European Unity
Europe and the Europeans. A Report Prepared at the Request of the Council of Europe.
by Max Beloff. With an Introduction by Denis de Rougemont.
Chatto and Windus (London). 278 pp. 25 shillings.

In October 1953 “seven eminent European thinkers” were invited by the Council of Europe—an inter-governmental body—to attend a round table conference in Rome. Among them were Signor Alcide de Gasperi; M. Robert Schuman, the French elder statesman; Professor Arnold Toynbee; and M. Denis de Rougemont, the French-Swiss historian who contributes an introduction to the present volume and clearly has had some influence on its more “federalist” sections. Two and a half years later, in March 1956, a study group of historians, economists, and others met at Strasbourg, under M. de Rougemont’s chairmanship, to discuss once more the general problem of European unity in the present era. These deliberations have now been summed up for the general reader by Mr. Max Beloff who acted as Rapporteur-Général and also, it must be supposed, as an unofficial British delegate to an assembly largely composed of Continental adherents to Europeanism.

The volume under review, as edited by Mr. Beloff, thus represents a summary of two separate discussions attended by eminent statesmen, scholars, and publicists holding widely differing views on a variety of subjects. To top it off, there is the substance of a paper on European philosophy, by Mme. Jeanne Hersch of Geneva University, which goes at some length into subjects such as positivism, Marxism, and Existentialism. As though that were not enough, the second part of the book departs sharply from the content and manner of the first half (largely historico-philosophical in substance and self-consciously “European” in tone) by turning a critical searchlight on the political and economic steps hitherto taken to forward European unity. This section reads as though it had been composed by Mr. Beloff (with some assistance from Mr. Peter Wiles, the Oxford economist who attended the Strasbourg gathering) for the express purpose of pouring cold water on the participants at the earlier Rome meeting. By way of balance, M. de Rougemont’s introduction to the volume, after paying due tribute to the objectivity of the Rapporteur-Général, denounces in no uncertain terms “the unnecessary pettifogging and malicious objections which the opponents of our union are so ready to multiply,” i. the attitude of those (mainly British) critics of Europeanism who dislike its Continental and Roman Catholic overtones. It will therefore be seen that whatever else this book may fail to do, it certainly does not pull its ideological punches.

The area of agreement among the participants in the Rome and Strasbourg discussions is rather more difficult to establish. Aside from the tussle between supporters and critics of European Union, there is an uncertainty over fundamentals which comes out in the opening chapter headed “The Problem of Definition.” From this one gathers that Professor Toynbee means by Europe “those Catholic and Protestant Christians who live in this north-western corner of the Old World,” while Professor Barraclough (his successor at Chatham House), and the author of the Report himself, reject this definition as too narrow. Dr. Van Kleffens, a former Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, thinks Russia is not in Europe, but Professor Barraclough disagrees; there are similar doubts about Turkey. Again, M. de Rougemont’s now familiar distinction between the false church of Moscow and the true Church of Rome is clearly not shared by Mme. Hersch, despite her attachment to the philosophia perennis and her worry over Marxism and positivism (bracketed together as departures from tradition). In summing up this section, the Rapporteur felt bound to note that the main philosophical dividing line may indeed run north-south rather than east-west. At least one French participant at Strasbourg recalled that Professor A. J. Ayer had told the International Congress of Philosophy at Lima (Peru) in 1951 that there were today two incompatible philosophies: the metaphysical tradition of Continental Europe (including Marxism and Existentialism) and the “neo-positivism” dominant in the United States, Britain, and Scandinavia. (It occurs to this reviewer that with a little extra ingenuity he might have related this line-up to the history of the Counter-Reformation—a subject which, in a different context, did indeed crop up during the Rome discussions).

There is of course a way out of these difficulties, and some of the speakers at Rome and Strasbourg seem instinctively to have opted for it: this is to proclaim that Europe’s essential unity lies in its diversity, its pluralism, its ability to accommodate the most striking departures from whatever is regarded as the cultural mainstream. The trouble is that this argument does not lend itself readily to support for schemes plainly intended to establish a new integration at the ideological as well as the political level. If Europe, like Mediterranean antiquity before it, is a conglomerate of diverse cultural traditions, why bother to unify it? Alternatively, if the Continent is the repository of a unifying central tradition (roughly identifiable as the philosophia perennis and its post-Christian variants), what is to be done about those troublesome northern barbarians, the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians, with their hankering after strange (Protestant and positivist) gods?

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To the present writer, some of the most satisfying passages of Mr. Beloff’s Report are those which throw light on the cultural pattern that has somehow managed to establish itself over the centuries, alongside with (and frequently indifferent to) political and religious cleavages:

Although use has been made of folklore in the interest of nationalism, the modern folklorist is far more conscious of the resemblances that are found to exist between local customs and even farm implements and clothings, [in] areas widely separated on the map. Thus in Ireland the saddleshoes used in hunting wild duck are similar to those used in Scandinavia. Norwegian nationalists have been shocked to learn that their ‘local’ costumes originated from France, and that the national symbol, the red cap, is really the bonnet phrygien of the French Revolution. This is equally true of the central themes of folk literature; research on the theme of the ‘substituted bride’ involved the study of Russian dialects as well as of Western languages.

This passage clearly owes something to M. de Rougemont’s influence. Elsewhere we are reminded that cross-fertilization in the arts extended even to minor performers, such as the first German composers, Hassler and Schuetz, who learned their art in Venice before passing it on to Bach (who was also influenced by Vivaldi); and it is clearly due to M. de Rougemont’s presence at these discussions that the reader is reminded of the supra-national significance of the Tristan myth, the common origins of tragic literature, and (on the other hand) the time-lag which prevented the Victorian novelists from realizing (as did their French contemporaries) the general break-up in traditional values.

But in a volume edited by a professional historian, these excursions, fascinating though they are, do not quite blanket the main theme, which after all has to do with Europe’s lamentable failure to establish good order in the political sphere. Fortunately Mr. Beloff does not lack forthrightness:

There is a tendency when Europeans get together to forget the evils of the past and to look only to the amenities of the present or the hopes of the future. This is a mistake. European history is nothing to be proud of. It consists largely of Europeans killing each other for allegedly idealistic motives. The Protestant Reformation plunged Europe into an orgy of war and massacre which lasted for nearly a century and a half. Europe had scarcely recovered when the even bloodier but mercifully shorter war launched by the explosion of the French Revolution burst upon the world. Greed for political and economic power, combined with the demands of submerged nationalities, wrecked the old Europe beyond repair in the holocaust of 1914-19. Totalitarianism in all its forms was born in the trenches of those fatal years. But the worst is more immediate. Until we face the fact that European history also includes the extermination chambers and concentration camps set up by the Nazis, we have no right to discuss it at all.

To which it is possible to say Amen; even though one notes the surprising absence of any mention of the Industrial Revolution which devastated 19th-century England no less thoroughly than Continental Europe had already been uprooted by the Napoleonic wars (it may even have claimed more victims, and certainly had a worse effect on the survivors). European history has indeed witnessed too many catastrophes to enable one to share the more sanguine hopes of those who profess to believe that future developments will be uniformly marked by greater tranquillity. There is a further consideration (not mentioned in this volume): to the extent that Europe has in recent decades become more democratic and pacific, it has also become less important. In Britain, for example, Labor’s rise to political eminence has occurred pari passu with the decline of England as a world power and the consequent weakening of the traditional ruling class. These processes (already foreshadowed earlier in Scandinavia) suggest a correlation between democracy and power which is uncomfortable, and therefore unfashionable, but should nonetheless be borne in mind, at any rate by historians.

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