It fights with all its power for peace, but only for a peace founded on
national equality and European culture. Any other solution signifies not the
salvation but the suicide of Europe.
Therefore the victory of Great Britain and France is the condition for a
PanEuropean solution of the European question. This victory alone can ensure
the creation of a United States of Europe.
Britain, France, and their allies would dictate the terms of peace, and
found the United States of Europe in order to make a third European war
impossible, and create the foundations for European reconciliation and a
common economic revival after the terrible waste of war.
In 1919 the victors missed this great opportunity. At that time the means
of uniting and reconciling Europe for all time lay at hand. They preferred
to create a worldwide, but powerless, League of Nations, and a Europe torn
by hate, vengefulness, nationalism, and distress behind the barriers created
by tariffs and currencies. We are still reaping the evil fruits which were
thus sown in evil. When, in the near future, Europe finds itself in the same
situation it must not, through the short-sightedness and amateurism of its
leaders, fail a second time to utilise this opportunity. To this end the
Paneuropa movement must already have been made strong enough to enforce with
all the means which can operate on public opinion the reconciliation and
unification of Europe at the decisive moment.
Had there been a strong Paneuropa movement before the [First] World War
the European league would have become a reality as early as 1919. We can do
nothing to alter the sorrowful past, but we can prepare a better future, and
must be morally armed for the great decisions of tomorrow.
For since 1919 Europe has been enriched by two all-important lessons
namely, that a policy of national revenge only produces new national
revenge; and that a worldwide League of Nations is at least a century in
advance of its time.
