, or whether she would remain neutral in the hope of profiting by gathering up some of the pieces remaining when the conflict was over. This uncertainty was resolved by Hitler through the deal which enabled Russia to take eastern Poland when Germany precipitated the struggle. Without this agreement Hitler could not have acted when he did because the danger of attack in the rear by Russia after he became involved in the war with France and Great Britain would have been too great a deterrent. The bait he dangled before Russia was more than the Communists could resist. It gave them an easy way to regain much of the territory lost by Russia in the post-World War I settlement.
Hitler’s Germany knew that its war of conquest could not be won if the United States joined with Great Britain and France to stop the aggression. But the United States, futilely clinging to an outmoded policy of isolation, gave every indication that she would remain neutral, at least initially, and Hitler believed that he could defeat Great Britain and France in a comparatively short time, before the United States awakened to her own ultimate danger.
So World War II was on. Hitler’s opinion that he could quickly overrun France was vindicated. He failed to conquer Great Britain because he failed to understand the potency of her sea power, and he learned that even so small an area' as Great Britain cannot be forced to surrender by the application of air power alone. After six years of fighting, in which eventually all the Great Powers and most of the smaller nations were involved, World War II ended. Now the list of Great Powers was reduced to four: France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States. Germany, Italy, and Japan had been thoroughly crushed as a result of their brazen attack on the rest of the world.
Germany
Since the Germanic tribes first came into conflict with the Romans in the second century B.C., the Germans have always been disturbers of the peace of Europe. German history for twenty five hundred years is largely the chronicle of a series of wars. To a considerable extent these wars have resulted from the ambitions of individual German leaders to enhance their personal holdings and power. One of the earliest rulers of any considerable portion of Germany, Charles Martel, conceived an ambition to reestablish the old Western Empire of the Romans. This ambition he handed down to his descendants and in 800 A.D. his grandson, Charlemagne, was crowned by the Pope as successor to the old Roman emperors. This event has ever since played a vital part in German history. Since Charlemagne’s empire was broken up, German rulers have always dreamed of reestablishing it, for themselves and their families. This ambition existed as recently as Adolph Hitler, in fact if not in acknowledged name.
For centuries the struggles of the German ruling families kept Germany divided into varying numbers of smaller political units until finally, following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the powerful personality of Bismarck succeeded in welding it into a single unified nation. In line with the ancient German expansionist dream, the Emperor William II endeavored to continue the work of Bismarck. His effort was destroyed by World War I but Germany rose again under Hitler, only to be again destroyed by World War II.
Today, divided as she is, there seems little likelihood of Germany regaining her former stature in the foreseeable future. The ties of blood are strong, and doubtless some day will result in a reunited Germany, but that can only come about after the downfall, either of the Communist dictatorship which now rules Eastern Germany, or of the democratic nations which now support Western Germany. Either a third world war or a world shaking revolutionary movement will be necessary to bring this about.
Italy
For centuries there have been two factors peculiar to the country which have had dominating effects on the history of Italy. One has been the dream of various Italian rulers that the glory which once was Rome might be reestablished. The other was the struggle of the Papacy to maintain its temporal powers.
Throughout its history, Italy has contributed to the world many of the great names of science, art, and literature, but after the disintegration of the Roman Empire, no political or military leaders arose who were capable of uniting the country, until the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Renaissance, which awakened Europe from the intellectual slumber of the Middle Ages, was led by Italy, but for another four hundred years the Italian peninsula continued to be divided into several small political divisions and to serve as a battleground for the armies whose masters contended for the predominance of power in Europe. For one hundred and seventy years most of Italy was dominated by Spain. For nearly a century the country was the prize over which France and Austria waged a long and bloody series of wars. Finally, in the wars following the French Revolution, France was victorious, and during the Napoleonic period France held the preponderance of power and influence in Italy.
Following the downfall of Napoleon, the Treaty of Paris and the Congress of Vienna organized seven independent states in Italy. In addition, Corsica was retained by France, and the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia was awarded to the House of Austria. From this moment there was a continuous series of movements, each having as its objective the establishment of a united Italy. One of the seven states was the Kingdom of Sardinia, ruled by the House of Savoy and including the territory of the former republic of Genoa. This state proved to be the foundation on which a united Italy was built. Years of wars and internal disturbances intervened, but by 1860 most of northern Italy was brought under the dominion of the House of Savoy. In that year the great Italian national hero, Garibaldi, with the blessing of Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia, took advantage of some minor disturbances in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and through further fighting was able to add most of southern Italy to the territories governed by the House of Savoy, and the Kingdom of Italy came into being. Italy was now united except for the provinces of Venetia and Rome. In 1866 Italy went to war with Austria as an ally of Prussia. The Italians were defeated by Austrian forces both ashore and at sea, but the Prussians were completely victorious and so Venetia was transferred from Austrian to Italian rule, despite the Italian defeats.
Meantime the struggle against the Pope for inclusion of Rome in the united Italy continued, unsuccessfully because of support and military assistance given to the Pope by France. But after her defeat by Prussia in 1870, France was unable to continue this support, and the Italians finally conquered the troops of the Pope. Rome became the capital of united Italy.
During the years of peace which followed, Italy made great progress culturally and economically, but the virility of the population of this area, which had developed the Roman Empire, was no longer apparent. The unification of the country had been accomplished only with much assistance from other nations, incidental to the give and take of international politics involving the greater nations of Europe. Nevertheless, the dream of an Italy which might rival ancient Rome persisted, and the new nation began reaching out for colonies. Eritrea and Italian Somaliland were acquired, but an attempt to occupy Abyssinia resulted in disastrous military defeat in 1906. A war of aggression against Turkey made Tripoli an Italian possession in 1912.
Italy’s position among the Great Powers was precarious. She feared that, as France recovered from her defeat by Prussia she might renew her support of temporal powers of the Pope, and that Italy might again be dismembered. She coveted the southern Tyrol and Trieste, which were part of Austria-Hungary although largely inhabited by Italians. Germany appeared to be the only suitable protector for Italy, and so she became a partner, with Germany and Austria- Hungary, in the Triple Alliance.
When World War I broke out, Italy deserted her allies and eventually threw in her lot with the opposition. What appeared to be the more advantageous course at the moment outweighed any obligation to observe her treaty agreements. Having picked the winning side, Italy continued to be recognized as a Great Power following that war. But now a new condition arose. Mussolini established his Fascist dictatorship, allied himself with Hitler in the Rome-Berlin Axis, and continued to foster the idea of restoring the glory of ancient Rome.
At the beginning of World War II Italy again hesitated, as in World War I. This time Germany accomplished the defeat of France very quickly, and as France fell Mussolini struck, and this time Italy adhered to her alliance with Germany. But she had guessed wrong. Complete and utter defeat followed, and Italy can no longer lay claim to a position as one of the world’s Great Powers.
Japan
None of the nations which have, during the Twentieth Century, been for a time recognized as Great Powers, has a history more filled with warfare than that of Japan. For centuries there was almost continual strife between various factions which strove to control all or large parts of this island nation. In addition there have been almost innumerable wars brought on by the efforts of various Chinese emperors to add Japan to their domains or, conversely, by the efforts of Japan to expand onto the continent of Asia.
At the beginning of the Christian era Japan was exercising a sort of protection over the Korean peninsula. She has been there, off and on, ever since, her advances and retreats being invariably the result of combat operations. In the thirteenth century Kublai Khan twice attempted to invade Japan but both times his invasion fleets were destroyed by storms and Japan was saved.
Europeans first heard of Japan from that great traveller, Marco Polo. His descriptions of the country excited the imaginations of many who heard or read them, and it was an attempt to discover India and Japan that Christopher Columbus discovered America. The first Europeans actually to reach Japan were three shipwrecked Portuguese whose disabled junk drifted to the southern Japanese islands in 1542.
Following this first contact an extensive commerce rapidly developed between the Portuguese and the Japanese, through the Portuguese settlement of Macao. Shortly thereafter a trade also developed with the Spanish in the Philippines, the Dutch East India Company, and the East India Company of London. With the traders came the Catholic missionaries, and for a time they made great progress in converting the Japanese to the Christian religion. But in 1596 a Spanish galleon which took refuge from a storm in a Japanese port was declared forfeited to the Japanese emperor. The captain tried to save his ship by impressing the Emperor with the power and majesty of Spain. In the course of his argument he pointed out on a map of the world the widespread holdings of Spain. In response to an inquiry as to how Spain had acquired all these scattered possessions, he explained that the missionaries converted large numbers of the inhabitants, then Spanish troops came in to cooperate with the converts to overthrow the existing government and seize the territory for Spain.
This incident resulted in many missionaries being put to death, efforts to spread Christianity in Japan were forbidden, and eventually, by 1640, to insure the exclusion of missionaries, all trade with Europeans was stopped except with the Dutch, and that was confined to the port of Nagasaki.
The self-imposed seclusion of Japan was not successfully broken until the well known visit of Commodore Perry in 1853. This resulted in a rapid reversal of Japanese policy. Contacts with the outside world began to be encouraged. Japan began a program of expansion which led to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, Japanese participation in the First World War, her invasion of China in the 1930s, and finally her too widespread aggression during World War II.
For a long time after she gave up her seclusion from the rest of the world Japan was able to pursue, successfully, an aggressive expansionist policy which kept adding territory, wealth, and prestige to her empire. In the end her greed brought about her destruction. Her defeat in World War II was so overwhelmingly complete that there is now no indicated probability that she can ever regain the status of a Great Power.
3
We have said that since the end of World War II the list of Great Powers consists of France, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States. That is an assumption which will bear further examination.
France
A reading of the history of France gives rise to a feeling that general acceptance of that country as one of the Great Powers is based more on tradition than on present fact. Before the French Revolution, France was unquestionably the leading power of continental Europe. Following the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte brought temporary internal order out of chaos, and France reached the highest pinnacle of her military might. Since the downfall of Napoleon the country has been so rent by internal dissension that she has been unable to back the influence she has wielded in international affairs with the power demanded when discussion failed and military action began. Her internal difficulties have sometimes led to bloodshed, more often to mere petty bickering, but no considerable portion of the population has been sufficiently united in aim to permit the establishment of any continuing policy, with one exception. The one exception has been the primary and almost single guide to French foreign policy for the past eighty years. It is the making of alliances for the protection of France against German aggression. Fear of Germany has been the dominating thought in France ever since the unification of Germany following the almost uncontested defeat absorbed by France in the Franco-Prussian War .of 1870. That the fear is justified has been demonstrated by what happened to France in World War I and in World War II. In the first instance, with the help of Great Britain, Russia, and Italy, France was barely able to hold off the Germans until the United States came to her rescue. In the second instance, she was completely overrun by Germany in very short order, a contributing factor being that several high offices in the government were held by traitors who were willing to assist the enemy for personal gain. This infiltration of the government was largely due to the chaotic condition of her internal political situation.
Despite her miserable showing in World War II, France has since been listened to as one of the Great Powers because her rescuers, Great Britain and the United States, have been so long used to thinking of her as a Great Power and because the French government does represent a sizeable segment of the world’s population, although no government has arisen in the country which is capable of guiding and leading public opinion along a road toward economic prosperity and military security.
Even today, French fear of Germany has so colored French thinking that it is handicapping, if not blocking, effective action of the western democracies in their struggle against world communism. France still objects to the rearming of Western Germany, for fear that any German military force might again be turned against her. Yet the democracies are in grave need of military manpower, and, despite their World War II defeat, the Germans probably still are the best fighting men in Europe. It seems entirely illogical for the democracies to refuse to the western Germans the right to help in this tremendous ideological struggle, and by so doing to deprive themselves of so much badly needed manpower.
Great Britain
England built the British Empire and became the world’s foremost Great Power through early recognition of the economic facts of life and a continuous and undeviating political policy which fostered the opportunity provided by development of the industrial system. When the population of Europe reached the point where it could not be supported by home resources, the British provided the shipping for transporting the foodstuffs and raw materials which had to be imported for all Europeans. When machinery began to replace hand work in manufacturing, England was first in the field, and so developed the economic system in which she imported great quantities of raw materials, converted them into usable articles of all sorts, and exported the finished product to all parts of the world. British shipping was used for transportation of both imports and exports. Thus her wealth and power were based on an industrial economy supported by a world wide shipping activity. The system depended on her control of the sea lanes, and so she became the world’s greatest naval power.
For so small a country to gain and maintain such a position required a shrewd and continuous policy of maintaining a balance of power which prevented any one continental power usurping her position. This she did by joining always the second strongest continental power against the strongest expanding power on the continent. Inherent in this policy was a willingness to fight if necessary but the avoidance of war if possible, not only because the British people disliked war but because war interfered with trade by closing some market areas and to some extent disrupting traffic on the high seas.
Over a period of centuries the British fought a long series of wars against the leading continental powers, always with the help of lesser powers. Her principal contribution in these wars was always sea power, which enabled her allies and herself to utilize the seaways to their advantage while denying their use to the enemy. Before the days of rail, air, and motor transportation this provided an even greater advantage than it does today.
Culmination of the British effort came at the end of the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. That series of wars left continental Europe so exhausted that the British system operated successfully for a hundred years without any major international war being necessary.
That century of peace was ended in 1914 because Germany, newly united and ambitious, began to challenge the supremacy of the British system. The First World War left Great Britain nearly as exhausted as the continent had been in 1815. Also, the world economic picture was changing. Manufacturing industries developed in other countries to challenge the near monopoly of Britain. A combination of these factors caused the British, for the first time, to falter in support of the policy which had for so long stood her in such good stead. As Hitler rebuilt Germany, that countty reached and passed the stage of expanding power where in earlier times the British would have considered it necessary to fight. This time they tried appeasement, attempting to extend the work of diplomacy into a period when military action was the only realistic solution. In the end, World War II had to be fought, and against greater odds than if the traditionally realistic British appraisal of the situation had prevailed.
Whether British leadership could have persuaded her continental friends to join her, during the 1930s, in a continuation of the traditional policy is debatable. Those friends, too, were exhausted after World War I, and had no fanatically energetic leadership to revive them quickly, as did Germany. The fact remains that Great Britain did not provide the leadership which might have accomplished this.
By the end of World War II the British people were almost completely exhausted. The changed economic conditions which had begun to affect them adversely long before the war were bolstered by the destructive blows dealt to their industrial installations by German bombers. This nation, which had been raised to a position of wealth and power out of all proportion to its inherent resources, was faced with a changed economic system which made rebuilding seem to require too great an effort, if, indeed, it could be done at all. India, heart of the Empire, demanded, and received, independence, for Britain no longer had the strength and will to hold it.
With their only means of livelihood gone, the people turned to the government, to socialism, for support. But the government is a political, not an economic agency. This is not the answer.
What is the answer? In the dominions, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, are opportunities for economic development. The British Commonwealth of Nations can be saved if this opportunity is grasped in time. For sentimental reasons the capital of the Commonwealth may remain in London, the crown and the directing brain may remain in England, but the productive agencies and British population must shift to the dominions and develop the resources of those areas. Whether bold enough leadership will rise to direct such a development is the problem facing Britain today.
4
We now come to the point where we have only two truly Great Powers remaining— the United States and Russia (USSR). Perhaps it would be more correct to say that we have two Great Powers led by these two nations, Communism by Russia, Freedom by the United States. The term Freedom is preferred to Democracy because not all the countries opposed to communism are democracies.
By this time it must be apparent to everyone that these two powers are engaged in a struggle for supremacy which eventually must be resolved in one of two ways, by war, or by revolution within the area controlled by communism. As between the two powers, communism is the aggressor. Should the apparent relative strengths of the two arrive at a ratio where the leaders of communism believe they can successfully end the struggle by war, World War III will be fought. Conversely, that contingency can only be avoided if the forces of freedom progressively increase their military and industrial might so as to keep ahead of similar progress in the communist area. At the same time, every effort should be made to foment and encourage revolt in the communist countries. It is entirely a matter of self-preservation, there is no other alternative to World War III. The basic tenets of communism forbid any other solution.
In this tremendous struggle, Communism has one great advantage over Freedom. If the leaders of communism do not exercise absolute control over the actions of the various countries under the spell of their doctrine, at least they do exercise considerably more control over those actions than is the case with their opponents, where the United States has no control but only some persuasive power. For this reason the communists can act more quickly and more positively than can the advocates of Freedom. To overcome this handicap it is essential that the nations of the freedom bloc put aside petty rivalries among themselves, recognize a community of interest in opposing the common enemy, and bring themselves into closer association in opposing that enemy.
That some progress is being made along this line is evidenced by the United Nations action in Korea, and the progress apparently being made, though slowly, toward agreement for common action by the Atlantic Pact nations to repel aggressive action in Europe. But these two situations also are indicative of the fact that the necessary degree of integration is far from being attained. In Korea, only the United States made more than a token contribution of troops and equipment to combat the communists. Means must be found to ensure more wholehearted support of United Nations action by the member nations. The development of plans and military forces for the defense of western Europe is hampered by the unwillingness of Great Britain to fully cooperate economically, and by French opposition to west German rearmament.
The history of Europe for a thousand years is a record of the attempts of various aggressors to bring that continent under a single rule. So far, the forces of Freedom have managed, with much sorrow and bloodshed, to avoid that contingency. In the twentieth century, modern transportation and communications have extended the struggle beyond the bounds of Europe, to include all the world. Up to now, communist aggression has been successful over a wide area, because the forces of Freedom, while united in opposing communist expansion by words, have not been equally united in opposing it by deeds. We are all in a precarious situation together, and only our combined efforts can see us through. This fact must be recognized, and all other considerations must give way before it.