AN IDEA CONQUERS THE WORLD

With a Preface by
The Rt. Hon. Sir
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi

AN IDEA CONOUERS THE WORLD

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi

An Idea Conquers the World

With a Preface by
The Rt. Hon.
Sir Winston S. Churchill

ROY PUBLISHERS · NEW YORK

Library Congress Card Catalog Number: 54-7134

Printed in Great Britain
by Purnell & Sons Ltd.
Paulton (Somerset) and London

To the memory of Ida Roland Countess Coudenhove-Kalergi

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

by

THE RT. HON. SIR WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Someone throws another log of trouble and effort, and fresh myriads or sparks stream ineffectually into the air. Men have always tended these fires, casting into them the fruits of their toil, indeed, all they can spare after keeping body and soul together. Sometimes at rare intervals something exciting results from their activities. Among innumerable sparks that flash and fade away, there now and again gleams one that lights up not only the immediate scene, but the whole world.

The resuscitation of the Pan-European idea is largely identified with Count Coudenhove-Kalergi. The form of his theme may be crude, erroneous and impracticable but the impulse and the inspiration are true.

prove to be the surest means of lifting the mind of European nations out of the ruck of old feuds and ghastly revenges. It may afford a rallying ground where socialists and capitalists, where nationalists and pacifists, where idealists and business men may stand together. It may be the surest of all the guarantees against the renewal of great wars.

Winston S. Churchill

CHAPTER I

BORN IN TOKYO

One day in the early spring of 1896 a strange-looking caravan travelled along a highway in western Bohemia. Starting from the railway station of the historic Czech town of Domažlice, it wound its way northward toward the little town of Ronsperg and its old castle. From time to time, as the caravan mounted the crest of the hills on the highway, the castle rose visible in the distance, for it, too, stood on a hill, surveying the plain as far as the distant green mountain chain in the west, the Bohemian Forest, which marked the frontier of Bavaria.

The little town of Ronsperg, with its two thousand Germanspeaking inhabitants, served as the unofficial capital of the estate, but the major part of the domain spread west of Ronsperg toward the hills of the forest, covered with straight, dark fir trees. Here stags and deer, roe and Corsican mountain sheep, foxes and hares were at home in the thick underbrush.

The plain of the estate embraced farms and herds of sheep and Swiss cattle which wandered over the wide fields and meadows.

Over all this Ronsperg Castle stood broad and solid on its hill, white walls covered with ivy, high roof of tiles black with the continuous smoke of chimneys. Its stone walls, ten feet thick, had withstood many sieges. Like an old tree, the castle had grown throughout the centuries, stretching its branches in all directions. In different generations new wings had been added, so that it had become irregular and unbalanced on its various sides. Like smaller trees around a large one, a number of smaller buildings gathered around the castle—the houses of officers of the estate, of coachmen and gardeners, the stables filled with carriages and sledges, the greenhouse, and the other buildings. Linked to the castle by a suspended wooden gallery was a second long cottage, built much later than the main castle, with apartments for guests on the upper floors and offices

for the administration of the estate below. Around the castle was a large park with century-old trees and flower-beds, all surrounded by a high wall of rough stones that separated the little world within from the great world without. . . . And the little world within was full of life today, preparing to welcome home for the first time the children of the master of the castle, who had come all the way from the opposite side of the globe.

Next to the driver sat an elderly man who was a contrast to the coachman and his fine attire. He looked fierce and vigorous, dressed in the native costume of the Caucasian mountaineer; an oriental dagger hung from his broad cartridge belt; his eyes were black and sparkling, and a powerful nose protruded above a huge grey moustache. On his head was a bright red fez with a black tassel.

Inside the carriage sat two smiling Japanese women, wearing the colourful costume of their country. On their laps rode two little boys, two years and one year old, dressed in Japanese baby costumes.

For two hours the caravan moved towards Ronsperg, where the townsfolk had gathered in the street to see the carriage as it rolled through the broad gate of the park toward the entrance of Ronsperg Castle.

This castle, where the caravan finally came to a halt at the home of the Coudenhove-Kalergi family.

The Coudenhoves had always been conservatives, following their dukes, kings, and emperors blindly through reform and revolution from the Netherlands to Belgium and again from Belgium to Austria.

Among their ancestors was Charlemagne, and beautiful Saint Elisabeth, Duchess of Thüringen and daughter of a Hungarian king. The Kalergis, on the other hand, had been traditional revolutionaries, fighting and dying for the liberty of their native island of Crete, first against its Venetian masters, then against its Turkish oppressors. Both families had been compelled by political events to emigrate from their countries of origin to distant lands, growing more and more European as they inter-married with daughters of different nations. Finally they united when Count Franz Coudenhove, a junior member of the Austrian Embassy, married his young cousin Marie Kalergi, heiress to the Kalergi fortune, in Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Coudenhove line reaches back to the eleventh century. Two brothers Coudenhove joined the first Crusade in 1099, when Jerusalem was conquered for the first time by the united armies of the Christian knights of Europe. They belonged to the oldest nobility of North Brabant, now part of the Netherlands. At the end of the eighteenth century the Coudenhoves were made counts of the Holy Roman Empire. But when the French Revolution swept over Belgium, the first Count Coudenhove left his native country. His son became an Austrian general and married a Baltic baroness. One of the sons of this international couple followed his father's career, and saved, by the greatest cavalry charge in modern history, the retreating Austrian army at the Battle of Koeniggraetz, after it had been defeated by the Prussians. His brother chose a diplomatic career and founded the line of the Coudenhove-Kalergis by marrying the Kalergi heiress.

The story of the Kalergi family centres on Crete. In the tenth century, after Crete had been reconquered from the Arabs by the great Greek emperor Nikophor Phokas, a branch of his family settled down in this strategic outpost of the Byzantine Empire. When, three hundred years later, Venice became the dominant power in the Mediterranean, Alexios Kalergis

signed the treaty with Venice which transformed Crete into a Venetian dominion. A chronicle recalls that on that occasion the Phokas of Crete changed their name into Kalergis 'because of the beautiful act of peace', the name of Kalergis being composed of the Greek words kalon, meaning beautiful, and ergon, meaning action.

But this peace did not last. Thirty years later three brothers Kalergis fought at the head of a national revolution against Venice. Though they paid for their defeat with their lives, the family remained throughout the following centuries the first on the island. And in Venice one of the most beautiful palaces, white marble worked like lace, the house where Richard Wagner lived and died, stands as a monument of their name: the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi.

After Greece had recovered its freedom, the Kalergis continued their historic role. It was again a General Kalergis who overthrew the first King of Greece, Otto I, and his Wittelsbach dynasty; and the former Premier of Greece, Emmanuel Tsouderos, was also a member of the Kalergis family.

In the eighteenth century one of the Kalergis, involved in a conspiracy against Turkish rule, fled to Russia and became a general of the Czarina Catherine II. He married a Norwegian and acquired a great fortune.

The only son of this couple, Johannes Kalergis, married the beautiful young Countess Marie Nesselrode, niece and adopted daughter of Russia's all-powerful Chancellor, Count Charles Nesselrode.

On account of the husband's jealousy, the marriage soon ended in divorce. Johannes lived in London, became a British subject and dropped the 's' of his name. Marie went to Paris and started an amazing career. By a unique combination of beauty, spirit, virtue, generosity, charm and wealth, she fascinated everyone she met: Balzac, Chateaubriand, Musset, Merimée, Delacroix and all the great figures of Paris half way through the century. She early sponsored Richard Wagner's career and remained all her life one of his close friends. Wagner tells in his Mémoires how she spontaneously gave him 10,000 gold-

francs to cover the losses of his Paris concerts. Later he presented her with the manuscript of Tristan and Isolde and dedicated one of his pamphlets to her.

When Heinrich Heine saw her for the first time, he exclaimed: 'This is no woman, but a cathedral of love!' He praised her beauty in one of his oriental poems: 'The White Elephant'. Théophile Gautier also wrote a poem about her beauty: 'La Symphonie en Blanc Majeur', he calls her a 'Madonna of the snows, a white sphynx sculptured by winter'.

Equally at home in Paris, St. Petersburg, Warsaw and Baden-Baden, Marie Kalergis all her life travelled throughout Europe, stopping on her way at the castles of her numerous friends and relatives. Politically this 'White Fairy', as she was generally called, was a genuine European. Though she loved her mother's Polish people, she remained faithful to the Czar and did all she could to reconcile Poles and Russians. She also tried to prevent the Crimean War and, after it broke out, to end it as rapidly as possible. At that time Empress Eugénie of France called her a 'diplomat in a crinoline'. Her friendship with many kings, queens and statesmen, such as Napoleon III, Prince Bismark and his Emperor William I, gave her great political influence. Her genuine love, however, was not politics, but art. A few years before her death she married a Russian nobleman, Serge de Mouchanoff, head of the Imperial Theatre of Warsaw, whom she assisted energetically in his artistic work.

One of Chopin's favourite disciples, she was an accomplished pianist, moving Rossini to tears by her music. Franz Liszt too was among her friends and admirers. When she died, he composed an 'Elegy on Marie Kalergis'; he wrote to a friend that she had left 'the memory of a soul dreaming, seeking, grasping and performing what was good, beautiful and ideal; in her was some mysterious note, the chord of which sounds only in heaven!'

Her only child, named Marie Kalergis like herself, grew up

^<sup>1 Under this title a book was published by Constantin Photiades, Edition Plan, Paris, 1929.

in a Catholic convent in Paris, to be still more international than her mother, combining Russian nationality with the Greco-Scandinavian blood of her father and the German-Polish origin of her mother. By education she had become a French lady; through her early marriage to Franz Coudenhove she became a member of the Austrian aristocracy.

After Johannes Kalergis' death, this couple bought three estates: the Castle of Ottensheim in Upper Austria, one of the most romantic places in the lovely valley of the Danube; the big estate of Zamuto in the wild mountains of the Hungarian Carpathians, the richest hunting grounds of Europe (there were Hungarian stags, bears, lynxes, wolves and wild boars), and finally, the castle and estate of Ronsperg in Bohemia. He gave up his diplomatic career to devote himself to the management of these properties. The Emperor appointed him a member of the Austrian House of Lords, the 'Herrenhaus', and he joined the Conservatives.

But the happy years of Franz Coudenhove were numbered. His beloved wife died at thirty-six, leaving him alone with six attle children. Faithful to the memory of his wife, he never remarried, but became as hard and despotic as he was unhappy, misunderstanding his children and misunderstood by them.

Two of his sons were remarkable—Heinrich and his younger brother Hans. Hans Coudenhove's unusual destiny took him from Ronsperg Castle to a life in the wilderness of Africa. After his father's death he gave up his diplomatic career, left Europe, disgusted with Western civilization and its hypocrisy, and established himself in the African jungles. All efforts of his friends and relatives to bring him back to Europe failed. He had fallen in love with the Dark Continent and its overwhelming natural phenomena. In his book My African Neighbours: Man, Bird and Beast in Nyasaland¹, which appeared just before his death in 1925, he confesses:

I have never seen an airplane, or a dirigible balloon, or a motor-bus, or a taxicab, or a motor-boat, or a wireless apparatus, or a cloud-picture, or the president of a republic, or a portrait of Einstein,

^<sup>1 Little, Brown and Co., Boston.

or a Bolshevik. Incidentally, I have not slept in a bed for twelve years, having acquired the habit of sleeping on a deck-chair instead, under conditions which made it advisable that I should be 'up and doing' and 'all there' within half a second of waking up.

Heinrich Coudenhove shared his brother's love for nature and for distant lands. But his life took a very different course. Born in Vienna in 1859, he had been educated by the Jesuits. After having studied law he took up a diplomatic career. His first post was Athens, his second Rio de Janeiro. In the jungles of Matto Grosso he shot two huge silver lions and two jaguars, the largest ever shot by a white man. Years later he was proud to show us his name and still-unbroken world record registered in The Sportsman's Handbook.

From Rio his career took him to Constantinople, the capital of the cruel despot of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, whom Heinrich despised because of his methods of government, based on corruption and cruelty. But in spite of his horror of Abdul Hamid and his politics my father loved Constantinople, where he spent three happy years in the Austro-Hungarian embassy. Here he learned Turkish, Arabic, and Hebrew, and plunged into the history, philosophy, and civilization of Islam. Here at last his early interest in the Orient could be satisfied, and in many respects he came to prefer the Oriental to the Western way of life: it was, he thought, nearer nature and nearer God; he liked civilization which seemed penetrated by religion and free from Western materialism. Later he emphasized how, during the Dark Ages, Arabic civilization had been superior to that of Germanic Europe, and his sympathies in the matter of the Crusades were definitely on the side of the Arabs and

not of the Christians, who seemed to him little more than barbaric invaders of Syria and Palestine. The only Christian emperor of that period Heinrich admired was Frederic II of Sicily, who had been brought up in the midst of Arabic culture and whose successful Crusade was accomplished without bloodshed. My father often quoted an Arabic author who declared that three times in history the progress of civilization had been interrupted: the first time when the Persians were defeated by the Greeks at Salamis; the second time when the Arabs were defeated by the Franks between Tours and Poitiers, and the third time when the Turks were defeated by Austrians and Poles beneath the walls of Vienna. Heinrich did not quite share this point of view, but he considered it defensible.

Next there came a brief mission to Buenos Aires, and then my father's dreams materialized. He was sent to the Far East, to Tokyo. As there was no Austrian Resident in Tokyo, and he was at that time the highest official of the legation, Heinrich became Chargé d'Affaires and was for two years at the head of the Austrian legation, in spite of his youth and his brief career. Promptly he set about learning Japanese and studying Buddhism, the religion that had attracted him since he first admired Schopenhauer's philosophy based on Buddhist ideas.

Heinrich devoted much thought to Japanese problems, until he became convinced that this little group of islands would one day play a decisive role in the history of our planet. Many years later he reread his reports from Tokyo in the files of the Foreign office in Vienna and was proud to state that his political predictions had been fulfilled: the Anglo-Japanese alliance, the Russo-Japanese war, Japan's victory over Russia, and Japan's rise to the rank of a great power. He also became a scholar of Japanese culture and sought out a number of Japanese statesmen, first of them Prince Ito, the real founder of the modern Japanese empire and one of the outstanding statesmen of his period.

From all his diplomatic posts my father made long trips to see as much as possible of the world, and especially of the world he loved, the Orient. Some time was spent with his relatives in Russia. He visited China, Korea, and India, where he learned Hindustani and had a young elephant as pet. He made a trip through the Caucasus and was almost drowned at Bangkok, where one pitch-dark night he fell into the Menam River. As a result of these voyages he finally spoke sixteen languages. French and English he spoke as well as his mother tongue, and he could read aloud any book written in one of these three languages in either of the two others, without it being apparent that he was translating.

As was natural for a man of his mental abilities, Heinrich acquired during his voyages an amazing knowledge of the world and its cultural and political problems. Naturally inquisitive and interested in knowing and learning everything, he wasted no time as he travelled, but used to work from the early morning till late at night. He always tried to see problems not from an Austrian or European point of view, but from that of the native population.

When in 1892 my father met my mother in Tokyo, they were as different as creatures fallen from two planets. For thousands of years there had been no contact between their ancestors. They had been educated in completely different schools. He was a Catholic, she a Buddhist. He had just started to learn Japanese, while she hardly spoke any European language. She had never worn European dress, never dined in a European house, never had contact with European men or women. The young European with skin like white marble and eyes like steel must have attracted and terrified her, whilst

Mitsuko Aoyama was born in Tokyo in 1874, only six years after the revolution that began to transform the Empire of the Rising Sun from a feudal state with medieval life and civilization into a modern power.

Mitsuko's education was hardly affected by this political change. As a young girl she received a purely Japanese education, learned to read and write thousands of Chinese characters, to paint beautiful calligraphy, to count with old wooden Japanese counting machines to learn how Japan was created by the Goddess of the Sun, the ancestor of the Emperor, and how Japan evolved through the centuries. Her parents were Buddhists, and she learned the principles of this Indian religion, together with the moral teachings of the Chinese savant, Confucius. Beside this she learned about innumerable Japanese gods and goddesses, with their mythology, charming fairy tales which inspired her lucid imagination. She was taught to worship the shrines of her ancestors and to adore the memory of emperors and heroes. She learned to express feelings and emotions in short poems, to sing old Japanese songs and accompany them with two Japanese instruments, one a kind of guitar and the other like a mandolin.

When little Mitsuko walked to school, her hands were packed in two little sacks full of dry peas, to give her fingers exercise and make them elastic and gracious—they became so elastic that she later used to play ball with the back of her hand. She also learned the graceful ceremonies of tea making and to arrange flowers according to old symbolic tradition. As politeness is a cardinal virtue in the East, she was also trained in perfect courtesy of speech and gesture, in the art of dressing, of bowing, and of smiling. She learned to suppress her emotions and to hide her expressions, to respect her elders, to be gentle and kind. And she learned that a Japanese woman must obey and devote her life first to her father, then to her

Mitsuko was eighteen when she met my father, who then was thirty-three. From her pictures at that age one cannot wonder that the young Austrian diplomat was fascinated by her beauty, her Oriental grace, and her charm, for she was really beautiful. Taller than the average Japanese, extremely slender and well proportioned, her face was pure oval, her cheekbones no more pronounced than those of Europeans, her lips full, her nose small and delicate, her forehead round, her hair black with bluish shadows. Her eyes, hidden behind long lashes and usually only half-open, were lively and intelligent, in striking contrast to her general calm. Her complexion was neither white nor yellow, but ivory. Many Japanese who saw her refused to believe that she was of pure Japanese stock; for a Japanese she looked European—just as certain types among pure Europeans look Japanese. Her hands were beautiful, admired by all painters and sculptors who saw them, while the long, slender fingers combined harmony with strength. In them anyone who understood hands could see that the weakness of her appearance hid a strong personality. Heinrich seemed to have known this: he used to compare her, not with a lamb or deer, but with a black leopard. And I believe he knew my mother better than anybody else.

Heinrich loved this ivory figure with all his passion, and she loved him as a man loves destiny or as a hero embraces adventure. It flattered her that a 'daimio' from the fairyland of the distant West, representing a great empire, had fallen in love with her and asked her hand. According to the Japanese tradition, it was not she who could decide if she would marry this mysterious stranger, but her father. It was for Kihatchi Aoyama to give his consent, and finally he gave it. Mitsuko obeyed her father, just as she would, from now on, obey her husband. But this act of obedience was done with secret pride, with hope and curiosity—and almost with love for the strange man who had become her destiny.

For Heinrich the marriage was more complicated than for Mitsuko. Never before had a member of the European diplomatic corps married a Japanese. Could he imagine Mitsuko as the hostess of an Austrian embassy, in London, or in Washington, Petersburg, or Paris? It was still his ambition one day to become ambassador, or even the foreign minister of his country, a successor to Prince Metternich.

But now he loved Mitsuko more than he loved his career—he could well imagine a life without a career, but not life without her. First he planned to resign, to give up his rights as the heir of his estates in favour of his younger brother, and to settle in Sumatra on a rubber plantation. But meanwhile his father had died and Mitsuko bore a son, baptized Hans. This son Heinrich wished to be his heir; he gave up his plans to go to Sumatra and decided to ask to have his marriage recognized by Emperor Franz Joseph, by the Church, and by the Mikado. With his boundless energy he overcame the innumerable obstacles set by his superiors, by tradition and convention, by social and by racial prejudice. Mitsuko was baptized with great pomp by the archbishop of Tokyo in the cathedral of that city.

The Empress of Japan received the wife of Austria's diplomatic representative. She gave her a priceless fan of carved ivory and made her promise never to forget in Europe the honour of Japan. From Ronsperg, family jewels were sent to Tokyo to decorate the new Countess Coudenhove, christened Maria Thecla, but called by her husband and her friends all her life 'Mitsu', between her Japanese name and 'Mizzi', the Austrian nickname for Mary.

To make sure Mitsu would have a social position corresponding to her new official position, Heinrich informed the diplomatic corps and the leaders of the European colony that he stood ready to challenge to a duel anyone who did not give his wife the same respect as if she were of purest European blood. Heinrich was never obliged to carry out this threat, for whoever met Mitsu was attracted and touched by her beauty and her modesty, and the European

colony was always glad to be entertained by this charming hostess.

In the first days of my life I was so weak that a French missionary, living near, was called to baptize me in a hurry. Since I refused to drink, it seemed doubtful whether I would survive. Then a friend of my mother, a Baroness Ushida, who was married to a Japanese diplomat and was noted for having 'second sight' called on my mother and saw the baby. 'The boy will survive,' she said, 'and grow up to be one day a famous man!'

At the beginning of 1896 my father decided to make a trip to Europe to show his home to his young wife and to introduce her to his family.

After we had arrived in Suez, my brother and I were sent ahead to Ronsperg, accompanied by our two Japanese nurses and by my father's Armenian butler, who served as their guide and interpreter. Meanwhile my parents went to see Egypt, Palestine, and Italy. My father wished to show to my mother the splendours of the Mediterranean and to present her to Pope Leo XIII and to Emperor Franz Joseph.

So it came about that my brother and I arrived, ahead of our parents, after a trip of four weeks across the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean, at our new home, the old Castle of Ronsperg.

CHAPTER II

OUR BOHEMIAN CASTLE

Boyhood in Ronsperg was as calm and carefree as a beautiful dream. Guided and protected by a strong and brilliant father and blessed by a lovely mother, my childhood was a succession of serene and happy days. The castle, with its vast grounds and its park, was an island of peace which the world never penetrated. From time to time talk was heard of distant wars and revolutions, but we seemed to live on another planet, far removed from all such misery, grief, and sorrow. First a nun from a near-by convent instructed us, then a tutor came to give us private lessons. Twice a year the teachers of the town came to the castle, examined us and reported to my father on the results.

During these early years I had only one friend—my elder brother Hans, who had been born the year before me. We were educated like twins, always sharing the same room and the same interests.

With Hans I played away the years of early childhood, in and out of the castle. One of our favourite playgrounds was the little courtyard leading, on the right, to the large kitchens and the wine cellars and, on the left, to a little chapel. Here every Saturday a mass was celebrated for us, for which we acted as ministrants looking like little priests. Inside the castle our play branched out from our schoolroom on the first floor to the billiard-room and the theatre hall, with its ever-fascinating stage, decorations, lights, costumes, and curtains. Up the main staircase, adorned with my father's exotic trophies, we found on the second floor the dining-room decorated with forbidding pictures of our ancestors. Here also were the bedrooms, ours and our parents', and here, too, was the real centre of the castle, its most beautiful room. This was my father's study, high walls covered with the thousands of books he had collected, and in the middle his enormous writing-desk, on which sat a beautiful Japanese Buddha surrounded by little busts of Goethe, Schiller,

Napoleon and Homer. On wooden columns around the room stood other busts—Socrates, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Kant, Schopenhauer—and in the midst of them Jesus Christ, and beside Him a reproduction of Michelangelo's 'Moses'. Above the study door was a rare picture of the great founder of the Persian religion, Zoroaster, and in the niches of the windows were Arabian calligraphs with quotations from the Koran, and, on the huge safe, a marble statue of the Indian God of Wealth, with an elephant's trunk instead of a nose.

looked at England I thought of my great-grandfather Kalergi, that strange misanthropist and lonely millionaire, while Scandinavia recalled to me his mother, who had come from the distant city of Bergen.

When my eyes left Europe and turned to Africa, I imagined my uncle living with his black servants and animal pets, far from civilization; and across the Atlantic, in the middle of South America, I dreamed of the Brazilian jungle where Father had shot the jaguars whose skulls now hung as trophies over his fireplace.

The whole globe seemed to me connected with my life and family. And when I looked at the globe of the sky, opposite that of the earth, the tiny little ball of our planet seemed to me like a boat, sailing with me and my far-flung family, across an ocean of stars, from a dark and unknown past to a dark and unknown future. I loved to gaze at the stars, when on clear winter nights our sleds carried us, wrapped in furs, through snowy plains and hills home to the castle. I realized with amazement the infinity of space and time, and never ceased to think about it. But at the same time I had made another boyhood discovery that seemed to me just as startling: that nothing was certain and that everything was possible. These two notions were the start of my thinking.

From my earliest youth I sensed the damage done by economic frontiers, cutting up natural landscape and dividing people speaking the same language into separate units. When I took a walk or drive to the nearest village in Bavaria, I was cross-examined by the Austrian and by the German frontier guards. Again and again I heard stories and rumours of smugglers who had crossed the border by night and who had been arrested or shot. I was told that all this was necessary to protect the national market, but in spite of these explanations

I made no sense of it and used to consider all these precautions mainly as a nuisance. One day my father showed me the passport he had needed for a trip to Russia and explained that such uncivilized countries as Russia and Turkey had introduced these papers to control aliens. We would never have believed then that one day we should need similar documents to cross the frontiers of Germany, Italy, England, France, and all other Western nations.

The other frontier we could see from the windows of the castle was still more interesting—the linguistic frontier separating Czechs from Sudeten. I soon realized there was a deep conflict and mutual contempt between these two nations and that the main reason for this was that they spoke different languages. Although I did not speak Czech I had no prejudice whatever against the Czechs, for I found the few Czechs I knew just as nice, kind, and intelligent as the Germans. So all this national hatred seemed to me the ridiculous consequence of ignorance and poor education.

In striking contrast to the national hatred that surrounded it, our castle was an oasis of international spirit. My mother was not the only Oriental in our house. She represented the Far East; the Near East was represented by Babik Kaligian, the Armenian butler who stood at the head of the household. When my father served at the legation at Constantinople he had saved Babik's life from the Armenian massacres of Sultan Abdul Hamid. From then on Babik followed him through the world, a faithful servant whose extraordinary physical strength and courage made him a perfect bodyguard and whose natural intelligence and loyalty made him a good companion. Babig spoke Turkish to my father, Japanese to my mother, and a broken German to us children. He was old. When asked how old, he replied, 'Sixty-five or seventy-five—I not know.' In his youth no one had cared to register his date of birth.

On his deathbed Babik found that he had not reckoned with the forces of religious prejudice. As he was an Armenian Christian and the churchyard was Catholic, he could not be buried near his master unless he became Catholic. Babik's highest religion had been his devotion to my father; so he became Catholic on his deathbed to be buried, far away from his native land, near his beloved and admired master. We had every reason to respect this faithful Oriental, Babik Kaligian.

I also remember a distinguished Hindu scholar who spent six months at our castle, Abdullah Mahmun Suhraworthy—a descendant of the Galiph Abu Bekr and an extremely religious Mohammedan, who had come to study German with my father while the latter read Hindu and Arabic texts with him. Before his arrival from London, where he had studied law, we found out the exact direction of Mecca and marked it in his room, so that Suhraworthy would know in what direction to make his daily prayers. Whenever we ate pork or hare, he was served veal; and when we drank wine or champagne, we offered him lemonade. We watched him during his prayers and questioned him much about Mohammedanism, its history and origin. We liked to walk with him in the park and to learn about that distant and fascinating world of India and its mysteries. My brother and I were extremely fond of this charming, gay, and wise Indian, with his fine features, his dark complexion, his slender figure, and his enormous, bright, gentle, and unforgettably expressive eyes. And we would have laughed at any one who dared to consider this Indian scholar as belonging to an inferior race. For he was superior to most of the Europeans whom we knew.

Suhraworthy was strongly anti-British and had many arguments about the Indian question with my father, who believed that the advantages of the British rule of India largely overshadowed its drawbacks. But Suhraworthy seems later to have made his peace with the British, for he died in 1935 in Bombay as Sir Abdullah-el-Mamun al Suhrawardy, after a brilliant career.

I believe that my father inspired young Suhraworthy to go as a Mohammedan missionary to Tokyo, because he believed that this religion corresponded better to the Japanese character than Christianity. And it also was my father who advised him to publish a book, selected quotations from Mohammed. This book, The Sayings of Mohammed, was later republished with a

preface by Gandhi; and, curiously enough, it was this little book that was found in the pocket of Leo Tolstoy's cloak the day he fled from his castle to his lonely death.

Soon after having left Ronsperg, Suhraworthy founded in London the Pan-Islamic Society and became its first secretary. Its aim was to establish closer cultural and political union between the three hundred million Mohammedans, from the Dutch East Indies to Morocco, if possible under a single caliph. As he hated Sultan Abdul Hamid he suggested as caliph, the Sultan of Morocco, a descendant of the Prophet.

I also recall Doctor Poznansky, the learned rabbi of Pilsen, who assisted my father in his studies of Hebrew and of the Talmud. When he came to see us we respected his ritual rules, giving him trout in place of the meat served to the others. We came to regard these different religious diets as quite natural, because we also respected strictly the ritual rules of our Catholic religion and would have found it very shocking if one of us had dared to eat meat on a Friday.

The first American I ever met was an American officer, an ex-serviceman who had taken part in the occupation of the Philippines. After my father had learned that he had arrived at our inn on a shooting trip, he immediately invited him to move from the inn to the castle and spend some days as his guest. I remember a tall, good-looking, and strong man, speaking of the Philippine campaign and of President Roosevelt, for whom my father had a high esteem, just as he profoundly

admired President Lincoln and considered his war for the preservation of the Union as one of the greatest events of history.

Another guest was the Catholic bishop of Hakodate, a French missionary who had gone in his youth to Japan and there met my parents. Now he was back in Europe, for the first time in thirty years. My father had invited the learned parson of our little town to dinner to meet him, and as this priest spoke no French and the bishop no German, we listened to their fluent conversation in Latin, the Esperanto of the Catholic Church. When they spoke about the railway, they simply invented a Latin word by translating its elements via ferrata—and understood each other perfectly. This was my first practical experience with an international language, and again my horizon was broadened.

Not only our exotic guests but also the ordinary members of our household presented an international group. We always had an English and a French governess, and our English governess was always a Protestant. My mother had a Hungarian companion, my father a Bavarian secretary and a Czech manager of his estates. Our tutor was Austrian, while among the servants who attended our meals one was Armenian, the second Czech, and the third Sudeten. It is evident that in such society no word could be uttered that might have offended any national, religious, or racial feelings, and that only a spirit of broadmindedness and absolute tolerance could preserve the harmonious life in the castle. And because of the many contacts we had with the East, we were conscious of the fact that Europe represented, above all national dissensions, a single branch of humanity. Europe seemed to be anything but a union from the mere European point of view. Only on a world-wide background did this unity manifest itself.

Our own life was permanently confronted with that background, with the contrasts between the East and West. Our father represented Europe, our mother Asia. These continents were no abstractions for us boys, but realities. Among ourselves, we always chatted about the two different worlds that surrounded and penetrated us—'The Japanese' and 'The Europeans', Germans, French, English, Czechs, Hungarians

—all belonged to the one great paternal class of Europeans, children of a single race, a single continent, a single civilization, and a single destiny. Their quarrels seemed stupid and ridiculous. On the other hand, we always considered the Chinese as some kind of cousins and read with pride the history of the Mongol conquerors and of the great civilizations they had created throughout Asia. We were conscious that they too belonged to the same great race as our mother—by no means inferior, but very different from white humanity.

It is evident that our feelings during all these years were as international as our surroundings and education. Still, I remember once having—the only time in my life—a distinct fit of nationalism. One day our father explained to us that, while our eldest brother would one day inherit our Bohemian estates and had to learn Czech, my younger brother, Gerolf, and I would be heirs to the estate in Hungary. He started to teach us Hungarian and promised us Hungarian nationality as soon as we were eighteen. The result was that Gerolf and I determined to become Hungarian nationalists, intensely interested in Hungarian history and in everything that was going on in the Hungarian parliament. We made a Hungarian flag and waved it proudly on every occasion. We founded a 'Hungarian League', with only two members, for mutual assistance against common 'enemies'. This enemy 'foreigner' was our brother Hans, the 'Austrian', against whom we fought 'national' battles in the swimming-pool and on the playgrounds. We soon considered ourselves genuine Hungarian patriots, without ever having been in Hungary.

When my father died our Hungarian lessons stopped, our Hungarian estate was sold, and our Hungarian flag forgotten. But many of the exhibitions of nationalism I saw in later years seemed to me as senseless as this youthful outburst.

CHAPTER III

MY EUROPEAN FATHER

I was sure, as most children are, that I had the best parents in the world. My affection for both of them was based on respect. I loved them both, but I admired them still more. All the years of my childhood were dominated by my father, and today, after I have met great men of all nations, he lives in my memory as one of the most remarkable personalities of them all. Even as a child I knew that he represented my ideal of a man—strong and kind, with a generous heart and perfect manners, bold by nature and peaceful by inclination, never lazy and never vulgar. As a devout Catholic he was deeply religious, but still extremely tolerant. A cosmopolitan by nature, he was wise as a sage, the friend of all evolution and of social progress and the implacable enemy of any brand of demagogy or fanaticism.

My father, Heinrich Coudenhove-Kalergi, inspired my life from its very beginning. I cannot remember when I did not want to resemble him, and from earliest childhood I found him a model and an ideal. I still see him before me, tall and slender, with his quick and graceful movements, combining energy with harmony. I see his big, grey-blue eyes under a beautiful and high forehead over an aquiline nose. When he travelled, every-body took him for an Englishman; not only because his type was definitely English, but also much of his character and his attitude toward life.

Returning to Ronsperg in 1896, my father quickly became aware that sound administration of the family estates was impossible without his personal direction. This was the excuse for which he had been looking, and, although he was offered the post of minister to Siam, he gave up the diplomatic career which his marriage had made so difficult to continue. This decision was of vital importance to us children. Our Japanese nurses, with whom we had exchanged our first words, were sent home; for, with his decision, my father had made up his mind

that his children should not become cultural and intellectual hybrids, but should be given a purely European education. So we did not learn any Japanese, but instead German, English, and French. I often wonder what would have become of me if my father had not so decided, or if he had died before we came to Europe. Then I might have grown up a Japanese child, educated in Japanese schools to be a Japanese patriot; and not only my mind and soul would have evolved differently, but my features as well. For every living being adapts itself unconsciously to its surroundings, and many Europeans who spend their lives in the Far East acquire Oriental features. . . . So not nature but destiny made a European of me—a fact which, I feel, prevented me from becoming a European isolationist, for it makes me ever conscious that even Europe is but a branch of the wider brotherhood of man which I have always considered my true nation and fatherland.

Within this wider world, which stretches beyond religions, races, and continents, my father began to educate us deliberately as Austrians, Christians, and Europeans. From our early childhood he spent hours and hours with us children, gay and natural as a child himself, personally giving us lessons in Russian and Hungarian and supervising our entire education. We lunched and dined with him and his guests, listening silently to their cultural and political conversations. Almost every day, even in rain and storm, he walked with us and answered our childish questions about state and laws, life and religion. All his words impressed themselves deeply on my mind and later ripened to thoughts and actions, but more important than all this intellectual influence was his unforgettable example of a noble nature and strong character, of a genuine gentleman, which provided me with basic values for all my future life.

Around the World in 80 Days and recommended us to choose its hero, the English gentleman Phileas Fogg, as our model. He wished us to be such good shots and fencers that nobody should dare challenge us to duels. Despising soft and effeminate men, he wished to give us a Spartan education, with mattresses of straw, cold baths and open windows at all seasons of the year, and long daily walks in all weather. He himself was an example of this way of living; and he put great stress on our physical education. When a noted acrobat once performed in Ronsperg he tried to hire him for the supervision of our physical culture.

My father was against corporal punishment in principle, for he had suffered much of it in his youth; but he was such a passionate lover of truth that he still introduced 'capital' punishment for three major crimes: for cruelty to animals, for theft, and for lying. Altogether my father believed more in the capitalistic principle of rewards than in the primitive methods of punishment. He gave us books of poems in Greek and Latin, German, English, and French; and for every poem we learned by heart he promised a specific sum of money, so that we could always earn money by learning poetry. Another way of earning money was—to eat. As we were delicate children he wished us to put on weight, but without forcing us to eat beyond our appetites. He weighed us every Saturday, and if we had lost a pound we had to pay him from our modest pocket-money the equivalent of one dime; but for every pound we gained we received the same amount. As we were growing, the advantage was definitely on our side; but we had every reason not to eat too much, because an upset stomach meant a loss of weight and consequently a fine. Usually, when in want of money, I preferred to earn it by eating rather than by learning. But from this double method I retained good health and the memory of poems that still give me great pleasure.

taught us never to touch principal, with the one exception of spending it on the education of one's children, for education was but another form of capital. He said he would ask us to give him our word of honour before we were of age that we would never give a financial guarantee to anyone, for then we would always have a respectable and legitimate excuse to refuse if we were asked by friends to do so. He also said that we ought to lend money to friends in need, but never more than we were ready to lose, and to consider it a happy surprise if we ever saw the money again. He also had us attend his weekly conferences with his managers, when he discussed the running of his estates, his woods, farms, and industries.

It is impossible to describe all the splendours of country life of an Austrian nobleman, living in his castle on a large estate in Franz Joseph's empire. Such a life combined health with security, dignity, wealth, leisure, and independence, giving ample opportunity to do much good to a whole region and, at the same time, govern a tiny kingdom of one's own without political responsibilities. Close contact with nature, with plants and animals, together with all elements of real culture made a beautiful, artistic and easy form of life. This was the life for which my father exchanged his diplomatic career. And I believe that he never regretted giving up ambition for independence, his eternal wanderings for the stability of a farmer.

After he had seen most of the world, he suddenly, at thirty-six, had enough of travelling and began to feel that he had been losing the roots of his life in the wide world. Now he sought to find them again in his homeland, and this restless man was transformed into a stable gentleman farmer, loving his Castle of Ronsperg, every tree of its park, every hill of its forest. And he who had been a bachelor for so many years now became an ideal husband and father who considered every day spent away from his home and his family a day lost. Indeed, when he had to be away from Ronsperg for only a few days, to visit Prague, Vienna, or Budapest, he gave orders to the governess to wire him daily reports on the children's health. Knowing

how easy it was merely to wire 'All children are well', he ordered that the text of these daily telegrams had to mention each child—'Hansi is well, Dicky is well, Rolfi is well', and so on in detail—for he knew that this would make it much more difficult to mislead him.

During the years he had been away from Europe, Heinrich had developed the utmost contempt for European society—for the ladies who were too fashionable to have children, who lived for social gossip and forgot that they were women who had to accomplish the natural duties of their sex. He hated the young men who thought of nothing but racing and gambling and considered themselves superior to human beings who worked hard to earn their living. For political demagogues with their narrow-minded and empty party slogans he cared still less. Leo Tolstoy was the only aristocrat for whom he had an intense and profound admiration. Like Tolstoy he wished to use his wealth, his independence, and his knowledge to serve the human race and human progress.

But my father could not be a private citizen, though he would have liked it. Bohemia before the First World War was legally a province of a democratic empire; but socially the traditions of feudalism were alive throughout the country. Even without rank or function my father was the first man of his district, with all the responsibilities and prerogatives attached to this position. Only sixty years earlier, the peasants were still serfs, and the count had the right to condemn them to be flogged. Now all citizens were equal before the law—in theory, but not in practice.

It was quite inconceivable to us children that the policeman who used to stand in our little town might one day venture to arrest us. Or that we could be forced to appear before the court and be condemned to prison. . . . As children we had the feeling that our only authority was our father; above him stood the governor of Bohemia, who happened to be his close friend and cousin, Count Karl Coudenhove; and above him only the Emperor. All other authorities seemed not to concern us—neither police, nor judges, nor mayors. This may have been childish, but it was only a natural reaction to the fact that at the Corpus Christi procession our father followed immediately after the priest and that we followed him, whilst behind us came all the dignitaries of the city and district. We alone had a balcony in church; my father had the right to choose the priests for six of our neighbouring parishes, for he contributed the funds for their churches. He also financed the convent, where nuns educated the young girls of the town, and several times a year he invited the authorities of the town, the priests, the judges, the teachers to dinner—invitations that were never reciprocated. When the bishop came to Ronsperg for confirmation, he stayed at the castle. There was no doubt that my father, although a private citizen, was the first man of his region.

And my father liked it. Following the celebrated quotation of Caesar, he preferred being first in importance in Ronsperg to being even second in Vienna. He was aware of his responsibilities, and he exercised his authority in the most human and patriarchal way. Everybody in need came to him to ask for help; and where he could, he gave. He found it natural to spend a great part of his income on the poor of the district—in the same spirit as an aunt of his was delighted every year to pay her taxes, for she thus had an opportunity to show her gratitude to the state for everything it had done for her during the year.

But these social obligations filled only a little part of my father's activities. The main part of his time was devoted to the management of his estates, to his work as scholar and author, and to the education of his children. All his actions and teachings were extremely human, since he sought to teach us more by example than by discipline. He always told us that we should treat the governess as politely as if we had offended her the day before—because it was so hard for a young English or French lady to serve abroad as a governess. He always jumped to his feet when the youngest governess came into the room, and when I once asked him if it was true that handwriting was the key to human character, he answered promptly: 'The key to the character of any man is his behaviour to women.'

After he had returned to Ronsperg, my father matriculated—at the age of thirty-eight—at the University of Prague. He concentrated on philosophy, ancient history, and Semitic philology; indeed, the only book that survived him was his

study of anti-Semitism which I re-edited many years later. My father numbered no Jews among his ancestors and none among his close friends. Yet this fair and broad-minded man was irresistibly drawn to the problem of anti-Semitism, and obtained his degree of doctor of philosophy by his book on The Essence of Anti-Semitism, which analyses, from wide knowledge based on literature and personal research in four continents, the history, elements, and consequences of anti-Semitism, and proves that 'Semitic' or 'Aryan' races do not exist and that for two thousand years anti-Judaism had been nothing but the result of religious fanaticism and intolerance. He praises the extraordinary and incomparable heroism the Jews have demonstrated in this long series of persecutions, and sets forth a two-fold solution of the Jewish problem: settling the Eastern Jews in a proper national home; and completing the assimilation of the Western Jews as members of their respective nations, without sacrifice of their traditional religion. He warned that if Europe ignored this fair solution and if anti-Semitism continued as an instrument of fanaticism and demagogy all Western civilization would one day be endangered by the results.

This quiet busy life in Ronsperg was suddenly interrupted when my mother, after the birth of her seventh child, fell seriously ill with lung trouble. Only an immediate trip to the south could save her. Our parents went to Arco in Southern Tyrol and we followed them some weeks later. Hansi and I were at once enchanted by the beautiful landscape around Lake Garda, and by the southern climate which was strange and new to us. But soon we found the dull green of the olive trees dusty, and began to be very homesick for our northern forests.

After a few months our mother had got over the worst attack. We all moved to the Black Forest and lived there for a winter. There mother recovered sufficiently for us all to be able to return home and to resume our old life in Ronsperg.

But the illness of his beloved Mitsu and life in sanatoria amongst the sick had made a profound impression on my

^<sup>1 Published in English under the title Anti-Semitism Throughout the Ages in 1935 by Hutchinson & Co., London.

father. Like Schopenhauer, he had always considered this world as a vale of tears. Now his mind was preoccupied with the problem of overcoming suffering by will-power, by asceticism.

He began to write a large work which would have taken years to complete.

This work he considered as the essence of his life; it was to be named The Realm of Abnegation, and was to deal with the common element of all religions, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and pre-Spanish America. He followed closely the basic conceptions of Schopenhauer and believed that those who had overcome the egoistic will within themselves were able to produce miracles by dominating forces of nature; that abnegation was the only road to salvation.

For this work my father had studied the lives of saints of all religions, nations, and times, and had recognized their striking similarity. And while he studied the problem of sainthood, his character turned always more toward this ideal. All his nature and instincts were heroic, and his natural religion was hero worship. Now the influence of Oriental thought had become increasingly strong and directed him toward that ideal of the saint.

In the last years of his life, when he visited a town, he paid at least one visit to the home for incurables, to speak with them, encourage them, and, so far as he could, to help. A Polish ambassador who had been his friend told me that, when he met my father for the last time in Munich, they dined at one of the big hotels, and soon became aware that their waiter was inattentive; but instead of complaining my father asked what took his mind off his service. The waiter answered that his mother was very ill. After verifying the matter my father sent her medicines and money.

In April 1906 my father completed his last pamphlet on the main problems of Catholicism and Protestantism. This pamphlet was written as a chapter of The Realm of Abnegation. In the preface to this pamphlet he gives a sketch of his life in Ronsperg:

Although I am now an old boy, not very far from my fiftieth birthday, I have remained what I always have been—a student. Only four years ago I passed my thirty-fourth examination, although I had meanwhile served the State eleven years, had myself partly instructed my children and personally administered large estates in Bohemia and in Hungary. But I always have studied and shall do so as long as I live. Dependent on nobody, blessed with earthly goods—nay, overwhelmed with them—I am able to indulge in the pleasure of literary activity for the sole purpose of serving the truth. I consider myself a servant of those who seek the truth with unbiased and unprejudiced minds.

One month later, on 11th May 1906, my uncle Richard Coudenhove and his bride stopped at Ronsperg for a short visit. The couple had just been married and were on their way to Africa, where my uncle expected to visit his brother and do some lion-shooting himself.

They arrived on a Friday and spent three gay days with us. Sunday evening the belated wedding celebration came to a climax with a big dinner, a great deal of animated conversation, laughter, and music. I had rarely seen my father so happy. He sang Wagner; his laughter reverberated from the castle walls. For long weeks the echo of his voice re-echoed in my ears.

Next morning at six Hans and I were summoned urgently to his room. We scrambled across the hall half asleep. Everybody else seemed to be there already. Frightened, we stopped on the threshold until somebody took us by the hand and led us up to his bed. He lay there motionless, his face very white. I saw my mother kneeling at the foot of the bed; next to her stood my uncle and his bride, both very pale and serious. I saw that many of the servants were quietly weeping.

That morning he had risen at five and made his usual run through the park, but on his return had felt the pains that presaged a heart attack.

'Shall I awaken the Countess?' asked the valet.

'No, don't disturb her.'

'Shall I fetch the doctor?'

'No, the priest.'

This natural evolution had been interrupted by my father's early death. Because I had not had enough of my father I missed him all my life and never overcame my regret at losing him too soon. In the depth of my heart I wished to continue his fragmentary life and to complete it as well as I could. At every major decision I asked myself what he might have said or done, and I learned to identify myself with him, as if a part of his soul had penetrated my own. Thus my father's influence on my education and evolution became even stronger after his death than it had been before.

CHAPTER IV

MY JAPANESE MOTHER

When my father's will was read it revealed that, while our eldest brother was the heir of Ronsperg, the rest of our father's property was to go to our mother, who would have custody of her children. This my father's family considered testimony to the eccentric love my father had for his wife; they could not conceive of the family fortune and the education of the children being placed in the hands of a woman who knew nothing of European business nor of European pedagogy. Their chief fear was that our mother would one day embark with her children for Japan, or that she would fall in love with some unworthy man who would squander away her fortune. So they tried to convince her that she should renounce the custody of her children and accept some control over her fortune.

But to everyone's surprise my mother, who had until now lived like an eighth child in her home, refused. Not for a moment would she think of giving up her children. She took up the challenge and fought for her rights. Engaging the best lawyers she won her case in the courts, and during this struggle for her children her character seemed to change completely. Although she still looked like a girl, graceful and charming, she suddenly manifested a will of iron and a strong mind. Conferring for hours with lawyers, bookkeepers, businessmen and bankers, her will-power and natural intelligence first astonished them and finally compelled them to admire this strange and incomprehensible young woman who administered the estates as well as her dead husband had done and brought up her seven children not as Japanese but, according to her husband's will, as good Austrians, Catholics, and Europeans.

Nothing in my mother's early years in Ronsperg had prepared us for these hidden depths. We had loved her greatly, it is true, but much as one loves a gentle being, one too good for

It was not only our mother's physical beauty that impressed us, but her enigmatic charm as well, so utterly different was it from everything else we knew. Two long knots, each thicker than an arm, crowned her little head. To relieve this pressure, I remember her sitting for hours and hours at her dressing-table, her hair being brushed by her maid, while she indefatigably polished her beautiful nails, which she loved as other women love their jewels. My mother could be merry and gay, and like a child she seemed to forget all sorrow when she could laugh at a good joke.

Within the decade between her twentieth and thirtieth years my mother gave birth to seven bright, lively, and healthy children, four boys and three girls. After the birth of her seventh child she weighed no more than a hundred pounds and could still span her waist with her two hands.

During these years in Ronsperg my mother lived in the castle more like a child than like a mother, learning English, German, and French, mathematics, history, and geography, like a schoolgirl. Brought up in the old Japanese tradition, she had to be completely re-educated in Europe, learning to sit, to move, to eat, to speak, and to live like a European. She told us later how disgusted she felt when she ate in a Western restaurant for the first time and had to use forks and spoons which some minutes before had been withdrawn from other people's mouths. She was especially attracted to Greek mythology,

My father not only loved but adored his Japanese wife; while she admired, respected, obeyed, and was fond of him. In some respects she considered him a father, in others a child. But during all these years of wifehood her soul was devoured by homesickness, by nostalgia for her lost country. Lying on her sofa she dreamed with open eyes of her home in Tokyo, her dear parents, and the woods and temples of the beautiful province of Sana, where her family had lived for centuries. She dreamed of a world where everyone spoke Japanese, and in those moments she must have felt like a prisoner, with all the wealth that surrounded her a heavy golden chain, binding her to this cold continent of Europe, to this curious husband she never could understand, to these children with whom she could not even speak the language of her heart. The thick walls of her castle must have seemed to her like prison walls, as she dreamed of the paper screens of her Japanese home, which were pushed away when the sun shone over her garden.

My mother seldom wore her Japanese costumes, but we were delighted each time she did so, for then she looked like one of our dear Japanese dolls in their little wooden boxes under glass covers. We often watched her sitting on the carpet of her room, writing, with her indian-ink brush, long, long letters to her distant parents about the miraculous life she was leading in the far West. Each letter was written on endless paper rolls and posted in a wooden box. She explained to us the pictures in the Japanese books we frequently received from our grandparents—stories of the peach-born hero Momotaro, of the fox Kitsune and the badger Tanuki, transformed into human beings, of gods and nymphs and ghosts and souls, of all

this strange world where human life is interwoven in a greater pattern of beasts and trees and flowers and stars.

She was animated by an extreme sense of duty and of honour. She admired my father without understanding him; her womanly instinct told her that he was an extraordinary human being; but she also knew well that she had much more common sense than he had. I am sure that she never understood why he married her instead of taking for a wife one of the beautiful Western girls with golden hair, the beauty of which she never ceased to admire.

She never shared her husband's intellectual life, since she was not interested in philosophy, nor in religion, history, politics or business. While my father lived, she had nothing to do with the administration of our estate, and even our household was virtually run by father, although she discussed the menu of the day every morning with our cook. Our education and upbringing naturally lay in father's hands, although he discussed all these questions with mother and often accepted her reasonable advice.

In fact, my parents had, beside each other and their children, no common interests. They dreamed different dreams in different worlds, as distant from each other as the moon from Sirius. She could neither understand nor appreciate his books, preferring Japanese and especially English novels which she read constantly, fascinated by these curious Western love stories with their accounts of free and bold Western women who gave their hearts and lives to men of their own choice and dared to live and to love beyond the strict limits of morals, tradition, and convention. Certainly she envied these women in the depth of her heart and compared them to the Japanese women, who had to remain all their lives the slaves and tools of men. My father, on the contrary, never touched a novel and did not like us to read them, for he believed that they painted life as it was not and that they might nourish our imagination with false illusions.

I do not know whether my father or my mother was the

more responsible for the total lack of intellectual communion between them. Had my father attempted to interest his wife in his books and ideas he might perhaps have succeeded, but he never made that attempt, for he, too, had rather an Oriental conception of relations between the sexes and disliked profoundly the notion of emancipated women. The mere idea that his wife might have tried to influence the current of his philosophical speculations would have driven him mad. He wished to combine the advantages of celibacy with those of marriage, so he remained all his life an intellectual bachelor. Nobody was allowed to influence his ideas, and had my mother ever tried to do so, their marriage would soon have proved impossible. My father was always reluctant to force my mother to give up her childlike life by involving her in unnecessary and complicated problems. He was well aware that he had complicated her life enough.

This lack of intellectual contact, together with a strong emotional attraction, was one of the reasons for the admirable and harmonious relations between my parents. Children are keen observers, and we watched our parents closely. We could never see the slightest tension between them, never the shadow of a conflict or dissension. Their harmony seemed perfect. They treated each other with the utmost attention, love, kindness, and regard. We never heard a harsh word between them or saw an unfriendly glance or gesture. They gave the impression of being eternal lovers, each aiming primarily at the happiness of the other.

But, in spite of this harmony, my mother was virtually a prisoner; without relatives, friends, or fortune, she felt herself completely at her husband's mercy, a slave in the house where she was mistress, my father's queen and slave at the same time. The cage in which she lived was golden—but nevertheless it was a cage. Jealousy was one of the strongest elements in my father's character, and jealousy was certainly one of the reasons for his seclusion in his lonely castle. His fortune would easily have permitted him to spend part of each year in Vienna or in Paris, but he was convinced that my mother was the

jewel of womanhood and that every man was bound to fall blindly in love with her just as he had. He was haunted by the fear that one day she might reciprocate such a love and smash the harmony of his family and his life. But his fairness impelled him to be just as jealous for her as he was for himself. When he once saw that my brother and I loved our charming young English governess, he threatened to dismiss her instantly if we gave the impression of loving her more than our mother. For we must love our mother more than any other human being in the world, until the day came when a wife would take this privileged place in our hearts.

My father, aware of my mother's profound nostalgia, certainly feared that this feeling might one day overwhelm her love for him and her children and that she would try to get home to Japan. Several times he planned to make a short trip to Tokyo with her to visit her parents, but always a new baby forced them to postpone this journey. It was difficult for my old grandparents to visit Europe, because they spoke only Japanese; so my mother, trained in Asiatic self-control and sacrifice, continued to suffer from never-ceasing nostalgia, to hide the tears of her heart behind the smiles of her lips, to do her duty toward her husband and her children, and to accept her destiny humbly.

The sudden change in my mother's character after my father's death was accentuated by her Japanese background; indeed it might be compared to the transformation of her native land during the second half of the last century which turned Japan from an Oriental land of dreams into an imperialistic world power—from the most peaceful into the most aggressive nation on earth.

On the practical side it had drawbacks. My mother's nature grew more and more despotic, distrustful, too, even of her own immediate environment. Children, servants, and employees grew to fear her and rushed to satisfy her wishes. She was particularly severe toward her daughters, for she believed that a girl ought to be taught complete self-control and obedience.

She disliked signs of weakness or lack of discipline in any of us. Our father had never allowed us to admit fear or fatigue, but our mother, once she could make her mind felt, showed a far deeper contempt for cowardice or weakness than even he had known.

I have often asked myself how a change as radical as hers was possible, and found the following explanation. An individual character is far from being a homogeneous unit. It is a composite being which may be compared to a parliament where many individuals and factions strive for power but end by expressing the will of the majority. The human character too is split into divergent factions ruled by impulses that originate in various individual and background elements. These factions, like those of a parliament, are held in check by a majority will which remains in charge as long as conditions are normal. However, a shock or an important event may call into play certain minor aspects which under the stress of the moment assume a major role. The former majority then becomes a minority with the former 'opposition' taking full charge. The character seems changed only because its elements have changed their roles.

For twenty years our mother led this active life. After her youngest son Eri had come of age, and she was free from the responsibility of custody over her children, a new chapter and a new turn in her life began.

For years she had had to play on the stage of life the most diversified roles: that of submissive daughter, faithful wife, loving mother and great lady; she had been a Buddhist and a Christian, a Japanese and an Austrian. Now she had done with all this comedy. From now on, her one desire was to be nothing but herself. She asked nothing more than to be left in peace

by everyone. Basically, her many European friends, both men and women, had remained foreign to her, and in relation to her own children she was like a hen who had hatched ducklings and was now astonished at seeing her young swimming off without her being able to follow them.

The one strong abiding sentiment to which she remained true was her love for Japan. Whereas she found any number of pretexts to avoid seeing her European friends and relatives, it was her last great satisfaction to be received by the brother of the Emperor of Japan and his wife when they visited Vienna on their world tour. She remained in constant touch with Japanese diplomats, read many Japanese books and newspapers, and listened to Japanese songs on her gramophone. She had finally given up her plans for a trip to Japan, after the death of her parents. She realized that Japan, like herself, had changed fundamentally, and that she would only meet disillusionment by seeing it again.

Each time I visited her in Mödling, she was pleased at my success with Pan-Europe—but only because it concerned me personally. She would have been just as happy if I had become a tennis-champion. The fate of Europe was a matter of indifference to her. She was happier when she read a short news item about me in a Japanese paper than the most flattering leader in a prominent European newspaper.

So, far from Japan, but also at heart far from Europe, she lived her own contemplative, flowerlike existence—ever smiling and ever dreaming.

CHAPTER V

IMPERIAL VIENNA

SLOWLY we settled back into our routine of study and play. Mother, as I said, was very intelligent and practical, anything but intellectual. We missed father's conversations about the past and future of the human race, about philosophies and politics and current events. The door to the world of ideas seemed closed and all intellectual stimulation stopped. Then all of a sudden new sources of inspiration opened up.

I had never been a great reader, but after my father's death I overcame my aversion to 'book knowledge' and steeped myself in the literature of the world. My father's library had remained untouched, and here Hans and I spent most of our free time now, climbing zealously up and down the library ladders, in breathless quest for more knowledge. Day after day I sat on the floor surrounded by volumes on the life of Buddha and the teachings of Confucius, while Hans was tracking down information on art and literature. I think that in the years that followed I read as much as is humanly possible, storing up intellectual capital for years to come.

We were first sent for a year to Brixen, a lovely Alpine town in Southern Tyrol. There we studied at the public high-school. Our tutor accompanied us. We lived under the care of the former Hungarian companion of my mother who had married a friend of my father, Count Erwin Wurmbrand. Both were spiritualists. In that year we learned a great deal about the things between heaven and earth: of horoscopes and spiritualist

séances, of clairvoyance and ghosts, of mediumism and prophecy, of hand-reading and graphology. A new world seemed to open up before us.

Soon mother became dissatisfied with our stay in Brixen. She did not wish us to grow up like provincials in that picturesque spot in Tyrol. We ought to establish connections for our future. So she decided to send us to the foremost college of Austria, the Theresianum Academy in Vienna.

From a purely pedagogical point of view the Theresianum was quite satisfactory. The boys more or less disciplined themselves. Every group of boys had a 'prefect', but he was only a supervisor who had to enforce house regulations and see to it that students got up on time, followed the school schedule and kept order. He had no moral control over the students, nor did he make an attempt to form their characters. The boys did their own educating, watched one another eagerly so that the two unwritten laws should not be broken—fair behaviour and a sense of solidarity—and I would say that the system worked. The majority of the students who were to graduate from the Academy became decent and honourable men—successful ones, too, in whatever career they had chosen.

Sundays saw us off on a few hours' furlough to Vienna, where we paraded our handsome uniforms with pride: dark blue jacket with shining brass buttons, high red collar with gold piping, grey trousers, and a stiff black cap—the latter an exact copy of the regulation caps of our army officers. What thrilled us most was our sword—a slender bit of steel sheathed in black leather

Like all the other students of the Theresianum, my brother and I led a double life: on weekdays we were naughty boys in their teens making life a misery for prefects and teachers alike, and on Sundays we moved like young gentlemen in Vienna's most exclusive society.

My mother had taken an apartment in Vienna. She was still as graceful as a young girl and went out a great deal. The Viennese nobility, who had always had a taste for the foreign and exotic, received her with open arms and made much fuss of her. She liked to be seen with her sons, who by this time towered above her.

In his preface to my book The Totalitarian State Against Man, Wickham Steed describes my mother at that time:

A few years later I overtook, in a street of the Austrian capital, two well-groomed boys wearing the uniform of the famous Theresianum Academy. They were accompanied by a lady who looked as though she might be their elder sister. As I passed them, this lady, Countess Coudenhove-Kalergi, turned and presented to me her sons, of whom the elder, Count Richard, is the author of this book.

Whatever objections I might have had in the first place to losing my 'privacy' among a lot of strange boys, this group life which forced me to adjust myself to a number of varied characters and temperaments did me much good and in a way proved more important to me than all my Latin and Greek. Taken together, my fellow students represented a very international bundle of reactions, resentments, prejudices, emotions, instincts, and ideals which was in no way different from that of any other international group of human beings elsewhere in the world and gave me an excellent chance of studying human nature at first hand and not from books. We had boys

I am afraid that intellectually the Theresianum made no particular inroads on my ways of thinking. My sedentary habits continued. I would rather sit at my desk and read than be out fencing or riding with my fellow students. The things that stirred me in Ronsperg stirred me now: the moral powers that determine our lives. What are they? Where do they come from? Whence hails the secret dynamism which has animated the religions and philosophies of the world?

I read the Indian and Greek philosophers; I steeped myself in the Stoics, particularly Seneca, and from there turned to the scholastics, then to the modern philosophers: Descartes, Bacon, Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche.

During the last years at the Theresianum, I had written a book: Objectivity as the Basic Principle of Ethics. This book later became my thesis for my doctor's degree. Its basic argument was that objective concepts were moral, and that subjective concepts were immoral. This principle held good both for the dimension of space and for that of time. 'Now' in the time dimension is the equivalent of 'I' in space. In social ethics, the 'I' view should be replaced by 'we' in individual ethics, and the 'now' view, by a conception which places future and past on the same level as the present. My studies of the Stoics had led me to reject one-sided social ethics, and to measure one's behaviour in relation to one's own life with the same yard-stick as that used in relationship to one's fellow men.

After graduation, I registered at the Vienna University for courses in philosophy and modern history. I never considered history as study, but as recreation. I seldom read novels, but much history and biography. World history appealed to me as the most fascinating novel of all—written not by man, but by God himself. More fantastic than any novel, it is a series of miracles, wonders and dramas. Therefore since time immemorial, all great dramatists have endeavoured to dramatize sections of that great novel, and have been inspired by it. History is also a means of escaping from the narrow present into distant periods and lands, and of meeting great men and women who have long been dead.

When in July 1913 the doors of the Theresianum closed behind me, I felt free and happy: a junior member of Vienna's aristocratic society.

Music is the very soul of Vienna. When Goethe called architecture 'frozen music', he might have thought of Vienna with its lofty churches and palaces built in the half Italian Baroque style—seeming to link an aristocratic earth with beautiful cloud-lines to a Catholic heaven.

Musical, too, is the lovely rhythm of mountains and woods, of vineyards and meadows surrounding Vienna with an indescribable charm. Music was the soul not only of the aristocratic society of this imperial city with its unique opera and concerts, its operettas and orchestras. The entire population grew up in an atmosphere of music, of art and of beauty. After a week of hard labour one saw on bright Sunday evenings in spring good-looking young girls and boys of the working class coming home from long walks through the neighbouring woods and meadows, carrying bunches of flowers, singing gay songs with clear voices, and walking with the rhythm of dancers.

And when the summer nights fell, all the little inn gardens in the charming suburbs of Vienna were crowded with lovers, drinking young white wine, singing, joking, and laughing....

Vienna's intellectual life had its centre in the numerous coffee-houses where, behind clouds of smoke, social, political, religious, and philosophical issues were discussed during long winter evenings and nights, between tables of gamblers and of chess players. Life was easy indeed in imperial Vienna; at least it was taken easily. For the average Viennese was kind, good-natured, and gentle. 'Live and let live!' was the motto of his life. It meant that he wished to be left in peace, as he wanted to leave the rest of the world in peace. His attitude was more contemplative than active, more inclined toward pleasure than toward heroism, more toward art than toward science.

When I was at the Theresianum, we were regularly sent to attend performances at the Opera and the Burgtheatre. These classical performances were considered an important element of education, and indeed, the tragedies of Shakespeare and of Schiller had a deep influence on my moral evolution.

Between the society of imperial Vienna and French society before the Revolution there was a great resemblance. Here was great culture linked to decadence and frivolity; a society that would not face, but only postpone, decisions; an upper class which considered life a comedy to be acted out against a background of luxury and indulgence, a class which shut its eyes to social problems and spent its energies on love and gossip, gambling and racing, art and amusement. There were exceptions among them, just as my father was an exception. But such men and women remained away from Vienna, working off their disgust in the affairs of their country estates.

This arrogant society had its virtues, of course: hospitality,

generosity, and a keen sense of honour, fairness, and loyalty. What sport and racing were for the English aristocracy, art was to the Viennese, who were proud of their artistic and cultural background and worshipped all genuine artists. Great musicians, painters, actors, and singers had social positions superior to those of millionaires, and Viennese society was proud to have them as its guests of honour. An accomplished artist was always considered an aristocrat and a peer.

On graduation from the Theresianum Academy, I found myself in yet a third kind of cosmopolitan society—imperial Vienna. Though I did not often join in the constant round of balls and operettas that immediately engaged the attention of the others who graduated—my father's teachings had broadened my horizons too much for that—I nevertheless became sufficiently familiar with Viennese society and its foundations to know that Vienna was unique in Europe. While all other great cities of the Continent were national centres, Vienna alone was international, capital of the only international empire. This vast empire had a population of fifty-five millions, split into nineteen different nationalities. But together they formed a natural geographic and economic unit. It was a beautiful country, from the plains of Hungary and Bohemia to the Alps and the Carpathians; from the woods of Transylvania to the coasts and islands of Dalmatia. But this empire, with all its natural resources, which might have made its inhabitants wealthy and happy, suffered from a mortal disease—nationalism. Their old loyalty to the Hapsburg crown had been overshadowed by the

new creed that each people had the right to form its own sovereign nation. The young generation was growing up in mounting opposition to Vienna. And Vienna hardly reacted against this dangerous movement, either by reforms or by suppression. Emperor Franz Joseph, who had reigned since 1848, was old and tired, opposed to any dangerous and radical reform that might have changed the constitution of his empire. This constitution had been based since 1867 on dualism, which meant that the empire consisted of two equal and sovereign parts, of Austria and of Hungary, linked by a common military, foreign, economic, and monetary policy. It was understood that in Austria the Germanic element was predominant, in Hungary, the Magyars. Yet neither Germans nor Magyars formed the majority of the Austro-Hungarian population, but the Slavs with their different branches: Czechs and Slovaks, Croatians, Serbs and Slovenians, Poles and Ukrainians. Naturally these Slavs, like the Roumanians in Transylvania and the Italians in the Southern Tyrol, desired to break German-Magyar supremacy and to transform Austria-Hungary into a federation of equal national groups.

Viennese society centred on a dynasty of international origin and an aristocracy which merged all branches of blood and civilization. Both army and bureaucracy were equally mixed, and were united only by common tradition and common loyalty to the old Emperor Franz Joseph. This cosmopolitan and polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire was an anomaly and anachronism in a Europe that had for a century grown more and more nationalistic, and it was inevitable that nationalistic movements found their way to Austria and even now were working to dismember the empire into national units by war, revolution, or reform. But the government of Vienna, determined to remain supranational and to fight the nationalist aspirations of its citizens, would not yield to these currents.

Vienna, I noticed, was definitely international only at its top and at its base. Its society not only consisted of its cosmopolitan aristocracy, but also of the refined Jewish intelligentsia

Of all these, the German nationalists were the most aggressive. They were pan-Germans, all of them—forerunners of a mighty movement to come—and their admiration for Bismarck's Reich was only surpassed in later years by their devotion to the Reich of another leader. These Germans in 1913 advocated the dismemberment of Austria, followed by the Anschluss of all its German-speaking provinces, or the hegemony of Austrian pan-Germans over the entire monarchy, with the help of their German brothers beyond the north-western borders. But whatever ends it was seeking, this pan-Germanism was closely linked with anti-Semitism, for these fanatical Germans considered the Jews the pioneers of internationalism and consequently their worst enemies.

leader of the Austrian Christian Socialists and Mayor of Vienna, a great orator who used anti-Semitism to stir up the envies and jealousies of the middle classes against Jewish competition. The other two were Von Schoenerer, leader of the pan-Germans, and the renegade Englishman, Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

Von Schoenerer, a member of parliament like Lueger, was an exponent of a racial theory which combined brutal anti-Semitism with narrow-minded pan-Germanism. Perhaps because of the brutality of his ideas Schoenerer, never gained great influence in Austrian politics, but twenty years later it became plain that some of his listeners—and one especially—had listened seriously and learned.

Of these three, the Englishman, Chamberlain, had the most influence on events to come, for he was no politician like Lueger and Schoenerer, but a scholar and author. While the latter were inciting crowds with words, Chamberlain was writing a best-seller which further poisoned the minds of those half-educated millions who formed audiences for Lueger and others like him. Not anti-Semitism, but worship of his own Nordic race motivated Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He had nothing in common with the vulgar anti-Semites who borrowed his theories, but believed, rather, that England had failed in its racial mission and should be displaced by Germany as the leading nation on the globe. In this conception of race he was a disciple of another non-German prophet of Germanism, the French Count de Gobineau, who may be considered the real 'discoverer' of the racial idea and theory. Houston Stewart Chamberlain married a daughter of Richard Wagner; Gobineau was a great friend of Wagner, who thus has the dubious distinction of being a link in this chain of pre-Hitlerite Nazism.

The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Chamberlain's book, which became the bible of the racial myth, undertook to interpret history from the racial point of view and tried to prove that all the great accomplishments of history were due to a superior race of 'Aryans', a heroic and genial race currently represented

Hitler, too, was in Vienna, but as a silent spectator only. Born in Braunau not far from my grandfather's estate, Ottensheim, he had come to Vienna with the burning ambition to become an artist and rise in the world. When his talents failed him he lived the life of an unemployed outcast, cursing the international aristocracy, the Jewish plutocracy, and the life of ease, tolerance, and humour around him. He would not join the party of the Austrian Socialists because it was run by a brilliant and idealistic Jew, Victor Adler, so he became a passionate pan-Germanist, a violent anti-Semite, turning his thoughts to Germany and Prussia, which he considered the antipodes of Vienna. When he moved to Munich in 1912 his education was completed. Like so many of his Austrian countrymen he already was an accomplished Nazi—made in Vienna.

Whilst the stage was set, first for war and revolution, then for Nazism, Vienna, ignorant of its tragic future, was never gayer, more frivolous, more extravagant, enjoying an eternal round of balls and dinners, receptions, theatre and opera parties, exhibitions and races. I could not escape certain social obligations, but did not enjoy them. Vienna's society remained strange to me; I did not share the political and social prejudices of the people I met; I did not gamble or smoke. After an evening in society I felt I had gained nothing, only lost a few hours of sleep and study.

Whenever I had a free week I preferred to go home to Ronsperg and spend my time there at our hunting box, Dianahof. Hans and I always found a group of old friends there—the foresters and gamekeepers of the estate, simple, straightforward men, who had a good deal of natural intelligence and common sense. They knew how to enjoy their life too. Many a party took place at the end of a long hunting day. Big tables were constructed of boards and barrels in the hall or out under the trees; vast quantities of sausages were served with bread, butter, and cheese, and beer flowed endlessly from great barrels. At a late hour we all burst into song:

Deep in the Bohemian Forest My cradle stood It's so long ago Since I left this wood.

CHAPTER VI

DURING the last winter in which Europe was at peace, the great sensation in Vienna's artistic life was the rise to fame of a young actress whom dramatic critics and public alike acclaimed with an enthusiasm unequalled since the days of Eleonora Duse or Sarah Bernhardt.

This brilliant star on the theatrical firmament of Vienna was Ida Roland. She had conquered Viennese society, and was the daily topic in every salon.

I shall never forget Ida Roland's first appearance: through a number of doors thrown hurriedly open by lackeys, she hastened to her huge Baroque writing-desk. There she stood almost motionless, face to the public—every inch an empress, every inch a lovable and loving woman. Her slender figure in a wide hoop dress seemed tall, crowned by the grace and delicacy of her small head which gave her the proportions of a Tanagra statuette. Behind long lashes, her half-closed eyes gazed into the distance. After a pause she began to give out orders in an unforgettable voice, the quality of which, like dusky velvet, was one of the most powerful elements in the magnetism which radiated from her personality.

Shortly afterwards, my mother met Ida Roland at the house of a mutual friend. After several meetings they became friends. Ida Roland invited my mother and my brother Hans to an informal supper one evening. But Hans being out of town at Dianahof, my mother asked me to accompany her.

As arranged, we went again to the Volkstheater before the supper to see Ida Roland in her latest role, 'Natasha', in a dramatized version of Dostoyevski's novel The Idiot. This time she played the part of a young woman of modern times, a tormented, passionate nature, who because she was in love with the young eccentric prince was alone able to sense the nobility of his true character, whereas others took him to be an idiot. The human quality of her acting was overwhelming. I was deeply impressed, and felt instinctively that this great actress was inspired by a great soul.

Half an hour later we met Ida Roland in the lounge of the Grand Hotel. I had expected to see a Grande Dame, instead I found a sweet, childlike being of great simplicity and incomparable charm, with no trace of conceit. She had a fair and almost transparent complexion. The oval of her face with its delicately moulded features was surmounted by an alabaster-white forehead and temples framed in lightly waved red-blonde hair. Her mobile expression was lit by light-blue eyes and a full beautiful mouth with dazzling teeth. The nose was that of a lioness or sphinx, and her hands were delicate and most beautiful. Her profile reminded one of the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. From a photograph of Ida Roland taken beside the famous bust of the Egyptian queen, one would have taken them to be twin sisters.

I was seated beside her at table that evening. We spoke of her roles, of Dostoyevski. To my mother's amazement, I proved talkative.

Five days later a highlight of the Vienna Carnival season took place, the Volkstheater Redoute. It was not exactly a masked ball, for the men wore evening clothes, and only the women were disguised behind dominoes. Ida Roland and my mother had agreed to meet at this ball. As I never went to balls, Mother had not expected I would accompany her. She was pleased when I offered at the last moment to go.

Behind her domino, Ida Roland was unseen that evening by her Viennese public. She had come on my account and for me alone. My mother had met other friends. So we two, in the midst of this bustle of Viennese society, were as happy to have found each other as two children in the woods. We saw nothing of the dancing couples, heard nothing of the Viennese waltz tunes, nor the clinking of champagne glasses all round. We walked arm in arm as in a dream.

Towards morning, I drove home with my mother, lost in the wonder of this meeting. I was in love and knew I was loved. Since childhood my dreams had been to find someone who was like a twin sister, someone who was my other self, yet a woman; someone with whom I could share my thoughts and longings: who would understand me without words. Suddenly this dream had come true. In these hours spent apart, yet in the midst of the hubbub of Viennese society, I had revealed my most intimate thoughts and dreams, and she had spoken as though we had known each other since early childhood.

From then on, we met almost daily. When she returned from long rehearsals to her hotel, we took drives in a horse-drawn cab through the Prater, which was alive with child-hood memories for her. Then we strolled through the neighbouring meadows around Vienna, enjoying the spring together.

Days, weeks and months went past as in a dream. We met far from Vienna, by the magnificent Traunsee in the Salzkammergut, and the Starnbergersee in Bavaria.

We had known for a long time that we were destined for each other. I often thought of the allegory taken from Plato's Banquet that man was once a cylindrically-shaped entity with four arms and four legs, that a god one day had split it in two, into man and woman, and that since then each half was seeking the other half, and could be happy only when it was found. I thanked God and my destiny that amongst the millions of other feminine elements, I had found my lost half.

characters and adapted them to each other. Our interests lay wide apart—I knew little of the dramatic arts, and she had not gone much into philosophy; she had neither taste nor interest for politics.

Still, we began to co-operate in all these fields. I accompanied her on all her theatrical tours, and advised her in her dealings with theatre managers and impresarios. I loved to sit for hours alone in the darkened hall of a theatre, never tired of seeing her rehearsals and watching her passionate efforts to perfect her role. I had to tell her again and again what I did not like about its quality. She was devoid of vanity and self-complacency, and was her own most relentless critic. Her love of perfection was one of her essential qualities, and nothing was indifferent to her nor secondary. From her managers she demanded the best co-actors and the best stage-settings. Only the finest costumes were good enough, for costume formed part of the mysterious magic which held her enthralled in the acting of her parts.

This magic character of her art made her so dependent upon reactions from the public that she would look upon the latter as both a medium and a hypnotizer. She liked to be carried away by their enthusiasm, emotion or hilarity. Often during a performance she would ask me to see who was sitting in, say, parquet box number four, because she felt unsympathetic radiations coming from there. And often she surpassed herself when she realized that some great artist was sitting in the stalls and sensed his approval. One day in Munich, Rainer Maria Rilke saw her in Anne Pedersdotter, the young wife of a Norwegian pastor who falls in love with her stepson, places a deadly curse on her husband and finally accuses herself of witchcraft. Rilke was so shaken that he came every evening to the theatre only to see her in one love-scene where she and her stepson meet and come together in an almost speechless scene. Rilke in one of his letters, published later, called this performance 'one of the most potent and satisfying impressions I have ever experienced with any character actress'; he then mentioned 'the vigour of her nature which seemed to renew itself, clear as spring water, by gestures,

In spite of her fame in tragic roles, they depressed her, because she identified herself so completely with her role that she somehow suffered all day under the tragedy she had to live in the evening.

She therefore loved to play in comedies: to conquer the hearts of young and old, of men and women, with her incomparable smile, with the natural humour that constituted a basic element of her personality and with the firework of her bright and brilliant temperament. Thus she was no less successful in comedies by Somerset Maugham or by Molnar than in Shakespeare's tragedies. And she was happier during the time she played them. For in spite of her unusual intelligence, her soul had remained that of a child.

Paradoxically enough, this great actress was incapable of dissimulation. Her expression was so completely the mirror of her soul that every emotion or mood was at once apparent. She was always genuine, both on the stage and in private life. She was incapable of camouflaging her likes as dislikes, her joys as sorrows. Nothing was more unbearable and tiring for her than to be bored by people and situations. She was constantly haunted by the fear of having to entertain a bore or to be compelled to sit in smoky rooms with bad air and closed windows. She loved spring and morning; she was most herself when roaming about in woods and meadows—far from people and cities.

In many respects, I shared her likes and dislikes. For a happy marriage, it is not enough to agree on big things, for life is full of trifles and even big things are like mosaics composed of little things. It was a lucky coincidence that neither of us smoked, played cards or hunted; that we both drank sparingly, prefered country to town-life, loved animals and disliked large parties.

Our co-operation extended to my own literary activities from the beginning. Her perfection in the art of speech, rendered keener by her familiarity with literary works of world-fame, was a valuable pointer to me in matters of style. And in my political activities she had always been an indispensable adviser and collaborator. Politics are based on sound human understanding. Therefore in this sphere men and women with common sense but without academical training are often more successful than the greatest scholars.

Her sound human understanding has often shown me the way out of an intricate political situation. We discussed every important question and every crucial decision. Her instinctive knowledge of human character, born of her strong imaginative qualities and radar-like intuition, was an invaluable help to me.

In this way, through co-operation, our mutual spheres of interest have expanded—I was always amazed at the manifold gifts that were slumbering in this great artiste. Although as delicate as mimosa, she could generously spend herself on things and people without depleting her vital energies. The clue to this mystery is found in the paradoxical law, that in the realm of the soul, only he who gives, gains, and he who hoards, loses.

I am always reminded, in connection with her, of Napoleon's

This sacred flame, this burning idealism and enthusiasm for everything which is fine and beautiful was the secret of Ida Roland and the spell she cast on the stage as in daily life.

At the end of 1950 her health began, for the first time in her life, to fail. Though in her natural optimism she did not attach sufficient importance to her heart troubles, we followed the doctor's advice to meet the spring on the Mediterranean coast, and spent happy weeks of undisturbed peace at the Mimosa Groves of La Rayol. On our way home we stopped for Easter at a charming cottage overlooking the Lake of Geneva, near Nyon. There, on Easter Sunday, she was struck by a sudden heart attack. Without having recovered consciousness, she passed away very peacefully on Tuesday the 27th March, 1951.

^<sup>1 In 1951 I published (in German) her biography, In Memoriam Ida Roland (Phaidon Press, London).

CHAPTER VII

WORLD WAR I

On 28th June 1914 was the Vienna Derby Day, the climax and close of the season.

Idel—I give her this name to distinguish her from my youngest sister, Ida Coudenhove-Goerres, the writer—and I were in the midst of plans and dreams for the future. The world seemed to open out before us. All the great painters wished to paint her. Wilhelm Victor Krausz had completed her portrait as a young duke of the Renaissance in the costume of Heinrich Mann's one-act play The Tyrant. She had just signed a contract for a two-month star performance of Bernard Shaw's comedy The Great Catherine, for a record salary of sixty thousand gold crowns—a sum hitherto unheard of by German-speaking actors and actresses. Every day new offers to appear in star performances came from Berlin and other cities. The Vienna Burgtheater sought to bind her by a contract. America's greatest theatrical manager and impresario, David Belasco, had come in person from New York to discuss with her plans for an American tour and to open up for her a career as a world star.

Amidst these plans and dreams flashed the sudden news on that hot June day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife had been assassinated at Sarajevo. The assassin was a young Serbian nationalist, one of a group of Austrian Serbs, who had conspired against the Austro-Hungarian monarchy—this, however, without the knowledge and consent of the Serbian government.

Franz Ferdinand had never been popular, and still he had been the hope of all Austrian patriots who believed that the regeneration and reform of Austria could be accomplished without war. It was evident that the system of ruling the monarchy against the sentiments of its Slav majority could not be indefinitely maintained and that the empire would only survive if complete equality between all its national groups could be achieved. Without Hungarian consent a reorganization of the monarchy on the basis of national equality was unconstitutional, and Emperor Franz Joseph would not think of violating the Hungarian constitution he had sworn to maintain, when, in 1867, he was crowned king of Hungary. However, it was an open secret that, as soon as he should die, his nephew and successor Franz Ferdinand would undertake the reform against the will of the Magyars—before taking an oath on the constitution. This was expected any day, for the Emperor's strength was failing steadily. He was eighty-five years old.

Why then did the Sarajevo murder happen? The Serbian nationalists, within and outside the Habsburg monarchy, did not believe in a reformed Austro-Hungarian empire, but were working for the establishment of an independent national state of their own, uniting all Serbs, Croats, Slovenes under their national dynasty of the Karageorgevich. The state was to be Yugoslavia. It had a chance to live only if the empire fell. Serbian patriots viewed a vigorous successor to the Habsburg throne with anxiety. They knew that he imperilled their dream of a Yugoslav kingdom. They conspired to kill him.

For several weeks after the blow fell, the fate of the world remained in balance.

At the Villa Wahnfried, the Wagners gave their usual big reception for the more distinguished of Bayreuth's visitors. Cosima Wagner and her son Siegfried received us very charmingly, for my family had had friendly relations with their family since the day my great-grandmother Marie Kalergis had known and sponsored Richard Wagner in Paris. I was shown an armchair which she had personally embroidered for the Maestro, who had been generous enough to compliment her on her musical accomplishments. We had a good many friends among the guests at Wahnfried; half of Vienna's society seemed to be there, and everybody was lost in long discussions about the merits of the festival performances. The air was thick with more or less subtle evaluations of the singers, the settings and the Maestro himself—eternal conjurer of all this legendary and subterranean Germanic splendour.

'Mr. Houston Stewart Chamberlain,' my aunt said simply. We sat down together. I do not recall what we talked about—Siegfried Wagner had settled down to play, and our attention was naturally divided—but I remember that he was a suave talker and a good listener too. I had leisure enough to observe him carefully, and the thought struck me that this man, who had so ingeniously sharpened the weapons of super-racialism, had about him nothing of the anthropologist, everything of the poet. He would have served the world much better had he written his epic of the Nordic man in verse rather than in prose. At least he would have lived up to his true vocation of spinning dreams rather than prepare fierce fratricide.

The news of the Austrian ultimatum hit Bayreuth like a bombshell. The date was July 26, and within a day or two Bayreuth was empty of foreigners, who were all anxious to leave Germany before the borders were closed.

Peace might have been saved even then had the Czar and the Kaiser desired it. It was obvious that the Czar had the power to restrain Serbia and the Kaiser to restrain Austria. But in St. Petersburg and Berlin nationalists and warmongers had gained the upper hand. Serbia, backed by Russia, refused to accept certain points of the Austrian ultimatum, and Austria,

backed by Germany, declared war on Serbia. Russia entered the war as Serbia's ally, Germany as the ally of Austria, and France as the ally of Russia. Several days later Germany broke its pledge to Belgium and violated its neutrality. Britain, faithful to its pledge to Belgium, thereupon joined the Franco-Russian alliance. Italy, though an ally of Austria, remained neutral, because Austria had failed to inform the kingdom of Vittorio Emmanuele of the impending ultimatum to Serbia. Austria had thus violated its pact with Italy, and the Italians were no doubt glad of it.

True, the immediate reason for war lay only in a local conflict between Austro-Hungary and Serbia, but behind it stood the major conflict between pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism. Both were aiming at European domination. Germany hoped to base its hegemony on the control not only of Austria but also of Turkey, while Russia hoped to become leader of all Slavs in the Danubian region, to control the Dardanelles, and to open the Mediterranean to its fleet. The two plans clashed: Germany wished to have Austria as vassal; Russia wished to dismember it, and to transform into vassals, if not all, at least most of its successor states. Both Russia and Germany needed the Danubian basin as a springboard to European hegemony.

Almost from the very first, chauvinistic ideas began to colour all the issues of the day. What perturbed me more, however, were the first threatening signs of racial complex in the German mind. From Ronsperg I wrote, in August, 1914, to Ida Roland, who was then at her house in Nymphenburg, a residential suburb of Munich:

I do not consider the terrible murders and cruelties now raging in all parts of the world as the most tragic elements of world war. What is more terrifying than anything, perhaps for centuries to come, is the awakening of the aggressive tendency of nationalism which is nothing but the apparently vanishing religious fanaticism, reappearing under a new form. This nationalism was on the defensive in the last century; the nations were only seeking liberty (Italy). Today this is changed. Responsible for the change are first of all Chamberlain and his group, who, with dubious arguments, try to transform the nation into an artificial unit and then supplant this unit by an

idea. The three steps are: first, predominance of the Aryans among the races, then predominance of the Germanic race among the Aryans, and finally predominance of the Germans among the Germanic race. . . .

The prelude to this national struggle was the so-called racial anti-Semitism. . . . I am afraid there are no more cosmopolitans left in Europe. This hatred is growing automatically—just as religious hatred grew in the past thousand years. It is the duty of objectively-minded people of all countries to fight this hatred, this lie and this blindness with full force. I, too, shall participate in this task and you, too, will do so; else this war is not an end but only a beginning of more slaughters. And the guilt for all this lies with scholars like Gobineau and Chamberlain rather than with war-minded statesmen. My father must have foreseen all this when, in conscious opposition to Chamberlain, he fought anti-Semitism. I wish to continue his work on a vaster scale. . . .

I continued my philosophic and historic studies at the University of Vienna until the summer of 1917, when I emerged as a full-fledged doctor of philosophy. I was finishing my book on ethics¹ when two events took place which transformed my negative attitude toward the war into a passionately interested one: the fall of Czarism and the entry of the United States into the war.

When Czarism was overthrown, I felt that the Russian people had vindicated themselves and their war aims. Their war cry, that the Allies were fighting for democracy had not sounded very convincing as long as Czarist power remained the most reactionary in the world. After the fall of Czarism, the central powers were surrounded on all sides by democratic and progressive nations. Now, at last, the threat of Russian despotism was removed, and if German imperialism too was crushed there was hope for a better world order. The war was no longer

^<sup>1 Ethik und Hyperethik.

This evolution was underlined by the fact that the United States had entered the war. Woodrow Wilson's attitude from the first gave it an ideological slant. I became passionately Wilsonian, though Wilson was fighting on the other side of the fence. But I shared this enthusiasm for Wilson and his ideas with most Austrians, including their young Emperor Charles, who had succeeded in December 1916 to his grand-uncle Franz Joseph. From the first day of his reign he did his best to assure a negotiated peace on Wilson's principles—against those of Ludendorff, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George. But events were stronger than his good will.

The issues of the war had boiled down to simple black-and-white terms, when in the East a second political leader emerged whose new ideals and aims made a reshuffling of all economic and political values necessary, at least within central Europe, which came very close to the new ideological radius of Soviet Russia.

Lenin will survive in history as a man of gigantic proportions and one who is much closer to being a religious than a political leader. From the first, Bolshevism seemed to me no mere political system but rather a new religion like Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. Lenin was very much like a Mohammed of the north, inspiring his people with a new creed and new ideals just as Mohammed had inspired the Arabs. Personally I was anti-Bolshevist, because liberty was my highest ideal, but I understood the generous impulses of his doctrine which attempted to rebuild on the ruins of an old world a new one of social equality and fair opportunity for everyone. It was a very dynamic doctrine too. I was aware of a good many dark points within our own capitalist system, but believed that the democratic system of the west was still capable of social evolution. Was Soviet Russia a threat to Europe? Would it hamper the further evolution of Europe? It was difficult to gauge the expansive urge and power of our Russian neighbour.

I was convinced that only a quick peace based on the principles of Woodrow Wilson would strengthen the democratic principles within central Europe and forestall the threat of civil war.

The year 1918 was disastrous for Austria. She had entered the phase of organized famine. Black flour had replaced white, and almost the only food available were turnips and potatoes. We were living near Linz in Upper Austria, in a lovely cottage which belonged to one of my aunts. Only a few miles from Ottensheim, it overlooked the Danube and commanded a grand view of the plain all the way to the snow-capped mountains in the south. And within this rich agricultural land conditions were still somewhat better than in Vienna.

Between Idel's star tours to Vienna and Munich, we lived a quiet, retired country life at the Pöstlingberg, among the peasants of Upper Austria. Little Erica was with us—Idel's daughter by her short-lived marriage to the son of a well-known St. Petersburg industrialist, de Bastian: with her large blue eyes, long fair hair, red cheeks and clear bell-like laughter, she was a source of pure joy to us. This darling little girl grew up, with all the natural charm she had inherited from her mother, as our dear and only child.

As the summer days grew shorter the end seemed to approach. The Allies were progressing on all fronts, in France, in the Balkans, and in Syria. The hope of the German leaders to end the war by a decisive victory had vanished when their last offensive had failed.

In October the decisive blow fell: Germany asked President Wilson for an armistice; she was ready to conclude a peace based on the Fourteen Points.

Bosnia and Herzegovina joined Serbia; and the Trentino, Istria and Trieste joined Italy. The Austro-Hungarian Empire which had taken centuries to rise, crumbled within three weeks.

During this week a world crumbled and a world was born: Germany accepted the hard terms of the Armistice, which practically meant surrender.

The world in which I had lived since my childhood vanished like a dream. My fatherland disappeared. The dynasty, to which my ancestors had been loyal for centuries, was overthrown and forced into exile.

Beyond the disaster of these tragic days my thoughts were fixed on this new world, on the glorious vision of a League of Nations uniting all nations and continents of the world in peaceful collaboration. A League that would replace international anarchy by order, arms by arguments, aggression by justice, revenge by understanding. Could anything more beautiful be imagined?

My political education was accomplished. I had broken with the prejudices of my class, with all national imperialisms and with the narrow outlook of capitalism. I was striving

toward international peace, personal liberty, national equality and social justice, impelled by my international blood and education.

When the war ended, only five days separated me from my twenty-fourth birthday, when I should be of age and a full-fledged citizen. But citizen of what state? That I ignored. Would I become a citizen of the little Austrian republic in which I was now living? Or would Austria join the German republic and transform me into a German citizen? Or would I become a Czechoslovak citizen, because Ronsperg had become a part of that new republic?

These questions did not worry me at the moment. I had practically no nationality and no citizenship until the conclusion of the peace. But I had acquired a wider and greater citizenship: I was conscious of being a citizen of the world, determined to live and to work not for one country, but for the brotherhood of men.

I was grateful to my destiny for having been born in the era of the League, in the era of Woodrow Wilson, in the era of the rebirth of the world under the impulse of new and generous ideals.

I was happy to be young, happy to be able to participate in that gigantic task of reconciliation and of reconstruction. I gave up my plans for living the contemplative life of a philosopher and pledged myself to work for the new world emerging from the ruins of the war.

CHAPTER VIII

SOVIET-MUNICH

But somehow I never contrived to put pen to paper. I was after all only an unknown citizen of Central Europe—of doubtful nationality at that—and without either standing or renown. The chances were that my letter would never reach Wilson, but find its way unread into a wastepaper basket. At best it might reach the desk of a minor assistant secretary, whence it would eventually vanish unobserved. Clearly, I had to get myself better known before I could hope to act effectively in a political sense. Instead of composing letters destined for Wilson's wastepaper basket, I would have to write articles and try to get these published in newspapers or magazines. Alternatively, I might try my hand at politics, but this possibility seemed practically ruled out by the fact that there was no party whose principles wholly appealed to me. What I was seeking—but failed to find—was some special

brand of socialism which played down the materialistic aspects of Marxism.

These thoughts led me to become a freelance journalist, without commitment to any political party. My first article, 'Plato's State in Relation to Contemporary Life', appeared in the magazine Die Erde, of which my young brother-in-law, Walter Rilla, who later became a film-star, was editor. This article argued the case for a socialist economy modelled on Plato's ideals and directed by an intellectual aristocracy. Before long, several leading German periodicals, among them Neue Rundschau, Zukunft and Neuer Merkur, invited me to contribute regularly, and within two years I was beginning to make my mark among the intelligentsia of Europe.

In the prevailing mood, such an ideal was by no means utopian. For it seemed as if, for the first time in history, mankind in general was ready to subscribe to a common political ideology, based on democracy and national self-determination. The political systems of the past had been uprooted: the absolutism of the Czars, the Manchu Empire, the despotism of the Turkish Sultans, the Prussian militarism of the Hohenzollerns, the semi-feudal monarchy of the Hapsburgs—all these were of the past. New republics were coming to life and even the Japanese Empire showed signs of transforming itself into a constitutional monarchy. What could be more natural than that these democracies should want to live together peacefully and support a League of Nations whose aim it was to guarantee that peace?

The one dark cloud in this generally hopeful prospect was the new Soviet Union which rose from strength to strength on the ruins of the Czarist Empire. Yet the leaders of the democratic world did not think it worth their while to invite Lenin's participation at the work of the Peace Conference. Convinced as they were that the days of the Communist regime were numbered, they took it for granted that a democratic Russia would ultimately become an enthusiastic member of the League. But the fact of the matter was that, while the West nursed fond hopes of a powerful League and of everlasting peace, Lenin prepared actively for world revolution.

Lenin, too, had visions of drawing together all mankind into a single community. But he was convinced that this could not be achieved without a radical change in the structure of society. For as long as the capitalist system continued to exist, he could visualize neither peace nor justice. To him democracy was a mere sham. He refused to recognize the verdict of the polls so long as capitalist domination made its influence felt through a strong press and a reactionary Church. Hence the first bastions to be stormed were the capitalist economy and the bourgeois element in society: the leaders of both were to be expropriated and ruthlessly stripped of their power. This first assault on the old system was to be followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat which would last until all class distinctions had been eliminated. Only then could it be said that the conditions of a true democracy had been created and could work be begun on the gradual dismantling of the state and the establishment of genuine peace among nations.

Throughout Russia, Lenin had won immense support for his creed. Operating from this powerful base, he began to stir up the backward peoples of Asia and Africa against their white masters, and the working peoples of the civilized world against their capitalist employers. In a Europe laid prostrate by war and misery, there was no knowing where the effect of such revolutionary preaching might end.

The intelligentsia of Europe was torn between the rival creeds of Wilson and Lenin, of democracy and communism.

From the very start I had chosen to follow Wilson, because he seemed to me to stand for peace, whereas Lenin's creed could, if at all, be achieved only at the cost of more bloodshed and cruelty. Somewhat to my surprise, I was soon to have an opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Bolshevist system at close quarters.

In the first days of April 1919 I accompanied my wife to Munich where she was playing the star role in Jealousy, a play by Arzibatcheff. Munich was then the focal point of the German revolutionary movement. Even before the Kaiser's abdication, the city had proclaimed itself a republic. The leading spirit behind this proclamation had been Kurt Eisner, an elderly intellectual from Northern Germany. His confused political idealism oscillated between the creeds of Wilson and Lenin. Through his hostile and independent attitude towards the central authorities in Berlin he had won the whole-hearted support of the powerful separatist elements in Bavaria.

A few days before our arrival in Munich, this first Premier of the Bavarian Republic had been shot dead, in the midst of his personal bodyguard, by a young nobleman, Count Arco. The city was now in turmoil. No one knew what would happen next.

Then one morning we woke up to see the whole city covered with posters: Bavaria had been proclaimed a Soviet republic! At first this change in its status seemed to make little difference to the ordinary routine of life. The opening performance of Jealousy was brilliantly successful, and the company played to a packed house for many evenings. A fortnight later the situation changed abruptly. The moderate members of the Munich Commune were displaced by Communists and by Socialist extremists, whilst the leadership of the executive fell exclusively into Communist hands. Shops were looted; hundreds of innocent citizens were imprisoned; hostages were taken, and subsequently released on payment of a substantial ransom. To keep the city in a state of constant fear, the alarm signal was pealed nightly by the church bells. Munich was cut off from the outside world, and we were unable to leave the city.

We lived at the Park Hotel on the Maximiliansplatz. At three o'clock one morning my wife was woken from her sleep

A group of heavily armed sailors, wearing red arm-bands, swarmed into her room: 'What is your name?'

'Ida Roland.'

Then in broad Bavarian dialect: 'Oh, so you're the actress. Don't worry, just let us see your passport.'

The leader of the group looked at her with amazement. 'What, you a countess?'

'Yes, my husband is a count.'

'Next door.'

Whilst I dressed, the sailors made a careful search of every cupboard and drawer in the room for hidden weapons and anti-Communist literature. Meanwhile Idel began a conversation with the leader: 'Why all this fuss about a count?' she said in her assumed Bavarian dialect; 'after all, Tolstoy was a count.' The red sailor looked perplexed; he fumbled for an answer, for in those days Tolstoy was often described on Munich posters as the spiritual father of Lenin—it was hoped by this to make Communism more popular in this city of the arts. Before the sailor had time to think of a suitable reply, Idel handed him a copy of Die Erde, containing my article on Plato. She pointed to the cover where my name appeared without its title. The sailor at once assumed a more friendly attitude. He started to read my article, but soon gave up in despair, for he was unable to determine whether this man Plato was a Bolshevist or a reactionary. I could understand his embarrassment only too well, for this is a question which I have tried in vain to answer all my life. Finally he abandoned the unequal contest and left the room, muttering: 'I'll have to take this down to our chief, Comrade Seidl.'

For two hours we waited under the watchful eyes of the sailors, who smoked cigarettes but refrained from molesting us. Then the leader returned, He handed the magazine back

The following nights we spent at the house of some friends, but we made the sad discovery during these trying days that some so-called friends found the most unconvincing excuses for not receiving us in their homes: concealing aristocrats in a Soviet republic was evidently too dangerous for their tastes!

In spite of its terrorist regime, the Munich Commune was a good deal less violent than other Soviet revolutions. The reason for this lay partly in its brief duration, but largely in the fact that there were among its leading figures a number of misguided idealists who were not prepared to go as far as committing atrocities and thereby frustrated the deliberate policy of those who were agents of Moscow. Among these humanitarians three names in particular stood out: Gustav Landauer, Erich Mühsam and Ernst Toller. Landauer was beaten to death by the regular troops on their arrival; Mühsam was tortured to death years later in one of Hitler's concentration camps; and Toller—a highly talented young poet of great courage and excellent character—whose acquaintance we were to make subsequently, committed suicide as a refugee in New York years later.

At last, after many anxious days, we heard the welcome sound of gunfire. The Bavarian Army was approaching Munich. Shots were fired in the streets. A corpse lay on the stairs of our host's house: no one knew whether he had been a Communist or an anti-Communist, but no one dared touch the body for fear of being held responsible for the murder.

During the last few days we had been unable to leave our hotel. Secretly, though with the knowledge of the manager, we slept in supposedly untenanted rooms, so as not to risk being arrested in the frequent searches which punctuated the nights.

Presently the first troops arrived in the city. From our window we observed the decisive skirmish on the Maximilians-platz. Guns started firing from behind the magnificent Hildebrand fountain; their target was the Justizpalast, where the Communists had established temporary headquarters. The fighting was very bitter on both sides. We saw men fall in action and die. Volunteers on the Communist side wore red armbands—those on the anti-Communist side white arm-bands. As the regular troops won the upper hand, we observed one group of young armed civilians throw away their red bands and replace them with white handkerchiefs.

Paradoxically enough, the Munich Commune helped to pave the way for National Socialism. Having been the focal point of the red revolution, Munich now transformed itself into the Mecca of the counter-revolution. In reaction against the terror they had witnessed, Bavaria's town-dwellers and farmers, her church and her army, her aristocracy and her officialdom became fanatically anti-Bolshevist and were ready to join any movement which offered to shield them from a recurrence of this terror. Reactionaries from all over Germany began to converge on Munich, chief among them General Ludendorff and his wife.

When we visited Munich a few months later, I noticed a poster announcing a mass meeting of protest against the Versailles Treaty. At the foot of a rather long-winded text there were a few additional words in heavy type: 'Half price for invalids. Jews are not admitted.' The poster was signed by a totally unknown name: Adolf Hitler.

One of the ways in which the seed of National Socialism was sown throughout Germany was the mass distribution of the so-called Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Soon after the war, hundreds of thousands of copies of this little booklet were sold and issued free of charge. It contained what were alleged to be secret protocols of the Basle Zionist Congress of 1897, with a detailed programme of action for the establishment of a Jewish world dictatorship under the leadership of a descendant of David.

This booklet had made its first appearance in Russia at the beginning of the century, but attracted little attention on account of the obvious absurdity of its contents. Only after the Bolshevist victory did it gain new topicality, for in some respects the methods of the Bolshevist dictatorship and of its propaganda machine followed the lines laid down in the protocols. This led men like Henry Ford, General Ludendorff and others to believe in the authenticity of the protocols and to see in Russian Bolshevism an attempt to put the programme into action. Even the London Times devoted a series of articles to the 'protocols'. Millions of Germans who had not hitherto concerned themselves with the Jewish problem suddenly became violent anti-Semites. They convinced themselves without apparent difficulty that the Jews had unleashed the world war in order to pave the way for world revolution; that having embarked on war, they then stabbed the victorious German armies in the back; and that they now worked for Bolshevism, some openly, others in clandestine fashion, as a means of preparing their own world domination.

Joly, which had been published in Brussels in 1865 and was called Conversation in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. Graves, whose acquaintance I subsequently made in London, told me how in this book he came across the same ideas and arguments that were alleged to have been laid down in the 'protocols'. He compared the two texts and, to his amazement, found whole pages of the one identical with the other. The only difference was that Joly's book was in no way concerned with the Jews: its author, an opponent of Napoleon III, had sought refuge in Belgium and written this book to reveal Napoleon's alleged plans for world conquest.

More detailed enquiries revealed not only that the 'protocols' were fakes, but also that they had been written and circulated by the Russian secret police in Paris with the object of forcing Tsar Nicholas II to adopt anti-Semitic measures. Henry Ford admitted at once to having been deceived, but more gullible Germans continued to believe in their authenticity. Proof of their real origin was conveniently ignored; belief in a Jewish world plot had in fact become such a firm article of faith with millions of Germans that they saw in militant anti-Semitism their only hope of salvation.

While we were witnessing the strange events of the Munich Commune, the statesmen assembled in Paris decided the fate of Europe. In that fateful year 1919, the prophets of the twentieth century, Wilson and Lenin, suffered defeat at the hands of the old forces of European nationalism. The former enthusiasm for President Wilson's new order of peace and freedom soon ebbed away. Peoples and governments began to show more concern for such territorial gains as could be immediately achieved at the expense of the defeated powers of Central Europe.

The Paris Peace Treaties left Europe more disintegrated than ever before. The mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire had been rent asunder. Germany, weighed down with heavy reparation payments, nursed dreams of revenge. The Treaty of Trianon, which split up not only the old Hungarian Kingdom but also the so-called 'Magyar region', stood in the way of

In Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Pasha staged a rising, tore up the Tracture of Shures and wared are a second to the ristorio and wared are a second to the ristorio and wared are a second to the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and the ristorio and ristorio and ristorio and ristorio and ristorio and ristorio anature and ristorio and ristorio and ristorio and ristorio and ris

Whilst, in the salons of the Hotel Crillon, Wilson suffered defeat at the hands of the leaders of European nationalism, Lenin was locked in battle with the same forces before the city walls of Warsaw. Lenin, too, was beaten: not by the ideology of Wilson but by the armies of Pilsudski.

One hope alone remained: the League of Nations. It was still possible to hope that Geneva might mend what Paris had so obviously shattered. In the Covenant of the League there was a clause providing for the revision of treaties which had become unworkable.

Before long this hope vanished, too. The American Senate refused to ratify the Covenant. President Wilson fell seriously ill and his party was defeated at the polls. America became strongly isolationist and left Europe to its fate.

At about the same time the attempt at fostering world revolution also came to grief. The civil war had absorbed all Bolshevist forces. After the defeat of Warsaw, new expansionist adventures had, for the time being at least, to be shelved.

European nationalism had thus scored a decisive victory over the dreams of Wilson and Lenin. The Europe which emerged from this Pyrrhic victory was hopelessly divided, weak and impoverished. Gone for ever was the hope that Europe might rule the world; even its chances of survival seemed seriously threatened.

During this political crisis I gave more thought than ever to certain basic moral problems. It seemed to me that the great political crisis through which we were passing had its roots in a deeper moral crisis.

For centuries European ethics had been rooted in religion, in the faith that God had revealed to man certain moral laws which man must follow. Millions of Europeans of our generation have forsaken this faith and with it their belief in binding moral obligations. The consequence has been the collapse of morality in our times.

I asked myself whether there could be other foundations for morality than religious dogma and found this question answered by my observations of Greece and the Far East. In the cultures represented by these two areas, morality has always been founded not on religion but on beauty. Ethics is the aesthetics of the soul, the doctrine of inner beauty—just as aesthetics is the doctrine of beauty in the outside world. There cannot be two different sets of values, only one comprehensive set embracing both aesthetics and morality. The law of nature, which compels each star to follow its course and which transforms drops of water into snowflakes, also demands of us that we act aesthetically—that we show ourselves strong, pure and sane.

Just as men and women do not want to appear ugly, so they dislike acting in a base manner once they have recognized the identity of moral and aesthetic values; hence, the two old moral conceptions of 'good and evil' ought really to be replaced by their aesthetic counterparts, 'noble and base'. My book on Ethics and Superethics appeared in the Leipzig 'Neuer Geist' edition, with the introductory motto: 'Virtue is human—beauty divine.'

Shortly after, the same house published two pamphlets of mine: An Apologia of Technology and Nobility.

Apologia of Technology deals with the part played by modern

science in helping man master the forces of nature. Electricity, for instance, whose murderous or, at best, incendiary properties in the form of lightning had previously been feared by man, was now securely harnessed to his service: it helps cook his meals and heats and lights his home. The mastering of this source of energy alone has made it possible for man to dispense with whole armies of slaves. Altogether, technical progress is a large-scale attempt by northern man—who has suffered more than his southern neighbour from the caprices of the elements—to break away at last from their despotism. But technical progress and ethics, far from being mutually exclusive, complement each other like body and soul; technical progress will fail in its mission unless it remains conscious always of its subservience to higher ethical values.

'Nobility' is concerned with the problem of aristocracy in its various aspects. It expounds the thesis that our democratic age is only an interlude between the old feudal aristocracy, based on birth, and the aristocracy of the future based, as it will be, on mental and moral superiority. The new intellectual nobility will have its democratic foundations just like the Chinese mandarine system or the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church: all may attain the highest offices, provided they make the grade.

To have no politics may be a comforting slogan. Those who make use of it to shirk their responsibilities share in the guilt for every catastrophe which they have not actively tried to avoid. Napoleon once remarked to Goethe: 'Politics are our destiny'; for better or for worse, this has become the motto of our time,

CHAPTER IX

PRESIDENT MASARYK

Presently I noticed the north-south line which in Europe divides the democracies of the West from the territory of the Soviet Union and which, beyond the Mediterranean, corresponds to the boundary between British Africa and the colonial territories of continental Europe. To the east of this African boundary, the British Empire extends in a gigantic arc round the Indian Ocean, all the way from Capetown to Sydney.

This observation gave me the clue to a possible division of the world into five huge regions, a division which would make it possible both for the United States and for the Soviet Union to join the League of Nations.

Three of these regions were already in an advanced stage of organization: Pan-America; the northern part of the Old World, where the Soviet Union was predominant; and the southern part of the Old World, which was the preserve of the British Empire. In the Far East, Japan was attempting to organize a Mongolian bloc incorporating China. Only the fifth region, Pan-Europe, lacked all organization, notwith-standing the fact that it forms a clear-cut geographical unit between the Petsamo-Katanga line and the Atlantic Ocean and that it is based on a common civilization, a common history and common traditions.

Could these twenty-six European democracies not be merged into one large union, modelled on that of Pan-America? If this were possible, the United States, as a partner in Pan-America,

The more thought I gave to these questions the more I felt attracted towards the idea of Pan-Europe. I soon became convinced that Pan-Europe was the only hope of avoiding a second world war. The nations of the Continent were hopelessly divided into revisionists and anti-revisionists. Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania pressed for revision. Russia supported them because of her own Bessarabian claims, whilst Italy, whose colonial demands had been ignored in the peacemaking, was always on the verge of moving towards the revisionist camp. Mustapha Kemal's success in revising the Treaty of Sèvres gave the revisionists everywhere new hope. But France, Poland and the countries of the Little Entente had made up their minds to oppose forcefully any attempt at revision. One did not have to be a prophet to see that, sooner or later, this conflict of views was bound to lead to a second world war; only Pan-Europe could prevent it.

Revisionists and anti-revisionists could have compromised on a programme aimed at concealing the existence of the disputed frontiers: militarily, this could have been achieved by a system of alliances, based on adequate arbitration procedure; economically, it could have been done by a customs union and a common currency; whilst politically, it would have had to rest on the provision of effective safeguards for minorities. Only a programme of such a kind could have taken the sting out of reparations and frontiers troubles and paved the way for a policy of reconciliation and mutual respect between the victorious and the vanquished nations.

Another point in favour of Pan-Europe was that in the creation of a large European market without internal tariff protection lay the only hope of a quick rise in the European

A third argument for Pan-Europe was the mounting Russian threat. It was to be expected that Russia, having fought out her civil war, would recover fairly quickly thanks to her immense resources and her large population. Alone, none of her European neighbours could withstand Russian pressure: alone, Finland, Poland, Roumania, the Baltic states, the Danubian powers, the Balkans, Scandinavia, a disarmed Germany—all these would be easy prey for Russia. Only if the three hundred million citizens of Europe agreed to join forces in one common defensive system could peace be guaranteed between them and the one hundred and fifty million Soviet citizens; only thus could disarmament be made effective on both sides.

I was aware from the start that the main obstacle to the unification of Europe would be the British question. For, whilst on the one hand the British Isles are an essential part of Europe, they are also the nerve-centre of a world-wide Empire, extending over five continents. This special position makes it very difficult for Britain to tie herself exclusively to Europe. A union of Great Britain with Pan-Europe might cause Canada to secede from the Empire and join Pan-America, with all the incalculable consequences such a move would entail for the political and economic unity of the Empire.

Glearly, therefore, membership of a purely European organization was not a practical proposition for Great Britain. Nor would Britain view with favour a united Continent from which she herself was excluded. For four centuries it had been her traditional policy to oppose any form of continental unity. Was it likely that she would now change this policy in view of

the Russian danger? Could a new-found balance of power between Pan-Europe and Soviet Russia take the place of the old game of balancing one European nation against another? Would Britain not take fright at the thought of being excluded from the European market?

To unite Europe notwithstanding British resistance seemed virtually impossible. Her prestige, her diplomacy, her financial resources and her navy still made Britain the strongest power in Europe. Many smaller nations, such as Portugal, Greece, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark felt themselves closer to Britain than to the Continent. Nor was France willing to weaken her well-tried entente with Britain in exchange for a highly uncertain alliance with Germany. Besides, Germany's own revisionist hopes began at about that time to centre on Britain.

The attitude of the Empire towards European unity reminded me in many ways of that adopted in the nineteenth century by the Hapsburg Monarchy towards the unification of Germany. Austria, besides being a German country, was also the nerve-centre of a large international empire. The effect of incorporating German Austria into Greater Germany would undoubtedly have been to destroy the Hapsburg Monarchy. On the other hand, Austria was equally anxious to prevent a unification of Germany from which she herself was excluded. This dilemma was finally resolved in 1878 through the unification of the Reich without Austria, coupled with an alliance between united Germany and the Hapsburg Monarchy. But for the shortsightedness of Austrian politicians, this mutually advantageous solution could easily have been achieved by negotiation and need not have awaited the crisis of 1866. It

was perhaps not too much to hope that British statesmanship would realize that a united Continent closely linked with Britain represented the best possible guarantee of lasting peace.

The crux of the whole Pan-European problem thus lay in the unification of the Continent in close accord with Great Britain. It was the squaring of the circle.

Pan-America, by A. H. Fried, was the first book I ever read in connection with Pan-Europe. I studied keenly the history of the Pan-American Union which was to be a pattern for Pan-Europe. Under the influence of this prototype, I preferred to speak of Pan-Europe rather than of the United States of Europe. For the example of the United States of America, with its strong central administration, would have struck terror into the heart of every European government.

The success of the Pan-American Union was due largely to the sponsorship it had received from the United States. Which country was to take a similar initiative for Pan-Europe? Where was the European Piedmont, which would place its power at the service of unification?

Logically, this task should have fallen to France. She maintained the strongest army in Europe. She had an alliance with Poland and the Little Entente. She was the traditional pioneer of European unification. A French initiative would thus have had a better chance of succeeding than that of any other country. But any such step on the part of France was out of the question. France was then dominated by Poincaré's nationalist majority. He would certainly have refused to jeopardize his reparations policy by taking the initiative in Pan-European affairs. The fact of the matter was that if Poincaré had attempted such an initiative, his government would have been overthrown at once.

A German initiative was still more impossible. Even if it had come from a great and genuine European like Walter Rathenau, the world would have received it scornfully and with distrust. Nor was Italy, rent asunder by internal dissent, capable of conducting a vigorous foreign policy.

At that moment only one group of powers seemed able to take the initiative: the Little Entente. Heir to the Hapsburg Monarchy, the Little Entente, with its fifty million inhabitants, almost qualified as a Great Power. Its three members—Czechoslovakia, Roumania and Yugoslavia—were about to form a federal union which might subsequently have included the Balkan states in the south and Poland in the north. By means of suitable concessions, Austria and Hungary might also have been brought into the fold. Besides, any initiative emanating from the Little Entente could not have failed to bring its ally France closer to the idea of Pan-Europe.

The political leadership of the Little Entente centred on Prague. It was from Prague, therefore, that the initiative had to come.

Through the Treaty of St. Germain I had become a Czech citizen. Thus, without any effort on my part, I now suddenly found myself a citizen of the victorious Entente. I accepted this change in the spirit of Spinoza's 'Amor fati', which bids us not simply to bear our fate, but actually to love it, and I became a loyal citizen of my new country.

My only personal tie with Czechoslovakia was my deep-felt admiration for my new President, Thomas G. Masaryk. No other statesman in Europe rivalled him either in wisdom or in moral authority. Talking to him reminded me of Plato's maxim that the world would only then be happy when wise men were crowned or crowned heads became wise. Here in Czechoslovakia, the wisest citizen had become king; the nation had elected her greatest son to be President.

I liked everything about Masaryk: that he once risked his reputation to prove that the alleged national epic of Czechoslovakia, the so-called Königinhof Manuscript, was a forgery; that he again exposed himself to popular resentment to save the life of Hilsner, an innocent Jew, who stood accused on a charge of ritual murder. At the age of sixty-four Masaryk had gone into exile to serve his people. Now he had returned to Prague as the uncrowned king of Czechoslovakia, his prestige higher than ever, both at home and abroad.

In the spring of 1920 Masaryk received me. As I passed under the thick arches of the Hradschin Palace, a feeling of uneasiness came over me. For the first time in my life I would confer with a statesman; a statesman, moreover, who happened to be the leader of my own country and for whom I had a deep personal admiration. But as soon as Masaryk greeted me with his friendly smile I lost my embarrassment. Masaryk proved to be the great and simple man I had hoped and expected to find. I had less the feeling that I was talking to my President than that I was talking to one of my university professors.

This man with his white hair and goatee beard, his narrow face and slender figure, gave the impression of being a highly cultured French scholar. Like all really great men, he seemed unaffected by his fame. He was anxious to learn and gather information, not to impress others.

I had sent him some of my philosophical articles—and he had read them. We began to talk of these problems. Then we came to the subject of Europe. When I explained to him the necessity and the practicability of Pan-Europe, he listened attentively and asked one or two questions. Finally I asked him to take the necessary initiative and become the George Washington of the United States of Europe.

He replied: 'I believe your idea is right and the day will come when the United States of Europe will be established. But I fear that day is not yet.' He then told me how, during the Paris Peace Conference, he had tried to bring into existence the United States of Eastern Europe and how he had been

assisted in this by his Greek friend, Venizelos, and by his Roumanian friend, Take Jonescu. The United States of Eastern Europe was to be a union of all states from Russia to Germany from Finland to Greece. This great project had come to nothing because of nationalist opposition. Only the Little Entente emerged from it. Pan-Europe would, he feared, meet a similar fate. As president of a constitutional state, he could not therefore identify himself with my plan, though personally he supported it wholeheartedly, and though he was prepared to promote it unofficially to the best of his ability.

Behind these arguments I discovered the real reason for Masaryk's refusal. Though he was young in spirit even at the age of seventy, his dynamism had gone. He no longer had the strength to take up a fight which would prove long and difficult and whose outcome he would hardly live to see. Shortly before his death he told an interviewer: 'If I were thirty-five, I would put every ounce of energy into the realization of the United States of Europe.'

On leaving Masaryk, I felt sad. In him I had clearly found both a sponsor and a wise old friend, whom I visited whenever I was in Prague and who was always happy to hear about the progress of our movement. But I had failed to obtain from him that active support which we so badly needed.

CHAPTER X

THE PUZZLE THAT WAS EUROPE

AFTER my talk with Masaryk I was convinced that no governmental action in favour of Pan-Europe could be expected for the time being. I therefore decided to seize the initiative myself.

I thought of Mazzini's Young Italy, of Theodor Herzl's Zionist Movement. I also thought of my childhood days when my father's friend Suhraworthy, then totally unknown, started the Pan-Islamic movement from scratch. I now set out to establish contact with all organizations of Pan-European character and with all personalities who shared my views on the subject of Pan-Europe. With their co-operation I hoped to create a vigorous Pan-European movement.

But my search was in vain. It seemed as if no one was interested in promoting the unification of Europe. There was certainly no movement with that specific aim. Nor was there any literature which could have served as a beginning for us. Political journals were full of articles on all sorts of questions—except that of Europe's future. Europe seemed somehow to have been forgotten altogether.

There is a simple explanation for this: after the First World War, Europe was split into three political camps, the Nationalists, the Pacifists and the Communists. The Nationalists believed in their proven policy of armaments, alliances and tariff walls, and had no interest in Pan-Europe. The Pacifists were irrevocably wedded to the concept of the League. Geneva was their spiritual home and they looked upon any new idea which risked diverting public interest from the League as a source of trouble and harm. They too therefore had little sympathy for Pan-Europe. The Communists, finally, made no secret of their hostility towards Pan-Europe, since this would give the West enough strength to stand up to the Soviet Union.

True Europeans were to be found only among writers of independent mind. It was not difficult, for instance, to make a convert of Maximilian Harden or of Heinrich Mann, in whose delightful one-act plays my wife had just then appeared and who was an intimate friend of ours. But any enterprise launched on the initiative of a group of German writers would at that time have derived more harm than good from the association. The distrust of all things German was still too profound.

Everything now depended on careful preparation. Above all, no harm must come to the movement as a result of precipitate action. I began by studying the European problem from various aspects: political, economic, cultural and historical.

I discovered to my surprise that the feeling of European consciousness had first shown itself during the Crusades. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Crusades represented the most vigorous display of European solidarity. For a time, feuds between kings, princes and cities were submerged in a common cause.

The first programme for Pan-Europe came from the pen of Pierre Dubois, a court lawyer of King Philip the Fair of France (1303). Under the heading 'Reconquest of the Holy Land', it advocates the setting up of a European League, under the presidency of the King of France. This League would have two objectives: first, to ensure permanent peace within the Christian world, and, secondly, to rally the armed strength of Europe for the reconquest of the Holy Land and the Mediterranean. Only his contemporary Dante could challenge Dubois' claim to be the father of Pan-Europe. For, in his work De Monarchia (1306), Dante makes a plea for a universal monarchy under the Holy Roman Emperor.

The first attempt at putting Pan-Europe into practice came, however, only a century and a half later, when Constantinople had fallen and the victorious Turkish armies threatened Central Europe. George Podiebrad, a famous King of Bohemia, took it upon himself to suggest a federation of European states for the defence of the Continent and the preservation of peace. Having convinced the kings of Poland and Hungary of the

merits of his plan, he sent a delegation representing all three countries to Paris in 1464 to ask King Louis XI of France whether he would to assume leadership of a European Peace League. The mission returned without achieving its aim.

A famous plan for Pan-Europe is also associated with the name of King Henry IV of France: the so-called 'Grand Design'. This plan had been designed by the Duc de Sully, King Henry's personal adviser. It too provided for the conquest of North Africa by a European army of some two hundred thousand men.

From that time onwards many writers and statesmen began to support the idea of Pan-Europe. Its greatest protagonist in the eighteenth century was the Abbé de St. Pierre. He had two great philosophers as his disciples: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. In the nineteenth century it was Napoleon who first endeavoured to unite Europe by force of arms; after his fall, the Holy Alliance created a Pan-Europe of Sovereigns for the prevention of wars and revolutions. Finally, in 1834, Mazzini founded Young Europe, a movement designed to co-ordinate all existing revolutionary movements with a view to building up a new and united Europe on a basis of nationalism and democracy.

The collapse of this movement in the year 1849 marked also the decline of the idea of European unification, whose last great protagonist in those days was the poet Victor Hugo. After the Franco-Prussian War and the deep split which this created between the two leading nations on the Continent, the prospect of a united Europe seemed, for the time being, hopeless.

Reprinted in Krisis der Weltanschauung, Paneuropa Verlag, 1924.

Soon afterwards Mussolini assumed control of the Italian government. The line of his foreign policy was still uncertain. Mussolini, formerly socialist, pacifist and internationalist, was known to have become a fanatical nationalist. Would it not be possible to win over this disciple of Nietzsche to the European idea and to harness the dynamism of his Italian Youth Movement to our own great mission? Mazzini's tradition was not yet dead: for Italians, there was no essential contradiction between allegiance to Italy and allegiance to Europe. Italy had always been greatest when she was most European: in the days of its Caesars and of its great Popes. If Mussolini could be won over to the idea of Pan-Europe, he would be the ideal mediator between France and Germany, and Pan-Europe might yet be established on governmental initiative.

Without hesitating, as I had done in the days of Wilson, I wrote the following letter to Benito Mussolini:

In the name of European Youth I appeal to you to save Europe.

Two of the three great nations which emerged from the Carolingian Empire, the German and the French, have been locked in battle for over a thousand years. It would seem that the third, a great and united Italy, is now called upon to settle the hereditary feud between these sister-nations and to pave the way not only for the recovery, but also for the unification and regeneration of the European continent.

You love Italy. You are seeking to promote its growth and development. But no European nation can live, let alone prosper, if the continent around it is moribund. Only in a healthy Europe can Italy hope to prosper—in a diseased continent, it is bound to wither away. Whoever loves his people today must also love Europe. As a good Italian, you are bound also to be a good European, just as the best Italian of the last century, Giuseppe Mazzini, was also the best European.

I would ask you to cast your eyes across the ocean. While Europe, from the Rhine to the Adriatic, is tearing herself to pieces, while her standard of living is constantly sinking and her misery, her resentments and her debts constantly mounting—while all this is happening before our eyes, a whole continent will shortly be meeting in the other hemisphere to promote its Pan-American Union in a spirit of confidence and hope and in the service of peace and progress.

The Pan-American idea, proclaimed by Bolivar a century ago, has today become one of the focal points of world development. A united America leads the world, whilst Europe bleeds to death from the wounds of its internal conflicts.

Do not put up with this misery and disgrace any longer. Convene the first Pan-European Conference to Rome, while Pan-America still meets at Santiago di Chile. Let Rome, once the capital of imperial and papal Europe, be the starting point of a new Europe now.

By changing its whole structure, Britain has developed from a European into a world power, whilst Russia has become a power primarily in Eurasia. Both have outgrown Europe and could survive its eclipse. But the remaining nations face a common destiny and for them the choice is between federalism and annihilation.

A hundred years later than America, Europe must proclaim its own Monroe Doctrine: Europe for the Europeans!

The future of Pan-Europe calls for the closest understanding between the Continent and its British neighbour; compulsory arbitration procedure and disarmament at sea and in the air would be a reasonable price to pay for Britain's consent and friendship.

As heir to Marius and Caesar, you, sir, have the power to postpone this new upheaval for many centuries. For it will depend largely on your attitude in this present crisis whether Europe is in future to confront Eurasia on the line of the Dniester and the Rokitno Swamps—or on that of the Rhine and the Alps.

For, if a succession of good harvests should enable Russia to pull out of her present plight before Europe has achieved unity, we may all live to see Cossack horsemen watering their mounts in the Adriatic and the cultural heritage of the Latin peoples will once again be submerged in a vast invasion.

Ancient Greece perished because the idea of pan-Hellenism was conceived too late. Save Europe from the fate of Greece by making a decisive intervention in this crisis. By doing so, you will lay the foundations of a United States of Europe.

Thus shall your memory be blessed and your name become immortal!

My letter appeared in the Neue Freie Presse. But no answer came from Mussolini. My last attempt to launch Pan-Europe through governmental action had failed.

Early in 1923 I retired for a few weeks to a friend's castle in Upper Austria and there wrote a book entitled Pan-Europe and dedicated to European youth.

The book opens with these words:

The aim of this book is to awaken a great political ideal which at present lies dormant in the minds of almost all Europeans.

Most people have visions of a united Europe, but only a select few possess the determination to create it. If we are content to let the Pan-European ideal remain wishful thinking, it will never bear fruit; but if we make it the aim of all our striving, it will produce results more quickly than we now dare anticipate.

The only power in the world which can make a reality of Pan-Europe is the collective will of the European peoples themselves. But if this will is used negatively, it can just as easily destroy Europe altogether.

Thus every European carries a share of the world's fate in his own hands.

Europe's decline has political rather than biological causes.

If Europe perishes it will not be because of old age; it will be because its nations are doing their best to exterminate each other with all the resources of modern science.

The World War has changed the political map of Europe but not its political system. International anarchy continues to hold sway as hitherto. Wherever one looks, might prevails over right, peace treaties turn out to be mere armistice arrangements, economies are disintegrating and political intrigue is rife. Europe's politics today have more in common with the politics of yesterday than with those of tomorrow.

Europe seems to be concerned with its past much more than with its future.

New books are mainly about olden times. Public discussion centres around the causes of the last war and hardly ever touches on the possibilities of avoiding the next.

This obsession with the past is one of the chief causes of European reaction and disintegration. Europe's youth is in duty bound to change this condition radically and to erect a new Europe on the ruins of the old, a European organisation to fill the void left by European anarchy.

If the statesmen of Europe refuse to recognize this necessity and bring about the unification of the continent, then the peoples with whose future they are trifling will almost certainly sweep them from their positions.

By contrast, the European problem, though of equal importance, seems to be dominated by a conspiracy of silence. Many people have never even heard of the existence of the problem. Generally it is conceived of as a product of literature and wishful thinking—hardly ever as a serious proposition.

Yet on the solution of this problem will depend the future not only of Western culture, but of the whole human race.

'Will it be possible for Europe, in its state of political and economic disunity, to preserve its peace and independence in the face of the growing strength of the extra-European world powers—or will Europe's preservation be conditional upon the formation of a federation?'

To put this question is to answer it. Hence it is more often suppressed than put.

There is a great deal of discussion nowadays on all kinds of European problems, but little attention is paid to the one central problem on which all others hinge—just as most social problems hinge on one major question at the centre.

Today no European can avoid taking up a position on social questions in his own country. He should now be compelled likewise, in the field of foreign affairs, to take up a definite stand on the European question. It will then be for the peoples of Europe to decide whether they want to achieve unity or preserve their divisions, whether they want to organize themselves or continue to live in anarchy, whether they want to rise to new heights of achievement or perish for ever.

Never again must a situation be allowed in which a vital question affecting 300 million people is concealed from them by those who claim to be their responsible leaders.

It is time now for the European question to be placed squarely before public opinion. To do so we must employ all the resources of the press and of political literature; our forums must be political meetings, parliaments and cabinets.

Time is short. Tomorrow it may be too late to solve the European problem. We must therefore begin working on it without delay.

To succeed in unifying Europe we must not only act; we must also act quickly. For the speed of our action will determine whether the Europe of our creating is to be a federation of states or a federation of ruins. The essence of Pan-Europe is self-help on a collective basis towards common political and economic objectives.

In some quarters Pan-Europe is regarded as an unrealistic project. This criticism has no basis of fact. No known law of nature stands in the way of Pan-Europe's realization. The project corresponds to the broad interests of an overwhelming majority of the peoples of Europe; only an insignificant minority will be adversely affected by it.

This small but influential minority, in whose hands the fate of Europe rests for the time being, tries hard to discredit the Pan-European project by labelling it a 'Utopia'. The fact of the matter is that every great development in history began as a Utopia and ended as a reality.

Whether an idea remains a Utopia or advances into the realm of reality depends largely on the number and effectiveness of its supporters. As long as the supporters of Pan-Europe are counted only in thousands, the project remains a Utopia; once millions rally to it, it will become known as a political programme; and when the number of its supporters swells into hundreds of millions, it will no doubt become a reality.

The future of Pan-Europe therefore depends on whether the thousands who now believe in it possess sufficient faith and are equipped with sufficient means of propaganda to persuade the remaining millions of the importance of their cause; if they succeed in doing this, yesterday's Utopia may well become tomorrow's reality.

CHAPTER XI

I START A MOVEMENT

My book Pan-Europe appeared in the first days of October 1923 under the auspices of our own publishing house—the Paneuropa-Verlag—which we had established in Vienna a few months earlier.

The idea of starting an independent publishing house had intrigued me for some time. My mind was finally made up when, during the German inflation, my entire receipts from the firm which published my pamphlet Aristocracy amounted to five free copies of the pamphlet. No other publishing house was likely to produce the thousands of propaganda leaflets needed for the rapid dissemination of our ideas. The Paneuropa-Verlag thus came to be the backbone of our whole movement—without recourse either to subsidies or to outside financial help.

Each copy of my book contained a card, addressed to me, on which were printed the words: 'I wish to become a member of the Pan-European Union.' More than a thousand members were enrolled in the first month alone, and henceforth every mail brought a mass of new applications.

I chose the sign of the red cross superimposed on a golden sun as the emblem of our movement. The red cross, which had been the flag of the medieval crusaders, seemed the oldest known symbol of supra-national European brotherhood. In more recent times it has also gained recognition as a symbol of international relief work. The sun was chosen to represent the achievements of European culture in helping to illuminate the world. Thus, Hellenism and Christianity—the cross of Christ and the sun of Apollo—figured side by side as the twin enduring pillars of European civilization.

^{1 &#}x27;In essentials—unity; in matters of opinion—freedom; in all things—good will and good deeds.'

As we had not provided for a subscription fee, the Union soon had many members but no funds. Early in 1924 Baron Louis Rothschild telephoned to say that a friend of his, Max Warburg of Hamburg, had read my book and wanted to meet us. To my great astonishment, Warburg immediately offered a donation of sixty thousand gold-marks to see the movement through its first three years. I suggested that this donation might be divided equally between Germany and Austria. We agreed on the appointment of two trustees: Geheimrat Fritsch of the Dresdner Bank for the German tranche and Vice-President Brosche of the Kreditanstalt for the Austrian tranche.

Max Warburg, a man of outstanding character and intelligence, was fond of giving financial assistance to movements with whose aims he found himself in sympathy; but he gave such assistance only in the initial stages, taking the view that, once they had been launched, the movements should become financially self-supporting. Though he was a staunch supporter of Pan-Europe all his life and we remained close friends until he died in 1946, he gave the movement no further financial assistance in its later stages. However, his readiness to support it at the outset contributed decisively to its subsequent success.

Our central office was housed in a large and impressivelooking apartment which the Austrian Government obligingly placed at our disposal in the former imperial residence. From then onwards, our address was Pan-Europe, Imperial Palace, Vienna.

Our project soon captured the imagination of the Viennese. The erstwhile metropolis of a large polyglot empire had not entirely lost its international outlook. Despite wars and revolutions, the character of the city and of its inhabitants remained distinctly European. In an economic sense, the customs barriers which had arisen on all sides dealt a mortal blow to the prosperity of the city. There was not a country in Europe in which the new protectionist system was more sincerely abominated than here. The creation of a free market between its neighbours thus seemed to the Viennese an ideal worth a great amount of effort and struggle.

Ten years earlier Vienna had rivalled Paris for glamour and good living. Now the city lay plunged in deep distress. Gone was the power of imperial days; the currency had fallen to between one thousandth and one ten-thousandth of its former value; the aristocracy and the middle classes were for the most part destitute; and in their places black marketeers and speculators displayed newly gotten wealth in an ostentatious and tasteless manner.

In those days a private plebiscite was held in Salzburg to sound public opinion about the 'Anschluss' with Germany. Ninety-nine per cent of all votes were cast for the 'Anschluss' and only one per cent against. Those who voted against were almost exclusively customs officials and their families. In later years I was often reminded of this incident when I came up against stubborn resistance to Pan-Europe in diplomatic circles.

The Vienna newspapers backed our movement whole-heartedly from the start. This was due largely to the initiative of the Neue Freie Presse whose editor, Dr. Ernst Benedikt, and his wife were good friends of ours. My articles on cultural questions had already brought me into the limelight, whilst Ida Roland gained considerable publicity as a result of the contract which the Burgtheater had just given her. The negotiations leading up to this contract had proved difficult, since the Burgtheater made a point of never engaging 'stars' in their own right; they agreed, however, to make an exception in her case.

The Christian Social Party was led by an outstanding statesman, Monsignor Dr. Ignaz Seipel. By his ascetic and puritanical way of life, his upright character, his uncommon intelligence and his impressive features—which gave him the appearance of a Roman Emperor—Dr. Seipel had won universal respect and authority. Next to the Pope, he was acknowledged to be Europe's most distinguished and outstanding priest, his fame extending far beyond the frontiers of Austria. Free from all traces of nationalistic bias, he had the broad international outlook of a high-priest of the Catholic Church.

Chancellor Seipel, who had read my book, gave me a very cordial reception. I had no need to convince him of the importance of Pan-Europe. To his question, what he could do for the cause of Pan-Europe, I replied that I would be happy if he consented to become chairman of our Austrian committee. I expected that this suggestion would meet with a polite refusal. To my amazement and great joy, Seipel accepted. He advised me to try and get a leading Socialist and a leading representative of the Pan-German Party to serve as vice-chairmen; in this manner, the movement would be kept from the start out of the controversial domain of party politics.

This advice proved difficult to follow, because Socialists as well as Pan-Germans were committed to the 'Anschluss' programme. A new formula had to be found which would satisfy the protagonists of the 'Anschluss' as well as those who opposed it.

Among the Socialist leaders, Dr. Karl Renner, the late President of the Austrian Republic and former Minister of Foreign Affairs, had always been known as a supporter of the federalist idea. By reason of his great knowledge and wide experience, Renner was bound to display a sympathetic attitude towards the European problem. When I called on him, it did not take us long to come to the point. I explained that so far as Austria was concerned, Pan-Europe would mean 'all-round Anschluss' as distinct from 'Anschluss' with Germany alone; Pan-Europe would bring down tariff walls not only between Austria and Germany, but also between Austria and all the succession states.

This formula appealed to Renner, who was at that very moment working on the problem of improving relations between Vienna and Prague, and he agreed to serve as vice-chairman of the Austrian committee. Once a precedent had thus been set, I had little difficulty in persuading the leader of the Pan-Germans, Vice-Chancellor Dr. Dinghofer, to accept the remaining vice-chairmanship.

The official support which the movement had thus received from two internationally recognized leaders, one of political Catholicism, the other of Socialism, was of decisive importance. In the first place, the idea of Pan-Europe began to be taken seriously. Both Seipel and Renner had the reputation of being political realists. Through Seipel's support, the movement soon acquired a firm footing in the Catholic world; through Renner's support, it spread likewise throughout the world of international Socialism. The mere mention of Seipel's name often sufficed to persuade a vacillating Catholic leader to join a national committee; similarly, it was only necessary to point to Renner's support in order to prove convincingly that the aims of the movement were not in conflict with those of the Second International.

Thus Vienna, having been the cradle of the movement, now became its Mecca. The Viennese took pride at having launched and acting as hosts to this international movement. They hoped that one day Vienna might become the federal capital of a united Europe. Everywhere in the streets of Vienna, men and women were seen displaying the buttonhole emblem of Pan-Europe.

In April 1924 the first issue of our new periodical, Pan-Europe, reached the bookstalls. It contained an article called 'The European Manifesto'.¹ Our publicity office worked day and night; thousands of circulars, leaflets and books were dispatched to every country in Europe and newspaper cuttings in many languages about Pan-Europe as well as new applications for membership continued to pour in daily.

Publishing houses all over the world soon began to apply

for the right to publish my book in their own languages. I granted many of these applications on condition that a membership application form in the appropriate language would be enclosed with each copy sold. The book soon found a market even outside Europe: there was a Japanese edition and an edition in Esperanto. Russian and Italian were the only two important European languages in which the book did not appear.

Since the book was first published in German, most of our original members were Germans and Austrians. There was some danger lest this predominance of German-speaking members might cause the movement to be looked upon—and resented—as an attempt to sabotage the Treaty of Versailles. To counter this danger in time, we had to gain a firm footing quickly in at least one of the Entente states.

Paris seemed at the time hopeless. For one thing, Pan-Europe had not yet appeared in French; besides, Poincaré's Government was firmly in the saddle. There was, however, one route which could indirectly lead us to Paris via Prague.

I tried, therefore, on the strength of my Czech nationality, to obtain the blessing of the Prague Government for our movement. Masaryk, to whom I had dedicated one of the first copies of my book, promised help. He introduced me to his friend and Foreign Minister, Eduard Beneš, who immediately received me with great cordiality. After Masaryk, Beneš was the leading citizen of the Republic and one of the most respected public men in Europe. His outstanding intelligence had made him an acknowledged leader of the Little Entente and a great figure in international politics.

Unlike Masaryk, Beneš was not a genuine European. Fundamentally, he was a Czech nationalist, but his nationalism was of the enlightened, not the narrow-minded type. He spoke the language of Pan-Europe because he believed that to do so was good for his country. But he had no intention of sacrificing a single Czech interest on the altar of European unity. His aim, in brief, was to gain for Czechoslovakia all the benefits

of a Pan-European policy, whilst incurring a minimum of the obligations which such a policy entailed. In consequence, his attitude towards our movement for the next few years tended to be ambiguous: in theory he was a Pan-European, but in practice a Czech nationalist. He favoured a collective guarantee of Czechoslovakia's frontiers, but he opposed effective protection of the German minorities. He favoured the dismantling of customs barriers towards Eastern Europe so as to widen the market for Czech goods, but he opposed customs union with Germany for fear of competition from that quarter.

Whilst I had all my conversations with Masaryk in German, I invariably talked to Beneš in French. He himself spoke French with a strong Czech accent, but was proud of his command of the French language. He met all my proposals with the stereotyped reply 'Je suis entièrement d'accord avec vous, mais. . . .' Only after he had made this introductory gambit did he give me his real views, which often conflicted sharply with my proposals.

He was impressed by the fact that Seipel and Renner had come out openly in support of Pan-Europe. He wished on no account to appear less European-minded than they. He therefore accepted the honorary chairmanship of the Czech committee and wrote an excellent preface for the Czech edition of Pan-Europe. He played an active part in the committee's formation and secured for it the co-operation of outstanding politicians of Czech and German descent. He also furnished me with a diplomatic passport which stood me in excellent stead on my various journeys.

In subsequent years Beneš and I often met in Prague, Geneva, Paris, London and New York; our personal relations remained excellent, despite frequent differences of opinion on various subjects. I always enjoyed my conversations with this exceptionally gifted man, whose one great fault was that he thought himself to be even more intelligent than he was. His support proved of great value to me, since it opened many doors in France and other Entente states, and thus helped me overcome the double handicap of my Austrian origin and my German mother-tongue.

At the beginning of October 1924 I was invited to attend the International Congress of Pacifists in Berlin. The question of Pan-Europe was one of the principal points on the Congress agenda. After the address, which I was asked to deliver, there followed a dramatic debate. Many of the older pacifists regarded Pan-Europe as rank heresy—a prelude to a kind of continental imperialism—and winced at the very mention of a European military alliance. They were even more sharply opposed to my thesis that personal freedom must in the final analysis take precedence over peace and that, sooner or later, all nations which are not ready to fight tyranny must succumb to it in one form or another. Some of the younger pacifists came out openly for Pan-Europe; they proved, however, to be in a definite minority.

Shortly after this congress, I published a pamphlet entitled Pacifism. I summarized my impressions in one sentence: 'Those who do most harm to the cause of pacifism are the pacifists themselves.' Since that date relations between the pacifist movement and Pan-Europe have been somewhat cool.

The following three months we spent in Berlin where considerable interest began to focus on the Pan-European project. Germany was clearly looking for a new political orientation. Extremists on both right and left looked to Russia, hoping for revenge or revolution or both. The parties of the centre were, however, seeking a formula which would allow them to reach agreement with France; they hoped to have found such a formula in Pan-Europe. The movement thus found support in the right wing of the social Democratic Party, among most Democrats and Centre Party men as well

^<sup>1 The pamphlet was published in an anthology, called Praktischer Idealismus, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

as on the left wing of the People's Party. The movement also had the support of most Berlin newspapers—from Vorwärts to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. In the circumstances it proved easy to form a German national committee. Its chairmanship was accepted by Paul Loebe, then President of the Reichstag.

Loebe was one of the most charming and popular figures in Germany. In general appearance and character he had much in common with the Swiss. Being a genuine Democrat, he respected the views of others, even when these were directly opposed to his own social-democratic convictions. His broad tolerance enabled him to succeed exceptionally well as Reichstag President. Like Renner, he was a protagonist of the Anschluss; like Renner, too, he was at the same time a good European.

As our first executive vice-president we selected Major Joseph Koeth; he was later succeeded by Dr. Herman Münch. The finances of the committee were looked after first by Dr. Arthur von Gwinner of the Deutsche Bank and subsequently by Hans Fürstenberg of the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft.

Our most active publicist in Germany was Georg Bernhard, who edited the Vossische Zeitung. This paper practically became the organ of the German Pan-Europe Movement.

Dr. Gustav Stresemann was at that time the unchallenged

leader of German foreign policy. Like Beneš he was an enlightened nationalist. It was clear to him that Germany, weak as it was, had to play the card of Pan-Europe. Fearing the impression which such a step might create in Russia and England, Stresemann never officially joined our movement, but, behind the scenes, he was one of our most active supporters. After our meeting in the Chancellery, he made a note in his diary: 'Herr Coudenhove-Kalergi called on me today; his project for Pan-Europe is making good progress. Whatever one may think of him, there is no denying that he is a man of exceptional knowledge and remarkable energy. I am convinced that he will one day play an important role.' 1

The European centre of the Carnegie Endowment invited me to deliver a lecture in Paris at the beginning of January 1925 under the chairmanship of Paul Appell, the distinguished rector of the Sorbonne.

On New Year's Eve we left Berlin on our first visit to Paris—then in a very real sense the capital of Europe—and our hearts were full of hope and expectation. I had on me five letters of introduction to smooth my path with French politicians. They had been given me by Beneš. Couched in very cordial terms, the letters were addressed to his best friends in France: to the former Prime Minister, Paul Painlevé; to the Minister of Reconstruction, Louis Loucheur; to the editor of Le Matin, Henri de Jouvenel, to the former Prime Minister, Aristide Briand; and to the Socialist leader, Paul Boncour.

The letters had a magic effect. Beneš being considered a most reliable friend of France, his introductions assured me a cordial welcome. I made my début in Paris not as a German writer but as a citizen of an Entente state, personally introduced by one of France's staunchest allies. Painlevé, Loucheur, de Jouvenel and Paul Boncour received me cordially and promised their full support to the movement. In the years which followed, they amply fulfilled this promise and contributed later to Briand's Pan-European initiative. Briand himself was not available at the time; he was at his home in Cocherel,

^<sup>1 Stresemann's Vermächtnis, Volume II, Part II.

Among the many personalities I met at the time, the one who made the strongest impression on me was Joseph Caillaux. His penetrating intelligence, coupled with exceptional energy, made him a born leader. He was also a genuine European, far above national prejudice. Unfortunately, a proud and arrogant manner prevented him from concluding those friendships which are so essential for a successful parliamentary career. As far as our movement was concerned, he remained a constant hope never to be fulfilled.

While in Paris I also met Francesco Nitti, the former Prime Minister of Italy. Like Caillaux, Nitti was a fighter for Pan-Europe; a thorough anti-Fascist, he lived in exile in Paris, waiting for the overthrow of Mussolini. To his sarcastic mind, the men who had drawn up the Treaty of Versailles and those European statesmen who in their blindness now paved the way for a second world war, were all either idiots, lunatics or criminals. Obviously, this view was somewhat exaggerated.

France's leading politician at the time was Edouard Herriot, who held office jointly as Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. A few months earlier he had triumphed at the polls over the former Nationalist majority of Poincaré. He was reputed to stand for peace and international understanding.

Herriot received me quite informally, like an old friend. In fact the interview took place in his bedroom, while he was changing for an official dinner. I was deeply impressed by the warmth of his manner, his kindness and the poetic and

^<sup>1 See Kambf um Paneuropa, Volume 1, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna,

almost childlike quality of his being. In talking to him, one has the feeling that the noblest ideals of the French Revolution have somehow survived within him. Beyond the problems of the hour, he managed to dream of a better world of liberty, equality, fraternity. Being more inclined towards the arts and sciences than towards politics, he entered the latter profession only to help achieve the better world of which he dreamt. This charming and lovable man never ceased to be conscious of his great personal responsibility for the fate of Europe and of humanity.

Herriot was fully informed about my ideas and plans by his principal secretary, R. R. Lambert, who had read my book while serving in the army of occupation in the Rhineland and had become a member of our Union. Herriot, too, seems to have been impressed by our conversation, for in his book entitled The United States of Europe, he wrote several years later as follows:

A large proportion of the best elements amongst European youth today are setting themselves the task of translating Kant's great theories into action. The man whose merit it is to be the leader of this intellectual group, and who in recent years has wholeheartedly devoted his talents to the cause of European federation, is Count Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi.

Count Coudenhove formulates his theories in a number of works which are the best handbooks today for the supporter of Pan-Europe: his precision and clarity cannot be too highly praised.

I left Herriot, convinced that I had found at last the statesman whose courage and imagination would put our project on the map. Nor was I proved wrong, for Herriot soon appealed openly for the United States of Europe—the first European statesman to do so while serving as head of his own national government. A few days after our talk, on 25th January, Herriot said in a great speech in the Chamber:

Europe is hardly more than a small district of the world. Is it not time, therefore, that we dropped some of our arrogance? Far away in the Pacific Ocean problems are now arising which will probably call in the near future for a co-operative effort on the part of the United States of Europe; their collective power, their will to work, their scientific knowledge and their technical experience must be available to carry an element of reason into those parts of the world which are still under the domination of instinct.

My greatest wish is that I may yet live to see the creation of the United States of Europe.

In conclusion, I would like to say only this: there are nations on this earth which simply must learn to live together because only by so doing can they hope to survive.

This speech, loudly cheered by the Chamber, was the first official approval of the ideal of Pan-Europe. Many who had previously treated the project with scepticism now came to regard it more seriously; it was no small matter for the head of the French Government to put on record his official support for the United States of Europe. I expected an immediate answer from Stresemann; but I waited in vain, for no official echo came back from Berlin.

I went to Berlin to see Chancellor Marx and explain to him the great opportunity which German foreign policy was missing. As Stresemann was away, Marx advised me to talk to Secretary of State von Maltzan. This intelligent diplomat, who later became the victim of an air-crash, grasped my meaning at once. A few days later the Frankfurter Anzeiger published an article signed by Stresemann and containing a positive reply to Herriot's speech. The Pan-European dialogue between Paris and Berlin had begun.

Italy had by that time veered over to a distinctly nationalistic tack. I gave up hope of convincing Mussolini. But I was anxious to sow the seed of Pan-Europe on Italian soil in preparation for the democratic regime which would sooner or later take the place of the present Fascist one. We therefore made a trip to Florence, Rome and Naples to establish contact with those elements in the country which had a genuinely European

Of all the Italian statesmen whom I met on this trip, none impressed me as strongly as the former Foreign Minister, Carlo Sforza. Though hated by Mussolini and constantly threatened with arrest and worse, Sforza remained in Rome and, in his capacity of Senator, took an active part in all Senate meetings. It would be wrong to describe Sforza as an enlightened nationalist, for he is clearly more than that: he is a genuine European patriot, steeped in European culture and sentiment and ready to place his country at the service of Europe. We soon became friends. Sforza invited me to attend a Senate meeting so that I would have a chance of observing Mussolini at close quarters. I was amazed at the contrast between the impressive-looking photographs and paintings which I had previously seen of the Duce and his appearance in real life. He had hardly anything in common with an ancient Roman. He obviously found it hard to sit still and listen to boring speeches by Senators. He impressed me as thoroughly restless and much at the mercy of his nerves; he also showed signs of irritability, probably due to overstrain. His well-shaped hands were constantly on the move, his wide-open eyes seemed to burn rather than shine and rolled ceaselessly to and fro. Lacking

in balance, he seemed to be haunted by demons. Watching him, it became clear to me why this man had two years earlier left my open letter unanswered; what he was looking for was not calm, but excitement; not peace, but war.

Before leaving Rome we were received by the great Pope, Pius XI. After the audience I had a private talk with his old Secretary of State, Cardinal Gasparri. I tried hard to obtain from him some positive declaration on the subject of European unity. He evaded my questions skilfully. Finally he began to talk about South America—so as to break away altogether from the dangerous topic of Europe. But from that day onwards, the Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, began to adopt a friendly attitude towards Pan-Europe—in sharp contrast to the snubs which we continued to receive from the Fascist press.

During the next few months our journeys took us to Brussels, Budapest and Warsaw. National groups of our movement were constituted in Belgium, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Bulgaria, Roumania, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Within eighteen months the movement had struck firm roots all over Europe. Among its active supporters we counted not only the leading politicians of many nations and various political parties but also the intellectual élite of the Continent: poets and authors such as Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry, Jules Romains, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Stephan Zweig, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Werfel, Fritz von Unruh, Emil Ludwig, Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Selma Lagerlöf, Karin Michaelis and Albert Einstein; and philosophers such as Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno. Many famous artists had also identified themselves with the movement, chief among them the brilliant violinist Bronislav Huberman, who canvassed the cause of Pan-Europe by lectures and in his writings wherever his journeys took him.

Thanks to the political and intellectual support which we received from these and other quarters, a powerful body of opinion soon emerged in favour of the United States of Europe.

CHAPTER XII

CROSSING THE OCEAN

Our movement soon spread like wildfire throughout the Continent. But it failed utterly to have an effect on the policies pursued by the various nations.

After Herriot's great speech I was full of hope that the French Government would seize the initiative and convene a full European conference. Only by such a bold step would it have been possible to create a European Union on the model of Pan-America. The hopes I had based on Herriot were soon dashed. The collapse of the franc forced the resignation of his government. In its place there came a national government under Poincaré.

The only other chance of realizing our project was by way of the League of Nations. During 1924 the League's bold attempt to organize a world-wide system of collective security ended in complete failure. France had supported the attempt, but Great Britain was against it. In the circumstances, there was much to be said for repeating the attempt on a regional basis and thus laying the foundations of a united Europe.

I drafted a memorandum, which I addressed to the League itself, containing the proposal that the League should henceforth be organized on a regional basis and that it should provide a meeting-place for representatives of the British Empire, of Pan-America, of Pan-Europe, of China and of Japan. A further

^<sup>1 See Kampf um Paneuropa, Volume 2, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

seat at the council table would have to be kept open for the Soviet Union.

Armed with this memorandum, I called in Geneva on the Secretary-General of the League, Sir Eric Drummond. He received me in the most friendly manner, but I was unable to convince him of the soundness of my proposal. I always remember his final words at the end of the interview: 'Please don't go too fast.' Sir Eric was a determined opponent of the regional concept. Besides, as a British diplomat, he was obsessed by his country's traditional fear of continental union.

After my meeting with Drummond, I called on Albert Thomas, the President of the International Labour Office. Thomas's attitude to Pan-Europe was as positive as Drummond's had been negative. A Frenchman and a Socialist, he was also a positive European. He joined our movement and promised me every form of assistance. I cannot help feeling that the fate of Europe and of the League might have taken a different turn if Thomas had at the time been Secretary-General instead of Drummond.

These thoughts led me to arrange a visit to London in the spring of 1925. My aim was to convince the leading personalities there that, as far as the Empire was concerned, only advantages could accrue from a regional reform of the League. The formal recognition of the Empire as a group within the League would help to strengthen the imperial connections, and a united continent, co-operating closely with Great Britain, could serve to protect the British Isles against new aggressions. Moreover, the existence of Pan-Europe seemed almost the only way of guarding against an eventual world hegemony by Russia or the United States; in the place of the old balance of powers within

Europe, it would create a new balance embracing the entire world and subject to the control of the League of Nations.

I had my first talks with Wickham Steed, the former editor of The Times. Few people in Britain were in a better position to secure the necessary introductions for me. Steed was a man of outstanding intelligence, with a gift for taking initiative in political matters and a wide knowledge of European affairs. He had earlier played a decisive role in the creation of the Czech republic and was on terms of intimate friendship with Masaryk and Beneš. Shortly after the war he gave up the editorial chair of The Times and devoted himself to the publication of the Review of Reviews, a journal which some months earlier had published my memorandum to the League of Nations

Steed immediately put me in touch with the leading personalities in the country, with Ramsay Macdonald, Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Balfour, Lord Reading, Sir Robert Horne, Philip Kerr, Gilbert Murray, Lionel Curtis, Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and Sir Walter Layton. Only few of these men, such as Wells, Shaw, Layton, Gilbert Murray and Robert Horne were impressed by the aims of our movement. The majority, whilst not lacking in personal friendliness towards me, expressed all sorts of reservations in regard to the project. Though no one actually opposed it, I met no leading Englishman who was prepared to take the initiative in securing Britain's support for Pan-Europe.

Steed finally formed a preparatory committee, consisting of representatives of all three political parties, which was to cooperate directly with the main body of our movement. He himself agreed to serve on the committee; its other members were Noel-Baker, representing the Labour Party, and Percy Molteno, representing the Liberals.

Of all the personalities I met on this visit one alone turned out to be of decisive importance to the future of our movement: Colonel L. S. Amery.

Amery is one of those rare men who combine great intellectual powers with a very magnanimous disposition. An intimate friendship soon developed between us and Amery became one of my closest and most valued collaborators. As Secretary of State for the Colonies, he played a decisive role in the development of the Empire. A true Empire-builder, Amery felt equally at home in all continents and possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge. His command of languages amazed me: he was familiar with no fewer than sixteen. One of the keenest and most constructive thinkers in the Empire, Amery had often rendered invaluable services to his fatherland in times of crisis. When war seemed imminent, he worked hard to secure universal conscription and, once war had actually broken out, he helped provoke the Cabinet change which led to the replacement of Chamberlain by Winston Churchill. A Secretary of State for India in the War Cabinet, his was the credit for preventing a major revolution on the Indian sub-continent.

It was Amery who succeeded in winning over to our cause his old friend Winston Churchill, whom he had known ever since they were at school together. Through this act, too, he exercised decisive influence on the fate of our movement.

The movement's rapid progress soon led to an awakening of American interest in its aims. It was natural for Americans to be attracted to a project aimed at healing Europe's scars and

I realized the importance of dispelling these apprehensions and misgivings at the outset and before they assumed real importance. By reason of its wealth and power, the United States was in a position not only to delay the unification of Europe but, if it so wished, even to prevent it altogether. We therefore made up our minds to visit the United States in order to have an opportunity of explaining to the leaders of American opinion that, far from being directed against the security of the United States, the creation of Pan-Europe actually corresponded to certain vital interests of the Western hemisphere.

Max Warburg, in his usual friendly way, offered to make all necessary preparations for our journey. Two of his brothers, Felix Warburg, the well-known philanthropist, and Paul Warburg, the founder of the Federal Reserve System, had become American citizens. Both were members of the Standing Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, which organized lecture tours in the United States for prominent Europeans. Through the kind offices of the two Warburg brothers we received an invitation to undertake a three months' tour up and down the country.

James Macdonald, the Director of the Foreign Policy Association, had some difficulty in finding a representative European who would accompany us on our tour and present the argument against Pan-Europe in our discussions. After a long search, he selected Christian Lange, the Norwegian Nobel prizewinner and Secretary-General of the International Peace Movement.

I met Lange in Geneva and at once congratulated myself on having such an uncommonly attractive and loyal personality as my opponent. He explained that his opposition to Pan-Europe was in no way fundamental, but rested mainly on expediency. He thought it wrong to weaken the influence of the strong pacifist element in the world by forcing it to choose between support of the League of Nations and support of Pan-Europe. For his part he preferred to direct this influence exclusively towards strengthening the mechanism of the League.

When I argued that the creation of Pan-Europe would actually facilitate the admission of the United States and of Soviet Russia to the League, he interrupted me with a smile: 'Please don't go on,' he said, 'for if, in the end, you succeed in convincing me, I will have to cancel my American tour.' In America, Lange and I became inseparable travelling companions and close friends, and I often think of the long verbal battles which we fought interminably before the members of the Foreign Policy Association in the banquet-halls and diningrooms of American luxury hotels.

From October until January we were almost continuously on the move. Lectures, discussions, interviews and banquets succeeded one another in extravagant confusion. Wherever we went delightful hospitality awaited us. I held public lectures in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Cincinnati as well as at several American universities.

Nearly all my lectures took the form of 'luncheon speeches'. Since for most men the luncheon hour is practically their only spare hour in town—in the evenings they generally return to their country homes—it has become the practice to combine lecturing with lunch. The setting for these functions is usually a vast hotel dining-room with a rostrum at one end. On this rostrum there is a special table, facing the general public, at which the speakers have their lunch together with the organizers

and various guests of honour. After a quick meal, the chairman introduces the two speakers. One of them then makes a short speech in support of the motion, whilst the other argues equally briefly against it. The first speaker often adds a few more words to put right any misunderstanding which may have occurred. Then the discussion begins, everyone present being entitled to put questions to the speaker from where he sits. The questions are for the most part very blunt. Similarly, American questioners like to receive short, concise answers to their questions without elaborate verbal flourishes.

I found it easier than I had expected to dispel American doubts about Pan-Europe. The United States was in the midst of an almost unbelievable prosperity. As a result, no one was seriously concerned at the thought of an impoverished Europe competing, let alone competing successfully, in the commercial field. As regards the practicability of the project, conclusive evidence was close at hand that nationals of countries which fought each other constantly in the Old World were capable of living together peacefully in the New. Even the wave of anti-German feeling which arose during the war had by now completely vanished.

There was no need for me to explain to American audiences the advantages of a united Continent over a divided one. Everyone realized that in a United States of Europe lay the only hope of solving the problems of that Continent. My main task was therefore to explain why the countries of Europe still did not follow the American example of forming themselves into a federation. I also had to explain how it was possible to run a highly industrialized economy in what seemed to them a wild profusion of currencies and a labyrinth of customs barriers.

One reason why the idea of a United States of Europe appealed so much to American opinion was that it implied a recognition by the Old World of the superior political wisdom of the new. In this way it did much to flatter American amour-propre.

The United States was at that time divided politically into isolationists, who opposed a policy of support for the League

of Nations, and internationalists, who favoured such a policy. To my surprise I found that both groups were favourably inclined towards Pan-Europe: the isolationists looked upon European federation as an effective safeguard against the risk of entanglement in a new European war. The internationalists were aware that the creation of Pan-Europe would facilitate and hasten their entry into a regionally organized League. I therefore had the curious experience of finding considerable sympathy and understanding in the very circles where I had expected to meet fierce opposition, notably among such men as Senators Borah, Capper and Shipstead.

Whilst in Washington I also established friendly relations with the Pan-American Union and with its director, Mr. Rowe. These relations were subsequently strengthened thanks to an outstanding champion of Pan-America, the Chilean lawyer Alessandro Alvarez, who proposed the incorporation of the Pan-American Union in the League of Nations as one of several regional bodies, and whose programme of action was almost identical with mine.

At the beginning of December Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Astor organized a luncheon in our honour at which were present some forty guests. After I had made a short speech, Frank Munsey, the multi-millionaire newspaper proprietor, rose to make the following statement: 'I am convinced that Kalergi's project is the only one which can save Europe. I therefore declare that I am ready to help him with my newspapers, my fortune and my personal influence.' There was general astonishment, for Munsey had omitted to say that two hours earlier he and I had had a very full discussion about the campaign for Pan-Europe.

We had to leave rather hurriedly after lunch to catch a train to Chicago, where I was to give a public lecture the following evening. Munsey and I arranged to discuss the details of our collaboration immediately after my return. On our way back from Chicago we read in the New York Times that Munsey had been operated on for appendicitis. A few days later he died before I had a chance to see him again. On the basis of a will written five years earlier, he left his entire fortune of some

Among the many Americans with whom I discussed Pan-Europe at the time were Herbert Hoover, Secretary of State Frank Kellog, Owen D. Young, Bernard Baruch, Walter Lipmann, Colonel House, General Tasker Bliss, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Thomas Lamont, Justice Hughes, and Walter Lippman.

Before we left New York I founded the American Co-operative Committee of the Pan-European Union under the chairmanship of Dr. Stephan Duggan, the Director of the Institute of International Education in New York. Among those who served on the Committee were Professor Felix Frankfurter, later to become one of the nine supreme court judges of the United States; Frederic Delano, Roosevelt's uncle, General Henry Allen; Frederick Coudert; Paul and Felix Warburg; John W. Davis, former Ambassador in London; Julius Rosenwald, the well-known philanthropist who had given more than a hundred million dollars to charity in the course of a long career; Gerard Swope, President of the General Electric Company; Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the women's movement; and other prominent American personalities.

The Committee had the task of correcting promptly any trend in American opinion hostile to the ideals of our movement.

One of my most active friends and supporters in the United States was Nicholas Murray Butler, who presided over both Columbia University and the Carnegie Peace Foundation. He wrote the foreword to the American edition of my book Pan-Europe.¹

On board the liner Majestic, on our homeward journey, we met Nicholas Titulescu, the Roumanian Foreign Minister, and his wife. Titulescu, one of the most fascinating and important political personalities in post-war Europe, felt more like a citizen of Europe than of Roumania, and for the rest of his

^<sup>1 A. Knopf, New York, 1926.

life he remained an ardent fighter for Pan-Europe as well as a close personal friend.

We crossed in perfect weather and landed at Cherbourg in the middle of January. As our train sped past the old Norman farmsteads, with their thick covering of snow, we had the feeling of being genuinely at home. A deep sensation came over us that this old and beautiful continent, all the way from the Atlantic to the Russian steppes, was in a real sense our fatherland, that we loved it and that our personal fates were intimately linked up with its own. From our cosmopolitan status, we had quite imperceptibly reverted to being European patriots, filled with a boundless love for this great continent and determined to fight to the end for its recovery and unification.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIRST CONGRESS OF EUROPE

CROSSING Paris on our way to Vienna, I had my first talk with Aristide Briand in his office at the Quai d'Orsay. From the moment I first set eyes on him I was fascinated by the personality of this remarkable man who was more artist than politician. His eyes revealed a blend of imagination and firmness; they were the eyes of a man capable of conceiving great visions, but capable equally of mastering them. Uncannily perceptive, he had a rare gift for handling men and was an accomplished diplomat. His lively intelligence was activated by a warm and passionate heart. Briand hated war; he felt himself cast in the role of a crusader for peace. He was also reputed to be a good orator—a reputation which he amply deserved, for in his speeches he gave brilliant expression to the convictions which he so deeply held.

In some ways Briand reminded me of a thoroughbred Persian cat, supple and ready at all times to bound forward; a man of peace and yet all his life a crusader. At times he was not unlike a great musician, a cellist: his cello was his voice, which he was able to use and control superbly. Here was a man for whom Pan-Europe was a matter of the heart. Unlike so many others, Briand was not content just to pay lip-service to our cause in private. He was resolved to proclaim it loudly to all mankind. Speaking later in the Chamber, Briand said that the idea of Pan-Europe had fascinated him ever since 1925; his success at Locarno had encouraged him to continue on that course.

felt full of hope that this great man, who seemed somehow to have the confidence of the people of Europe, would call upon the governments to lose no time in laying the foundations of the United States of Europe.

Had Briand then become Prime Minister, his substantial majority in the Chamber might have encouraged him to attempt such a step at once. But as Foreign Minister of a government presided over by Poincaré, he had to proceed slowly and with much caution so as not to come into open conflict with his nationalistically minded colleagues. The latter never ceased to mistrust him and continued in various ways to intrigue against his policy of international understanding.

Briand promised me full moral support and asked me specially to keep him well informed about all further developments. As we parted he said: 'Marchez vite—vite-vite!' I could not help thinking at that moment of the words with which Sir Eric Drummond bade me farewell: 'Please don't go too fast.' These contrasting outlooks symbolized the tragic divergence between the policies pursued respectively by France and Great Britain towards Pan-Europe.

We spent the evening in the company of Thomas Mann and his wife. Thomas Mann reports in his diary, published some time later, my exaggerated hopes after my first meeting with Briand:

Count Coudenhove-Kalergi and his wife Ida Roland (unforgettable, the Messalina-like majesty of her Zarina, commanding, with the star on her bosom, erect behind her imperial writing-desk) await us in the hall. Coudenhove, the little red-and-gold symbol of Pan-Europe in his buttonhole, is one of the most curious and, incidentally, one of the best-looking persons I ever met. Half Japanese, half mixed from the breed of Europe's international nobility, he really represents, as one knows, a Eurasiatic type of noble cosmopolite, exceedingly fascinating and giving an average German the feeling of being somewhat provincial. Two folds between his orientally shaped eyes, under a pure, firm and proudly borne forehead, give to his smile the character of earnest determination. His personality and his words disclose unshakable faith in a political idea that I do not consider without defects, but that he is spreading throughout the world and propagating by his pen and his person with clearest energy. He was coming from America and from England, where he

had everywhere presented his ideas with strong moral success, and just had here a detailed talk with Briand, who had listened to him very attentively. He expressed confidence that things were getting on and that his vision would be realized within two years. I can think of nothing more impressive than this prepossessing, high-minded and democratically inclined prototype of a new society who, born and bred to think in terms of continents rather than countries, took it upon himself to shape the world according to the dictates of his own reason.

In many countries Pan-European Committees had come into being independently and lacked the necessary contact with our head office in Vienna; in some countries there were even rival groups which competed for my official recognition. The time had therefore come to create a firm control at the centre and prevent a decentralization of the movement.

With a view to broadening as far as possible the attendance at the Congress, I wrote to all the most eminent men in Europe asking them to answer two questions: Do you consider the creation of a United States of Europe necessary? Do you consider the creation of a United States of Europe possible? I received many answers; most of them in the affirmative. Those who believed that Pan-Europe was both necessary and practically possible were invited to attend the Congress; so were all the members of the Pan-European Union and of its various national committees.

The first Congress of Europe was formally opened on 3rd October and remained in session until 6th October. More than two thousand delegates took part, representing twenty-four nations. The plenary sessions were held in the huge marble hall of the Vienna Concert House which had been decorated for the occasion with the flags of every European country.

^<sup>1 The replies to this questionnaire were published in the second volume of Kampf um Paneuropa, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna.

Europeans and friends of Europe! Pan-Europe is the great revolution of European brotherhood.

Like all revolutions, it is a declaration of war and a declaration of peace.

A declaration of war on the extreme egotism of individuals and of nations that are betraying and selling out Europe for their petty interests; a declaration of war on all who want to profit by Europe's dismemberment; to all who wish to split and to sabotage our great movement!

This great struggle shall be carried on until the assembly that has met today shall be followed by another assembly: the Constituent Assembly of the European Federation.

Our Movement is a political campaign, our Union an army of peace, our Congress a political war-council.

We appeal to all nations and governments of Europe to help us win this struggle against wars, customs and oppression: this battle for a free, peaceful, prosperous, strong and united Europe!

We have assembled here at the first Congress for Pan-Europe, to prepare for Europe's resurrection from misery, shame and folly—one thought shall unite us, one aim, one will: Vive l'Europe!

The French delegation was led by one of the most active members of the Government: Yvon Delbos. Head of the German delegation was Paul Loebe, who was accompanied by ex-Chancellor Wirth. Pilsudski had sent Alexander Lednicki, former envoy to Moscow, as leader of the Polish delegation. The Yugoslav delegates were presided over by Premier Korošec, the Greeks by Nicola Politis, a former Foreign Minister and Greece's permanent representative to the League of Nations. Other delegations led by former Ministers were those of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland. Our American committee was represented by its treasurer, Frederick H. Allen, our British committee by A. Watts, a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and Democratic Russia by its former Prime Minister, Alexander Kerenski.

Briand, not content with sending a cable, instructed his envoy in Vienna, de Beaumarchais, to express his warm personal greetings, and in a special speech from the rostrum his good wishes for the success of the Congress.

The Congress ended on a harmonious note, symbolic of the triumph of the movement. Our ambitious programme was unanimously adopted and so were the statutes of the Union. The Union was given an executive organ in the shape of a central council which was to consist of the presidents of the various national committees. The presidency of this central council was conferred on me by acclamation.

In honour of those attending the Congress, the Austrian Government organized a magnificent evening reception in the imperial palace of Schönbrunn. Vienna's Social-Democratic Mayor, Karl Seitz, also gave a reception in the town hall at

• The Pan-European Movement is above all party considerations the mass movement for European Union. The Pan-European Union is the organ of the movement.

• The world programme of the Pan-European Movement is: friendly cooperation with the League of Nations and with other political continents.

• 6. The Pan-European Union is organized according to states; every state has its autonomous committee that covers its budget. The headquarters of the Pan-European Union co-ordinating the activities of all national unions, is in Vienna.

which he received his guests with a wonderful show of hospitality. Other parties were given by the legations of France, Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. Then there were gala performances in the Opera House and the Burgtheater; Rostand's L'Aiglon was the piece chosen for the Burgtheater, with Ida Roland in the leading part.

There was enthusiastic response to the Congress. Messages of goodwill began to pour in from several continents. Newspapers in all languages acclaimed the Congress as the prelude to an entirely new policy. The French delegates were received by Briand immediately on their return. Briand was delighted with the report they gave him. For him, the success of Pan-Europe was the vindication and triumph of that policy of mutual understanding which he had so long pursued.

As for the Union, a new chapter had at last begun. The movement was outgrowing its own organization which could no longer cater—even in its expanded form—for the number of members who now supported it. Millions of people had already set their hopes on Pan-Europe and were convinced of the possibility of its realization. Pan-Europe soon became the ideal as well as the great hope of the younger generation. But the next step forward could only be taken by the governments themselves. This meant in fact that the initiative would have to come from France or, to be more precise, from Briand.

In May 1927 the Central Council of the Union met in Paris. Briand received us very cordially. Every delegate was invited to report about progress in his own country. Briand then addressed us in hopeful words and we felt sure that some decisive action by the French Government was in the making. He promised to do everything in his power to assist our movement to victory. I thereupon invited him in the name of the Central Council to become honorary president of the entire Union. He accepted without hesitation.

Next morning the Havas News Agency broadcast to the world the news that France's Foreign Minister and Europe's most popular statesman had publicly and without reservation identified himself with the cause of Pan-Europe.

CHAPTER XIV

YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE

With the sudden growth of our movement came a complete upheaval in our private lives. In the past, notwithstanding our many outside interests, we had always contrived to live our lives in private. From now onwards it was as if we had stepped into a political whirlpool.

Our year's work was generally divided into three parts. During the winter months I was fully occupied attending to the organization of the movement; this included launching propaganda campaigns, sending out circulars and distributing leaflets. Meanwhile, Idel kept herself busy performing and rehearsing, partly in the Burgtheater, partly in Max Reinhardt's theatre in the Josephsstadt. In the spring came a few months during which we were regularly on the move—with a very extensive programme of lectures and conferences. The third part of the year, the late summer and autumn, we invariably spent in the country. It was during this period that I had an opportunity of working on my books.

In Vienna we had our apartment in the abbot's lodgings of the Heiligenkreutzerhof. The lodgings were in the very centre of the town, only a few minutes' walk from St. Stephen's Cathedral. Set in a large and secluded courtyard, the house had for centuries been the abbot's town residence. Now that the advent of the motor car had brought the monastery itself, a magnificent Cistercian foundation in the Vienna woods, within easy distance of the city, the abbot no longer required a separate town residence and was prepared to rent it to us. The building dated back to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Its interior decoration was of the purest and richest Vienna baroque: the paintings and stuccos on the ceiling, the lofty inlaid doors with their finely sculptured brass locks and the elaborately carved Theresian furniture all seemed untouched by contemporary influences.

Between the abbot's house and my nearby office in the Hofburg a shuttle service operated at all hours. In the office itself, a staff of competent collaborators worked untiringly under the joint direction of Valerie Benedict, a fine idealist, and my engineer brother-in-law, Leopold C. Klausner, who served the movement with intelligence, enthusiasm and devotion. Such was our confidence in every member of the staff that Idel and I were able to spend the greater part of the year away from Vienna without causing the work of the office to suffer in the slightest degree.

I maintained excellent relations with all public men in Austria: with Seipel's two successors, Chancellors Ramek and Schober, with Presidents Hainisch and Miklas, as well as with several Socialist leaders, among them Karl Seitz, Mayor of Vienna, and Karl Renner, Chairman of the National Assembly.

Of the many foreign statesmen who visited Vienna, the one who impressed me most was Eleutherios Venizelos. An enthusiastic supporter of Pan-Europe, Venizelos was full of confidence for its future. He spoke to me in the manner of an old friend, almost a compatriot; the name Kalergi had, after all, very intimate associations with his own native island, Crete. His white beard, his white hair and the marble complexion of his tall, handsome forehead blended the wisdom of old age with the gracefulness of eternal youth. This outstanding gracefulness was compounded of intellectual genius and great personal charm.

He had just been to Ankara and was still full of the impressions gained on that visit. At one stroke the hereditary enmity between Greeks and Turks had been transformed into an amicable alliance. 'Shortly after I had come to power,' he told me, 'I reviewed the whole complex of Turco-Greek relations. It suddenly became very clear to me that there were really only two ways out of the impasse created by a mass of conflicting claims and counter-claims: either our two countries would go on quarrelling—in which case they would sooner or later exterminate one another, or there must be a genuine

reconciliation—after which the two countries would work harmoniously together.

The splendid simplicity of this action only becomes apparent when one considers fully the long history of fighting between the two peoples, stretching back eight hundred years and inflamed at all stages by religious hatred and fanaticism. Only five years earlier, Greeks and Turks had been locked in a merciless life-and-death struggle in which both sides appeared to exclude the thought of reconciliation. Now all this bitter hatred was suddenly gone, merely because the political genius of two statesmen had proved stronger than the whole gamut of hereditary feuds. Here indeed was an example to inspire the leaders of France and Germany. Here also was conclusive evidence at last that leaders, not peoples, were to blame for the slow progress of the Pan-European project.

We came to speak of racial questions. Venizelos held that there were no racial differences between Greeks and Turks. 'Those who continued to adhere to the Christian Church,' he said, 'were regarded as Greeks, whilst those who embraced the Moslem faith became Turks. Had my ancestors become Moslems and Kemal's followers of Christ, then I would today be a Turk and he a Greek.' To emphasize this point, Venizelos told me that whilst in Ankara he had attended a parade of boy-scouts: the proportion of fair-haired Turks among those marching past was about one-third, greater, in fact, than would be found among Athenian boy-scouts.

In the course of our discussion, Venizelos convinced me of the need to include Turkey in the Pan-European project. I had purposely left this question open because of the partly Asiatic character of Turkey. But Venizelos made it clear that in view

Among the many Americans whom I met in Vienna during these years, one who became a special friend of mine was William Bullitt, then a promising young author. Bullitt was keenly interested in Pan-Europe. In later years, and after a brilliant career as Ambassador, Bullitt became one of the most effective propagandists of Pan-Europe in the United States.

Our summers we usually spent either near one of the peaceful lakes in the Austrian Alps or on the enchanting island of Hiddensee, near Rügen, on the Baltic coast. The island housed a small colony of artists, generally swarming around Gerhart Hauptmann, with whom we spent many enjoyable hours. On these holidays we were accompanied by our daughter Erica, who spent the rest of the year in a convent at St. Pölten, near Vienna. Her ambition was to study gardening. From her mother she had inherited a passionate love of nature and a real feeling for flowers and animals. We were all of us very happy to be able to spend so much of our time in the country.

Shortly after the Congress of Europe, I wrote a new book entitled Hero or Saint¹. I began by discussing the influence of climate on the respective ideals of northern and southern populations. My point was that what we generally refer to as 'oriental' and 'occidental' mentalities ought really to be called 'northern' and 'southern' mentalities. I went on to show how the ideal of the contemplative saint is a product of the passive southern temperament, whilst the ideal of the fighting hero is more suited to the climate of the cold and barren north where contemplation is a sure way of inviting destruction and survival depends on continuous effort and struggle. I concluded that,

¹ Held oder Heiliger, Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna, 1927.

except for the Christian adoration of saints, European culture generally revolves around the heroic concept of man.

This conclusion led me to examine the three principal sources of European culture: Greek individualism, Jewish-Christian socialism and Nordic-Germanic heroism. At one point in history, these three sources merged into the European ideal of chivalry, whence they developed later into the more modern concept of the 'gentleman'—a concept now held independently of nationality, racial origin or philosophical views.

The thoughts expressed in Hero or Saint were developed by me in a further book entitled Away from Materialism, published three years later. In this second book I developed a post-materialistic and anti-materialistic philosophy, based on the dualism of forms and forces as the two original elements of life and of matter. The second part deals with a new conception of ethics, based on heroism; on the notion that not happiness but perfection is the supreme goal of life that can be reached only by heroism. The third part deals with the intellectual and moral aristocracy of the future which is bound to replace one day the materialistic principle of numerical superiority now dominating democracy.

The following year, I wrote Stalin and Co.², a study of Stalin's counter-revolutionary Bolshevism, which I saw as a combination of state, cartel and church. The logical answer to this gigantic conglomeration of power in the East would have been the unification of Europe with the explicit aim of protecting the Western concept of personal freedom.

That same year I also published a collection of aphorisms called Commandments of Life.³

^<sup>1 Los vom Materialismus! Paneuropa-Verlag, Vienna, 1930.

^<sup>2 Stalin and Co., Paneuropa-Verlag, 1931.

on this magazine seems like a nightmare. No sooner had one edition gone to press than I had to start thinking hard about the next. The strain of this work was particularly heavy during those months in which we were on the move.

More than a third of each year we devoted to travelling throughout Europe, generally within the large triangle contained between Stockholm, Constantinople and Cadiz. On these journeys we did our best to canvass for the movement: we lectured, attended meetings, visited national and local groups, had talks with statesmen, party leaders, authors, newspaper editors, business men and other influential persons whose support for the movement we were anxious to obtain.

A few weeks after the Congress we were on our way to Stockholm. From there I went to Uppsala to meet that truly remarkable priest of the Protestant Church, Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, who immediately joined our Union and campaigned for it unceasingly within the body of his Church.

In Norway, the famous Fridtjof Nansen accepted the honorary presidency of our local group, whilst Foreign Minister J. Ch. Mowinckel became its chairman. After my lecture in Oslo I was received by King Haakon VII, who showed sympathy and interest for our aims. On our way home from Oslo we stopped at Copenhagen, where we were guests of Count Moltke, the Foreign Minister and an ardent supporter of Pan-Europe. It was a great tragedy that he met with an untimely death shortly after.

We paid frequent visits to Belgium and Holland. Because of their deep-rooted European traditions and their apparent predestination to serve as battlefields between Germany and France, these two countries had a quite particular interest in the unification of Europe.

In Brussels we formed one of the first and most active of our Pan-European committees. Its chairman was the former Premier, Van de Vijvere. As vice-chairman we found prominent representatives of all three parties: Jules Destrée for the Socialists, Van Cauwelaert for the Catholics and Paul Emile Janson for the Liberals. The group's treasurer was Dannie

Heinemann, brilliant and dynamic American, chairman of Sofina, the well-known international utilities concern.

Our Dutch committee was presided over by de Visser, leader of the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Colijn was among its supporters. One of the most original and witty members of our Dutch committee was Dr. Loder, Dutch member of the International Court of Justice, who in spite of advancing years seemed always full of youthful élan and much good humour.

The chairman of our Luxembourg group was A. Mayrisch, the founder of the European steel cartel. After my lecture to the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, we spent the evening with his family at his beautiful castle near Colpach. At table everyone teased him about his reckless driving; his large yellow motor car had, it seemed, been locally nicknamed the 'Yellow Danger'. A few months later Mayrisch met with a fatal accident while motoring from Luxembourg to Paris. His death meant an irreplacable loss for the causes of Franco-German and European economic union, which he had championed untiringly all his life.

Another outstanding supporter of Pan-Europe was Francesco Cambo, former Finance Minister of the Spanish Government and leader of the Catalans. We spent some time in Barcelona as his guests. He had his home in a villa of highly original design, situated at the centre of a roof-garden above his spacious office building. From there one had a splendid view—as from a mountain-peak—of the surrounding countryside and of the sea; the near distance was a panorama of low hills, whilst high above the mass of buildings could be seen the stone arches of the old Gothic cathedral. Cambo, a great connoisseur and collector, had transformed his villa into a real museum containing many masterpieces by Titian and Botticelli.

From Barcelona we motored south in our open car, passing Valencia, Alicante, Cartagena and Almeria. The most impressive city of all was Granada, set in its Andalusian paradise and crowned by the Alhambra's incomparable splendour.

Roman city of Pompeii to rise out of its mass of lava, it would almost certainly appear less strange and fabulous than the Arab city of Tetuan. On the very doorstep of Europe, this relic of old Arab civilization remains totally immune to European influences, like a reincarnation of the age of Harun-al-Raschid or a story out of the Arabian nights. In Tetuan we were the guests of an Arab nobleman whose black Assyrian beard gave him a handsome and dignified appearance. Only my wife and Erica were permitted to visit his own wife in her harem; for me, she remained totally invisible. Dinner was served in the Arab manner without forks, spoons or knives. In their place we had innumerable slices of bread and with them we angled as skilfully as we could—first for the poultry and then for the peaches—in the large silver bowls in which all food was served. A young slave handed round a big bowl of water out of which we all took sips in turn. Oddly enough, this very Oriental dinner ended with coffee served quite in the European manner in small china cups.

On a fine spring day we left Tetuan and, accompanied by an interpreter, drove to the picturesque city of Tchetchouan—where kings of Granada used to live in exile. There, in the ruins of the royal palace, high up in the Atlas Mountains, was a colony of white peacocks of indescribable beauty. We visited a small café where we found ourselves in the company of Berbers and Kabyles. One of them, a holy man, proceeded to give us a pleasant glimpse into the future. We also visited the local carpet factory, but my wife was deeply depressed at the sight of so many small girls being made to weave at a very tender age.

Back in Tetuan we received the news that King Alphonso XIII had abdicated and Spain been proclaimed a Republic. This news was received quietly both in the European and the Arab quarters.

From Ceuta we sailed back to republican Spain. One of the passengers on our ship was a royalist general. He was evidently an enemy of the new regime, for a large crowd waited for him on the quayside and he was received with rather voluble threats. He disembarked and walked through the crowd fearlessly. Not a hand was raised against him.

There was much rejoicing in towns and villages at the outcome of the bloodless revolution. No one suspected how much blood was still to flow.

We drove slowly in the direction of Madrid, passing on our way Cadiz, Seville and Cordova. In Madrid the leaders of the young republic gave me a most cordial welcome. Their hopes were clearly set on Pan-Europe. One of these leaders was Fernando de los Rios, the wise and distinguished Minister of Justice, who many years later was to become a close friend of mine and a most trusted collaborator during our joint exile in the United States. I also had a long talk with José Ortega y Gasset, the famous philosopher. The passage of his book, Insurrection of the Masses, which deals with the problem of Pan-Europe is one of the best things ever written on that subject.

On Cambo's introduction we also called on the Duke of Alba at his Madrid palace. On our way through Seville, we had already admired his Moorish castle. He now received us in true 'grandseigneurial' fashion without the slightest indication of nervousness; yet his position as the leading grandee of Spain had clearly become fraught with great personal danger under the new regime. He showed us his unique collection of historic relics. There was a set of armour worn by his ancestor, the great duke, and next to it a painting by Titian showing the duke wearing it. We admired the magnificent rooms of his palace, but he merely commented: 'You know, there is nothing special about this house; it only dates back to the eighteenth century. Our house in Seville is a different matter altogether; we built that exactly six years before Columbus discovered America.'

This 'we'—which emphasized the identity of individuals over centuries and generations—seemed to me a sign of real greatness in an age of sensationalism and impermanence. Another Easter holiday we spent driving with Erica to Constantinople, by way of Belgrade and Sophia. In Constantinople we took a ship to Athens.

Athens made us feel genuinely at home. All Greeks, no matter whether they supported Venizelos or the royal family, were enthusiastic for Pan-Europe. Moreover, our Greek name was well-known in the city. We met many relatives and I was reminded of the advice which my father had often given methat one should have dealings with distant rather than close members of one's family. Near relations somehow contrive to reveal the least pleasant sides of their characters simply by attempting to interfere in one's private life: distant relations, on the other hand, keep their distance and thus often reveal their best characteristics.

One of the relations whom we met in Athens was Emmanuel Tsouderos, who was later to become Prime Minister of the exiled government in London. He handed me a history of the Kalergis family which he himself had written. It was a big and interesting-looking volume, but my efforts to apply my knowledge of classical Greek to deciphering it proved of no avail.

I was received very cordially by King George and his brother Paul, who is now king. Both showed great sympathy and interest for the cause of Pan-Europe. But all other memories of Athens were dwarfed by the unique and unforgettable sight of the Acropolis, of the temple of Pallas Athene whose wisdom had once illuminated Athens and elevated her to be the mothercity of Europe. Even now, in its ruined state, this temple with its huge forest of columns is one of the world's most magnificent monuments—unconquered by barbarism or destruction, superb in its majestic simplicity. Midway between earth and sky, the Acropolis is a fitting symbol of the proud and unconquerable spirit which emanated once upon a time from that great city.

We visited Corinth, Mycenæ, Argos, Epidauros, Nauplia and Sparta. One of my most treasured recollections of this trip is that of Sparta's Byzantine sister-city, Mistra—the setting of the scene with Helena in Faust; a mysterious-looking medieval

version of Pompeii—with churches, monasteries and gardens, all in decay—the whole dominated by a fortress of nordic appearance.

The ruins of Delphi, in their mountain fastness, looked like the product of some gigantic curse that had broken over the heads of this whole world of gods, heroes and soothsayers. Yet, in a way, this supernatural world of the Greeks seemed to be only temporarily dormant: one day it might return to life and Delphi become once more a shrine of universal prophecy.

On our way home we passed Ragusa—the city which, by its heroism and diplomacy, managed to remain free in a world of slavery. Ragusa is like a monument in stone to its own past greatness; perfect in general appearance as well as individual detail, the city is one of the most beautiful in Europe. In the neighbouring city of Spalato the ruins of Diocletian's palace reminded me of the story of that great emperor. Having given a new lease of life to his empire and reached the very peak of his power, he withdrew voluntarily from the world and from his throne so as to be able to live the remainder of his great life in that magnificent countryside free from all responsibilities of government.

Our work in the principal cities was so concentrated and exacting that we did our best to snatch bits of rest while motoring. The hood of our car was almost always down, and we rarely travelled at more than sixty kilometers per hour. At that speed, our journey from Vienna to Paris generally took about five days. If the weather was fine, we hardly ever stopped for lunch at an hotel, but had a picnic meal somewhere on the edge of a wood. At night we tried to stay with friends; if this proved impossible, we put up at small country inns. Our itinerary was often upset by Idel's passion for flowers, particularly for lilies of the valley. If by chance we found ourselves in a wood with many lilies, we would often stop and pick them for hours.

There, off the beaten track, we talked to ordinary men of no set political views. Invariably we came to speak of Pan-Europe, a Europe as peaceful as Switzerland and as wealthy as the United States. Our ideas were received somewhat sceptically. These people had been disappointed so often that it was now almost impossible for them to nurse great hopes. But on one thing all were agreed: 'How wonderful this would be if only it could be achieved.'

CHAPTER XV

FRANCO-GERMAN MEDIATION

WITHIN the wider field of our European travels, there was also an inner circuit along which lay our most effective field of action. The itinerary of this inner circuit was: Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Paris, Geneva and back again to Vienna. Prague was mainly a stopping place en route from Vienna to Berlin. I never went there, however, without visiting the Palace, where I payed my respects to Masaryk and Beneš and discussed the political situation with them.

We also met Masaryk in Carlsbad. One evening we were his guests for dinner there. The only other person present was his daughter Alice. While a sumptuous meal was placed before us, he himself ate only a piece of cake and drank a cup of coffee. The moderation displayed by this wise old man at the height of his power helped him to remain youthful in spite of the immense amount of work with which he had to cope. Though nearly eighty at the time, he was full of interest and understanding for new ideas. With this agile brain went an uncommonly supple body. Every day he went for a ride through the woods, though he had only taken up this sport when he was sixty-four. The more I came into contact with other statesmen and politicians, the more I admired Masaryk, who had managed to preserve a warm heart and a crystal-clear brain in the face of every kind of political intrigue.

We visited this club every year. Each time I had long talks with Briand, its star. I also maintained contact with the leading figures of the national committees of our movement, of which one had meanwhile been set up in every country. Among these figures were Beneš; Titulescu; Politis; Hjalmar Procopé, Finland's young Foreign Minister; Pusta, his Estonian colleague; Michalakopoulos, the Greek Foreign Minister; and Marinkovič, Foreign Minister of Jugoslavia, a man with the sound common sense of a peasant. After a lunch given by Briand in honour of Pan-Europe, Marinkovič told me how Henderson, the British Foreign Secretary, had emphasized that Pan-Europe was not directed against anybody. 'I did not understand him at all,' said Marinkovič, 'for after all, when we talk of "ourselves" the implication is surely that we are solidly opposed to anyone who is not "ourselves"!'

I once called on the Polish Foreign Minister, Alexander Skržynski. He was a young man, elegant, eccentric, witty and temperamental—in fact, the perfect Polish aristocrat. After a few minutes' conversation, he said to me: 'Why do we stay in this drab hotel room? Let's take a motor-boat on the lake and continue our conversation there.' We carried out this suggestion at once and sailed along the lovely banks of Lac Leman, discussing all the while, without fear of eavesdropping, Poland's relations with Germany and Russia.

Soon after, Skržynski was killed in a motor accident. In him Poland lost one of its most capable men and Europe a source of great hope. Fortunately Zaleski, who succeeded him, shared his Pan-European attitude and agreed to serve on the honorary committee of our Union.

The European centre of gravity, however, lay not in Geneva but in Paris and Berlin. The fate of Europe depended on the outcome of the attempts at Franco-German reconciliation. There could be no such thing as a formal and cool relationship between France and Germany. The two countries had either to be mortal enemies or genuine allies; and while it remained uncertain which of these courses they would choose, Europe's fate hung precariously in the balance. In the years from 1924 to 1929, conditions for an understanding were exceptionally favourable. Stresemann, as Foreign Minister of Germany,

and Aristide Briand, as Foreign Minister of France, did their best to dispose of the remaining obstacles. The two men were obviously guided by very different motives. Stresemann regarded Pan-Europe as a convenient way of speeding up the revision of the Versailles Treaty, whilst for Briand it was primarily a means of stabilizing the arrangements decided on by that treaty.

The principles of Stresemann's revisionist policy were approved by Germans of all political parties. Hatred of the Versailles Treaty was at the time the one great unifying force in German politics. Differences of opinion arose only on the question of how the necessary revisions were to be brought about. The Communists were all for putting an end to the Versailles system by a revolution embracing the whole of Europe; the Nazis favoured a war of revenge; Stresemann and the moderate parties wanted neither war nor revolution: they had hopes of revising the Treaty step by step through skilful negotiation and agreement with individual neighbours.

Whilst public opinion in Germany was preoccupied with the problem of treaty revision, in France the paramount question was that of security. For the fourth time in a hundred years, German armies had invaded France. All Frenchmen were agreed that a fifth invasion must at all costs be prevented. Here, also, differences of opinion arose as to the methods to be adopted. Those who believed in the possibility of a permanent reconciliation with Germany were prepared to work towards this end. But those who had no faith in it were determined to base the security of their country on military superiority.

Whenever in these years Germans spoke of the revision of the Versailles Treaty, they had in mind primarily the following points:

• 1. Reparations.
• 2. Equal military rights.
• 3. Evacuation of the Rhineland.
• 4. Return of the German colonics.
• 5. 'Anschluss' of Austria.
• 6. Question of the Polish Corridor.

Basically, none of these questions was insoluble.

In fact, the question of evacuating the Rhineland had already been formally solved. Unfortunately, the final evacuation was so long delayed that its psychological effect was lost altogether.

The Austrian question was one which could only be solved within a European framework. It would have been much easier for Germany to forget all about the 'Anschluss' than to renounce her claim to an Alsace-Lorraine plebiscite. Yet Germany apparently found it possible, within the framework of the Treaty of Locarno, voluntarily to renounce all her claims against that region.

The question of the return of the colonies did not arouse any really deep feelings in Germany. It would not have been difficult to find a compromise solution, either by returning to Germany one of her former colonies or by allowing Germany to participate on a non-political level in the economic development of Central Africa.

Germany's demands for military equality presented much greater difficulties, since French security rested clearly on the superiority of French arms. Only a close military alliance between the two countries could lead to a mutually satisfactory solution.

More difficult still was the problem of reparations. The key to this lay not so much in Paris as in Washington. So long as America insisted on the repayment of all war debts, France could hardly consider cancelling reparation payments due to her. On the other hand, every German was convinced that his standard of living was affected by reparations; consequently he was insistent on demanding their early abolition.

My proposal was to the effect that the whole problem of war debts should be disposed of finally by selling all French and British possessions in Guiana and the Pacific to the United States. By way of compensation, France and Great Britain would receive the former German colonies which had already been placed under their mandate. On this basis it would have been possible, if not to cancel reparation payments altogether, at least to reduce them to a more tolerable level.

By far the most difficult obstacle in the way of a satisfactory understanding between Germany and her neighbours was that of the Polish Corridor. For Poland, the Corridor represented a vital link with the overseas world; for Germany, it was a knife mercilessly carving the fatherland in two. It was not, therefore, surprising that Poland demanded the unconditional maintenance of the Corridor, whilst Germany was equally insistent on its immediate abolition.

It was not within the power of French statesmen to solve this problem. The merest hint of a compromise solution would have been regarded as rank treason by Warsaw. And France was in no position thus to endanger the Franco-Polish alliance which her statesmen regarded as one of the cornerstones of post-war security. Germany, on the other hand, was not prepared to accept her eastern frontier as final. In 1927 I asked Stresemann whether he intended to make a bid for the Corridor. 'We are prepared to wait,' he said; 'we have no wish to attack Poland, but if Poland should one day be attacked by Soviet Russia we have every intention of presenting our account.'

A peaceful solution of the Corridor problem seemed virtually hopeless and I often expressed the fear lest a second world war might break out over Danzig. On two occasions I tried to act as mediator in solving this thorny problem.

My first proposal—which I made immediately after the Vienna Congress of Pan-Europe—was based on the following principles:

• Partition of the Corridor between Poland and Germany.
  Danzig to become German; Gdynia to remain Polish.

  Poland to have a free port in Danzig and full rights of passage to Gdynia.

• 2. Poland to renew its age-old union with Lithuania and thereby to gain direct access to the Baltic at Memel; Poland to return Wilna to Lithuania within the framework of a Polish-Lithuanian union.

This proposal met with a friendly response in Germany, but great hostility in Poland. When I went to Warsaw shortly after to deliver a public lecture, a group of nationalistic students staged a demonstration against me and had to be dispersed by the police. The nationalists even succeeded in persuading the management of our Warsaw hotel to haul in the Pan-European flag which had been hoisted in our honour on the roof.

A few years later our periodical, Pan-Europe, featured the terms of a second proposal. This had been thought out and drafted by two well-known Swiss engineers, Charles and Jules Jaeger. The territory of Danzig was to be divided between Poland and Germany on a basis which would give the city of Danzig to Germany. A canal was then to be dug connecting the Polish stretch of the Vistula with Gdynia. Direct road and rail communications were further to be built over an elaborate system of dams and bridges so as to connect Germany with Danzig and East Prussia without touching the Corridor. The effect of this arrangement would be to unite the two parts of Germany without requiring any sacrifice on the Polish side.

Louis Loucheur, a man of exceptional intelligence and dynamic personality, looked like an amiable, elegant brother of Molotov. He deliberately sought wealth and power as a basis for constructive and practical achievement. In a Soviet state he would doubtless have made a most accomplished People's Commissar. In the Third Republic his ambition was to be both a millionaire and a Minister. Loucheur had one foot planted in the business world—the other in that of politics. He was firmly rooted in both camps. In addition, he was proprietor of the Paris newspaper Le Petit Journal, over whose editorial policy he had considerable influence. His thorough knowledge of economic affairs rendered him almost indispensable to the Council of Ministers. In all questions of this sort he was the chief adviser of his friend Briand, who understood little of economics. Loucheur was temperamental and impatient; he worked prodigiously hard and at great speed.

In next to no time he had formed our French Committee. The two vice-presidents were leaders of the left and right respectively: Léon Blum and Joseph Barthelémy, the well-known lawyer who was later to become Minister of Justice in the Vichy Government.

When Loucheur and I had finally set up the French Committee and included in it leaders of all parties, former Ministers, Premiers and Ambassadors, intellectuals, artists and journalists, Loucheur said to me: 'We have a fine committee now and can add to it as many famous names as we want, but please do not believe that we shall create Pan-Europe simply by having this committee. Once a year—unless they ask to be excused—the members will turn up at our General Meeting. Apart from that, they will not move a finger for Pan-Europe and everything will remain exactly as it always has been.

Before long Loucheur had formed a second committee consisting of French business leaders. This committee had twenty members and represented every branch of French industry: Theodore Laurent and Lambert Ribot (steel), Gabriel Cordier and Louis Marlio (aluminium), de Peyerimhoff (coal), Robert Hecker (electric power), René Fould (shipbuilding), Duchemin (chemicals), Gillet (silk), Dubrulle (wool), etc.

We decided to form a similar committee in Germany so that we could arrange inter-European economic talks between the two groups. Prior to the first Congress of Pan-Europe, German business had never taken our movement seriously. But when the success of the Congress became apparent, they began suddenly to display considerable curiosity.

At heart most German business leaders, like their French colleagues, were ardent nationalists. In the newspapers under their control, attacks were always being launched against the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies' reparations policy and the French Government in general. They had little love for the political programme of our movement. What interested them, however, was the idea of a European Customs Union.

Germany's most pressing economic problem at the time was how to feed and employ her rapidly increasing population. Since Posen and other agricultural regions had been lost, in accordance with the Versailles Treaty, Germany's food production no longer sufficed to sustain the existing, let alone a growing population. In consequence, a great part of Germany's population had to be supplied with foodstuffs from abroad. To pay for these imports Germany was compelled to export on a substantial scale. Her export trade, far from being a luxury, thus became a vital necessity for Germany. But this trade was beginning to be adversely affected by the industrialization of hitherto

undeveloped countries as well as by the policies of economic autarchy which many of Germany's neighbours were then pursuing. Only a European Customs Union could open up for German industry a large and unrestricted market of some three hundred million consumers.

Success in the economic field mattered more to them than success in the purely political field. Wherever I went, I heard allusions to the old German Customs Union, which had preceded the creation of the Reich. On some such basis, German business leaders were prepared to reach an understanding with their French colleagues: the two economies would thus be integrated sufficiently closely to render a new Franco-German war practically impossible. Once that had been achieved, the United States of Europe was a big step nearer reality.

I had no difficulty in forming a German economic committee. Its members were: Geheimrat Duisberg and Carl Bosch (chemicals), Hermann Bücher (electric power), Dr. Paul Silverberg (coal), Albert Vögler and Ernst Poensgen (steel), Richard Heilner (linoleum), Hermann Lange and Richard Gütermann (silk) and Ludwig Roselius (sanka-coffee). There were also three bankers: E. G. von Stauss, Herbert Gutmann and Carl Melchior.

This Pan-European Economic Council held several meetings in Paris under the chairmanship of Loucheur. Though views were exchanged on a frank and cordial basis it was clear that there was a wide gap between the German and French approaches. The Germans were of course determined to conquer the French market. The French, on the other hand, were not particularly concerned about exports, but were deeply anxious to protect their market against foreign competition.

Loucheur proved to be not only a brilliant chairman, but also a very skilful mediator. He proposed the formation of European cartels between corresponding industries in the two countries. These cartels would afford protection to France on the same basis as customs tariffs. Within such a framework it would be possible to work towards the gradual elimination of inter-European tariffs and to create in time a large free European market.

Loucheur took the view that such a policy would only be feasible if two conditions existed: first, there must be political agreement between France and Germany so that the danger of war could be virtually ruled out; secondly, the envisaged inter-European cartels must be placed under the control of the League of Nations, so as to prevent their being used to keep the cost of living artificially high.

In principle, both parties accepted these proposals. The remarkable success of the European steel cartel which had recently been formed by Mayrisch acted as a strong spur in this direction. Unfortunately our negotiations came to a sudden end when the outbreak of the world economic crisis compelled every government to revert to strictly protectionist measures. For the time being, all hope of a European Economic Union had to be shelved.

Loucheur had however succeeded in arousing interest for the idea of Pan-Europe among French business leaders. He had even made some converts. This success had far-reaching consequences both in the field of politics and in that of propaganda. Presently, newspapers of marked nationalistic tendencies began to write friendly leading articles about Pan-Europe, and rightwing politicians like Tardieu, Laval and Flandin treated our movement with no less respect than their Liberal and Socialist opponents. I even had a thorough discussion about Pan-Europe with Poincaré. He received me in a very courteous and friendly manner, but left me to guess whether he was for or against Pan-Europe. I suspected that he was for it in the long run, but doubted its feasibility in present circumstances.

This change of attitude on the part of the right wing in France paved the way for Briand's initiative. In this sense, Briand had given me excellent advice when he suggested Loucheur for the chairmanship of the French group.

This growing interest of business leaders was of decisive importance, too, for the future financing of the movement. Under the chairmanship of Robert Bosch, the Stuttgart industrialist, we formed a Society for the Promotion of Pan-Europe, an international company with headquarters in Zurich. As trustee of the company we appointed Dr. Walter Keller-Staub, a prominent Swiss lawyer and genuine Pan-European.

Robert Bosch was one of Germany's outstanding Europeans. A self-made man, he had become a supporter of Pan-Europe less for economic than for moral reasons. After the First World War he made over the vast profits accumulated during the war to all sorts of charities, his guiding principle being not to profit by the misery of others. The same motives induced him to take up the cause of Pan-Europe: not to procure more export markets but to protect Europe against the threat of another war.

As against the many people who looked upon Pan-Europe as a means of enriching themselves or their countries, there were always a few who followed our movement out of pure conviction. These rare men one found among politicians, economists, journalist, as well as in other professions. Many of them became our personal friends.

The Pan-European idea gained ground particularly fast among the younger generation. Seminars on Pan-Europe were formed at many universities and it seemed as if the rising generation was determined to work hard for the unification of the Continent. In this manner, our movement, which in its wider form had perforce to be a mixed bag of politicians, economists, authors, scientists and artists, came to have a small nucleus of genuine Europeans. Their influence only began to be really felt, however, after the end of the Second World War.

CHAPTER XVI

BRIAND ACTS

When, in the autumn of 1928, we drew up a tentative balance-sheet of our achievements, we noted one very remarkable contrast. Numerically, the movement had assumed the dimensions of an avalanche in the space of five years; yet it failed to have any influence on the policies pursued by national Governments. Since Briand's acceptance of the honorary presidency of the Union, I hoped month after month that some initiative would be forthcoming on the part of the French Government. But Briand remained silent. There were many statements of Government policy and several important parliamentary debates. Each time I hoped to find in them some reference to Pan-Europe, but each time I was disappointed. I was equally disappointed in the 1927 and 1928 Assemblies of the League during which not a word was said about the unification of the Continent.

Every time I went to Paris I called on Briand and urged him to arrange a high-level conference as a first step towards the unification of Europe. His replies were never negative. He was clearly working on some plan in this direction, but did not consider the time fully ripe. There seemed always to be just one or two tasks which remained to be tackled before he could publicly seize the initiative for Pan-Europe. The two major diplomatic tasks which postponed Briand's initiative were the Kellogg Pact and the Young Plan. By the Kellogg Pact he hoped to ensure that the United States would not consider the unification of Europe as a move directed against them. A prior settlement of the reparations question seemed important to Briand inasmuch as it would deprive Stresemann of the opportunity of trading his support for Pan-Europe for a cancelling of reparation debts. Two precious years were lost over these matters, and when Briand's initiative finally came it was —alas—too late.

I had almost given up hoping that the French Government would move when, towards the end of 1928, Briand informed me of his decision to submit the project of Pan-Europe to the next Assembly of the League. It was a tremendous moment for me. At last the European question appeared to be moving out of the sphere of private propaganda into that of official action. I did not doubt for one moment that Briand would succeed in creating an organization on the same lines as the Pan-American Union. Such an organization could later be transformed into a formal Customs Union by agreeing on some kind of preferential system; out of a Customs Union it might eventually develop into the United States of Europe. I looked forward to being relieved at long last of the burden of campaigning which I had hitherto carried; once rid of this burden, I was determined to devote my time exclusively to philosophical work.

My confidence in Briand was further strengthened when I met Alexis Léger, his principal secretary and close collaborator. Léger was a remarkable personality and a man of outstanding intelligence. Diplomat and poet, he had become Briand's homme de confiance on European questions. We remained on terms of close friendship during the changing fortunes of the next few years.

In June 1929, while the Council of the League met in Madrid, Briand took the opportunity of discussing his pan-European plan with Stresemann and other Foreign Ministers. Every one promised support for the initiative he proposed to take. A few weeks later he convened a press conference at the Quay d'Orsay at which he announced publicly his intention of placing the question of unifying Europe on the agenda of the League's September meeting.

in Scandinavia and in Portugal, discussed the announcement in their leading articles. The United States of Europe had suddenly become the main topic of conversation in drawingrooms and clubs, in cafés and country inns, in parliaments and at family dinner-tables, in large cities and in the most distant villages. Industrial workers and peasants, artisans and merchants, fishermen and shepherds, all began to hope fervently that United Europe would bring lasting peace and a higher standard of life.

In spite of this not inconsiderable opposition, Briand's announcement had a very good press. The peoples of Europe were evidently prepared to back him. Much to everyone's surprise, even Fascist Italy supported Briand, hoping that Pan-Europe would somehow open French North Africa to Italian colonizers.

Only the British attitude was sceptical and apprehensive. Prime Minister Macdonald stated in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that he considered the plan for the establishment of the United States of Europe premature. In his opinion, it should be postponed for at least ten years. Great Britain's negative attitude caused everyone to think again. But Briand was hopeful that he would in the end succeed in moving the British Government into line with his ideas.

At home, Briand's great popularity had been further enhanced by his latest move. He had now reached the peak of his career: he was regarded as the man of peace. Notwithstanding some opposition encountered in Parliament, he had the full support of the French people. But at this critical moment Parliament, too, gave him proof of its confidence by electing him Prime Minister and entrusting him with the leadership of the Government.

For the last four years I have been much concerned with the ambitious programme known as the United States of Europe, without in any way committing myself to this gigantic task. Now, after thorough scrutiny of this whole complex of problems, I have reached the firm conviction that Europe will never live in peace so long as certain problems remain unsolved and certain apprehensions undispelled, and so long as the peoples of Europe do not find ways and means of co-operating effectively among themselves.

The reply to this speech took the form of acclamation by the majority of the Chamber, followed by an overwhelming vote of confidence. From that moment onwards Briand spoke not for himself but in the name of France. The initiative taken by Briand had become the initiative of the French Government. The entire French nation, irrespective of party loyalties, felt proud of this initiative and proud of Briand.

The large Assembly Hall was filled to overflowing. An audience of Premiers and Foreign Ministers waited tensely for the birth of Europe. Idel and I were as happy as small children under a Christmas tree. Seats had been found for us in the diplomatic gallery. Many delegates and journalists came up and shook us by the hand. Amidst the applause of the Assembly, Briand walked slowly to the rostrum. In spite of his pronounced stoop, he seemed young and full of energy. Presently he stood there like a new Columbus about to discover Europe. All our warmest wishes went out to him.

There was a deadly silence as Briand began to speak. Then suddenly I was overcome by fright, for Briand spoke of other things—not of Pan-Europe. Was it possible that under some last-minute influence he had decided to postpone his initiative? But after making a pause, he came suddenly to the subject of Pan-Europe:

The origin of this idea dates back a good many years, during which it has thrilled poets and philosophers and helped them gain the respect of their public. The movement owes its success to the intrinsic value of the underlying idea. Today Pan-Europe seems more of a necessity than ever. Publicists, by pooling their resources, are spreading the idea as widely as possible so that it should penetrate deeply into the consciousness of the peoples of Europe—and I confess that I have joined the ranks of these publicists. On the other hand, I have no illusions about the difficulties of such an enterprise; nor am I in doubt as to the burden which an adventure of this kind entails for the statesman who sponsors it. But I am convinced that among peoples like those of Europe, which possess a certain geographical unity, there must also in the long run be some sort of political federation. These peoples should be in a position at all times to enter into informal relations with each other; to make plans for the protection of their common interests and to reach joint decisions on problems affecting them all. In brief, they should form themselves into a closer community so as to be able to withstand serious threats from within and without. This, gentlemen, is the type of community which I propose to bring into existence.

There followed a storm of applause. But no one was quite sure whether this was meant for Briand the orator, or for Briand the statesman

Four days later it was Stresemann's turn to speak. He looked alarmingly pale and very overworked. His speech was the very reverse of Briand's brilliant oratory and rested purely on cold logic. He appealed to reason rather than sentiment. He approved Briand's plan without expressing enthusiasm for it. To Stresemann Pan-Europe was never an ideal: at best it was

a necessity. He began by disagreeing with Briand about Pan-Europe being a Utopia. He then proceeded to attack the grotesque situation in which Europe laboured under more customs barriers since the war than there had been before. He also made a plea for European postage stamps and for European coins. His speech was directed more towards economic than towards political affairs, but it held out a guarantee of loyal German co-operation in any attempt to improve the organization of Europe and establish it on a sounder basis.

Stresemann was followed by Beneš, who welcomed Briand's initiative in principle but warned his audience about the practical difficulties which would be found in its way.

The next speaker was Mussolini's representative, Scialoja. He congratulated Briand on his noble initiative without clearly defining his own Government's attitude towards it.

Everyone waited for the speech of Arthur Henderson, the British Foreign Secretary, who followed the debate with great interest. But Henderson remained seated and did not speak.

On 9th September there took place the first unofficial conference on Pan-Europe attended by representatives of twenty-seven European countries, most of them Foreign Ministers. Briand had invited them all to lunch at the Hôtel des Bergues so as to have an opportunity of discussing the problems of Pan-Europe in a more concrete manner and to agree, if possible, on a common plan of action. All present, including Henderson, declared themselves in favour of a European organization within the framework of the League. It was decided to entrust Briand with the drafting of a memorandum setting out the projected organization. This memorandum was then to be submitted to all Governments with a request for their comments. On the basis of the answers received, Briand was to submit concrete proposals to the next General Assembly in September 1930.

Two fateful events had occurred, both of which tended to slow down Briand's initiative and prepare the way for a Third Reich and a second world war. These two events were the death of Stresemann and the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange.

Stresemann died suddenly after his return from Geneva. His speech on Pan-Europe turned out to have been his swan-song. The German Foreign Minister was visibly exhausted after the long, courageous struggle he had waged against the unreasoning attitude of the nationalist elements who refused to admit that his policy alone could lead Germany back into the ranks of the great powers and that it had already earned him personally the respect of the entire world. Stresemann's death was a major catastrophe not only for Germany but for the whole of Europe. Had he lived Hitler might never have become Chancellor. Germany and France would probably have found a way of composing their differences and the Second World War need never have occurred.

There was no one in Germany who could take Stresemann's place. The post of Foreign Minister was given to his former colleague, Dr. Curtius. Though anxious to continue Stresemann's policies, Curtius was not the man to do so: he lacked Stresemann's will-power as well as his authority and diplomatic skill.

The second catastrophe, which occurred a few days after Stresemann's death, was the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange. No one suspected then what consequences this would in course of time entail. In later years, however, the whole tragic chain of events was fully revealed: world economic crisis—unemployment in Germany—triumph of the Nazi movement—establishment of the Third Reich—Second World War.

autarchic basis. In the circumstances, the possibility of a European Customs Union had for all practical purposes to be ruled out.

The economic crisis seemed at the time to be only a small dark cloud on the horizon. Nobody suspected that one day the tempest unleashed by it would all but bring down the whole edifice of modern civilization. The tragic consequences of Stresemann's death were, however, apparent almost at once.

It looked as if Briand's initiative was being deflected into a cul-de-sac. Clearly, Briand could not count on Great Britain's support; nor could he hope for more than conditional support from Italy. If Germany, too, were to lose interest in Pan-Europe now that Stresemann was dead, then Briand's initiative must be considered as having failed. All eyes were therefore turned on Berlin where a new wave of nationalism was threatening to undermine the policy of Franco-German reconciliation.

In order to counteract these tendencies I organized a lecture tour for October 1929 on which Herriot and I were to be the principal speakers. We travelled to Vienna, Berlin and Prague. Our object was to gain support for Briand's initiative. Herriot spoke in French, I in German. With his powerful oratory and his great personal charm, Herriot easily won his hearers' hearts and had a most favourable press. In Berlin the big hall of the Kroll Opera House, which was later to be the scene of Hitler's Reichstag meetings, was filled to the last seat. After the lecture my wife and I gave a dinner and reception in Herriot's honour at the Kaiserhof Hotel to enable him to meet the political, economic and cultural leaders of Germany. On the roof of the Kaiserhof, the hotel which served shortly after as Hitler's Berlin headquarters, there were three flags: the tricolor of France, the flag of the German Reich—and between them our own Cross of Europe.

We met with a particularly friendly reception in Prague. Beneš organized a big party in our honour at the Palace. He joined us as third speaker and came out decisively on the side of Pan-Europe and Briand's initiative.

By way of introduction, Herriot reminded his listeners that the first Pan-European initiative had emanated from Prague: the message which King George of Bohemia once sent to King Louis of France. The bearers of that message entreated King Louis to accept the leadership of Pan-Europe, but the King, though courteous, proved evasive and replied that he might revert to the suggestion later. Now at last, four and a half centuries later, the legitimate successors of Louis XI saw fit to revert to the Bohemian suggestion. Briand's initiative was in fact no more than a belated answer to the Bohemian King's invitation.

In spite of the great success of this lecture tour, our troubles in the face of growing German nationalism were evidently only beginning. We decided, therefore, to arrange a second Congress of Pan-Europe to be held in Berlin on 17th May 1930. This Congress opened with a pleasant surprise: Briand informed us that he had chosen 17th May for the publication of his memorandum on the organization of Europe. By this coincidence he hoped to give public expression to his staunch support of our movement.

Loucheur led the French delegation and it was from him that I received the first copies of Briand's memorandum. When these copies were handed to me, they had as yet been seen neither by the Governments concerned nor by the press. The excellent timing of their subsequent release moved the Berlin Congress right into the centre of world politics.

The German Government, led by Hermann Brüning, the young Chancellor who had always been a supporter of Pan-Europe, accorded the Congress a very friendly reception. A banquet for delegation leaders was held at the Kaiserhof Hotel—which was once again dressed with the flag of Pan-Europe.

The French Government and press gave every possible assistance to the Congress. Messages of good-will arrived from practically all former Premiers:

Painlevé: 'Please convey to your collaborators my best wishes for the success of their great work of international reconciliation.'

Caillaux: 'I send you my most heartfelt wishes for the success of your movement. I hope you will succeed in building a new basis of existence for Europe and for civilization.'

The most spectacular political speeches were made by Loucheur and by Dr. Wirth, German Minister of the Interior and former Chancellor. In the economic field, the scene was dominated by Daniel Serruys and Robert Bosch, whilst the greatest speech in the cultural field was that of Thomas Mann.

The sensation of the opening day was caused by Colonel L. S. Amery, the British delegate.

He began by praising the Pan-European idea, referred to Briand's initiative as a decisive step towards peace, and then came to speak of the relationship between Pan-Europe and Great Britain:

I now want to turn to a question which is surely on every tongue: what role will Great Britain play in Pan-Europe? How will Great Britain react to Briand's suggestions? I will say here and now without hesitation that it would run clean counter to the interests of Pan-Europe as well as to those of Great Britain if she were to accept membership of any form of European Union. From the point of view of Pan-Europe, such a step would be no less than a catastrophe . . . Our hearts are not in Europe; we could never share the truly European point of view nor become real patriots of Europe. Besides, we could never give up our own patriotism for an Empire which extends to all parts of the world—not even for the sake of a great ideal like that of Pan-Europe. Nor could we risk the political and

economic estrangement between ourselves and the Dominions, which would undoubtedly be the consequence of our accession to a European system. We cannot belong at one and the same time to Pan-Europe and Pan-Britannia, and no Briton, whatever his political party, would hesitate even for a second if faced with the choice between these two alternatives. I think it is possible, however, that our present Government, most of whose members know nothing about the Pan-European movement, will give a vaguely affirmative answer merely out of politeness towards M. Briand. But please do not be deceived by this. The character of the British people makes it impossible for us to take part seriously in any Pan-European system. And every Britain or European who toys with such thoughts renders a disservice not only to the cause of the British Empire but also to that of Europe.

All this is, however, far from meaning that we in Great Britain will not give our warmest sympathy and support to a movement which can make such a significant contribution to the building up of a genuine and lasting peace.

Amery subsequently pointed to the fact that the relations between United Europe and Great Britain should be secured on the same friendly and good-neighbourly basis as those between the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada.

A few months earlier, Amery's friend Winston Churchill had adopted exactly the same attitude towards Briand's initiative. In an article about 'The United States of Europe', which the Saturday Evening Post published on 15th February 1930, Churchill dealt for the first time with the problem which was later to absorb his attention so intensively. After describing the origins of the Pan-European movement, Churchill said:

The League of Nations, from which the United States have so imprudently—considering their vast and increasing interests—absented themselves, has perforce become in fact, if not in form, primarily a European institution. Count Coudenhove-Kalergi proposes to concentrate European forces, interests and sentiments in a single branch which, if it grew, would become the trunk itself, and thus acquire obvious predominance. For think how mighty Europe is, but for its divisions! Let Russia slide back, as Count Kalergi proposes, and as is already so largely a fact, into Asia. Let the British Empire, excluded in his plan, realize its own world-spread ideal, even so, the mass of Europe, once united, once federalized or

partially federalized, once continentally self-conscious—Europe, with its African and Asiatic possessions and plantations, would constitute an organism beyond compare.

The attitude of Great Britain towards European unification or 'federal links' would, in the first instance, be determined by her dominant conception of a United British Empire. Every step that tends to make Europe more prosperous and more peaceful is conducive to British interests. We have more to lose by war than any human organization that has ever existed. The peculiar structure and distribution of the British Empire or Commonwealth of Nations is such that our safety has increasingly been found in reconciling and identifying British interests with the larger interests of the world. The prosperity of others makes for our own prosperity; their peace is our tranquillity; their progress smooths our path. We are bound to further every honest and practical step which the nations of Europe may make to reduce the barriers which divide them and to nourish their common interests and their common welfare. We rejoice at every diminution of the internal tariffs and martial armaments of Europe. We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonalty. But we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked, but not comprised. We are interested and associated, but not absorbed. And should European statesmen address us in the words which were used of old—'Wouldest thou be spoken for to the king, or the captain of the Host?'—we should reply, with the Shunamite woman: 'I dwell among my own people.'

The conception of a United States of Europe is right. Every step to that end which appeases the obsolete hatred and vanished oppressions, which makes easier the traffic and reciprocal services of Europe, which encourages its nations to lay aside their precautionary panoply, is good in itself—is good for them and good for all.

It is, however, imperative that as Europe advances towards higher international unity there shall be a proportionate growth of solidarity throughout the British Empire, and also a deepening self-knowledge and mutual recognition among the English-speaking people.

Then, without misgiving and without detachment, we can watch and aid the assuagement of the European tragedy, and without envy survey their sure and sound approach to mass wealth; being very conscious that every stride towards European cohesion which is beneficial to the general welfare will make us a partner in their good fortune, and that any sinister tendencies will be restrained or corrected by our united strength. Though Churchill and Amery did not express the view of their government, they certainly expressed that of their people.

Loucheur was very upset about Amery's speech and tried to make him modify his attitude. He knew that without Britain's active participation Briand's initiative was condemned to failure.

I found Briand's memorandum disappointing. It was patchwork, diluted and faded. He insisted on the undiminished sovereignty of all members of the federation, on the subordination of Europe to the League and on the predominance of politics over economics. Nothing in the document made the slightest appeal to the imagination of the people; it was written for diplomats and constitutional lawyers.

The world press received the memorandum rather critically. So did the twenty-six nations whose replies were published one by one. These replies actually did more to damp our hopes than the memorandum itself. Many countries demanded the inclusion of Russia and Turkey, neither of which was then a member of the League. Most replies made the participation of Great Britain a condicio sine qua non. But the British reply was evasive. The British Government wanted neither to be excluded from Europe nor to be included in it. It was anxious only to prevent a European federal union from being set up. It therefore proposed to limit the intended organism to a European Committee of the League of Nations.

In spite of these conflicting views, all twenty-six Governments declared themselves ready to co-operate with France on a solution of the European problem within the framework of the League.

Early in September 1930 the Governments held, at Geneva, their first official conference on Europe. The enthusiasm which had reigned only a year earlier was now gone. The discussions about European problems had revealed that the things which divided countries were greater than those which united them. Britain's opposition had come to the surface. Most governments seemed determined to get as much as possible out of Pan-Europe without contributing anything to it, least of all by sacrifice. The French decision to create a viable organism conflicted directly with Britain's determination not to let this happen on any account.

The policy of Franco-German reconciliation, which Briand had defended for five years, suffered a heavy blow. Criticism of Briand grew louder and more aggressive. How could France continue to rely on a Germany whose Chancellor might tomorrow be Adolf Hitler? And how could France afford to adopt a European policy opposed to that of Great Britain, when tomorrow the two countries might be called upon to co-operate against German aggression?

Briand's initiative had been dealt its death-blow by Hitler's electoral victory. It was now easy for Britain to assert her point of view. Instead of a confederation of European states, it was decided to set up a Study Group on European Union.

Briand still hoped to salvage his project by creating a standing European Secretariat based on Geneva. This Secretariat might revive his initiative in more favourable circumstances. However, even this suggestion proved unacceptable to Great

Britain. Her representatives proposed that the danger of duplication between the League and the European Secretariat might be avoided by asking Sir Eric Drummond, the League's Secretary-General, also to assume the direction of the Secretariat. This proposal was accepted—and the European Secretariat vanished.

In January the Study Group held its first meeting, but achieved no result worth mentioning. It proved impossible to reach agreement on any material point on the agenda. From then onwards the Study Group lived a shadowy existence until a few years' later it disappeared together with the League, forgotten and unmourned.

Since Hitler's victory at the polls, not only Briand's policy but also his position were seriously undermined. His European initiative had clearly miscarried. A few months later a serious Franco-German conflict broke out over the decision of the Reich Government, prompted no doubt by the need to regain its vanishing prestige, to conclude a Customs Union with Austria. Briand finally succeeded in having this union annulled. But confidence between Paris and Berlin had been irreparably shattered.

In September 1931 I met Briand again in Geneva: he was a tired and broken man. He was determined to devote the rest of his life to Pan-Europe. His eyes shone more brightly than ever. He had turned from fighter into martyr. On the rostrum of the League he proclaimed his intention to make a pilgrimage through the countries of Europe and preach peace. The prophet within him saw the second world war rapidly approaching; with all his might he wanted to resist it.

I discussed with him the organization of his peace tour, on which I was to accompany him. Since the Governments had failed us in the matter of Pan-Europe, we wanted to make a direct appeal to the peoples for the unification of Europe. The peoples had already acclaimed Briand, the peacemaker, with enthusiasm: they were determined to see him succeed. Before leaving I handed Briand a small Pan-European pennant, which Idel had specially given me for him. He was touched and promised to hoist it on his fishing-vessel in Cocherel. Next morning Idel received a wonderful bunch of red roses from Briand. They were his final greeting. I never saw him again. On 7th March 1932, Briand passed away, lonely and powerless, exhausted by his untiring and courageous battle for peace.

CHAPTER XVII

AN ISLAND OF PEACE

Our frequent journeys to Switzerland helped us to become increasingly familiar with the beauties of the Swiss country-side.

One day we found ourselves, quite by chance, in the Saanenland, at the south-western end of the Canton of Berne and near the line dividing French- from German-speaking Switzerland. The Saanenland, with some six thousand inhabitants, forms part of the Bernese Oberland and lies about one hundred miles east of Geneva. Its 'capital', Saanen, is a picturesque village with wooden chalets carved and painted on all sides. The old Protestant church at the centre is decorated with beautiful and rare medieval frescoes which were only recently restored to view. The vicar and his wife are the spiritual and moral leaders of that little community; both are pacifists in the noblest sense of that word and staunch supporters of Pan-Europe. To show his sympathy with our movement, Pastor Lauterburg had the Pan-European insignia, together with my initials, affixed in the church. Apart from Saanen the region has only one other village of any size: Gstaad, well-known as an international winter-sports resort.

Cattle raising and dairy farming are the principal occupations of the local people. The superb cattle of the neighbouring Simmenthal and the snow-white goats of the Saanenland itself are exported to many parts of the world. The surrounding mountainside is covered with forests and meadows. The whole landscape seems as peaceful as the people who inhabit it. Since 1928 we had been in the habit of spending a few weeks of every year, either immediately before or immediately after the Assembly of the League, in this lovely and unspoilt corner of the Swiss highlands. In the first few years we put up at a farmhouse just above Saanenmöser—on the upper slopes, 1,400 metres above sea level. We made friends with many of the local

In the summer of 1931 we happened to hear that two especially attractive antique doors were on sale in the neighbouring village of Gruben. A few days later we paid a visit to this little village, which lies on the road from Saanenmöser to Gstaad and which, oddly enough, we had never set foot in before. Gruben is really not so much a village as a collection of scattered farms. It lies at the very heart of the Saanenland, on the lower slopes of the Hornberg.

We asked the farmer whether he really wanted to sell his house. He began to tell us his story. It appeared that he had only bought this old place a few months earlier. Now he was on the point of marrying and therefore anxious to sell the house again so as to be able to settle further away from his parental home. A few days later we signed the contract. Almost before we knew it, we had become owners of a Swiss farmhouse built in 1764 and complete with stables, barns and a large meadow.

In the spring of the following year we began to rebuild the house. Meanwhile we had discussed and agreed on a design for it with our friend Professor Oskar Kaufmann, the famous Berlin theatrical architect. It is notoriously more difficult to alter the structure of an existing house than to build a new one. It was not long before we too had this experience. The work of rebuilding went on through eight long summers. In winter the house had to be closed and all work suspended. Then in the early summer of each year we would return to the Saanenland and supervise the building activities.

The main difficulty was how to enlarge the house without destroying its delightful proportions. Hence, we had to extend and lift it in all three dimensions. The stable and barn which used to have a common wall with the farmhouse, were dismantled and re-erected some way down the field. This meant that we had now to find a new wall to close in our house on the north side and that this wall would have to harmonize with the rest of the building.

After much searching we found such a wall in the neighbouring small town of Château d'Oex. Not long ago the most beautiful house in the place had been dismantled. This house dated back to 1672 and had been built by a prosperous captain of the militia. The front of the house consisted of a beautiful carved façade which happened to correspond exactly to the dimensions of our own building. After long and difficult negotiations we acquired it for use in place of the dismantled north wall. As result, our house now has a painted German inscription on the south side and a carved French inscription on the north side.

Every summer Oskar Kaufmann came to help us with the rebuilding. My brother-in-law Arthur, Idel's eldest brother, also gave us the benefit of his considerable skill and taste in restoration matters. Erica, who had meanwhile continued her studies of horticulture and landscape gardening, designed a rockery all around the house which she proceeded to fill with a selection of all the Alpine flora of the Bernese Oberland. This rockery merged imperceptibly with the meadows around it, just as these meadows in turn merged with the landscape of the Saanenland.

Though we all lent a hand, it was really Idel who created the house. She took personal charge of the rebuilding operations and soon mastered all the complicated technical details involved. Not a day passed without some new problem. One day it was a question of extending an old beam that was found to be too short. Another day a radiator might have to be concealed behind an antique chest or an electric wire behind a specially fitted ledge. Then came the problem of inserting an old oak staircase we had acquired and of finding dark-red Glockenthal tiles for the roof. There was no difficulty which Idel's creative imagination could not resolve in one way or another, and the intuition of her taste became our guide throughout this protracted and somewhat unusual building operation.

Now the old farmhouse continues to stand there, surrounded by flowers and fruit trees on either side—and outwardly indistinguishable from the other houses of the neighbourhood. Its interior, however, has acquired the character of a comfortable little hunting-lodge. Somehow Idel contrived to blend the many different materials she used into an organic and lively whole. The trophies of local craftsmanship which we had collected on our various journeys harmonized perfectly in this atmosphere. Embroideries and rugs from Hungary and Yugoslavia lie alongside carved ornaments of Swiss and Tyrolean

^<sup>1 Arthur had been working as an expert on restoration in all the old museums of Europe. He had invented a new method of restoring paintings with wax colours which Helmuth Ruhemann, the curator of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, described in the international museum publication Mouseion as 'une methode de restauration à la cire neutre'. See Mouseion, Volumes 17-18 published by the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Paris, 1932.

origin. Even Kabyle ceramics from the Atlas Mountains seem to blend easily with these products of peasant art. Nor is this surprising, since farming communities all over the world till the same earth under the same sun—disregarding linguistic and geographical barriers. They all have the same worries and nurse the same hopes. Little wonder, therefore, that they should all use the same artistic symbols: the sun, the moon, the stars, stylized flowers and birds, simple geometrical figures, lively colours and vigorous forms.

Below a thin and temporary veneer of urban art, the eternal peasantry of Europe represents a great cultural entity.

Here in this oasis of peace, I found enough leisure every summer to write my books. In 1934 I published Contemporary Anti-Semitism, a discussion of the National Socialist theory of race. I meant it to be a sequel to my father's book on the same subject, which I revised and brought up to date at about the same time. In 1935 I published Europe Without Misery, an anthology of my own lectures and articles. In 1936 I wrote The Awakening of Europe, a history of the Pan-European idea from the Crusades to the present day. The following year another book of mine appeared, The Totalitarian State Against Man—this was intended as a philosophical and historical analysis of Fascism, National Socialism and Bolshevism—the three degrees of Totalitarianism. In it I also dealt, by way of contrast, with the concept of free man, balanced and complete within himself, whose modern prototype is the British gentleman. The book opens with the words: 'Man is a creature of God—the State is a creature of Man'; on this simple proposition the book is founded.

The room which I made my study faces both south and west. In the south my view takes in parts of the canton of Vallais—behind snow-covered mountains. In the west I have a panorama of farmhouses, spread around the village of Rougemont in the canton of Vaud.

Rougemont lies only a few kilometres from Saanen. It is reached by a lovely, shaded road along the banks of the River Saane—which here assumes quite imperceptibly its French title 'la Sarine'. There are no Customs officials at this frontier between German and Latin Europe which is at the same time the frontier between the cantons of Berne and Vaud. There is no barbed-wire fence, no wooden barrier, no bureau de change for currencies. Everyone is free to cross this unguarded and invisible frontier without formality. No hatred divides the German-speaking Swiss from their French-speaking compatriots. On the contrary, the young people of the Saanenland are frequently sent to the canton of Vaud—there to learn 'the language': French.

This frontier is no barrier to romance or marriage, to games or conviviality. It is not uncommon, of course, for people of Vaud to make fun of their German-speaking neighbours, nor for the latter to retaliate in kind. But the differences between them and the many local rivalries which exist act only as an incentive to greater effort, never as a ground for hatred. As one walks along the road from Saanen to Rougemont, the farmhouses on either side all seem to be of one type. But halfway down the road the inscriptions on the front of these houses suddenly appear in a different language and the children sing in French instead of German. Their games, however, are the same.

I can never cross this invisible frontier without thinking of the blood and tears which have been shed further north on that other frontier between German and Latin Europe and of the efforts made through the centuries to shift this frontier by means of mass destruction and brute force.

In Switzerland one sees only too well how Germans and French can live peacefully together. One also realizes that it is by no means Utopian to hope that one day the frontier between Germany and France may become just as invisible as that between the cantons of Berne and Vaud, between Saanen and Rougemont, is at this very moment.

The longer I live here the greater grows my admiration for the political achievements of this small nation, which has made common sense a cardinal principle of its system of government. For on geographical grounds Switzerland seemed destined to be the arena of European conflicts. Her lack of raw materials, and the poor quality of her soil seemed to condemn her to a life of eternal poverty.

But the Swiss took up this challenge with eagerness. Their common sense and hard work now enables them to look back upon a century of uninterrupted peace. Moreover, notwith-standing their lack of colonial territories, raw materials and sea communications, they have become the most prosperous nation in Europe. They have solved the problem which caused the Hapsburg Monarchy to founder and perish: the problem of how many different races can live together harmoniously in the enjoyment of equal rights.

If Germany, France and Italy were tomorrow to join the Swiss confederation, then the European question would be solved at once and European mothers need no longer tremble at the thought of losing their sons in war. The Swiss example also refutes the claim often advanced by the opponents of Pan-Europe: that the unification of Europe would destroy the separate cultures of its member states. For in Switzerland every canton has retained its individuality and its local patriotism. Even the language and cultural heritage of the forty thousand Rhaeto-Romans in the Grisons are given full opportunity to develop and perpetuate themselves. In every valley, local traditions are jealously guarded, and the local dialect carefully nursed. In a sense, the Saanenland is itself a small republic within the canton of Berne and within the wider framework of the Swiss confederation.

In the midst of a nationalistic continent, Switzerland is nothing short of a miracle. If the country did not exist, no one would believe that anything like it could ever be created. Because the world now accepts Switzerland as a reality, everyone takes this miracle for granted. Switzerland is the reverse of nationalistic Europe. By her example she shows the other nations what Europe could be if only she made the effort. Young Europeans of all nations, steeped in nationalistic traditions, should be encouraged to make a pilgrimage to Switzerland—not only to enjoy her natural beauties, but to learn how a free and peaceful Europe could and should be organized.

Whilst Europe moved inexorably towards the Second World War, I felt myself more deeply attached than ever to that country, whose patriotism is an expression of its love of liberty and at the same time of its faith in the highest values of Western culture. For their deep and genuine love of peace in no way weakens the determination of the people of Switzerland to fight to the utmost for the preservation of their liberties. Their pacifism is of a heroic kind. More than any formal policy of neutrality, this heroic pacifism, generated during long struggles in the defence of freedom, has saved Switzerland's peace through two world wars.

CHAPTER XVIII

CROSSING HITLER'S PATH

BRIAND's death—after the failure of his Pan-European initiative—was a heavy blow to our movement, doubly so because it coincided with the growing danger of Hitler seizing power in Germany. Heavy clouds had been hanging over Germany and Europe ever since Brüning's fall from power. International confidence was at a low ebb and all endeavours seemed frustrated by the prevailing sense of uncertainty. The Pan-European movement, too, began to live in the shadow of Hitler's struggle for power. Berlin became a kind of battle-ground for the future of Europe. No Frenchman wanted closer ties with Germany so long as there was any danger of Hitler becoming Chancellor in Berlin.

After the breakdown of the effort which various governments had made towards the creation of Pan-Europe, the only way seemed for the peoples to seize the initiative themselves. An appeal had in particular to be made to the German people to choose between nationalism and Pan-Europe; other nations would then have to support those Germans who were good Europeans in their life-and-death struggle against nationalism, dictatorship and war.

To carry out this reorganization I convened the third Congress of Pan-Europe. It was to meet in Switzerland where it would be free from all governmental influences. Switzerland had for a long time occupied a leading position in our movement. Our central office in Zurich was directed by three men who had set their minds firmly on the achievement of our aims: Dr. Conrad Staehelin, Robert H. Stehli and Edgar Grieder. These men were in turn supported by a committee of outstanding representatives of the political, economic and cultural life of the country. Among the leading pan-Europeans in Switzerland was Dr. Hans Sulzer, a well-known industrialist whom we had first met when he was Swiss Minister in Washington.

Our discussions revolved mainly round the possible formation of a European popular movement based on a European Party. Though the idea was accepted in principle, it was agreed to postpone its execution until the German crisis had been solved in a democratic way. For it was clear that there would be no room for a European Party in a Hitlerite Germany; nor would the formation of such a party find favour in other countries as long as Germany had not decided for Europe and against Hitler.

Around Christmas 1932 I received an invitation from the S. S. S. Club in Berlin to deliver a lecture to them at the Hotel Kaiserhof on 30th January 1933. The S. S. S. Club was Germany's leading political club. It was named after its three founder-presidents: General von Seeckt—the creator of the Reichswehr, Dr. Walter Simons—President of the Supreme Court, and Dr. Wilhelm Solf—a former Foreign Minister. The club prided itself on its strictly non-political status.

Slowly ploughing our way through deep snow, we motored up from Switzerland through the Tyrol and Bavaria and reached Berlin in the first days of 1933. There were only a few swastika flags to be seen. Altogether it seemed as if the National Socialist movement had passed its peak and was at last on the decline.

Our friends in Berlin confirmed this. The reduction in the National Socialist vote at the last elections and the catastrophic state of the Party's finances fed rumours of an impending Party crisis. Everyone seemed confident that President Hindenburg, assisted by his resourceful Chancellor, General von Schleicher, and backed by the army, a Reichstag majority and the trade unions, would avert Hitler's seizure of power and that the next elections would finally dispose of the whole National Socialist danger.

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht saw the situation in a different light. He accomplished the extraordinary feat of remaining a supporter of Pan-Europe notwithstanding his admiration for Hitler. In his buoyant way, he told me: 'In three months' time, Hitler will have become Chancellor. But don't worry; he is the only man able to reconcile Germany with the Western Powers. You will see: one day Hitler will achieve the unification of Europe.' Schacht brushed aside my objection that Hitler's coming to power would lead to a break between Germany and the West. 'Hitler alone can create Pan-Europe,' he said, with an air of profound conviction, 'because he alone has no opposition to fear from the extreme right. Stresemann and Brüning failed because their efforts were constantly frustrated by elements on the right. Only Hitler can afford to ignore this opposition; and that is why he alone will succeed in setting up peaceful co-operation among European states.'

The first part of Schacht's prophecy was to be fulfilled very swiftly. A few days after our conversation, news reached me from Cologne that Hitler and von Papen, who had hitherto been on the worst of terms, met at the house of von Schroeder, the banker, and decided to join forces against the established Government.

I had known von Papen for years. He had never joined our movement, but had always declared himself in favour of understanding and co-operation with France. During the summer of 1932, while he was German Chancellor and represented the Republic at the Lausanne Reparations Conference, he once asked me to lunch with him. Hitler was our main topic of conversation. Papen regarded him as a bloated demagogue of no standing whatsoever, and was confident that he could deal with him easily. In the realm of foreign policy, he welcomed the threat of a Third Reich as a means of exerting pressure on France. By using this weapon he hoped eventually to secure complete equality for Germany. He also hoped soon to reach an understanding with France, to overcome the menace of Hitler and thus to pave the way for a United Europe.

I never had contact with Hitler and his senior colleagues in

the Party. In 1932 Goering gave an interview to a Swedish newspaper and was asked what he thought of Pan-Europe. His somewhat surprising reply was: 'I am all in favour of Pan-Europe, but not the Pan-Europe of Coudenhove-Kalergi.'

On 29th January 1933 President Hindenburg dismissed his Government and charged Hitler with the formation of a new Cabinet. To secure the support of conservative and catholic circles in Parliament, von Papen was asked to be Vice-Chancellor. On the following day the new Government was formed. The Weimar Republic was dead, the Third Reich well on its way.

Many friends advised me to cancel my lecture. When I telephoned the manager of the Hotel Kaiserhof, his reply was: 'Yes, the lecture will take place, but the audience will have to use a side entrance, since the main entrance is reserved for members of the new Government.'

That evening the Kaiserhof, Hitler's personal residence, was like a beehive, swarming with innumerable brown bees. Within a few hours the hotel had become the hub of Germany. With great difficulty we blazed a trail to the lecture hall through cordons of police and uniformed guards.

reverberated with the monotonous goosestep of marching Brownshirt battalions and husky voices chanted triumphantly the battle song of Horst Wessel.

Hitler's war against Europe lasted twenty-six years, from 1919 to 1945. His first attempt at the conquest of Germany was foiled in November 1923; ten years later he became undisputed master of the Third Reich. Thereafter, it took him five years to conquer Austria, another year to reduce Czechoslavakia and three more years before the whole of Europe from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus lay prostrate at his feet. Only in November 1942 did the tide begin to turn; then, within two and a half years, Hitler's millennium perished.

His legendary rise to power was due mainly to two events: the Peace Treaty of Versailles and the Munich Commune. The popular movement launched by him was a protest against the work of two men: Clemenceau and Lenin. The struggle against the Versailles Treaty secured him a powerful following among the masses, whilst the struggle against Bolshevism brought the financial support he needed to organize and arm these masses. Hitler first turned against Lenin's ideology in Germany, then against Clemenceau's in Europe. But in the end, as it turned out, the heirs of Lenin and Clemenceau joined forces to crush him.

There is no doubt that Hitler's popularity rested mainly on the fanatical struggle which he waged against the Versailles Treaty. He modelled his early actions on Mustapha Kemal, the Turkish leader, who began by resisting the Treaty of Sèvres and then, carried away by the nationalist feeling of his followers, tore up that treaty altogether and negotiated in its place the much more lenient Treaty of Lausanne.

Hitler cannot in any real sense be credited with the creation of the nationalist protest against the Versailles Treaty. The famous French historian and patriot, Jacques Bainville, bears witness to the fact that Hitler merely benefited from a feeling which already existed.

In his book The Political Consequences of the Peace Treaty Bain-ville predicts with prophetic clarity the political development of Europe in the two decades following the Versailles Treaty. His

book was published in 1919, before the name of Hitler had emerged on the political horizon.

Just as Mustapha Kemal served as a model in Hitler's struggle against the Peace Treaty, so Mussolini was used as a prototype in the battle against Bolshevism. European anti-Communism was the natural reaction against Lenin's attempt to conquer Europe and destroy by world revolution the liberal Christian civilization which had its roots on that continent. The counter-revolution broke out simultaneously in Hungary, Bavaria and Italy; then step by step it conquered half of Europe. The political pendulum was definitely swinging back and it seemed as if National Socialism was merely the German version of this general phenomenon.

Fascism, as it appeared in Germany, was closely linked with the theory of race. Germans were taught to think in terms of a racial hierarchy, a pyramid of races comprising the whole of humanity with the blond races at the summit and the negroid races at the base. All other races, from the dark-haired Mediterranean types to the chocolate-coloured Indians are conceived as lying between these two extremes, of which the upper is destined always to rule and the lower always to be ruled. This racial doctrine is an anthropological myth without scientific foundation. Such roots as it has are in the Bible, where Noah is said to have placed a curse on the heirs of his ungrateful son Cham. Centuries later the myth was revived by the pseudo-scientific daydreaming of Gobineau and Chamberlain.

The most astonishing thing about this racial theory is the importance given to pigmentation as a factor in determining the value of a race or an individual. The adoration of blond beings probably has its origin in the sun-worship of the pre-Christian era. This cult was based on a system of simple antitheses: light and darkness, day and night, good and bad, blond and black. The blond man and woman with golden hair was looked upon as an earthly incarnation of the sun's golden rays, just as the lion with its long mane has from time immemorial been the symbol of the sun in the animal kingdom.

This dualistic conception has always had a place in the subconscious of the German people. Their village churches display blond angels and black-haired devils. Long before Hitler, Germans would have thought it absurd to present Lohengrin and Elsa on the stage in black wigs or Telramund and Ortrud in fair ones, though, as a Friesian, Ortrud would have had an obvious claim to ash-blond hair.

National Socialism simply brought this latent tendency into the forefront of the conscious mind. It is always easy to convince people of theories which seem to flatter them. Hitler, therefore, had no difficulty in convincing the German people that they were the aristocrats and natural leaders of the human race.

Before this theory could become popular, there had also to be a hostile race at the other end of the scale. For the more people can look down on others the more superior they will feel themselves. As there are no Negroes in Germany, National Socialism invented an ersatz Negro, the Jew. In this respect, the Nazis were greatly helped by the existence of a kind of traditional anti-Semitism. There was no need to create anti-Semitic feeling: it only had to be properly exploited and combined with anti-Bolshevism.

One of the consequences of this fanatical anti-Semitic campaign was the total rejection of Christianity—itself a product of the Jews—and of its moral values. The Hebrew-Christian moral code, as defined in the Bible, was supplanted by the twin Darwinian principles: the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. In the spirit of Nietzsche's teachings, the fittest became the best, whilst cruelty and force took the place of humanity and justice in the scale of moral values.

In this manner, the Nazis created a biological pseudoreligion not unlike the economic pseudo-religion created by Bolshevism. Both creeds tended to bring out the best as well as the worst in their followers: heroic self-sacrifice on the one hand, bestial cruelty on the other. These instincts were duly marshalled by the leaders to serve political ends.

The state of semi-education in which modern Germany found itself provided an ideal breeding-ground for National

Socialism. It was a soothing creed for a people with rudimentary scientific knowledge; for a people who had read some of their own classics, but knew nothing of the great poets and thinkers of other nations and who had thus become convinced that their race alone possessed the secret of culture, whilst all other races were either barbarian or decadent.

Hitler's propaganda appealed quite deliberately to men's emotions as distinct from their brains. It sought to put into practice Schopenhauer's philosophy as expressed in Welt als Wille und Vorstellung: to influence men's actions and imagination without paying too much attention to the dictates of reason and logic.

The use of mass hypnotism for propaganda purposes is most successful at times of crisis. When National Socialism made its bid for power, millions of Germans had been thrown completely off their balance: middle-class families had sunk to the level of the proletariat, whilst working-class families were without work. The Third Reich became the last hope of the stranded, of those who had lost their social status, and of those rootless beings who were seeking a new basis for an existence that had become meaningless. Looked at in this light, National Socialism seemed a repetition on a gigantic scale of Catilina's conspiracy. It differed from Socialism, which was a class movement in the tradition of that of the Gracchi, and from Bolshevism, whose classical prototype was the revolution of Spartacus.

During these years we often visited Germany. I gave many public lectures on Pan-Europe. Once, in Oldenburg, an attempt was made to stop me. A group of young National Socialists suddenly broke out into the following chorus: 'Poincaré said: there are twenty million Germans too many!' I answered: 'I

have always heard it said that hospitality is one of the great German virtues. Here I am as your guest at the very heart of Germany. I would ask you to act accordingly.' The chorus died down, and when my lecture was over there was applause from every part of the hall.

Three weeks after the formation of the Third Reich we left Berlin for Prague. I asked Masaryk, who had greater moral authority than any other European statesman, to give a series of propaganda talks on human freedom over the Prague radio—as an antidote to the Nazi campaign. I felt sure that his talks would be welcomed by millions of Germans who could otherwise listen to nothing but Nazi propaganda. Masaryk liked the idea. He said he would think about it and inform me of his decision.

We spoke about Hitler. Masaryk had of course studied Mein Kampf carefully. 'This man Hitler,' he said, 'is not altogether a fool. He certainly has a remarkable gift of observation and his description of pre-war Vienna is not at all bad. But I must confess that some chapters leave me like a calf facing a new barndoor.'

Back in Vienna, we heard of the Reichstag fire and of the reign of terror which had set in. Our minds went back to the film about Nero which we had seen in Berlin two months earlier. In this film, which had gone down well in Germany, Tigellinus advises Nero to set Rome on fire, to put the blame for this on the Christians and to use this as a pretext for annihilating them. I would not be surprised if it had been this film which put the idea of a Reichstag fire into the Nazi leaders' heads.

A few days later General Haushofer from Munich paid us a visit. We had known him for years. In his Geo-political Review he had always found room for a friendly word about Pan-Europe which seemed to him to accord with his own ideas. On

the evening when we founded our Munich group he and Thomas Mann had sat on either side of my wife at dinner.

In spite of his geo-political leanings, Haushofer remained a Bavarian monarchist. He regarded the Third Reich very critically and described Hitler, whom he knew personally, as a typical product of half-education. On the other hand, he had a number of good things to say about Rudolf Hess. He told the story of how, after Hitler's abortive coup d'état in 1923, Hess had for weeks remained a fugitive in his house, where he hid him from the police. 'If Hess is really such a nice man,' I said, 'how is it that he became a Nazi?' Haushofer was not stuck for an answer: 'He just happened to meet Hitler—so he became a Nazi. If he had met you, he would have become a supporter of Pan-Europe.'

In this connection I could not help telling Haushofer how one day in the 1920's I gave the young receptionist at the Park Hotel in Munich a copy of my book Pan-Europe. Some days later I saw him again. 'Pan-Europe is a great idea,' he said, 'even greater, I think, than anti-Semitism.' For this young man, Hitler's anti-Semitism had so far evidently been the climax of political wisdom. Suddenly it began to dawn on him that there might be more important things worth striving for in this world, greater problems and higher aims. His answer gave me new hope that the Pan-European idea might achieve more in the field of denazification than all the negative experiments which were being made in that direction.

CHAPTER XIX

I CALL ON MUSSOLINI

HITLER'S seizure of power in Germany made the prospects of Pan-Europe seem almost hopeless. The movement had scarcely recovered from the miscarriage of Briand's initiative. Now its worst enemy had become absolute master over Germany. The German branch of the Union was dissolved and proscribed; my books were destroyed. Robert Bosch and the German members of our promotion syndicate were compelled to resign.

Even outside Germany faith in the Pan-European ideal had weakened noticeably. No one wanted—nor for that matter, was able—to co-operate constructively with the Third Reich; the alternative of waiting for its collapse seemed utterly unrealistic.

Britain had then a splendid opportunity of adopting the Pan-European ideal and assuming the leadership of a free Europe. But its statesmen lacked the necessary imagination. During my last visit to London, Amery had invited two former Foreign Secretaries to meet me: Sir Austen Chamberlain, a Conservative, and Arthur Henderson, a Socialist. Amery hoped that I might convert them to the Pan-European cause. Dawson, then editor of The Times, was also present. Amery and I tried to put forward every argument in favour of Britain adopting a European policy. But Henderson and Chamberlain were both equally determined to put forward every available counter-argument. In the end Chamberlain summed up our discussion by saying: 'Though my friend Henderson and I hold conflicting views on a great many matters, we seem to agree fully on the fact that the unification of Europe is not in the interests of Britain.' Henderson endorsed this statement. Amery and I had clearly to give in.

France was more concerned than ever with the problem of her own security. The policy of Franco-German understanding which Briand had sponsored, and which he hoped to combine with his wider European plans, had miscarried and could not for the time being be revived. France's only hope lay in either British or Russian assistance against new German aggression. Both these potential allies were, however, known to oppose Pan-Europe. France, too, had therefore to soft-pedal for the time being the Pan-European ideal.

Most smaller European countries had only one aim: to remain neutral in the forthcoming trial of strength. Even Masaryk had, after all, refused to speak against totalitarianism for fear of provoking Hitler's wrath!

Our triumphal progress in the days of Briand was now only a lingering memory; in March 1933 the movement lay in utter ruins.

Yet Pan-Europe seemed to me more important than ever now as a means of keeping the Third Reich in check and preventing a new world war. The Paris-Rome axis appeared to be the only point of departure for a new defensive alliance between the free countries of Europe. Such an alliance, comprising ninety-five million Latin peoples, would have had the automatic support of all the Danubian countries; it would further have been strengthened by the accession of Poland in the north and of the Balkan countries in the south. Such a union of some two hundred million Europeans, representing west, south and east, would have been in a position to deflect Hitler from any political or economic adventures outside Germany and to

The difficulty was to gain Mussolini's support for such a plan. Though his interests in Austria risked collision with those of Hitler, there was a close kinship between the ideologies of the two dictators. Mussolini, too, was anxious to see Europe divided into two rival camps, France and Germany, between which he could act as arbiter—taking care never to identify himself with either. But I was at any rate prepared to make an effort to convert Mussolini to our way of thinking. I was reminded in this connection of the wise old maxim coined by the great Condottiere Sforza: 'If you are faced with three enemies, make peace with the first; conclude an armistice with the second, and hurl yourself with all your might against the third!'

Our attempts at enlisting Mussolini's support did not appear entirely hopeless. Since the days of Briand's initiative, a monthly journal had appeared in Rome, entitled Anti-Europa. Though every issue contained some criticism of Briand and 'Conte Calergi', the journal definitely gave expression to certain Pan-European tendencies. It was in fact a rather cunning attempt by Mussolini to win over the Italian intelligentsia for the idea of Pan-Europe without any loss of face on his part.

Whilst in Geneva, I asked Titulescu to introduce me to Mussolini's Foreign Minister, Dino Grandi. I found him very understanding and we had a long discussion. He showed considerable sympathy for my ideas, but refused to commit himself in any way. In the end, he undertook to arrange a meeting between Mussolini and myself. We awaited Mussolini's reply in Cap d'Antibes, near the Italian border. Meanwhile, the Columbia Broadcasting System had invited me to give a talk on Pan-Europe. I was to deliver this talk on 9th May in Nice, from where it would be broadcast to New York.

On 7th May a cable reached me from Rome: Mussolini would be waiting for me on the afternoon of 10th May. The

date of my radio talk could not be postponed. But arrangements were made to deliver it in Ostia instead of Nice. I reached Rome in the morning of 9th May. Mr. Morgan, the representative of the Columbia Broadcasting System, immediately informed me that my talk had to be cancelled on account of a 'technical hitch' at Radio Ostia. Morgan was most upset. He at once called on Mussolini in order to have the matter put right. Mussolini was in a truculent and strictly monosyllabic mood. Morgan and I were convinced that the hitch at Ostia was political rather than technical: Mussolini was evidently angry when he heard that a talk on Pan-Europe had been arranged from his own broadcasting station without his prior approval. All this seemed a thoroughly bad omen for my visit to him the following day.

At the Palazzo Venezia I was escorted through iron gates and along narrow corridors. Finally we reached Mussolini's ante-chamber. After a short wait, I was invited by one of Mussolini's secretaries to step into his study. The study could hardly be described as a room. It was a long, lofty hall—with a huge desk in the most remote corner. Behind this desk sat Mussolini. While I walked diagonally across the hall, he never looked up from his papers. He appeared to be writing something and affected not to have noticed my entrance. Only when I actually stood in front of his desk, he rose and offered me a seat on my side of the desk, facing him. He seemed serious, cool and very reserved.

I found him much changed since the time when I observed him in the Senate. His black hair had begun to turn grey. He had become older and stouter. But this also made him look more massive and robust than ever. His movements were no longer as nervous and jumpy as when he spoke and listened in the Senate; they now seemed calm and controlled. He had evidently become much more familiar with the part of Caesar for which he had cast himself. There was not a trace now of the temperamental journalist whom I had observed in the Senate; instead I now sat face to face with a wealthy and powerful business leader of unpretentious peasant origin.

Whereas formerly I thought of him as resembling a leopard, he now seemed much more like a heavy bull.

His head looked impressive, his forehead tall and handsome. His temples betrayed intellectual leanings. Altogether the upper half of his head was composed of noble features, while the lower part reflected brutality. In a serious mood, he appeared strong and handsome; as soon as he opened his mouth to smile, he became ugly. His smile had a cynical flavour. In sitting posture, his large head harmonized well with his heavy chest; on his feet, he looked small and ill-proportioned.

At first there was an embarrassed silence. When I handed him a few of my writings he immediately opened the collection of aphorisms entitled Rules of Life and started reading the one beginning: 'Be sane—be strong—be beautiful—be pure!' Mussolini read aloud in halting, but clearly intelligible, German: 'Be sane: yes! be strong: yes! be beautiful? no! Why should a man have to be beautiful?' I commented that the term 'beautiful' applied not only to man's body but also to his soul and character. This definition appeared to satisfy him. The ice between us had been broken.

We spoke in French. Our first topic was Nietzsche, who had stood to Mussolini in much the same didactic relationship as Wagner to Hitler. Mussolini's Fascism was based on Nietzsche's anti-democratic philosophy, just as Hitler's dreams were based on the romanticism of Wagner's operas. I remembered that Nietzsche had been one of the early pioneers of a Pan-Europe and handed Mussolini a copy of our journal Pan-Europe, containing a complete collection of all Nietzsche's sayings about European unity.

We then came to speak of racial theories. Mussolini regarded Hitler's anti-Semitism as absurd. I explained to him that no Nazi could ever look upon an Italian as an equal, since to him all dark-haired Mediterranean peoples were of mixed race, half Aryan, half Negro. 'I also have given much thought to racial questions,' Mussolini told me, 'and many years ago I even wrote an article on the subject. I will try to have this article found and sent to you. My thesis was that most great cultural

works were created by the Mediterranean races and that the barbarians of the north attempted time and again to wipe us out.'

This led us straight to political matters—and to Pan-Europe. He inclined towards a Latin Union between Italy and France as a kind of protective barrier against the Third Reich; he also seemed to sympathize with the idea of Pan-Europe. Gradually Mussolini warmed to the conversation; his manner became increasingly friendly and natural. The dictator had vanished; only the intellectual remained. As we parted, he asked me to prolong my stay in Rome for a few days, since he was anxious to continue our conversation.

We talked of National Socialism and the danger of war. By contrast with his predecessor, Pacelli made no secret of his sympathy for Pan-Europe. While talking to Pacelli, I could not help thinking of Mussolini and of the indescribable contrast between these two great Italians. Though sons of the same nation, they sprang from two entirely different worlds. There was a difference between them as between heaven and earth. Pacelli seemed an angelic being, an incarnation of the 'pastor angelicus' mentioned in prophecy. I thought of Mussolini's remark: why should man have to be beautiful, as I beheld this noble priest—a perfect blend of three-dimensional beauty, physical, moral and intellectual; a living work of art in the tradition of the pre-Raphaelites, with the brilliant, lucid countenance of a truly good man and a smile which lit up his severe, ascetic features.

In my hotel I happened to run across Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the Crown Prince's second son, whom we had previously met in Berlin and St. Moritz. He immediately asked me whether I believed that Hitler would proclaim his uncle 'Auwi' (August-Wilhelm) Emperor, as he had promised. I told him that I considered this quite outside the bounds of possibility; Hitler would do anything rather than share his power with a Hohenzollern. I advised him to avoid all contact with Hitler as far as possible and perhaps go to America until the Third Reich went out of business. But the young prince, highly gifted as he was, chose not to follow my advice.

Two days after my talk with Mussolini I received a short note from one of his chief assistants: Mussolini was heavily engaged and could not therefore see me again. The article which he had promised was not enclosed. I suspected that Mussolini had meanwhile read my journal and that he had been annoyed by my article on 'The Rights of Man' in which it is said that recognition of these rights was a pre-condition for the accession of any state to the Pan-European Union. The article was of course directed primarily against Hitler. But Mussolini had some grounds for feeling that it was also directed against him—the more so as it was introduced by the famous quotation from Hölderlin: 'The masses always like what is fit for the market-square; slaves generally honour those who wield power; none but the divine themselves believe in things divine!'

Before leaving Rome I paid a visit to the editorial offices of Anti-Europa and met its youthful editor-in-chief, Asvero Gravelli. This protégé of Mussolini's turned out to be a staunch supporter of Pan-Europe, who had read every line of my writings and was in fact a secret disciple of mine. He had made it

his aim to win over public opinion in Italy to my ideas and to organize with Mussolini's approval an Italian branch of our Union.

I was surprised to find inscribed over his office-door not the title 'Anti-Europa' but—in huge letters—the words: Roma erat ante Europam' (Rome existed before Europe). This inscription reflected Gravelli's embarrassment about the title of his publication; he hoped in fact, by merely changing one letter, to convert this title surreptitiously into 'Ante-Europa'. But this trick was no longer needed. Acting on orders from above, he soon suspended the journal's publication. Some time later, it reappeared under a new and neutral title: Ottobre. There were no more attacks against me, and Ottobre all but became the official Italian organ of our movement. Henceforward, Italy was strongly represented at all our conferences. Gravelli himself led the Italian delegation to the fourth Congress of Pan-Europe in Vienna.

Mussolini himself never concealed his sympathy for Pan-Europe. In an interview with the Paris newspaper L'Intransigeant published in January 1934, the mantle of Briand seemed almost to have fallen on his shoulders. He said:

Europe has created the civilization of the world. Europe has directed this civilization and benefited from it. Today Europe is in danger of foundering altogether between America and Japan. If Europe wants to regain her foothold and remain in existence, she must unite. The great nations of Europe need cement to bind them together: they need a European spirit.

CHAPTER XX

THE DOLLFUSS TRAGEDY

HITLER'S mind was now set on the conquest of Austria. He realized that possession of Vienna would give him the key to all Europe. Once Austria had been annexed, Czechoslovakia—the buffer against German aggression on which the French based their Central European policy—would be effectively encircled and the road to the Balkans lie open for further German conquests. It was not surprising, therefore, that plans for the siege of Vienna began to be laid early in 1933, soon after Hitler's accession to power. The war of nerves lasted five years and ended with Austria's final surrender on 11th March 1938.

The outbreak of this life-and-death struggle raised a serious dilemma for our movement. Either we continued to operate from Vienna and fight from there for an independent Austria within the framework of a united Europe, or we transferred our headquarters to Switzerland and, from that safe base, ran the movement on economic rather than political lines until the international situation would permit us to resume our efforts towards Franco-German understanding. Our choice depended mainly on the attitude of the new Austrian Government: on whether or not this Government saw fit to harness the driving force inherent in our movement to its own struggle for independence. My mind in this respect was made up as soon as I had had my first talk with Engelbert Dollfuss, the new Chancellor of the Austrian Republic.

Dollfuss was a man of great generosity and moral courage. Though a typical Austrian, he was by no means a typical Viennese. The decadent cosmopolitanism and culture of the metropolis had left no mark on him. Dollfuss remained a genuine product of the countryside, of the gentle woodland slopes of Lower Austria. Besides his erudition, he retained the sound common sense of a peasant. His political success was not due to the backing of any one party, but rather to his

I first met this remarkable statesman in the Federal Chancellery in Vienna. He was of slight build, and had a face of such unusual kindness that one was instinctively drawn to him. His high forehead was a measure alike of his intelligence and of his obstinacy. His large sparkling eyes betrayed idealism, whilst the movements of his well-shaped mouth radiated that typically Austrian blend of wit, sarcasm and charm. There was also about him an air of restlessness, as of a man who has much to do, but little time to do it in.

Dollfuss received me as he would an old friend. I had no need to explain to him what significance the future of our movement had for Austria. He knew only too well that, without Europe's help, Austria's struggle was hopeless. Everything depended on his convincing the great powers that Hitler's threat to Vienna was also a challenge to their own security and to their survival as free nations.

We soon agreed on a plan of campaign. The Austrian Government would support the movement in every possible way, whilst the movement itself would direct all its efforts towards forming a united European front as a means of guaranteeing Austrian independence.

A second point on which we soon reached agreement concerned economic co-operation between the Danubian countries. Through the Treaty of Rome, Dollfuss had ensured reasonably close economic understanding between Rome, Vienna and Budapest. He now aimed at extending this understanding to the countries of the Little Entente, so as to create a

A further question with which Dollfuss was much concerned was that of how the peasant populations of Central and Eastern Europe could be actively rallied behind the Pan-European movement. The collapse of world markets had rendered the position of the agricultural areas almost desperate. Dollfuss was convinced that only an inter-European preferential system could rescue them from this plight. He therefore suggested the creation of a Pan-European peasants' movement, and promised that, if I succeeded in forming such a movement, he would help me with his far-reaching connections with agricultural organizations.

We also decided that, in addition to the existing information office run by our movement, there should be an economic office whose task it would be to prepare the ground for a European Customs Union by carrying out statistical and economic studies on various subjects. On 2nd December 1933 a Pan-European Economic Office was opened at our new headquarters. The inaugural ceremony was attended by Dollfuss, his Ministers, and many members of the diplomatic corps.

Though Dollfuss was in a position to guarantee the continued existence of our central office, he had unfortunately no influence over its radius of action. Whether or not the movement would continue to make itself felt in European politics depended less on Vienna than on Paris. In this respect, an improvement took place early in 1934, when the reins at the Quai d'Orsay passed into the hands of a man who was deeply convinced of the need for a united Europe—Louis Barthou.

This uncommonly intelligent man, deeply cultured and wonderfully vigorous, was the spiritual successor of Aristide Briand. He realized that the establishment of the Third Reich made the unification of Europe a more urgent task than

ever before: for only a powerful defensive system embracing the whole of Europe could prevent German rearmament. He was acutely aware of Vienna's key position in any such system and therefore realized the vital importance of preventing its annexation by Germany. Thanks to Barthou's understanding and confidence, the Pan-European movement was able to continue to play its role on the international plane despite Germany's defection from the European family.

In October 1934 Barthou was assassinated at Marseilles, together with King Alexander of Yugoslavia. His death proved a heavy blow for Europe. Fortunately the policy which he had initiated survived his disappearance from the political scene. His successors were as loyal as he to the idea of European federation; altogether, my contacts with the Quai d'Orsay were happily unaffected by the frequent personal changes at the head. I owed this in the first place to Alexis Léger who, in his capacity as Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry, had a decisive influence on French foreign policy and always remained a close friend of mine.

In Prague, too, a new man had come to power whose attitude was wholly European and with whom I was to collaborate closely—Dr. Milan Hodža. Hodža was a native of Slovakia and a Protestant. As a young politician he had been the personal adviser of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Emperor's heir, and it seemed as if he was destined later to play a leading role in carrying out the reforms which the Archduke then planned. Years later he became Chairman of the Czech Agrarian Party. Free from the nationalistic shackles which hampered so many of his compatriots, Hodža was a genuine European. His generous manner of dealing with men and affairs had more in it of the Hungarian gentry than of the Czech politician. He did not get on well with Beneš, largely because he shared Dollfuss's ideas about the new role of the agrarian parties and the need for united action by all Danubian countries. He would have welcomed an understanding with Italy, but the ideological and personal antipathy between Beneš and Mussolini proved a quite unbridgeable gulf.

Dollfuss, Barthou and Hodža were the three contemporary statesmen who enabled our movement to find new strength and a new orientation after Hitler's seizure of power in Germany. Thanks to their efforts, the Pan-European movement survived financially even after its German sponsors had withdrawn their support; this defection on the part of the Germans was more than made good by subsidies from the Austrian, French and Czech Governments; also, while Titulescu remained Foreign Minister, from the Rumanian Government. These subsidies had a deep moral significance for our movement, and underlined its political role in the struggle for the future of Europe.

Early in 1934 Dollfuss began to find himself in an increasingly difficult position. Hitler had only just embarked on the rearmament of Germany. He could not risk invading Austria for fear of getting embroiled in a war with the Western powers. It therefore served his purposes much better to conquer Austria from within by making skilful use of his fifth column. The internal battle against Dollfuss was waged by the Austrian National Socialists in a spirit of ruthlessness and bitter determination. Men were assassinated, bridges blown up, propaganda leaflets distributed throughout the country and subversive organizations issued with arms. It was clear to all who knew these facts that the outbreak of an open insurrection was only a matter of time.

Those who opposed National Socialism lacked unity. In Parliament, the fact that Christian Socialists and Social Democrats were both bitterly opposed to National Socialism did not prevent them from constantly fighting each other.

Outside Parliament there existed at that time in Austria three para-military organizations capable of supporting political parties in a civil war: Hitler had his so-called Brown Army; the

Social Democrats relied for support on their Red Army, which was in some ways backed by Beneš; whilst the Heimwehr Groups constituted the Green Army. The Heimwehr was under the leadership of young Prince Starhemberg who had spent his considerable fortune on training and equipping it.

decided that their only remaining hope lay in assassinating Dollfuss, thus leaving the country without a leader and in a mood of simmering insurrection which would make it an easy prey for German annexation.

Our movement had many enthusiastic supporters both among the Christian Socialists and among the Social Democrats. I tried to mediate between Dollfuss and Seitz, then Socialist mayor of Vienna. Both were hopeful of achieving a better understanding between the two parties. But the Heimwehr and the more extreme elements of the Socialist Party pressed hard for a show-down and gradually carried the moderate elements with them.

Meanwhile we pursued our campaign for the formation of a united anti-Nazi front. On 17th May we held a rally in the large Assembly Hall of the Austrian Parliament. In front hung two huge flags—that of Austria and that of Europe. Dollfuss and I made the chief political speeches; von Schuschnigg, who was then Minister of Education, spoke about the cultural unity of Europe. Ida Roland then proceeded to read the superb speech made by Victor Hugo at the opening of the 1849 Pacifist Congress in Paris.

We spent that evening with Dollfuss and other friends tasting the year's vintage in an inn at Grinzing, a wine-growing suburb of Vienna. Dollfuss enjoyed himself like a child. He arranged for some of the best Austrian wines to be served to Ricard, our French delegate, who had once been Minister of Agriculture. He liked hearing these wines praised by a connoisseur, for their improved quality was largely due to his own personal efforts. His secretary entertained us with a selection of Austrian folk songs, and people were dancing everywhere. Presently, however, Dollfuss's private detective quietly reminded him that we were sitting in a brilliantly illuminated veranda separated by no more than a glass partition from the dark vineyards all around; news had got about that the Chancellor was spending the evening there, and it would not be safe for him to remain longer. But Dollfuss was enjoying himself so thoroughly that he was loath to go. We stayed until late that

evening, happy and carefree, listening to the soothing melodies of Viennese waltzes.

A few weeks later we met Dollfuss and his wife at the home of von Karwinsky, the Minister of Public Safety. Dollfuss told me that in a few days' time he and his family would be leaving for Riccione on the Adriatic coast, where Mussolini and his family were also spending a holiday. This would provide him with a good opportunity of having a comprehensive exchange of views with Mussolini on the question of Pan-Europe; he would try to persuade Mussolini to seize the initiative in this matter. He was full of hope and felt certain that, with the joint help of Mussolini and Barthou, he could succeed in guaranteeing Austria's future through a European alliance. I entreated him not to ignore his personal safety—for Europe's sake as much as for that of his family and of Austria. My wife also stressed the need for ensuring Dollfuss's safety in a conversation with Alwine Dollfuss who, together with her two children, was planning to precede her husband to Riccione. A few days later we ourselves left Vienna for a holiday in Switzerland.

In the early afternoon of 25th July I was interrupted in my work by suddenly hearing a deep sigh. I was frightened; my first thought was that something had happened to Idel. I hurried to her room where I found her perfectly well and rather surprised at my concern. I then went to see my brother-in-law, Arthur; he was quietly painting one of his water-colours, and had evidently heard nothing. Shortly after, the wireless brought the dreadful news from Vienna: Chancellor Dollfuss had been assassinated by a group of Nazis who had made their way into the Chancellery dressed as army and police officers. He died slowly of his wounds, without either a doctor or a priest being present. In his last minutes, hovering between life and death, he remembered perhaps our last conversation—our warnings, our dreams and our hopes. And, in a most mysterious manner, I seemed to have picked up one of his sighs. . . .

CHAPTER XXI

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA

Dollfuss died as a hero, fighting for Europe against Hitler. Though he was not strong physically, he had taken up the fight fearlessly and magnanimously, fully conscious of the personal danger which this entailed. Without his resistance, Austria would probably have succumbed to Hitler much earlier, and the history of the world might well have taken a different course.

The Nazi insurrection for which the assassination of Dollfuss was to be the signal collapsed in the face of popular indignation: everyone sincerely mourned the death of Austria's Chancellor. The country's independence might nevertheless have ended there and then, had it not been for Mussolini's timely despatch of troops to the Brenner Pass. The appearance of these troops prevented Hilter from sending aid to the hard-pressed Austrian Nazis.

As Federal Chancellor and also as honorary president of our Austrian Committee, Dollfuss was succeeded by Kurt von Schuschnigg, who proved a worthy successor in every respect.

But the assault of the Third Reich against Austria continued relentlessly and without abatement. German machinations were now conducted by Hitler's new Ambassador, Herr von Papen, with whom I naturally refused to have further dealings. We had many contacts, on the other hand, with the French Minister, Gabriel Puaux, as well as with the Ministers of the United Kingdom, of Italy, of the United States, of Czechoslovakia and of other democratic countries.

and the Burgtheater challenged Reinhardt's Viennese productions for the most exquisite presentation of German drama. Shortly before the Anschluss, Ida Roland achieved in the Burgtheater two of the greatest triumphs of her life, playing first the part of Cleopatra, then that of Lady Macbeth.

We were on friendly terms with an elderly painter who was a most eccentric person. His eccentricity accounted for his being at one and the same time an enthusiastic follower of my philosophical ideals, an admirer of Ida Roland, and a staunch supporter of the Nazi Party. He was kind enough to tell me that his group had decided to kill me as soon as the Nazi insurrection broke out—and he promised to warn me of this in time.

Whenever members of the Government called on us the police searched the building beforehand to guard against the possibility of surprise attacks. One day a seemingly harmless neighbour of ours died. On examining his property the police discovered a hidden store of bombs.

Notwithstanding all the precautions taken by the police, we were nearly blown sky-high one day. Schuschnigg was to dine with us in the evening and, in the course of the afternoon, a girl came into the kitchen with a parcel for Joseph, our chauffeur-valet. Only after the 'Anschluss' did Joseph disclose to one of our servants that this parcel contained a time-bomb. He was to have planted this bomb in our drawing-room, setting the time fuse so that it would explode shortly after dinner. Fortunately for us, his nerves proved too weak for the task and he threw the bomb into the nearby Danube canal. A few days later we dismissed him on account of a minor theft, little suspecting that he was a secret member of the Nazi party.

In all these years of our struggle against Germany, the central

office of the movement was very active. In 1935 we organized the fourth Congress of Pan-Europe. This again took place in the Assembly Hall of the Austrian Parliament, the Federal Chancellor presiding. It turned out to be an important international demonstration against National Socialism. A year later, in May 1936, we organized the first Pan-European Farmers' Congress. One of the most active sponsors of this Congress was the secretary-general of the Farmers' Unions, Leopold Figl, who was later to become Austria's first post-war Chancellor. The Czech delegation was led by Dr. Ladislaus Feierabend, who worked closely with Hodža and was at the time director-general of the National Wheat Monopoly. Feierabend was later to become Finance Minister of the Czech Government in London. In 1937 we organized the first European Educational Congress under the honorary presidency of Dr. Pernter, the Austrian Minister of Education. The Western countries were well represented at this Congress, and the discussion centred on the historical, geographical and literary aspects of European education.

This work for the maintenance of Western culture brought us into contact with one of the finest and noblest characters I have met in my life, Father Friedrich Muckermann.

Father Muckermann was a Jesuit. For many years he lived in Münster, where he edited a literary magazine, Der Gral. In appearance he was typically Westphalian: large and well-proportioned, with a high forehead indicating a contemplative mind. His eyes and mouth betrayed signs of deep melancholy. His dynamic personality made him a German fighter of the type of Martin Luther, driven by a militant instinct, yet held in check by his severe religious discipline. Though Bolshevism was his principal target, he was no less opposed to the Nazi ideology. With the personal assistance of the Queen of Holland he was able to escape from Germany and subsequently found asylum in Rome. But when Austria began to wage her life-and-death struggle against the Third Reich, Muckermann asked to be sent to Vienna so that he could play a leading part in the moral resistance of the Catholic Church there to the pagan and

barbaric ideology of the Nazi Party. He went from church to church preaching resistance. Wherever he went he was persecuted and threatened. Many attempts were made on his life, but fortunately none succeeded. By his outstanding eloquence he was able to rally to his cause not only Catholics but also Jews and Protestants. His uncompromising search for truth occasionally proved embarrassing to the Government, but there could be no doubt that his burning faith became one of the Government's most effective weapons against the Nazi threat. In these fateful days Muckermann and I became close friends, and I am often reminded now of our intimate collaboration in these days as one of the few bright memories in that tragic period.

Whilst the Austrian Government resisted German pressure with great determination, the international situation became more desperate every year. In May 1935 Mussolini seized the initiative in Abyssinia. Then came the League's sanctions, followed by the breach between Rome and the Western powers. This dilemma suited Hitler's book to perfection. In March 1936 he took advantage of it by occupying the demilitarized left bank of the Rhine. From that moment onward Austria's position became virtually hopeless, since even if they had wanted to, the Western powers would have found it practically impossible to come to her aid in the event of German invasion.

In April 1936 I asked Flandin, then French Foreign Minister, how France would react to a German invasion of Austria. He replied that France's reaction would depend on the attitude of Britain, since France could on no account risk a war against Germany without knowing that her flank and rear were covered by Britain. I went to London the following day—only to discover that the British Government was not prepared to take military steps in defence of Austria.

of Mussolini with France could be achieved at the end of the Abyssinian campaign.

To see what could be done in this respect, I again went to Rome on 9th May 1936, two days after Mussolini's victory over the Negus. I found the Duce in splendid form. He greeted me very cordially. Ciano attended the meeting, and we came at once to speak of the political situation: 'Hitler is about to make himself master of Europe,' I said; 'there is only one way of stopping him, and that is by forging a close alliance between Italy and France.' Mussolini appeared to be familiar with this train of thought. He had never really thought in terms of Pan-Europe. His dream was of a pan-Latin federation to hold the scales against the parts of Europe dominated by the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Slavs. The nucleus of such a federation would consist of a close Franco-Italian alliance which would have the further advantage of opening North Africa to Italian colonization. The Latin federation could, of course, be extended to include Spain and Portugal and could also have close relations with Latin America. After we had talked for a whole hour Mussolini walked with me across his huge study and, as he saw me off at the door, promised to think the matter over. Two days later we met again.

This time Mussolini opened the conversation by saying: 'Your policy is, as it were, geometrical. It has the merit of perfect logic, but is in my opinion quite impracticable.' He opened the drawer of his desk and took out a newspaper. 'Just read how in today's Populaire Léon Blum regrets that the League of Nations did not succeed in strangling me.' He emphazised this remark by putting his hand to his throat. 'How can I possibly deal on terms of confidence with such a man?' Blum had just then emerged victorious from the French elections and had been charged with the task of forming a new Government. I found it difficult to contradict Mussolini when he said that the 'Front Populaire' Government would show little disposition to make an alliance with him. 'What is more,' he observed, 'Britain will never tolerate an alliance between France and Italy,'

Before we parted he said that I should certainly try to have a word with the new leaders of France. He made it a condition of a possible alliance that it should be confined to France and Italy and not include Britain and Yugoslavia. Its terms of reference should extend beyond mere political understanding: there should be close collaboration on colonial and economic as well as on military affairs.

I left for Paris without much hope of achieving what I really wanted. I discussed Mussolini's proposals with the new Vice-Premier, Camille Chautemps and with Alexis Léger. I soon recognized the utter futility of initiating successful negotiation between a Fascist and a firmly anti-Fascist Government. Mussolini was right; a Franco-Italian union was a necessity, but the conditions for its achievement did not exist.

Early in 1938 we paid a visit to London. Now that Hitler and Mussolini had finally joined forces, Europe's only hope lay in a close alliance between Paris and London. During our stay in London we heard a piece of news on the wireless which we found hard to believe: Schuschnigg was reported to have gone to Berchtesgaden and to have agreed to the admission of Nazi representatives into the Austrian Government.

On our way home we stopped for a few days in Switzerland

and arranged for our daughter, Erica, to remain in Zurich because of our premonition that the situation in Vienna might deteriorate rapidly.

Returning to Vienna at the beginning of March, we found the city completely transformed. Hitler's threats to Schuschnigg had provoked a strong patriotic reaction. For a moment it looked as if the old hatchet between Social Democrats and Christian Socialists had been buried. The workers of Vienna were evidently ready to fight for Austria's independence under the leadership of Chancellor Schuschnigg. Roused by this patriotic fervour, Schuschnigg announced that a plebiscite would be held on Sunday 13th March on the question of Austrian independence. He was convinced that seventy to eighty per cent of the population would cast their votes firmly against annexation to the Third Reich.

As this day of much hoped-for triumph over National Socialism approached, Vienna began to assume a festive air. The plebiscite was regarded as an electoral battle against Hitler and was expected to end in a clear victory for Austria.

On the morning of Friday 11th March, while the streets resounded with patriotic songs and demonstrations, Frau Alwine Dollfuss came to see us. An intelligent and hard-working woman, she had been her husband's closest collaborator and had shared every one of his interests, particularly that in European understanding. She had just returned from Rome, where she made a desperate effort to save the independence of Austria, appealing personally to Mussolini on the strength of his friendship for her late husband. She remembered that dreadful day in July when Mussolini, accompanied by his wife, had come to her Riccione hotel room to bring the news of her husband's assassination; she also remembered that in his death throes her husband had commended her two small children to Mussolini's protection.

The Duce had received her with his usual cordiality. But he carefully avoided all political issues and confined himself to the advice that she and her children should seek safety in Switzerland.

We were still talking to Frau Dollfuss when a new visitor was announced: the Nazi painter. His face was deadly pale. While he made a deep bow to the two ladies, Idel whispered into my ear: 'Here is the bird of ill omen . . .' I took him next door, where he told me that Hitler would not tolerate the plebiscite and that a decision about the fate of Austria was pending that very day.

Suddenly, in the early afternoon, an ominous silence broke over the city. The festivities came to an abrupt end. People disappeared rapidly from the streets. It was uncannily like a lull before a great storm. In the space of a few hours the mood of the public had changed completely and rumours spread like wildfire through the city. We spotted the first lorries with swastika flags. Nobody knew what the next hours held in store: was it war? or revolution? or annexation?

That evening we had guests for dinner. They had hardly arrived when the telephone rang: Schuschnigg had resigned, a Nazi Cabinet had been formed, the German army had begun to occupy Austria. I rang the Czech Legation and obtained confirmation of this news. We could not afford to waste a minute; any moment the Gestapo might appear on our doorstep. We asked our guests to leave at once. Then, taking Pai-Chouan, our white pekinese, we left home and made our way to the Czech Legation where we intended to spend the night before crossing the frontier the next morning in the Minister's car. But within a few minutes we were compelled to abandon this plan. A vast crowd, carrying swastika flags, barred our way, screaming, cheering and singing. There was nothing for it but to turn round. The question was where to go now? For to return home would have been sheer suicide.

A new difficulty arose: neither Idel nor I knew how to drive a car, and our Austrian driver had completely disappeared. Minister Jäger placed his own driver at our disposal. Idel rang up home: our loyal housekeeper, Berta, was to hand over our car to the Minister's driver, then come over to the legation herself, having packed one trunk for the two of us; she was also to bring Sascha, our big Russian sheep-dog. Idel then telephoned Czech friends and asked them to meet us later that night at the frontier near Bratislava. It was about eleven o'clock when we finally got under way.

The Ringstrasse appeared to be blocked. There was an unending parade of Nazi sympathizers; flags were carried high through the streets and the people cheered and sang. Luckily our car had a Swiss number plate. Shouts of 'Heil Hitler!' gave way here and there to shouts of 'Heil Schweiz!' and, albeit with some difficulty, we slowly made our way through the vast crowds. Presently a new difficulty arose; we discovered that the Minister's driver, who was quite unprepared for this journey, had not taken his passport. We had therefore to call at his flat before leaving town. He drove us down a cul-de-sac, jumped out of the car and disappeared into the dark. Presently we were surrounded by a dozen young Nazis with swastika arm-bands, brandishing steel bars. For a moment we feared the worst; there was a deadly silence. Then one of the Nazis walked up to the car and stroked the dogs. Luckily he mistook us for Swiss diplomats. The minutes which followed seemed like hours; at last our chauffeur reappeared and we drove out to the open road.

It was past midnight and the road from Vienna to Pressburg was practically empty. Only one solitary motor-cycle with a vast swastika flag raced past us. We hardly spoke a word. In my hand I held an automatic pistol, since we had to be ready for a hold-up at almost any moment. At last we reached the frontier. To our great surprise, the old Austrian frontier guards were still at their posts. There was as yet no sign of the Third Reich.

During the Customs formalities we observed a large black car standing by the side of the road. As we were about to drive off, the chauffeur of the other car came over to say that the lady in his car wanted to have a word with us. It turned out to be Alwine Dollfuss who, together with her two small children, was waiting for an immigration permit from the Czech Government. Puaux, the French Minister had placed his car at her disposal to ensure her safe passage as far as the frontier.

Half an hour later we pulled up at the only modern hotel in Bratislava, the Carlton. All available accommodation was occupied by refugees from Austria. As soon as we had arrived we ran into two ex-Ministers who had evidently beaten us to it. No one had any desire to sleep, and we remained with Frau Dollfuss until the early hours of the morning, discussing the future of Austria and of Europe.

From Zagreb we drove via Ljubliana to the Italian frontier. There, we were met by a senior Italian officer who welcomed us in the name of his Government. He introduced four young Fascists who had been specially detailed to escort our cars through Italy as a kind of personal bodyguard. We drove through the towns of Trieste and of Sirmione, along the shores of Lake Garda, until we reached Chiasso. As we passed the frontier into Switzerland and bade farewell to our blackshirted escorts, we felt relieved at having reached at last a country where we could dispense with the services of a personal body-guard. On arrival in Switzerland we learned of the tragic

fate of many of our friends in Vienna. Our central office in the Imperial Palace had been occupied immediately: the Nazi Chancellor, Seyss-Inquart, had set up his personal residence there. One of his first actions had been to destroy forty-thousand volumes published by the Pan-Europe Editions as well as all our archives and correspondence. Our flat had been searched and subsequently sealed by the Gestapo.

The name of Austria disappeared from the map of Europe. For the time being, Hitler's position in Germany and in Europe seemed impregnable. Pan-Europe, which had made gradual progress towards reality for fifteen years, now relapsed once more into the realm of dreams.

CHAPTER XXII

MEETING CHURCHILL

AFTER our flight from Vienna and the destruction of our central office the movement remained inactive for some months. It did not come to life again until our closest collaborators had succeeded in escaping from Austria.

We spent these months in Gstaad, where I tried to put down my thoughts on the present world situation in a new book entitled Europe Must Unite. This book called for the unification of Europe around a Paris-London axis. It was the first time Britain had been given a prominent position in the Pan-European movement; for France was now too weak to withstand the combined pressure of Berlin, Rome and Madrid. Our only hope of salvation lay in a close working alliance between Paris and London. Around this alliance of the two great democratic powers there might in time grow up a combination of all states threatened by Hitler, with the object of averting war, or, if this proved impossible, of winning it.

At this moment, when our movement was at its lowest ebb, one great hope emerged on the political horizon: that section of British public opinion which was represented by Winston Churchill. The isolationist mood represented by Neville Chamberlain was slowly but surely petering out. A strong reaction was setting in against the policy of appeasement and there grew up a kind of British resistance movement whose political attitude towards the Third Reich did not differ greatly from the programme of the Pan-European movement on the Continent.

Winston Churchill was the unchallenged leader of this reaction which was tied to no particular party. He pressed for rearmament, for the introduction of compulsory military service and for a network of European alliances to counteract the expansionist drive of the Third Reich.

I had first met Churchill in February 1938, when Austria was in her death throes. He had invited me to spend an after-

noon at his country home at Chartwell in Kent. I found him very much as I had imagined him: a genial aristocrat of tremendous intellectual grasp. I was reminded of the famous words of Nietzsche: 'This is how I like man to be: honest towards himself and towards his friends; courageous in the face of the enemy; magnanimous in his treatment of the vanquished and at all times courteous.'

Churchill is neither a typical Englishman nor a typical product of our age. Like all outstanding personalities of history, he cannot easily be identified with any particular age or nation. Though he is far ahead of his countrymen in his appreciation of the need for European understanding, he is at the same time a leading advocate of Anglo-American cooperation. In a strange way, he has more in common with the characters of the British Renaissance in the days of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth than with his own contemporaries. In talking to him one is struck by the fact that he would have been just as dominant a personality as he is now had he been born two thousand years earlier as a patrician of ancient Rome.

One of Churchill's outstanding features is his capacity for enjoying life: there is nothing about him of the ascetic, of the saint or of the hypocrite. Goethe, if he were alive, would have said of him that he lived 'resolutely'. In him the stout heart of a hero is joined to the plastic imagination of an artist.

I was gratified to feel that Churchill had remained faithful to the ideal of Pan-Europe, though for years he had ceased to write and speak about it. For the moment all his thoughts and activities were concentrated on preparing his country for the decisive battle against Hitler; for he now considered this quite inevitable.

Towards evening I said that I ought to be getting back to London, but Churchill asked me to stay and spend the evening with him. He conducted me to a guest room and prepared a hot bath for me. He suggested that, after taking my bath, I should follow his example and rest in bed for an hour. When we sat down to dinner an hour and a half later, Churchill looked years younger. Before we parted he gave me a copy of his last

book Great Contemporaries which reveals in a wonderful way the generosity of his character. No one could have written so generously about his former adversary, Kaiser Wilhelm. The last thing we then expected was that, some three weeks later, the Gestapo would find this book—with Churchill's inscription—on my desk in Vienna and confiscate it. When months later I informed him of this, he immediately despatched a duplicate to Gstaad.

In June the Royal Institute of International Affairs invited me to deliver a lecture on the Sudeten crisis. During our stay in London I also worked for Czechoslovak independence in close collaboration with Jan Masaryk, Czech Minister in London, who was as good a European as his famous father.

Churchill's influence had grown considerably in recent months. The annexation of Austria and the offensive against Prague had opened the eyes of many of his countrymen. Among Churchill's closest collaborators in his anti-appeasement policy was Leo Amery who used his considerable political influence in favour of the Pan-European movement. At a luncheon given in Amery's house I also had another meeting with Churchill and with Lord Lothian. During the war the latter became one of the staunchest protagonists of the Pan-European project.

Towards the end of September the European crisis came to a head with the Munich Conference. It seemed that the Continent was now lying obediently at Hitler's feet.

Five weeks later we again travelled to London—for the third time in 1938. Churchill and his friends had made considerable headway. Their ranks had been joined by Alfred Duff Cooper (now Lord Norwich), who had resigned from being First Lord of the Admiralty in protest against the abject Munich surrender. This courageous act became a signal for the change from Chamberlain's policies to those of Churchill. In his book The Second World War¹ Duff Cooper has this to say about our meetings:

^<sup>1 Duff Cooper, The Second World War, Jonathan Cape, London.

had known then that he was working on plans for the federation of European nations which was known as the Pan-Europe Movement, and that he had gained the support of no less a person than Aristide Briand, who was then at the height of his power. I had vaguely classed this movement in my mind with the various idealistic and impractical schemes for ensuring international peace, all of which seemed to be now consigned to limbo as a result of the advent and the repeated success of power politicians. Almost my first words, therefore, at our second meetings were to suggest that I supposed he retained little hope now of carrying out his scheme for a united Europe. 'On the contrary,' he replied quietly, 'Pan-Europe was never so certain as it is today. Europe will certainly be united in a near future. The only question now is whether the union is brought about by force or whether it comes about by agreement and good will under the moral leadership of England and France. All the smaller nations would prefer the latter solution, which would allow them to retain their freedom and independence, but since Munich they have begun to doubt whether England and France have the power or the will to protect them and therefore they are inclined to make the best bargain they can with Germany before it is too late.' I was much impressed by the views he expressed, by his grasp of the European situation and by the practical character of his programme. . . .

Ernest Mercier, an outstanding French industrialist, had stepped into Loucheur's shoes. With him, Louis Marlio was the chief supporter of our French Economic Committee. Among the members of that committee were also two future Ministers: René Mayer and Raoul Dautry. After a short interval, our journal Pan-Europe made its reappearance; it was now called European Letters and was published in German, French and English.

new German-Czech crisis was in the offing. We immediately left for Paris so as not to be cut off from home by a sudden invasion.

In Paris the resistance against Hitler was built up around two men; Paul Reynaud and Georges Mandel. My relations with both these men were excellent and they fully shared my views on Pan-Europe. So did Gaston Palewski, Paul Reynaud's chief assistant, who was later to play a leading role as principal adviser to General de Gaulle.

Through the annexation of Czechoslovakia, my wife and I became virtually stateless. Belgium and Holland insisted on German visas for holders of Czech passports. We therefore applied for French nationality. Among the members of the French Government who assisted us in this respect were Prime Minister Daladier, Foreign Minister Reynaud and Minister of the Interior Mandel. The normal naturalization procedure was accelerated on account of 'extraordinary services rendered to France' and we received the necessary papers within a few months.

The 17th May 1939 was an anniversary for Pan-Europe: nine years ago to the day our Congress had been formally opened in Berlin and Briand's memorandum broadcast to the world. To commemorate these events we organized a big meeting in Paris. It was to be held in the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Élysées.

situation. In a brilliant speech, he gave the reasons why Europe must unite around a closely knit Anglo-French alliance.

Cabinet Ministers, Ambassadors and all that sector of Paris society which had even the mildest political pretensions filled the large auditorium to the last available seat. My own turn to speak came last—after Duff Cooper. I only touched briefly on political matters, then concentrated on the moral aspect of the problem. I took the view that Europe could never hope to overcome its political or economic crises until there was a complete moral regeneration.

This Pan-European meeting was a resounding success both with the audience which attended and with the wider public reached by the Paris newspapers. The 'Anschluss', which at first threatened to destroy our movement altogether, proved in fact to have been the signal for a new advance. It seemed as if Hitler's threats had been more effective in forging European solidarity than all Briand's appeals.

At the beginning of June 1939 we were back in London. The Royal Institute of International Affairs had invited me to deliver another lecture—this time about Pan-Europe—under Duff Cooper's chairmanship. We had an opportunity of seeing for ourselves the extent to which public opinion in Britain had swung round in recent months. Only one more step was needed from this negative programme of resistance to a more positive programme of Pan-Europe. Everyone in Britain seemed ready to take this step under Churchill's leadership. For only a few days earlier Churchill had published an article in the News of the World which argued the case for Pan-Europe in strong terms. During my visit I called on him at his London home—our last meeting before the war.

We attended a very interesting luncheon given by Alfred Duff Cooper and his wife, who—as Lady Diana Manners—had achieved fame on the stage ever since she played the Madonna in Max Reinhardt's production of the Miracle by Vollmoeller. At this luncheon we met Anthony Eden and Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party, with their wives. We

^<sup>1 Duff Cooper, The Second World War.

had an extensive discussion about the programme of our movement and found that we agreed on all points.

On 2nd June the British Pan-European Committee had its inaugural meeting in a room at the House of Commons. Amery was in the chair and proposed Duff Cooper as our first active chairman. Victor Cazalet, a twentieth-century idealist who, had he lived in the Middle Ages, would doubtless have been a crusader, took charge of the secretariat. During the war he was appointed liaison officer to Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish Government in exile; together with Sikorski, he met his death in a flying accident near Gibraltar.

A number of other M.P.s of all three parties took part in this inaugural meeting, among them Sir Edward Grigg, Sir Arthur Salter, formerly head of the economic department of the League, Harold Nicholson, the famous writer, Somerset de Chair, who during the war was to make a stirring speech in the House for Pan-Europe, Haden Guest and Sir Geoffrey Mander. This parliamentary Pan-European committee decided to hold a mass rally in the Albert Hall that autumn. They asked me to be the principal speaker at the rally.

A few days later the Committee was given national status by the inclusion of several eminent non-parliamentary figures, such as Professor Gilbert Murray, Stephen King-Hall and Sir Walter Layton.

Our campaign in Britain was facilitated considerably by the appearance of my two latest books. One was entitled The Totalitarian State Against Man, the other Europe must Unite. Both had been admirably translated by Sir Andrew McFadyean. The preface for the book on totalitarianism had been written by Wickham Steed, that for the book on Pan-Europe by Amery. Both were well received by the press and by public opinion.

CHAPTER XXIII

WAR AND FLIGHT

At the end of August we visited the Lucerne music festival under the direction of Arturo Toscanini. Not even the magic of these outstanding concerts was able to dispel the depression into which we had all sunk as a result of the mounting danger of war. Ribbentrop and Molotov had just reached agreement on co-operation between Berlin and Moscow. The crossing of the Polish frontier by German troops was awaited hourly. Our thoughts wandered back to the Bayreuth Festival of 1914—the year when Europe was first precipitated into world war. We seemed to have arrived at a similar turning-point—at the end of twenty-five years of war, war's aftermath, economic crisis and threats of new war.

On our way back to Gstaad we stopped at Berne to collect our new passports from the French Embassy. Two days later Europe was again plunged into war. As soon as the first mobilization was over we travelled to Paris, where we spent the first winter of the war.

The partition of Poland between Hitler and Stalin and the subsequent Russian attack on Finland helped to destroy such good will as Russia still possessed in the West. In the last few years sympathy for Russia's point of view had constantly militated against the success of our movement. Now the ideological alignment had at last become crystal clear: on one side the dictators, red as well as brown; on the other, the twin democracies of the West.

This development was bound to result, as indeed it did, in the collapse of the League of Nations. This event had a profound influence on the war aims of the Allies. For Russia's attitude, coupled with the growing isolationist mood in the United States, made a revival of the League unthinkable. On the other hand, there was an obligation on the part of the Western allies to proclaim a positive post-war programme,

to which they would adhere after Hitler's defeat. This programme could only be Pan-Europe.

A few days after the outbreak of war I published the following declaration on Pan-European peace-aims:

APPEAL TO ALL EUROPEANS!

The unspeakable sacrifices of this cruel war demand the establishment of a lasting peace which shall render new wars amongst Europeans impossible.

After the collapse of the world-wide League of Nations, of unrestrained nationalism and of Bolshevist internationalism, there remains but a single solution to ensure a long period of peace, prosperity and liberty: the UNITED STATES OF EUROPE.

This federation must be organized to secure the following fundamental objects:

• 2. An effective guarantee to all the federated states of their independence, integrity, security and equality, and of the maintenance of their national character.
• 3. An obligation on all European states, regardless of differences in their constitutions, to respect the rights of human personality and the equality of their citizens belonging to ethnic or religious minorities.
• 5. The establishment of a European institution designed to help state members of the federation to meet their monetary and financial difficulties.
• The progressive suppression of inter-European economic restrictions, which are wrecking and ruining the European market.
• 8. The systematic organization of collaboration in colonial matters with a view to fitting colonial raw-materials and markets into the economic complex of Europe.
• The maintenance of and respect for the political, economic and cultural links uniting various states of Europe with other parts of the world.

In this tragic and decisive moment of human history we appeal

to all of you:

Struggle for a European Federation! Europeans, save Europe!

In France Premier Daladier and Foreign Minister Reynaud were the two national spokesmen for a post-war United Europe. An unofficial poll I organized among parliamentarians produced a majority for European federation in the Senate, and a strong minority in the Chamber.

In Britain all three parties keenly supported the idea of Pan-Europe and many public meetings were held on its behalf. Among the statesmen who openly sided with it were not only Churchill and Chamberlain, but also Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour opposition, who coined the phrase: 'Europe must unite or perish.'

In Paris we were also in touch with leaders of the Austrian emigré movement. In co-operation with them we tried to form a government in exile which would enable Austria to claim a place at the side of the victors at the eventual peace conference. Unfortunately party differences proved too great.

Father Muckermann also lived in Paris in those days. He

often broadcast to Germany. But, under German pressure, his superiors soon ordered him to suspend these broadcasts. Muckermann, however, found a way round this dilemma: he suspended his broadcasts, but henceforth recorded his talks on gramophone records—leaving it to the French Ministry of Information to do what they liked with them!

On 9th May 1940 we travelled to Geneva to help set up the new central office of our movement in the Palais Wilson. Next morning we received news of the German assault on the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. That same day Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain. Both Duff Cooper and Amery joined his Cabinet. A few days later the famous Maginot Line was pierced. On Pan-Europe-Day, 17th May, I went back to Paris. Having obtained the consent of the Quai d'Orsay, I wrote a last appeal to Mussolini, asking him in this fateful hour to co-operate in saving our cultural heritage rather than to destroy the Latin world in alliance with Hitler's Germany. On 28th May, the day on which the Belgian armies surrendered. I returned to Geneva.

A German attack on Switzerland was awaited hourly. Everything depended on whether the so-called Weygand Line could be consolidated on the River Somme. If that proved possible, Hitler was expected to make his next push through western Switzerland in the direction of Lyon so as to roll up the flank of the French armies defending Paris.

We spent these exciting days of June 1940 shuttling back and forth between Gstaad, Geneva and Berne. We had made no plans to leave Switzerland, since we believed firmly in an eventual Allied victory.

Between the glorious evacuation of Dunkirk and Hitler's subsequent entry into Paris, I composed my last European Letter addressed to the members of our movement. It was dated 15th June:

The battle of Flanders was the first round in the decisive battle for the West. It has produced a victory for German arms: the occupation of the Flanders coast.

The second round has now been rung in: it is the battle for Paris. But the fate of Europe will be decided only by the outcome of the last round—wherever that may be fought. What matters is not so much the number of victories won nor the extent of territory occupied nor even the number of prisoners taken, but the course of the final battle, the battle which will end in the ultimate collapse and capitulation of the enemy.

Those of us who lived through the First World War know from their own experience how fortunes change in war and how great is the difference between a victorious battle and a victorious war. We remember the German conquests of Liége and Brussels, of Lille and Antwerp, of Belgrad and Nish, of Warsaw and Bucharest, of Riga and Kiev. We remember too the arrival of German troops in Belgium and Northern France, in Serbia and Roumania, in Montenegro and Albania, in Western Russia and Northern Italy. We remember how the Turks and the Bulgars joined the German cause, how the Czarist Empire and armies collapsed, how peace was negotiated at Brest-Litovsk and how German armies occupied the fertile plains of Roumania and the Ukraine. But we remember at the same time how this seemingly unending chain of triumphs ended: in the unprecedented collapse of the Central Powers—only a few months after their final offensive in France.

These events of the First World War recall the history of Napoleon, that chronicle of fifteen years of victory from Egypt to Spain and from Italy to Russia, that unrivalled triumphal march across Europe which reached its climax—and its bitter end—at Moscow. We are reminded of Goethe's words, written as the guns thundered away at the Battle of Leipzig: 'Every man, whoever he may be, must in the end encounter his last stroke of fortune and his last day on earth.'

The fate of Napoleon's campaign against the British resembles in many respects that of Hannibal's against the Romans. Hannibal's war, too, opened with victories and triumphs for Carthaginian arms. But Hannibal's victory at Cannae was no more than a stage on the road to his ultimate defeat at Zama, which sounded the death-knell of Carthaginian supremacy.

What distinguishes the present war from most previous wars is that today we are witnessing not so much a battle between equally matched great powers as one where two continental states are aligned against two vast empires which, though they have their nerve-centres in Europe, are in most respects immune from European aggression. In his great speech in the House of Commons, Churchill laid special stress on this point by saying that, even if the British Isles were to be occupied and starved, that would prove not to be decisive in the end, since the Empire would continue the war to the bitter end from its unassailable bases overseas. France's position is in many respects similar to that of Britain. Germany, on the other hand, has no empire beyond the frontiers of her European state, whilst in the case of Italy, such colonies as she possesses in Africa are a burden rather than a source of strength to the motherland. This means that Germany and Italy fight with their backs to the wall, whilst the Western Allies can fall back on the inexhaustible and strategically safe resources of their overseas possessions. Together with American help, these should enable them to continue the war indefinitely through many changes of fortunes—provided only that there is no break in morale; in other words, while they hold unflinchingly to their resolve never to rebel, the Western Allies are practically invincible.

This war will therefore be decided not only by arms, but also by the state of civilian morale. If both sides display over a period of time the same degree of resolution, then the outcome of the war cannot be in doubt.

There seemed to be no end to the chain of bad news: penetration of the Weygand Line—flight of the Government from Paris—declaration of war by Mussolini—fall of Paris— Reynaud's last appeal to Roosevelt.

While these evil tidings poured in on all sides, there came also one piece of heartening news: just before the final collapse of the French armies, Churchill decided to make a generous Pan-European gesture on behalf of his Government.

It is not without interest in these days to reread the almost forgotten text of the proposal which the British War Cabinet then made to their French friends:

THE DECLARATION OF FRANCO-BRITISH UNION

At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic

make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom, against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves.

The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union.

The constitution of the Union will provide for joint organs of defence, foreign, financial and economic policies.

During the war there shall be a single War Cabinet, and all the forces of Britain and France, whether on land, sea, or in the air, will be placed under its direction. It will govern from wherever it best can. The two Parliaments will be formally associated.

The Union will concentrate its whole energy against the power of the enemy no matter where the battle may be.

And thus we shall conquer.

Premier Reynaud and a number of his Ministers, among them de Gaulle, Mandel, Yvon Delbos and Raoul Dautry, were in favour of accepting this offer. They were defeated, however, by a small Cabinet majority, led by Pétain and Chautemps. Had they succeeded, 16th June would have become the anniversary of United Europe. For the exiled Governments of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Norway would certainly have acceded to an Anglo-French Union. A single European Nation would have emerged at the end of the war, with one Cabinet, one army, one economy and one Parliament. The neutral and defeated nations would subsequently have joined this Union and the result of the Second World War would have been a Europe united in the political as well as in the economic field.

Thus it came about that in June 1940 the second wave of the Pan-European movement reached both its climax and its end. Once the British offer had been turned down by the French Cabinet, Paul Reynaud's Government was doomed and the way was open for the armistice negotiations subsequently conducted by his successor, Pétain. On 17th June Hitler's motorized columns reached a point just across the frontier from Vallorbe—twenty miles north of Geneva. Italy had entered the war. We expected the Germans to march south into Savoy and cut off Switzerland from contact with the West.

We could, of course, have stayed in Gstaad until the war was over. True, Switzerland was surrounded. But in a way the country was less directly threatened than before, since Hitler's advance round Swiss territory meant that the country had lost its importance to him as a transit route. But to remain in Switzerland would have meant the end of my political activities. Even in the first winter of the war, I had to submit my European Letters to Swiss military censorship. Now Switzerland was economically at the mercy of Hitler's Germany; she could hardly afford the luxury of harbouring a political movement led by a foreigner of French nationality and directed against the Third Reich.

In the morning of 17th June we received our visas to enter Spain and Portugal. That same afternoon an official of the League provided us with the necessary petrol for the journey. On arrival in Lisbon, we intended to take a plane for London and there to work with Churchill and the exiled Governments on post-war plans for a United Europe.

At four o'clock in the afternoon a special newspaper edition was sold in the streets announcing the French request for an armistice. Not a minute was to be lost. The French authorities might at any moment prohibit the departure of men of military age.

We quickly took leave of our friends and of Switzerland—and motored towards an unknown future. We had no idea whether it would be possible to travel across France at all. Nor did we know what Franco would do next: for all we knew,

he might follow Mussolini's example and declare war at once. We were also ignorant of the actual position of Hitler's armoured columns. We guessed that they would soon be pushing south into the neighbourhood of Geneva. To avoid them we stayed away from the main Lyon road, and drove instead over the mountain-route to Annecy and, from there, to Valence.

Erica was at the wheel; next to her sat a French driver whom we had hired specially for the occasion. During the first hours we were constantly afraid lest we might meet a German armoured column on the road. From Valence onwards there was less to fear. We drove down the Rhône valley as fast as our car would take us. The road was choc-a-bloc with other cars containing refugees from Northern France and Belgium who, like us, fled southward with as much luggage as they could carry. At two o'clock in the morning we reached Nîmes. We looked for a room where we could spend the night, but found that all available accommodation had already been taken up by other refugees. We drove on to Montpellier. Here, too, everything was full to overflowing. It was now three o'clock in the morning and we decided to spend the rest of the night on park benches. In the morning we continued our westward trek, flanking the Mediterranean shore. At four in the afternoon we reached the Spanish frontier at Port Bou. We sent our French driver home and left Erica to drive us across the Pyrenees in the dark, until finally we reached Figueras.

Friends in Barcelona advised us to discuss the problem of despatching our car with the owner of the largest forwarding house in Barcelona, Gabriel Ayxela Vidal—a native of Catalonia. We had hardly entered his office when this complete stranger greeted us with a degree of friendliness that we found quite embarrassing. He offered to look after everything: our car, our accommodation and our onward journey. He invited us

Archangel Gabriel, as we called him, reserved seats for us on the following day's flight to Lisbon and came to the airport himself to see us off. We were hardly airborne when I noticed, to my horror, that the aircraft in which we travelled was not Spanish, but Italian, and that its route was: Rome—Barcelona—Madrid—Lisbon. It occurred to me that we might have been delivered into the enemy's hands. For a whole week now France had been at war with Italy. No armistice had yet been concluded. I was a Frenchman of military age and all three of us had diplomatic visas.

Presently there was a jerk. The plane landed near a coastal town. I thought it was Valencia. But, to my surprise, it turned out to be Barcelona—which we had left only half an hour ago. A few yards away, on the tarmac, were two giant German aircraft, each with a swastika sign. I gathered that they were both due to take off any moment for Stuttgart.

We were told that our own plane had returned because of bad weather over Madrid. We were to wait at the airport until the plane was ready to leave again. We immediately telephoned our friend, the Archangel. A few minutes later he appeared in person at the airport, demanded our luggage and our passports from the airline officials and drove us back into town.

to Portugal and from there perhaps to de Gaulle's movement in London.

Gabriel obtained sleeper reservations for the Madrid train that evening. From Madrid we took the train to Lisbon. Before we arrived there, news reached us that the armistice had been signed. Hitler had won the first round in this new world war.

In those days Lisbon was a funnel, a kind of collecting-centre for refugees from every corner of Europe. Everyone lived in terror lest one fine day Hitler's paratroopers would drop in from the skies and force Portugal into an alliance with the Third Reich. All who passed through, millionaires and beggars, politicians, writers and businessmen had but one thought: to proceed to America as quickly as possible.

Immediately after our arrival we enjoyed the hospitality of Sir Walford Selby, the British Ambassador, and of Lady Selby. Sir Walford's previous post had been in Vienna. He urged us not to go to London but to proceed directly to the United States, where we could make a far more valuable contribution to the common cause.

At first there seemed no prospect of obtaining visas or tickets to the United States. The demand was immense and the Consulate-General had strict instructions to keep the stream of refugees within reasonable limits. Accommodation on American ships was reserved for American citizens whom it was hoped to protect from submarine attacks. The air service was booked up for months ahead. I sent a telegram to Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University. A few days later the Consulate-General received instructions from the State Department, signed by Secretary Cordell Hull personally, to issue our visas immediately. A second telegram to Butler about reservation of berths produced the same effect. Three places were assigned to us on the Yankee Clipper leaving Lisbon on 3rd August.

We spent the greater part of these seemingly unending six weeks not in Lisbon, but in Cintra, a garden-city of legendary beauty, about half an hour's drive north of Lisbon. The city is of Moorish appearance and contains magnificent castles and parks. Lord Byron aptly calls it an earthly paradise.

Early in the morning of 3rd August we boarded the Yankee Clipper. The day was bright and sunny. Slowly we saw Lisbon vanish on the horizon; then the entire coastline, crowned by the Cintra hills—our last asylum in Europe—disappeared from view like Paradise Lost.

Presently we were on our way westward, towards the setting sun. The flight across the Atlantic was indescribably fascinating. The cloud panorama changed constantly, displaying every variety of colour: dark grey, gold, bright red and pure white; first low over the water like a thin veil, then higher up on the horizon like snow-covered peaks; finally, like a vast flock of small sheep grazing on celestial pastures of deepest blue.

This summer's day, which we spent flying to America, turned out to be the longest day of our lives. We flew in the same direction as the sun and thereby gained three full hours of daylight. After a golden sunset, the night was clear and the stars seemed nearer and brighter than ever.

During this flight from Hitler's Europe to the New World, my thoughts dwelt on our past experiences, and it seemed to me as if those eventful years which we spent fighting for peace were like a chapter that had now been temporarily closed by the greatest war in history. It seemed like a fairy-tale that at the very moment when, threatened by those same armies which had already sent us packing twice, we had reached the extreme tip of Europe, a huge bird came across the ocean to carry us away into a free and peaceful land.

Behind us lay a Europe that was defeated, enslaved and morally bankrupt. Yet deep down in my soul there was a firm conviction that one day I would see that continent again. This conviction proved stronger than all the arguments of logic, and I knew that one day Churchill would wrest victory from Hitler's hands; that the day would dawn when Europe, rescued from war and slavery, would rise again, free—and united.

During these hours, as we hovered between heaven and earth, between Europe and America, I thanked God with all my heart for the battle which He had allowed me to wage and for the manner of our escape. I also thanked Him for the fact that in all these years I never felt lonely, thanks to the company of a wife who shared every hope and every disappointment, every care and every plan, every thought and every action. Through the darkest hours of this struggle, her stout heart, her lucid brain, her self-sacrificing character, her courage and her faith never ceased to inspire me with fresh hope and confidence.

It was therefore of the utmost importance to win over American public opinion to the idea of Pan-Europe. Not only public opinion, but also Congress and the administration. From now on, all my thoughts were trained on this single aim. Our flight across the ocean was to be not an end, but a new beginning.

Presently we sighted land: America. Soon we were over the extensive beaches of Long Island. Below us we spotted houses, boats and human beings, all seemingly minute—as if they had stepped straight out of a toy box. A few minutes later we touched down at La Guardia Field—twenty-six hours after leaving Lisbon.

The Atlantic ocean, which we had crossed in a day and a night, seemed to me like a wide river. Far from dividing the two great branches of our common civilization, it seemed to hold them together tightly as if it were a kind of modern Mediterranean. It was, in fact, the cradle of that Atlantic Union which had been born alongside Pan-America and Pan-Europe to mark the arrival of a new and better age.

CHAPTER XXIV

NEW YORK AND ITS WOODS

SHORTLY after our arrival in New York the Luftwaffe launched its first terror raids on London. The gigantic battle which ensued between Goering's seemingly superior bombers and Churchill's valiant little force of fighter planes held all America in its spell and every move was followed with bated breath. It was clear enough on which side American sympathies lay, but only a select few had the faith to believe that Britain would succeed in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Nor was it easy to see how such a feat could be achieved: invasion remained a constant threat and, in the longer run, there was the no less pleasant prospect of starvation by U-boat warfare.

Could Britain one day reconquer the European continent? Frankly, the idea seemed fanciful to most American observers. Hitler was the undisputed master of the Continent and, temporarily at least, he had managed to make his peace with Stalin. It would take the full mobilization of America's mighty war potential to dislodge him from this position and that mobilization had barely begun. America at the time was neither able nor willing to fight a war; who then was likely to push the German armies back out of France?

Small wonder that many Americans found it hard to make a distinction between the theoretical notion of a United Europe and the practical reality of a Europe forcibly held together by Hitler's armies. United Europe without Hitler seemed entirely outside the realm of practical politics.

One fear which haunted me a great deal in those days was that Schacht might persuade Hitler to adopt the Pan-European idea for his own evil purposes. It would not have proved difficult for Hitler in concert with Mussolini, Pétain and Franco to form a kind of High Council of Europe. This Council might have taken immediate and spectacular measures to integrate the European continent, rebuild its economic structure, remove

Question-master: 'Who started the movement for a United States of Europe?'

Voice from the

public: 'Briand.'

Question-master: 'No, it was Count Coudenhove-Kalergi.'

Voice from the

public: 'Is he still alive?'

Question-master: 'The way things look in Europe nowadays, it

would not surprise me in the least if he were

dead.'

The following day I made it my business to establish the identity of the question-master. He turned out to be Otto Tolischus, the well-known editor of the New York Times. Some days later we met. Soon after, Tolischus became one of the keenest American supporters of the Pan-European movement.

We were lucky to find a house in one of the most attractive parts of New York, at the point where the Haarlem river flows into the Hudson. The house was situated on the banks of the Hudson itself, facing the steep slopes of the Palisades on which lay one of the national parks, where all building is prohibited by law. Downstream we could see as far as George Washington Bridge, one of the longest bridges in the world and one of New York's most pleasing architectural features. Notwithstanding its size, the structure of the bridge is so beautifully proportioned that from a distance it resembles a fine filigree ornament. Upstream our view stretched well beyond Jonkers, right up into the wooded hillsides of Westchester County.

Our house stood in an old residential quarter, amidst ancient oak and tulip trees; yet, for all its rustic appearance, it was a mere half hour's journey from the centre of Manhattan. We felt that we were living in the country and, in many odd ways, our house on the Hudson reminded us of our pre-war visits to the North Italian lakes.

Idel soon received many attractive stage offers from New York theatrical agents. But, though her English was fluent, she was reluctant to express her art through a medium with which she was not fully familiar. Her almost fanatical perfectionism caused her to turn down every one of the many offers received. There were film offers from Hollywood, too. Here Idel's decision was made easier by the knowledge that if we were to settle in California I could hardly continue my political activities which required me to spend most of my time in and around New York and Washington. The alternative of taking up separate residences was out of the question. Erica meanwhile continued her training in The New York Botanical Garden and obtained a useful diploma in horticulture.

As for me, I enjoyed for the first time in years the luxury of ample spare time. I was particularly glad to be rid of the burden of editorial responsibility for my periodical which had weighed heavily on me for the past eighteen years and which had prevented me from ever finding complete relaxation.

I now found time to do a lot of reading. I was also able to give thought to a non-political problem which had fascinated me for many years: the introduction of a standard time system for the whole world. I was brought face to face with this problem when, to my surprise, I discovered one day that, whereas my parents had always celebrated my birthday on the 16th November, my birth certificate clearly stated that I was born on the 17th. It was some little time before I found the clue to this mystery: it appears that at the precise moment when I was born, the 16th November was not yet out in Europe, whereas the 17th had already begun in Japan.

This gave me the idea of a standard time system applicable

to every time zone of the world, irrespective of longitude. Such a system must obviously be based on Greenwich Mean Time and the International Date Line. World time could be kept distinct from local time by the simple device of denoting the twenty-four world hours by the twenty-four letters of the Latin alphabet. Thus world day would begin at midnight G.M.T., i.e. when the sun stands right above the International Date Line; world midnight would be known as 'Z' hour. One hour later, when the sun has moved to the Fiji Islands, world time would be 'A' hour; eleven hours later still, when the sun has reached the Greenwich meridian, world time would register noon.

Recent developments in the fields of aviation, radio and other long-distance communications clearly call for the adoption of some such system. Without world time it will become increasingly difficult to work out adequate timetables for transatlantic flights; for, if the flying time from Paris to New York should one day be reduced to five hours, passengers would arrive in New York one hour before leaving Paris!

The applications in the field of radio are equally important. If, for instance, a radio programme begins in Paris at 6.20 p.m. one evening, it is not at present easy for other cities to quote this programme in terms of their own local times. Expressed in terms of world time, however, the concert would simply be announced for R.20 hours and, R.20 hours being a familiar notion everywhere, it would not be difficult for the inhabitants of any individual country to convert it into their local time, i.e. 12.20 p.m. in New York, 9.20 a.m. in San Francisco, etc. The advantages to international shipping and to long-distance communications are equally obvious.

My suggestions for the adoption of a standard world time were published in the Congressional Record, the official bulletin of congressional activities, as well as in the American press which gave it an encouraging reception.

I then constructed a world clock with a triple dial to enable anyone to ascertain at a glance—and without having to perform involved mathematical sums—what time it is locally,

Notwithstanding the unfavourable developments on most war fronts, I began slowly to propagate the Pan-European idea in the United States. I asked Dr. Stephen Duggan, the president of the American Co-operative Committee of the Pan-European Union, which I had helped to form sixteen years earlier, to convene a members' meeting. From the day of that meeting onwards, we used to foregather at more or less regular intervals and we managed to co-opt a number of influential Americans to the Committee.

I took the following line:

Technical progress makes it imperative for Europe to unite. The world war which we are now fighting will be decisive not so much on the general issue of union as such, as on the more specific issue of what ideological character the United States of Europe are to have. On this ideological plane a triangular battle is at present being fought, the three contestants being Fascism, Bolshevism and Democracy.

If Hitler wins, Europe will go Fascist under German leadership.
If Stalin wins, Europe will go Bolshevist under Russian leader-ship.

If Churchill wins, Europe will be a democracy under the leadership of the Anglo-American countries.

The influence of the United States at the forthcoming peace conference will depend largely on the power and efficiency of its

¹ The organ of the World Postal Union in Berne published my world-time scheme (January 1948).

air force. There is therefore no surer way of inducing a settlement of the European problem on democratic lines than by taking immediate steps to expand the size of the U.S. air force.

By means of lectures and articles I began to bring my views to the notice of a wider public. We also took part in various conferences in other cities at which post-war problems were discussed. There were, however, only very few Americans who, at that time, had real faith in the creation of a United States of Europe on democratic lines. One of the men who had this faith was John Foster Dulles whose acquaintance I made shortly after my arrival in New York. As chairman of the Council of Protestant Churches of America, Dulles took his stand firmly on the side of a Pan-European peace programme.

During the tropical heat of the New York summer, we lived in the northern part of the state in the wooded mountains of the Adirondacks. On one side of our chalet was Big Moose Lake, on the other side the virgin forest. This fabulous and immense woodland, with its hundreds of lakes, stretches north right into Canada.

The forest is known for its collection of wild deer. From our windows we would often see stags venturing forth to drink at the edge of the big lake. There were also large blue herons, and beavers displaying their engineering skill by laboriously felling trees across the waterways. Bull-frogs squatted interminably on the water lilies, their big eyes looking uncannily human.

One evening I spotted one of the most timid animals in the forest as it alit on our roof: a flying squirrel. The greatest sensation of Big Moose, however, is the brown bear. To get a glimpse of it, summer guests used to wait for hours by the hotel refuse dump. Then, all of a sudden, as darkness fell, a bear would creep stealthily from the forest and, brushing aside the hot cinders with its powerful claws, help itself to such morsels of kitchen offal as it fancied.

One night, as we switched off the lights, we heard loud whistling noises coming from the direction of the forest. Presently two racoon couples, with nine young ones, turned up at our front door. They soon became friendly and proceeded to eat out of our hands. After a while a lonely porcupine, with an amiable black face not unlike an ape's, joined the group. With an air of disdain, the porcupine squatted on its hind legs and, turning its back on the racoons, gobbled its food, using its paws somewhat ostentatiously like human hands. Its bristly fur gave it the appearance of being draped in a large wrap.

Once Idel tamed a few black-and-yellow striped chipmunks, which look a curious cross between a mouse and a squirrel. She also domesticated a grey squirrel which had fallen from its nest. Franzl—as we called him—became a remarkable domestic animal and performed his acrobatic tricks all over our furniture, until one day he disappeared into the forest never to return again.

During our stay at Big Moose Lake I continued to compose my memoirs as well as various articles on which I was working.

Whenever nowadays we think of our wartime days in America, Big Moose Lake stands out as one of our happiest recollections. Though we have impressive memories of America's technical sensations and of New York's skyscrapers, we feel most homesick of all for that free-and-easy life on the lakes of the virgin forest. There is something quite unforgettable about the short American spring, which sets in so suddenly that the blossoms often shoot forth even before the leaves have time to unfold. Pink azaleas mushroom in wild and picturesque profusion on the banks of the lake, and huge lady's slippers grow all over the forest floor. The splendour of the spring forest in New York State is a sight I shall never forget: its panorama of dogwood flowers, white, pink and ivory, shine on the evergreen foliage like stars in the night. Nor have I seen many sights as impressive as the long American autumn which, with its magic wand, appears to transform the entire forest into one gigantic multi-coloured flowerbed of red and gold.

In the autumn of 1941, as the German armies were fanning out across the Russian steppes and the end of the war seemed

I had many talks with the Chancellor, with Harold O. Voorhis, the Secretary-General, and with Joseph H. Park, the Dean of the Faculty. In the end, I was asked to undertake the direction of a special research seminar on post-war European federation. As my co-director the university appointed Professor Arnold J. Zurcher, one of America's greatest authorities on European constitutional questions. Zurcher soon became not only a close collaborator in all my work but also one of my most intimate friends.

To staff my seminar I had to find eight hundred dollars for each research student. Thanks to the generosity of American and European friends, I soon succeeded in collecting the necessary funds. The seminar started work in February 1942. It was made up of a group of uncommonly gifted workers of many nationalities who, under my direction, soon applied themselves to the task of examining the political, legal and economic implications of European federation. The results of their studies were later published by New York University.

As was to be expected, my seminar soon became the new headquarters of the Pan-European movement. The university supported my work in every conceivable manner. Besides, it was invaluable from the point of view of my future political activities that, instead of operating as an isolated foreigner, I now worked under the aegis of one of America's most respected universities. I had at all times excellent personal relations with my colleagues and with the governing body of the university. Right from the start our collaboration proceeded on very harmonious lines. We understood each other perfectly and I was soon filled with admiration for the remarkably idealistic outlook of American professors who, at a time when everyone seemed engaged on bettering his own financial position, asked

for no more than to be allowed to pursue, on their very modest incomes, the intellectual aims which they had set themselves.

A few days before Pearl Harbour, I received a letter from my sister Olga through Japanese diplomatic channels: it brought me news of my mother's sudden death. Unaffected by the change in the political scene, she had continued to live quietly in Mödling until she died suddenly, as peacefully as she had lived during her last years.

The passing away of my mother and the outbreak of war with Japan became merged in my mind into one single sensation of gloom and grief.

A fanatical campaign of hatred against Japan soon raged throughout America. This campaign was directed not only against the Mikado's faithful subjects but even against American citizens of Japanese or half-Japanese descent. The latter were expelled from the Pacific coast areas and herded into camps in the interior of the country. The rapid conquest of South East Asia by the Japanese armies intensified this mood. I feared that it might make my position at the university untenable and thus reduce me to inactivity for the duration of the war.

Happily my fears did not materialize. Never in any part of the United States did I suffer from this anti-Japanese feeling. On the other hand, America's entry into the war definitely had the effect of increasing American interest in the problems of post-war Europe. The United States had never yet lost a war and the final victory of the Allies was therefore taken for granted. Americans knew that they would have the decisive word at the peace conference. In consequence, they began to take an almost passionate interest in problems of European reconstruction. The moment for setting up our research seminar thus turned out to have been well chosen.

Pan-Europe's first public occasion in New York was to be a memorial service for Aristide Briand. 7th March 1942 being the tenth anniversary of his death, we arranged the service for that day. Somewhat to my surprise I was told that Americans take no notice of days on which people died, only of those on which they were born. Luckily the memorial service had only to be postponed three weeks; for on 28th March Briand would have celebrated his eightieth birthday. In recognition of the fact that during his lifetime he had received an honorary degree from New York University, the great assembly hall was placed at our disposal.

In all ages ideas backed by arms and arms backed by ideas have transformed the world. Tomorrow the great idea of a free and united Europe, backed by the heroic arms of the United Nations, may become the dynamite to blow up the strongholds of Nazism and of its New Disorder. History is the severe and cruel teacher of humanity. What Briand planned for preventing the second world war may well be executed at its end to prevent a third one; but only after our poor generation had to experience for the second time that European peace cannot be maintained without European federation; that God has created our beautiful continent as a single country, while human ambitions have again and again split and dismembered it during centuries; that at last the time has come for our Old World to follow the successful and glorious example of America—the example of federation, of freedom within union.

future peace conference other statesmen will take up his ideas and turn them into the greatest accomplishment of our century. And when all his successful actions, from the Pact of Locarno to the pact of Paris, will have passed away in the stream of time, his unsuccessful attempt at uniting Europe will be the source of his lasting fame.

Then the prophecy of his great countryman Victor Hugo, pronounced as early as 1849, will at last be fulfilled: 'The day will come when bullets and shells will be replaced by votes, by general and popular elections, by the venerable arbitration of the great and sovereign Senate, that will be for Europe what Parliament is now for England, the National Assembly for Germany and the Constitutive Assembly for France. The day will come when these two gigantic countries, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, will face and greet each other across the ocean, exchanging their goods, their commerce, their industry, their art and their genius—to civilize the planet, to fertilize deserts, to improve creation under the eyes of the Creator; and to assure the greatest benefit for all by uniting these two infinite forces:

The Brotherhood of Man and the Power of God!

The American press took up this message in a positive and sympathetic way. This showed how strongly Americans felt for Briand and for France, notwithstanding the low ebb to which Vichy had caused that nation's prestige to sink. It also showed how popular was the conception of a United States of Europe, which now arose on the political horizon as a new and remote possibility.

At the beginning of November 1942 came the decisive turning-point in the war: the victory of the British at El Alamein, the Russian defence of Stalingrad and the successful American landings in North Africa. These events clearly heralded the beginning of the end for the Third Reich. As a result, interest in post-war problems became considerably intensified.

rather than anything else. It seemed to be well realised in these pro-Bolshevik circles that open hostility to the idea of Pan-Europe would only intensify American interest in it. They therefore chose sabotage in preference to more overt methods.

CHAPTER XXV

EUROPEAN CONGRESS IN EXILE

Our New York Congress was due to open formally on 25th March 1943. Four days earlier Winston Churchill made one of his famous broadcasts to the world. I had asked Churchill to lend his moral support to the Congress by sending us a message of good-will. Instead of doing this in the conventional form by letter or cable, Churchill chose a medium which raised his message to a sensational level.

For the first time since he had taken over the leadership of His Majesty's Government, Churchill appealed publicly for a United Europe as one of the principal aims of British post-war policy. In his speech he said:

One can imagine, that under a world institution embodying or representing the United Nations, and some day all nations, there should come into being a Council of Europe and a Council of Asia.

As according to the forecast I am outlining the war against Japan will still be raging, it is upon the creation of the Council of Europe and the settlement of Europe that the first practical task will be centered. Now this is a stupendous business. In Europe lie most of the causes which have led to these two world wars. In Europe dwell the historic parent races from whom our Western civilization has been so largely derived. I believe myself to be what is called a good European; beside, I should deem it a noble task to take part in reviving the fertile genius and in restoring the true greatness of Europe.

I hope we shall not lightly cast aside all the immense work which was accomplished by the creation of the League of Nations. Certainly we must take as our foundation the lofty conception of freedom, law and morality which was the spirit of the League. We must try—I am speaking, of course, only for ourselves—we must try to make the Council of Europe, or whatever it may be called, into a really effective league with all the strongest forces concerned woven into its texture; with a high court to adjust disputes and with forces, armed forces, national or international or both, held ready to enforce these decisions and prevent renewed aggression and the preparation of future wars.

Any one can see that this Council, when created, must eventually embrace the whole of Europe and that all the main branches of the European family must some day be partners in it. What is to happen to the large number of small nations whose rights and interests must be safeguarded? Here let me ask what would be thought of an army that consisted only of battalions and brigades and which never formed any of the larger and higher organizations like army corps. It would soon get mopped up. It would therefore seem to me, at any rate, worthy of patient study, that, side by side with the great powers, there should be a number of groupings of states or confederations which would express themselves through their own chosen representatives, the whole making a council of great states and groups of states.

It is my earnest hope, though I can hardly expect to see it fulfilled in my lifetime, that we shall achieve the largest common measure of the integrated life of Europe that is possible without destroying the individual characteristics and traditions of its many ancient and historic races. All this will, I believe, be found to harmonize with the high permanent interests of Britain, the United States and Russia. It certainly cannot be accomplished without their cordial and concerted agreement and direct participation. Thus and thus only will the glory of Europe rise again.

Churchill's words provided the statesmanlike setting in which our fifth Pan-European Congress opened a few days later. The Congress was held under the auspices of New York University. To guide the Congress through its agenda, I had already set up a Steering Committee consisting of prominent Europeans. Its chairmanship was shared equally between Fernando de los Rios, former Foreign Minister of the Spanish Republic, Louis Marlio and myself. Among the famous men who agreed to serve on the committee, and to whom we used to refer as the Council of Europe in America, were: Paul van Zeeland and Milan Hodža, both ex-Premiers; Rudolf Holsti and Radu Irimescu, former Ministers of Finland and Roumania respectively; Richard Schüller, formerly a senior official of the Austrian Government; Leon Schaus, Secretary-General of the Luxembourg Government; Sophocles Venizelos, who was shortly to become Prime Minister of Greece and who carried on the Pan-European tradition of his famous father; Professor Oscar Halecki, Director of the Polish Institute in New York; Raymond

de Saussure, the well-known Swiss scholar; and Antonio di Aguirre, at one time Prime Minister of the Basque Republic. My wife took charge of the complicated technical arrangements for the Congress.

On the eve of the Congress a banquet was held in the big ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Speeches were made by Ambassador William Bullitt, who presided over the dinner, and by the three chairmen, de los Rios, Marlio and myself. Chancellor Chase welcomed the delegates on behalf of New York University. Then Stephen Duggan made a few introductory remarks on behalf of the American branch of the Pan-European Committee. Finally, there was a speech by Senator Harold Burton of Ohio, now judge at the Supreme Court of the U.S.A.

The committees and working-parties set up by the Congress met at the New York University Faculty Club. Marlio took the chair at the Economic Committee. Our chief expert in matters of Customs Union was Richard Schüller, who had conducted Austria's foreign trade policy for decades. Currency problems were in the hands of two outstanding experts: Professor Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian, and André Istel, a Frenchman, who had been financial adviser to Paul Reynaud and to de Gaulle. An outstandingly intelligent thinker, Istel later went to Bretton Woods as head of the French delegation to the International Monetary Conference. One expert on whose wise advice we were always free to draw was Dr. Mauricio Hochschild, the intelligent, far-seeing business man who never lost his faith in the Pan-European idea even in the darkest days of the war.

The findings and conclusions of the Economic Committee were published periodically by the Secretariat in bulletin form.

The chair of the Constitutional Committee was taken by Fernando de los Rios. This committee worked in close liason with my own study group. Its time was spent examining a proposed European Federal Constitution which had been outlined by Professor Zurcher. After one year's intensive drafting, this document was finally published by the university. De los Rios and Stephan Ladas, the brilliant Greek-American lawyer,

signed it on behalf of the Congress. Zurcher and I added our own signatures on behalf of the original study group, whose secretary, Dr. Alexander Baird, together with various lawyers from Europe and America, had made a substantial contribution to the working out of the final text.¹

Churchill's speech and our Congress aroused much interest in the press and among the public for the idea of a United States of Europe.

Paradoxical as this may seem, it is easier in America than anywhere else in the world to employ the press as a medium of propaganda. For in New York there are only two important morning dailies, the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. Luckily, both papers had shown themselves well disposed towards our ideas and our activities.

One of America's greatest journalists, Anne O'Hare Mc-Cormick, succeeded through her leading articles in influencing the whole policy of the New York Times on European affairs. Her knowledge and her shrewd judgment secured her a unique position in American public opinion. Her active support of European Union was therefore of decisive importance. In the New York Herald Tribune, the chief protagonists of United Europe were Mrs. Helen Ogden Reid and her son, Whitelaw Reid. Dorothy Thompson, who used to write for the New York Herald Tribune and later joined the New York Post, had been a correspondent in Vienna in the early 1920's and had at that time interviewed me; since then, she had been a constant supporter of European Union. Walter Lippmann we had already met on our first visit to America and we now renewed our old contacts.

^<sup>1 Draft Constitution for a United States of Europe, New York University, 1949.

idea throughout the United States. It is fair to say that our contacts with most of these journalists were based not only on our common faith in a big project but also on personal friendships.

When I first arrived in New York I fancied that it would be rather easy to gain support in the United States for the idea of a European Union. My plan was to have a talk with President Roosevelt at the earliest opportunity and to convince him of the soundness of my ideas. I had in mind that after such a talk he rather than I would see to it that these ideas met with the approval of the Administration, of Congress—and of public opinion. Almost immediately after our arrival, Nicholas Murray Butler wrote to the President introducing me in very cordial terms. Much to my disappointment, the President replied that heavy pressure of work prevented him from granting me an audience for the time being.

Quite apart from the political matters which I was anxious to discuss with him, I would have liked to meet Franklin D. Roosevelt because of the great personal respect I had for the human qualities that had enabled him to develop his career notwithstanding a great physical handicap and to lead it to such a successful climax.

A second attempt to bring me together with Roosevelt was made by my friend William Bullitt. Bullitt had had an interesting and colourful career. As a young man, his outstanding intelligence and strong personality had brought him to the notice of President Wilson. He drafted the famous Fourteen Points and took part in the Peace Conference in Paris. When the Republicans came back into office, Bullitt left the Administration and spent the next few years travelling in Asia and Europe. It was at that time that I made his acquaintance in Vienna. When Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, Bullitt was appointed Ambassador, first in Moscow and subsequently in Paris. In Moscow, he acquired great knowledge of the Soviet Union; he also gained a reputation as a remorseless critic and sworn enemy of the Soviet system. In Paris, Bullitt was known to be Roosevelt's personal observer of the entire

European scene, and it was there that I frequently met him both before and during the war.

Bullitt had now returned to Washington and, being a man of independent means, occupied a leading position in Washington society. He had always been convinced that our project was on the right lines and now gave me considerable assistance in publicity matters. Unfortunately his approach to Roosevelt on my behalf also met with no success. Some months later Bullitt happened to hand Roosevelt a memorandum, some twenty pages long, on Allied war aims. As far as Europe was concerned, Bullitt's proposals tended in the direction of a federal system. When I saw him shortly after, Bullitt told me that Roosevelt had studied his memorandum carefully but had flatly turned down the proposals it contained. It appeared that the President was opposed to the idea of European Union, and that this was a fact which I would simply have to accept.

This intimation was the heaviest political blow which my ideas had yet received. All the plans and hopes I had based on Roosevelt collapsed abruptly. Luckily for us, few people were aware of the President's attitude. He himself avoided official utterances which might have committed him to any particular aspect of post-war policy. Only one single authentic document bearing on Roosevelt's attitude in this respect has so far come to light: this is an article about the Teheran Conference by Forrest Davis in the Saturday Evening Post. According to Davis, this article was drafted and partly corrected by Roosevelt himself. In it, Roosevelt expounded the idea of his Big Plan which proceeded on the assumption that after the war there would only be two major powers—America and Russia. If these two powers could live together in friendship, there might be peace. If not, there would certainly be war and annihilation. The first requirement of foreign policy was therefore the promotion of Soviet-American friendship. All other matters must be subordinated to this—at least to the extent to which they did not directly affect American interests. The upshot of this was that the problems of Europe must be solved by a Soviet-American compromise. In other words, since Stalin

was in favour of creating an East European sphere of influence, America had no choice but to accept this.

This was the reason why Churchill's 'United Europe' speech had such a bad reception in Washington official circles. One year later, in May 1944, when Churchill spoke again in Parliament about the necessity of creating a United Europe, the White House and the State Department once more remained silent.

Whilst we were preparing for our New York Congress, pro-Soviet agents in America made efforts to thwart our preparation. These agents had contacts in the various national 'refugee groups', whose function it was to stir up trouble as frequently as possible. Every member of my Committee was urged to resign from it; even the University received letters advising it to dissociate itself from this allegedly anti-Soviet undertaking.

To scotch these intrigues at their source, I wrote a personal letter to Litvinoff, who was then Soviet Ambassador in Washington. I asked him to give me the names of Soviet citizens in America who did not occupy official positions and whom I could invite to the Congress. I also invited him and his wife to be guests of honour at the opening banquet.

Litvinoff's reply was as courteous as my letter. He knew of no Soviet citizens in America other than those in official positions, and as far as the banquet was concerned, he unfortunately had a long-standing engagement for that evening. For me, this exchange of letters served the useful purpose of helping to counter the assertion that our Congress was directed against the Soviet Union and thereby against the solidarity of the Allies. In this unfortunate struggle against Soviet and pro-Soviet intrigues, I leant heavily on the support of my friend Fernando de los Rios, a Socialist who was known to be a man of independent judgment and unimpeachable moral authority. Our close and cordial collaboration on European affairs over many years is one of my most treasured memories. His fine human qualities, his intellectual detachment, his strong character and his aristocratic virtues created a degree of confidence between us strong enough to withstand any amount of intriguing. His presence by my side as co-chairman of our Council of Europe was enough to convince all but the most prejudiced that our movement stood well above political issues.

My work in connection with various European refugee groups helped me to make the somewhat startling discovery that it is much easier to bring together Europeans of many nations, even representatives of nations at war with each other, than it is to make prominent men of the same nation sit down at one table. The French colony was divided into Vichyists and Gaullists, the Austrian colony into Monarchists and Republicans. A French Gaullist thought it quite natural to meet an Austrian Republican or an Italian anti-Fascist, but would refuse to have any dealings with what he called the 'men of Vichy'.

CHAPTER XXVI

I GAIN AMERICAN SUPPORT

OWING to the strong support I had received from the American press, the idea of a United States of Europe gradually gained ground among leaders of American foreign policy at the State Department and in Congress.

My liaison man in the State Department was Cavendish Cannon, later to become Ambassador in Belgrade. When our movement first started, Cannon had been at the American Legation in Vienna where he met and married an Austrian lady. One way in which he differed from most diplomats was that he shunned all social events. Instead, he worked untiringly, until late every night, at his desk in the State Department. He applied the thoroughness of a scholar to his studies of political questions and became a living encyclopaedia of current political history.

Whenever I visited Washington we had talks lasting for hours and I received much useful advice from him. I kept him informed about my political activities. He in turn handed my memoranda and articles to leading officials in the department and saw to it that they were read at once. Since his Vienna days he had been convinced of the necessity of some sort of European Union. This caused him to give me invaluable assistance and at the same time made him and his wife close personal friends.

The idea of a United Europe began to find support among Senators. I could always count on ready help from Senator Elbert Thomas of Utah, a former Mormon missionary in Japan who enjoyed considerable moral authority in the Senate and was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He was responsible for many of my speeches reaching the Congressional Record. Others who canvassed for United Europe in the Senate were Senator Austin of Vermont, Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, Senator Carl Hatch of New Mexico,

Senator George of Georgia, Senator Joseph Ball of Minnesota and Senator Harold Burton of Ohio. Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana, the leader of the Isolationist Group, also was anxious to see Europe united in order to relieve America of the heavy burden of a disintegrated and economically dependent Europe. The squabbles of the Old World had forced America twice in a single generation to send the flower of her manhood across the ocean—there to fight and die for Europe. To avoid a third world war, Senator Wheeler was prepared to range himself unreservedly on the side of the United States of Europe, and it was to his credit that he succeeded in making the majority of the Isolationist Senators follow his lead.

The autumn of 1943 saw the appearance of a new book of mine, Crusade for Pan-Europe, the final part of which deals with problems of post-war policy. It received a good press, and I seized the opportunity of sending copies of it to all those whose support I was anxious to gain.

I soon reached the conclusion that I would get a particularly ready response for my ideas from Catholic circles. The latter did not share the general admiration for the Soviet Union. When the conflict arose between Russia and Poland, they came out openly against Russia. This inclined them favourably from the start towards the project of a United Europe. I had talks with Cardinal Spellman of New York, Cardinal Mooney of Detroit and Cardinal Stritch of Chicago. It seemed that our political views were in full harmony.

There were other circles in America which from the outset had adopted a more sceptical attitude towards the Soviet Union: one of these, the Socialist New Leader, soon began a canvassing campaign for the United States of Europe.

In the autumn of 1944 New York University appointed me Professor of History. I delivered lectures on the history of Europe between the two world wars. Among my audience were other teachers of history as well as war veterans who had

^<sup>1G. B. Putnam & Sons New York.

only recently returned from overseas campaigns. The latter often astonished me by their remarkably accurate knowledge of European conditions. At the end of my first lecture, one member of the audience came up to me. He told me that he had specially asked to be allowed to join my course because, twenty years earlier, as a student in Berlin he had listened to a lecture which my father had delivered to the Wednesday Club. I had some difficulty in convincing him that the man whom he described as 'my father' was actually myself.

Whenever European statesmen visited New York I used the opportunity to discuss post-war problems with them. In this way I had meetings with Sikorski, the Prime Minister of Poland, with Tsouderos, the Prime Minister of Greece, with Spaak, Beneš and Masaryk.

My contact with de Gaulle was established by André Istel, who handed him a letter from me in Algiers. When de Gaulle came to New York, we made his personal acquaintance. I also renewed my acquaintance with Léon Blum, whose views on Europe had not been affected by the many changes of fortune which he had suffered. When Guérin de Beaumont, the French Consul-General, was about to introduce us, Blum smiled, saying: 'But we are old brothers-in-crime (complices).'

During these years I made many attempts to secure the official representation of Austria on the side of the Allies. In the middle of the war Churchill wrote to me that he would gladly support my endeavours in this direction if I succeeded in rallying round me the support of the principal refugee groups. However, although the majority of the Austrian colony was prepared for such a rally, my plans were obstructed by the intransigence of a few extremists. The Catholics were annoyed with the Socialists for continuing to favour Austria's joining a post-war Socialist Germany; the Socialists were similarly unable to forget that the Catholics had followed the authoritarian regime of Dollfuss.

Though I failed on the political level, my wife had more success in the purely humanitarian field. She was able to arrange

for generous assistance to be given to Austria. At the end of 1944, when the liberation of Austria was in sight, relief committees had been set up for almost every country in the world—except Austria. My wife soon managed to set up a committee of leading Americans representing the Catholic and Protestant charities, the two trade unions (A.F.L. and C.I.O.) and the Quakers. We then went to Washington and obtained from the State Department a licence for the formation of an official body known as the American Relief to Austria (chairman: Robert Hoguet).

Since the law was firm on the point that only American citizens could be on the committees of these relief organizations, my wife founded simultaneously the Auxiliary Committee of the American Relief to Austria so as to be able to employ the services of non-Americans too. She herself became first vice-chairman; George E. Warren, vice-president of the Chase National Bank, became chairman. There were also three honorary chairmen: President Herbert Hoover; Alice Longworth Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter; and Father Robert Gannon, S.J., President of New York's Catholic Fordham University.

With the help of these two committees, my wife now devoted all her time to relief work. Through press appeals and personal interventions in Washington she obtained permission for private parcels to be sent to Austria. She also secured a quota of UNRRA clothing for Austria and, together with her collaborators, collected clothing, food, medical supplies and shoes for despatch to Austria through her two organizations. In this relief work she was greatly assisted by many members of the Austrian colony, most of all by Archduke Otto and his three sisters, Archduchess Adelheid, Charlotte and Elisabeth.

Admittedly, the fact that a great deal of official publicity was then being given to the United Nations diverted attention to some extent from the idea of United Europe. But this publicity in no way militated against our idea. It was quite possible to find a place for Pan-Europe in the proposed world organization as one of several regional groups.

This question was on the agenda of the San Francisco Conference, which had been convened to decide on the organization of the United Nations. If the Conference decided that the establishment of regional groups had to be subject to the great-power veto, then all hope of Pan-Europe must be shelved for the time being. To observe these discussions, we decided to attend the Conference and accordingly travelled to San Francisco in April 1945.

On our arrival there I established contact at once with the representatives of the Latin-American countries whom I knew to be well disposed towards regional projects. I found a particularly keen supporter of my idea in Leras Camargo, Foreign Minister of Colombia. The Arab League, too, was in favour of regionalism. So was General Romulo, the representative of the Philippines, who was aiming at a group of Far Eastern states under the leadership of China.

Of the European statesmen, the one who gave me the greatest assistance was Sophianopoulos, Foreign Minister of Greece. He presided over one of the Conference's most important committees.

The most interesting personality I met in San Francisco was the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, Field-Marshal Jan Christian Smuts. This statesman, soldier and philosopher was young in heart and spirit despite his advancing years. His special blend of greatness and modesty reminded me in many ways of the unforgettable personality of Thomas Masaryk. We talked about the reconciliation between Boers and British after the South African War, which culminated in the establishment of the South African Union and in which Smuts himself had played a decisive role. We shared the hope that Europe would follow this example and work for unification after the present war. Smuts supported me unreservedly in my demand for a regional organization.

The San Francisco debates on regionalism gave rise to the now famous Article 52 of the United Nations Charter, which permitted the establishment of regional groups within the U.N.O. framework.

I took advantage of the presence of statesmen and press representatives from every part of the world to make publicity for our own campaign. I also gave a press conference and delivered a lecture at the University of California in Berkeley.

While the Conference was still sitting, news came of Hitler's death, of the collapse of the Third Reich and of the end of the European war.

We spent a few days on the Pacific coast—on the lovely Monterey peninsula, which is magnificently arrayed with rare trees and flowers. A colony of sea-lions lives on a rock not far from the coast. They are huge animals and roar loudly at all times of the day, as they disport themselves in the water or sunbathe on their rock. Apart from their roar, they have, however, more in common with pigs than with lions.

It is as if time had here been projected into space, for the canyon's steps and layers mark the different centuries of man's history: it is as if the fancy imagination of a modern painter, rather than nature's moods, had been at work here.

We were holidaying in our chalet near Big Moose Lake when the first atom-bomb fell on Japan and the war moved to its end. From then onwards public feeling about Russia underwent a remarkable change. The clumsy and provocative attitude adopted by the Kremlin suddenly opened American eyes to the fact that the Russians had ceased to be allies and were now competitors, opponents and rivals—in Europe as well as in Asia.

This change in public feeling came about with amazing swiftness. Hope that the United Nations might prove a panacea for all the world's ills vanished under the pressure of continued Russian obstruction. American foreign policy suddenly found itself faced with the task of halting the Russian advance before it had conquered all Europe and Asia and isolated the United States. This new feeling of world responsibility stood Pan-Europe in excellent stead. Just as the 'brown peril' had helped the movement in 1939 and 1940, so the 'red menace' now enabled it to become topical once again.

On this journey, as well as on our journey to California, my wife organized local groups in aid of the Austrian relief action. Wherever she went she found touching evidence of willingness to help.

There was considerable astonishment in political circles when, at the beginning of December 1945, Collier's, the much-read monthly magazine, published an article by George Creel,

its Washington correspondent, about President Truman and the United States of Europe. For us this was no surprise. Creel had shown us the manuscript a month earlier. He had also told us the remarkable story behind it.

In his young days Creel had been editor of the local newspaper at Independence, a small town in the State of Missouri. After his political lectures, a farmer used to come up to the rostrum and ask for additional information. The name of this farmer was Harry S. Truman. In the First World War Creel had been chief information officer on President Wilson's staff. Since Truman's arrival at the White House, Creel had been a regular guest there. One day Creel asked Truman what he really thought about the United States of Europe. 'It's an excellent idea,' was Truman's spontaneous reply. Creel asked for permission to publish this opinion. Having obtained this in principle, he proceeded to write a comprehensive article about the Pan-European movement, its background and its aims. He added that Truman shared the views of its sponsors and that a decisive initiative in this respect was to be expected from him. Truman read the manuscript and signified his approval. Truman thus became the first leading American statesman to identify himself publicly with the project for a United States of Europe.

Creel's article was bought by Readers' Digest and widely distributed throughout the world.

In March 1946 I had a full discussion with the then Under-Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, and with Ben Cohen, Adviser to the State Department. Both were men of outstanding intelligence, who showed great understanding for the European question. They were already busy planning a basis for a European economic union in the spirit of the Marshall Plan, but came up against difficulties which made it necessary to postpone such a project.

By the middle of 1946 the United States—from the White House to the State Department, from Congress to public opinion—was ready to promote the United States of Europe, provided that the European nations themselves desired such a union. For nothing was more alien to the American way of thinking than to impose their own system on a reluctant Europe.

I was often reminded of what Nicola Politis had said to me at the beginning of the war: 'At last the time has come for the realization of your project. The only thing I am afraid of is that if the war proves to be short nothing will be changed at all; whilst if it proves to be long there will arise national hatreds and prejudices so deep that the realization of Pan-Europe may have to be shelved once again.'

Was Europe at last ready to unite? I looked for an answer, but found none. Only in Europe would I find out whether the Second World War had killed or given a new lease of life to the idea of Pan-Europe. We decided to travel home on the little French steamer Oregon, leaving New York on 9th June 1946.

While we were making preparations for the journey we realized that we had ceased being strangers in America, that part of our beings had struck firm roots in the New World. We had concluded many wonderful friendships. As we left, our friends showered us with tokens of affection, and our cabin looked half flower-shop, half pâtisserie.

We knew that we would not be away for long and that we would always look forward to returning to this great country which in the years of our exile had been less an asylum than a second home.

CHAPTER XXVII

BACK TO EUROPE

Three smiling passengers stood on the deck of the liner Oregon as it sailed slowly eastwards past the Statue of Liberty. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the skyscrapers of Manhattan vanished in the mist on the distant horizon. The Oregon carried some seventy passengers, mostly French, who, like us, were filled with happiness at the thought of returning at last to their own liberated country. For all practical purposes, we were already on French soil. The Oregon was a floating version of a French pension de famille; service, food and atmosphere were all typically French.

The crossing took ten days, which we spent in rest and relaxation. Provided the weather is fine, an Atlantic crossing by small boat, in close contact with sea, sun and air, is incomparably more exhilarating than travelling in a luxury hotel afloat. The sea was as calm as a pond and our ship seemed scarcely to be moving.

For ten days we were completely unaware of space or time and devoted ourselves exclusively to thoughts, dreams and hopes for the future. There was no newspaper, no telephone and no mail. The only communication which reached me during the crossing was a radio telegram from Winston Churchill, dated 15th June 1946, which read as follows: 'What is the latest date you will be in Paris as I want my son-in-law Duncan Sandys to come and see you there?' We regarded this as an excellent omen, for we hoped that the man who had saved Europe would wholeheartedly devote himself, now that he had been freed from all burdens of government, to the creation of a United States of Europe.

On 18th June we sighted the Channel Islands and, shortly after, the French coast. It was six years to the day since on that tragic 18th of June 1940 we had taken leave of French soil at Port Bou. Tears came to many eyes as we entered the port of Le Havre. The ruins of the city stood out like a symbol of the battered and crucified continent on which we were about to step ashore.

Our train took us through devastated cities. But the countryside, with its green fields and meadows, seemed somehow to have forgotten the war more quickly. Herds of cattle grazed happily where only two years ago there had raged one of the most murderous battles in history.

After our impression of Le Havre, we were surprised to find Paris virtually unscathed. Never had it seemed to us more beautiful. After six years in New York we found Parisian houses graceful and well-proportioned, the squares large and spacious and the city generally as if it had been designed by a great artist and executed as an integrated masterpiece.

There was, of course, much evidence of poverty all around, but at the same time there could be sensed a tremendous upsurge of hopefulness, not unlike that joie de vivre which is associated with convalescence from a really serious sick-bed. Everyone felt that, after years of terror and misery, things were at last taking a turn for the better, and in the hearts and eyes of Parisians one sensed the early spring of European recovery.

I began to ask everyone, politicians and journalists, chauffeurs and waiters, what they thought of the idea of a United States of Europe. The reply I received was always the same: 'If only it were possible! It seems the only chance we have of extricating ourselves from our present plight.'

Back in Gstaad, our faithful Berta came running out of the house to greet us. Tears were in her eyes: during all the years of our absence, she had looked well after the house and now took some pride in handing it back to us unchanged and undamaged. The outer hedge had grown so high that it looked like a forest. Apart from that, all was exactly as we had left it. Whilst the old world had collapsed and a new one risen in its

place, here—as if by a miracle—time had evidently stood still. Our flight to America, our years on the banks of the Hudson and our return home—they all seemed like a strange dream.

We soon resumed our daily lives as if they had never been interrupted. This seemed easy in a Switzerland that was a kind of museum displaying relics of a vanished world, a 'national park' of pre-war culture.

It was clear to me that the revival of our movement as a mere propaganda organization would be pointless at a time when the project met with so little resistance. There were certainly many people who refused to believe in the practical possibility of a European federation, but there were few who opposed it on principle.

Oddly enough, hardly any Europeans knew that Pan-Europe had the strong support of public opinion in the United States. Most Europeans had even a kind of preconceived notion that Americans looked with horror upon the prospect of a United Europe and would prevent such a move at all costs. They laboured under the delusion that America would welcome a divided and quarrelsome Europe, too weak to be a rival for political power or a competitor in trade. I heard it said on many occasions that the unification of Europe was impossible since neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would tolerate it.

I had, in this connection, to clear up a double misapprehension: first, I had to convince Americans that, contrary to their beliefs, the peoples of Europe were, in fact, ready to unite, and secondly I had to convince Europeans that, contrary to their beliefs, America was ready to support the political and economic federation of the Continent.

One of the most remarkable phenomena I came across in post-war Europe was that the wave of nationalism, which had caused two world wars, seemed at last to have exhausted itself. Only its ghost remained to haunt the Continent. Thus the first French elections after the war showed that an overwhelming majority of Frenchmen supported the three parties which were distinctly supra-national in character: the Catholic M.R.P., the Social Democrats and the Communists.

In some respects, this phenomenon was reminiscent of the Thirty Years' War which had begun as a fanatical religious struggle and which ended as a fierce fight for political and dynastic power. At the conclusion of this so-called war of religion, Catholic France, led by a cardinal, found itself on the same side as Protestant Sweden, but ranged against the Catholic House of Austria. As the war dragged on, the religious fanaticism which had caused it to start somehow petered out completely.

In the Second World War European nationalism suffered almost the same fate. To my amazement, the chauvinistic front against which I had fought for more than two decades seemed somehow to have vanished altogether. Pan-Europe had no longer to wage a war on two fronts. Serious opposition came henceforth from one quarter only: the Communists. But even the Communists did not want to prevent the unification of Europe altogether; they merely wished to carry it out in their own manner. Their aim was a Soviet Europe under Russian leadership.

At the end of the Second World War, Europe was divided less into national camps than into camps of different ideologies. Communist parties all over Europe formed one strong camp, whilst anti-Communists, at first disorganized, were now beginning to display a similar solidarity in the face of common danger. There is no doubt that today a French anti-Communist feels much closer to an Italian of similar persuasion than to a Communist sympathizer in his own country. Ideological concepts have taken the place of national ones. Under Hitler, nationalism, which for a century and a half had been the chief

driving force behind European politics, first reached its climax and shortly after suffered an abrupt eclipse.

The eclipse of nationalism marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of Europe.

These new factors in the situation had obviously to be taken into account in deciding on our plan of action. Our main difficulty was that, whilst the people of Europe were clearly ready for federation, their Governments, still tainted by prewar ultra-nationalism, took a different view.

Our task was therefore to bring pressure to bear on Governments and thus induce them to take the initiative towards Pan-European federation. Externally, such pressure could be applied by the United States; internally, it would have to emanate from the various national Parliaments. Unless we could achieve some success in mobilizing these two pressure-groups in our interest, there was no hope of early action. These thoughts led me to the following plan: to strengthen our publicity campaign in the United States and to mobilize at the same time as much parliamentary support as possible within Europe.

Wherever they exist, Parliaments tend to develop into clearing-houses between Governments and peoples. Governments depend on Parliaments, just as Parliaments depend on the electorate. Unanimous support by parliamentarians of the idea of European federation would therefore compel Governments more effectively than any other move to give serious thought to the United States of Europe.

In Geneva I called on the Secretary-General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Leopold Boissier, and discussed my plan with him. He told me frankly that it would be impossible to carry out such a plan within the framework of his union. He invited me however to attend the next meeting of the Union Council, so that I would have an opportunity of establishing personal contact with parliamentary representatives of many countries.

This meeting took place at St. Moritz in the first days of September. Many of the representatives present accepted my plan at once. I met there among others the Chairman of the Belgian Parliamentary Socialist Group, Georges Bohy, and his wife; both were ardent supporters of federation. I also met the former Austrian Minister, Dr. Eduard Ludwig, now Chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Austrian Parliament, with whom I had worked before the war when he was Senior Public Relations Officer of the Dollfuss Government.

One day Duncan Sandys visited me in Gstaad. He told me that Churchill was working on plans for a Pan-European initiative and that he was anxious to collaborate with me in this respect. I proposed that Churchill, like Briand in former times, should become honorary president of the Pan-Europe Union which he and I would then reorganize jointly. Sandys, however, was more in favour of creating an entirely new organization which Churchill, he and I would activate together. The principle of creating a new organization appealed to me and, at Sandys's request, I handed him a list of all leading personalities in Britain and on the Continent who had formerly been associated with our movement and on whose assistance we might therefore be able to count in such a venture.

Churchill spent that summer at Bursinel on the Lake of Geneva. On 14th September I lunched there as his guest. He told me that he had been invited to deliver a lecture in Zurich and that he proposed to use this opportunity to make a strong appeal for the unification of Europe. He added that he would naturally give full credit to what I had already accomplished through my movement. The heavy burden of the war years seemed to have left no mark on Churchill. He had hardly aged since I last saw him and was in a buoyant mood, full of energy and wit. I also had the feeling that his fame had in no way gone to his head. He remained modest and human, ready to listen to advice and criticism.

When we came to talk of Germany and Japan, he emphasized how strongly opposed he was to any policy based on repaying old scores: 'It is a firm principle of mine,' he said, 'that one should only hate when this becomes absolutely necessary.' After lunch he took me to see his latest canvas.

Painting, he said, was the greatest relaxation he knew, because it saved him the trouble of thinking! He was busy painting a large landscape of the Lake of Geneva with an old cedar tree in the foreground. His paintings are in keeping with his character and literary style: bold and large, with strong impressive contours and brilliant colours, but without much attention to detail. His dainty handwriting stands in curious contrast to this bold manner—like all men, he is made up of contrasting features. It is perhaps this very tension between contrasts which gives such eminent stature to his personality.

Five days later we listened on the wireless to his memorable Zurich speech, which contained the following reference to our movement:

I wish to speak to you today about the tragedy of Europe.... If Europe were once united in the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity and the glory which its three hundred million or four hundred million people would enjoy....

Much work has been done upon this task by the exertions of the Pan-European Union which owes so much to Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, and which demanded the services of the famous French patriot and statesman Aristide Briand. . . .

Let Europe arise!

I wrote at once to Field-Marshal Smuts, who happened at the time to be in Europe, and asked him to give official support to Churchill's appeal. A few days later Smuts delivered brilliant speeches in the Belgian and Dutch Parliaments, underlining the views already put forward by Churchill.

The following month Churchill invited me to his home at Chartwell, where I had first made his acquaintance almost nine years earlier. Duncan Sandys joined us. We discussed the question of reorganizing the old movement under our joint leadership. I proposed United Europe as a new title. Churchill was to be our first president, whilst two vice-presidents would be chosen from the ranks of the Socialist and Catholic parties on the Continent. I was to act as secretary-general and Sandys as my deputy. Churchill approved the outlines of this proposal. His intention was to set the ball rolling during the coming winter by forming a British national committee. This would

consist inter alia of the members of the existing British section of the Pan-European Movement. In the spring he planned to hold a meeting between this United Europe Committee and various Pan-European personalities on the Continent, at which plans for our future co-operation would be finally agreed.

The greatest obstacle to the realization of this programme lay in the negative attitude which the British Labour Party displayed towards Churchill. But Churchill hoped, relying on the co-operation of his friend Attlee, to convert the Labour Party to his plans by the following spring.

After lunch, Churchill took me round the estate and showed me the park which he had himself designed and laid out. On a gable above the house could be seen the picturesque flag of the Cinque Ports, Churchill's personal standard since the King had appointed him Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports during the war. With considerable pride, Churchill showed me a garden wall and a skilfully designed brick arch which he had built with his own hands. Then he took me to his study where he showed me his paintings, mostly landscapes and still-lifes. He told me that the Chartwell property had been purchased by a group of friends who wished to transform it into a national museum after his death. He drew my attention to a large hall, full of wartime souvenirs which had already been selected for this museum. On one wall was the original scale model of the Mulberry Harbour, as it had been assembled and moored at sea to make possible the invasion of the Normandy beaches.

On another wall, in a frame, was the original Atlantic Charter, complete with handwritten corrections made by Churchill and Roosevelt. I told Churchill that this Atlantic Conference in Newfoundland waters had been prophesied as early as the sixteenth century by this verse of Nostradamus:

Churchill seemed interested but unconvinced. He is not a believer in prophecies. A man of action such as he must abhor the thought that we are mere puppets in the hands of God, that a kind of microfilm of our entire life, from beginning to end, lies deposited in God's archives and that only a select few like Nostradamus possess the gift to gaze through the thick veil of the future at the shape of things to come.

As we parted, Churchill fixed his look on me and said: 'You may be sure that a man like me, upon whom life has bestowed an abundance of success, does not wish to use the United Europe movement to further any personal ambitions. You have created this movement. It could therefore be conducted without my assistance—but hardly without yours! You may rest assured that I will always deal fairly with you.'

Meanwhile, I had already done some spade-work in Paris to revive the movement there. André Istel, whom I consulted in New York about the choice of a suitable candidate to take charge of our French activities, recommended René Courtin, Professor at the Sorbonne and economic Editor of Le Monde.

Courtin at once accepted my invitation and we started the formation of a French non-party committee for a united Europe.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ACTION THROUGH PARLIAMENTS

BACK in Gstaad I concerned myself with the preparations for the organization of the European Parliamentary Union. To begin with, I had to find out which of the members of Parliament were ready to identify themselves openly with our movement. This could only be done by means of a poll. I therefore addressed a circular letter to 3,913 parliamentary representatives, enclosing a card which I asked them to return to me after answering the following question: 'Are you in favour of the establishment of a European federation within the framework of the United Nations?' Each recipient had only to answer 'yes' or 'no' and sign the card which was already addressed to me at Gstaad. I had arranged for Erica to forward to me in New York a list of those who had replied.

After I had signed all the letters, we left Cherbourg for New York on 10th November on the Ile de France. A few days later we were back in our house on the Hudson. Erica remained in Gstaad. While in New York, she had suffered a great deal from home-sickness and was now determined not to leave her beloved mountains again.

With considerable excitement we awaited the results of our poll. Soon every mail brought reports from Erica. Her communiqués sounded cheerful and it seemed as if the results would exceed our wildest expectations. Almost every answer was in the affirmative; 'no's' were few and far between. All parties except the Communists sent in their cards. Even the fact that most Communists refrained from answering—instead of sending in a negative reply—had some significance, for the party leaders knew only too well that by sending in a negative reply their parliamentary candidates risked forfeiting the allegiance of many of their voters.

Among those who answered 'yes' was Vincent Auriol, who shortly after was elected first President of the Fourth Republic.

His opposite number in Italy, President Einaudi, also gave an affirmative answer and so did many former Prime Ministers, among them Reynaud, Daladier, Paul Boncour, Bonomi, Parri, Tsaldaris, Papandreou, Venizelos and van Zeeland. Among Ministers in office who answered 'yes' were Henri Queuille, Count Sforza, and many others.

France and Italy were clearly in the van of the movement. The British attitude tended to be more reserved; fears had been expressed in some quarters lest a federation of Europe might conflict with the interests of the Commonwealth. But to our surprise, there were few negative replies even from Britain. The Scandinavian countries had reservations of a different kind, due largely to the geographical proximity of Soviet Russia. In view of the Russian occupation, I refrained from sending my questionnaires to Austria. But I soon received unanimous declarations of support from both major parties, the Catholics and the Socialists. From Greece, two-thirds of the parliamentary representatives replied in the affirmative, among them practically all the Party leaders.

My private poll had almost assumed the proportions of an indirect plebiscite. Those to whom I addressed it were under no compulsion to answer and could easily have thrown my letter into the wastepaper basket, had they not been convinced of the predominantly Pan-European feeling of their electors. Thanks to this plebiscite, it became clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that an overwhelming majority of the electors of Europe favoured the creation of a United States of Europe and that only an insignificant minority was actively opposed to it.

Those representatives who had not sent in replies were again approached by me from New York. In my reminder, I drew their attention to the results hitherto achieved. I also sent a list of these results to representatives who had answered in the affirmative enclosing the following Memorandum:

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, the following question: 'ARE YOU IN FAVOUR OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A EUROPEAN FEDERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE U.N.?'

The overwhelming majority—over ninety per cent—of the numerous answers received until now are in the affirmative.

Thus has it become possible to take the initiative by the following steps:

• 1. In every Parliament, Members having given affirmative replies are invited to constitute immediately non-partisan Parliamentary Committees for European Federation, to study and promote the cause of European Union.
• 2. Each of these Committees should then be extended by the inclusion of all other Members of Parliament approving its objective.

Thus every Committee should aim at attracting a majority of Members of its Parliament, to compel its Government to embrace the cause of European Union.

Every member of these Committees should try to include European Federation in his party's official programme.

3. To merge the activities of these various Parliamentary Committees, a European Congress is being organized for June 1947, at Geneva.

4. This European Congress, attended only by Members of European Parliaments, shall take the lead in the campaign for European Federation.

It shall determine what other European Parliaments shall be invited to join.

It shall draft a European Charter.

It shall recommend to the European Governments practical steps to be taken to promote the political and economic union of Europe.

It shall submit to the United Nations Organization suggestions for the establishment of a Regional Organization for Europe, according to Article 52 of the United Nations Charter.

It shall organize special Commissions to study the various problems of European Federation.

It shall examine the organization of a European Plebiscite on the issue of Federation.

It shall constitute itself as a permanent body, meeting periodically and representing a kind of preliminary Parliament for Europe.

It shall elect a Council of Europe, to serve as a permanent advisory body to the Governments and to the United Nations.

The following table shows the results of the poll:

The following replies were given by parliamentary representatives to the question: 'Are you in favour of a European federation within the frame of the United Nations?'

Americans are more easily impressed by figures than by arguments. I therefore arranged for the greatest possible publicity to be given to the results of the poll. No one could now doubt that the people of Europe were ready for federation.

The argument that United Europe was desirable in principle but impracticable on political grounds fell abruptly away.

In New York we were struck by the tremendous growth of anti-Communist feeling which had taken place during the five months since we left. Those who sympathized fanatically with Soviet Russia only yesterday had now suddenly become equally fanatical opponents of the Soviet regime. There was much apprehension lest the European countries would be destroyed in turn by the Soviets within and without and that they would thus fall an easy prey to the anti-American camp. It was not difficult to convince Americans that only a European federation could prevent such a catastrophe. The bugbear of all American thinking was a Soviet Empire stretching from the Behring Straits to Lisbon and Dakar and threatening the United States from east and west. Given this frame of mind, it was easy to find strong support among Americans for the idea of a United Europe.

Of decisive importance in this development was a speech delivered by John Foster Dulles, on 19th January 1947, in the big ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, about America's interest in the unification of Europe. The effect of this speech on American thinking was comparable to that which Churchill's Zurich speech had within Europe. Foster Dulles spoke with the voice of authority—not only for the Republican party, in which he had for some years been known as an expert on foreign policy, but also for the Administration itself and for Congress. Before delivering it, Dulles had shown the text of his speech to the two Republican leaders, Senators Taft and Vandenberg, as well as to Governor Dewey. All three had signified their wholehearted approval. Dulles thus became the spokesman for that bipartisan foreign policy which he had helped to initiate. He was helped by the fact that he enjoyed the confidence not only of the two political parties, but also of the State Department.

To mark the unanimous support which American public opinion was giving to United Europe, I drafted—with the help of a few American friends—an 'Appeal to the Citizens of

the United States of America in Favour of the United States of Europe'. This appeal was published in March 1947 and bore the signatures of many prominent Americans, among them politicians, authors, clergymen, Nobel Prize winners, heads of universities, scholars, journalists and businessmen.

Among the famous men whom I asked to sign the appeal was Senator Fulbright. Fulbright was greatly respected throughout the United States ever since the Senate resolution bearing his name had been adopted as the fundamental principle of American policy towards the United Nations. Fulbright wrote me that, whilst he was in full sympathy with the appeal, it was his conviction that the appropriate forum for Senators to voice their political views was the Senate itself and not an outside platform.

I took him at his word and asked him whether he would table in the Senate a resolution for the unification of Europe. This suggestion he accepted at once. Together with Senator Elbert Thomas (who had signed the appeal), Fulbright tabled the following motion: 'Congress approves the creation of the United States of Europe within the framework of the United Nations.' A motion in identical terms was tabled in the House of Representatives by Hale Boggs, member for Louisiana.

These resolutions had a remarkable effect. Almost the entire body of Senators and Representatives immediately declared themselves in their favour—a lead which public opinion followed without hesitation. Secretary of State Marshall, too, let it be known that he fully approved Senator Fulbright's initiative.

Harold Ickes, Roosevelt's former Secretary for the Interior, wrote in the New York Post that, within his own memory, no idea had ever been so unanimously acclaimed by the American public. Republicans and Democrats, Internationalists and Isolationists, Capitalists and Socialists, Reactionaries and Progressives, outdid each other through newspaper and magazine articles, lectures and radio speeches in giving their unreserved support to the project of a United Europe.

I had occasion, in connection with these resolutions, to visit Washington in the early days of April 1947. In the train back

to New York, I reflected on the long way which our movement had travelled and in my mind tried to draw up a kind of balance sheet. In Europe, hundreds of parliamentary representatives of all nations were waiting impatiently to play a decisive part in the realization of federal Europe. Here in America, the White House, the Administration, the State Department, both Houses of Congress and the entire public had been won over to the idea of Pan-Europe. Suddenly I felt tears coming to my eyes. They were tears of joy. Anxious lest I arouse the curiosity of others in the compartment, I turned to the window and, looking out into the open spring-like country-side of Pennsylvania, thanked God.

A few days later we finally wound up our New York home and, on 26th April, left America on board the Queen Elizabeth. Three hours after landing at Southampton I lunched with Churchill at his London house. He was delighted to hear that our cause had gained such strong support in the United States. Since I last saw him, he himself had formed in Britain a central committee representing the United Europe Movement which was busy preparing its first mass demonstration to be held in the Albert Hall on 14th May. To his great sorrow, he had, however, failed to overcome the Labour Party's resistance to the movement.

Though, like me, Churchill would have been happy to see our two movements merged into one, this project now appeared more difficult than ever. For of the British Members of Parliament who had answered my questionnaire in the affirmative, no fewer than two-thirds were members of the Labour Party and were anxious not to provoke a clash with their party leaders by following a movement headed by Churchill.

Four days later I attended an informal meeting at the House of Commons with a group of M.P.s who supported our movement. Soon after, I had a similar conference at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris with members of our French parliamentary group. I was also received by President Vincent Auriol, who was a most active supporter of United Europe. He told me how, already at the Versailles Conference, he had

I got on well with Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, a convinced European and a man of outstanding intelligence. But when I asked him to take the initiative on an official level, he replied that the time for this had not yet come. Meanwhile René Courtin had, however, formed a French representative committee for European unity of which Edouard Herriot became the first president.

On 18th May we visited Bordeaux at the invitation of the university which celebrated that year its five-hundredth anniversary. I had been asked to represent New York University at this jubilee.

Wearing the full regalia of my university, including cap and gown, I duly presented the message of goodwill which New York University had addressed to the University of Bordeaux. The ceremony was followed by a series of formal banquets. One of our most enjoyable evenings was that spent in the pillared wine-cellar of the famous Château Margot with city dignitaries and representatives of nearly every university in the world.

There was also an organized excursion to the Pyrenees under the guidance of the rector himself, Professor Henri Marchaud, and of his wife. We visited the superb Château de Pau, with its memories of Henry IV—one of the forefathers of Pan-Europe. In the mountain valleys and later in Biarritz we admired the strange, festive folk dances of the Basque people, indescribably beautiful in their noble and melancholy manner.

When we arrived back in Gstaad, the meadows and mountains were already decked out in their lovely spring colours: there were narcissi and gentians and an impressive array of other flowers. We started work at once on the preparation of the opening session of the European Parliamentary Union which was to be held not in Geneva, but at Gstaad, on 4th and 5th July 1947.

My friends—you are most welcome in this lovely valley of the Sarina, where the Germanic and the Latin genius join hands in a spirit of perfect European brotherhood.

Our meeting in this heart of Europe is an Open Conspiracy—to use a word of H. G. Wells. The aim of our conspiracy is to organize immediately, throughout Europe, parliamentary majorities strong enough to compel the governments to execute our programme: a United Europe within the framework of the United Nations.

Our recent Parliamentary enquête on the European question has given evidence that in every Parliament of Western Europe there are potential majorities for European Union.

You, my friends, have just taken the initiative of mobilizing and organizing these majorities, scattered among various political parties, by constituting parliamentary committees for European Federation. As soon as you shall have accomplished this task, the traditional parliamentary struggle between the parties will continue only on problems of domestic policy—but not in the realm of foreign affairs. There, only two fronts will face one another: the Pan-European and the anti-European forces. In this decisive battle for Europe's future, you will lead the majorities and, consequently, you are bound to triumph.

Our Conference has met to co-ordinate our forces for this impending battle by organizing a European Parliamentary Union. And also to prepare for the first meeting of a preliminary Parliament for Europe on 8th September.

After twenty-five years of preparation and of propaganda, the day of action has come; the Union of Europe has ceased to be a distant dream, it has become an immediate political goal.

You, my friends, are the legitimate representatives of the peoples of Europe in their longing for peace and happiness. In your hands and in those of your colleagues lies the future of Europe, of its peace and civilization. It is up to you to start, here and now, a new page of human history, to lead to triumph this great revolution of the twentieth century, the glorious revolution of European brotherhood.

The upshot of this Paris conference was the Committee for European Economic Co-operation, a kind of economic general staff to prepare the ground for an eventual Customs Union. This development had to some extent been anticipated by Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg when they created what has become known as the Benelux Union between their three countries. France and Italy subsequently entered into similar

negotiations with a view to forming a Customs Union of the

Before long, these efforts to co-ordinate economic affairs led to the question of European political union; for it became clear that in the long run there could not be a common market unless there was readiness to defend it by common sacrifice. A proposal for political union figured on the agenda of the first European Parliamentary Congress, which we were now busy preparing. Helped by a staff of competent collaborators, my wife attended to the technical problems of the Congress, whilst I discussed with the various national groups how to select delegations which would represent as fully as possible the various trends of opinion and thus give the Congress the character of a preliminary European Parliament.

On 8th September 1947 this European Parliament opened in the beflagged ballroom of the Palace Hotel at Gstaad. Except for me, every delegate was an active parliamentarian of his own country. They had come to Gstaad from every part of Europe—from Sweden in the north to Greece in the south—to plead for the unification of the Continent.

Our guests of honour were a number of prominent exparliamentarians, such as Duncan Sandys, Somerset de Chair, Grégoire Gafencu, former Foreign Minister of Roumania and Paul de Auer, former Minister of Hungary in Paris, one of the early pioneers of the Pan-European movement.

The leader, Georges Bohy, was elected president, Léon Maccas, René Coty, Enzo Giacchero and Ronald Mackay vice-presidents, whilst I myself was appointed secretary-general. Gstaad was to be the headquarters of the Union.

The understanding between the two largest delegations, the French delegation of forty-three and the Italian delegation of forty, was particularly cordial. On every side there was recognition of the fact that some measure of national sovereignty must be renounced in favour of European federation.

The most valuable achievement of the Congress was its appeal for a European Parliament to be elected by the Parliaments of member states and to act as the chief deliberative organ of United Europe.

Two years later this appeal was to be partially fulfilled. Our draft resolution did not call for a European Parliament with executive powers, but only for a Consultative Assembly with powers to draft a constitution which national Parliaments would be free to accept or reject.

The numerous press representatives assembled in Gstaad began at once to make propaganda for a European Parliament. Our Congress, so they said, proved by its example that no national conflicts stood in the way of such a federal body and that it had as good a chance of functioning as any national Parliament.

By the end of 1947 the leadership of the movement had for all practical purposes passed into the hands of the parliamentarians themselves. This time, fortunately, our cause was championed not by a group of powerless individuals but by men and women with sufficient power and responsibility to drive their Governments firmly in the direction of European Union.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE DAWN OF EUROPE UNITY

Idel was afraid lest Tiěn might have to spend the voyage locked up in the ship's cage. Tiěn, who was delicate and much attached to us, would have been most unhappy there. Idel therefore decided to smuggle him on board, wrapped up in a big muff. This turned out to be no easy job, since Siamese cats, instead of being silent like other cats, are notoriously talkative. For three days we successfully hid him. While our cabin was being tidied up, Tiěn remained in the bathroom; when the steward came to clean the bathroom, Tiěn was carefully concealed in Idel's bed. To make doubly sure, we set every available ventilator in motion, in the hope of drowning any noises which he might make. On the third day I spotted quite by chance a poster requesting passengers to hand in their dogs to the ship's cage. There was no mention of cats. Screwing up my courage, I saw the captain and confessed our stowaway. He laughed, for he too was fond of cats. From now on, Tiěn could amuse himself to his heart's content in our cabin and receive as many visitors as he liked—and Idel was free to have her meals with me at the captain's table.

Back in New York, we were assailed by a host of photographers and reporters. They wanted to know how Europe was progressing towards federation. We replied in fairly optimistic terms. Asked to explain the purpose of our visit, I said: 'To co-ordinate the unification of Europe with the Marshall Plan.'

In Washington I handed a memorandum which I had composed to leading officials at the State Department and to several members of Congress. Its title was 'How Europe can be saved by the Marshall Plan'. I argued that Europe required not only material but also moral assistance, not only dollars but also unity; that without some form of European Union, American dollars would be squandered, since money alone can prevent neither a third world war nor the total destruction of Europe which would follow such a war. America, the memorandum went on, had a vital interest in European integration; the Marshall Plan can be made the instrument of a policy of integration. For, once European Governments realize that America's readiness to continue with Marshall Aid depends on their own readiness to unify, the pace of unification will be considerably accelerated.

My suggestions fell on fertile ground. The preamble of the European Co-operation Act, as drafted by John Foster Dulles, brought out very clearly the relationship between European integration and American aid. Speeches by leading Senators helped further to convince the Governments of Europe that, whilst America was ready to assist a unified Europe, she would never help a divided one.

I discussed these aspects fully with President Truman and with Secretary Marshall. I found Truman's direct and unpretentious manner very stimulating. The warmth of his reception is free from all those symptoms of Spanish Court protocol that still survive so frequently in Europe. No one would for a moment suspect that, next to Stalin, this man is the most powerful personality in the world. His fabulous rise to power has robbed him neither of his modesty nor of his sound common sense.

Marshall is less typically American than Truman. He has much in him of the European intellectual. By his personality he conveys the impression of a thinker rather than of a soldier or diplomat; dignified, serious and thorough, he inspires respect and confidence. The man whose overall strategical plan won the greatest campaign in history, is, like all really great men, modest, human and simple.

I also had many talks on European problems with the leading officials of the State Department: with Charles A. Bohlen, the official adviser of the Secretary of State; with George Kennan, the head of the department of long-term political planning; and with John D. Hickerson, the head of the European Department. They were all pleased to hear about the rapid progress of our movement and declared themselves ready to support it in every possible way—subject only to their profound dislike of any policy which might create the impression that American federal ideas were being forced on European countries.

Bevin's initiative, which led in March 1948 to the foundation of a Western European Union, was applauded by the American press and the American public with joy and approval. Everyone saw in the Union the first step towards complete federation.

We were still in America when Churchill convened the Hague Congress of the European Movement for 7th May 1948. This Congress was to be a gigantic rally of all unofficial forces and personalities in Europe who strove for the unification of the Continent. Its chief sponsors were the British and French Committees of the European Movement, the European Union of Federalists (Henri Brugmans), the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales (Robert Bichet) and the European League of Economic Co-operation (van Zeeland), all of them bodies formed since the end of the war for the promotion of European unity. At Churchill's invitation, the European Parliamentary Union agreed to participate in the preparation of the Hague Congress. We for our part urged all our national groups to be represented by as many delegates as possible.

Before returning to Europe, I constituted on 19th April the American Committee for a Free and United Europe. It was made up of a number of leading personalities in the United States. Its objective was to keep alive the idea of the United States of Europe and to pursue the work which I myself had tried to do in the past few years. William Bullitt gave considerable assistance in the formation of this committee and accepted its vice-chairmanship. Senator Fulbright became chairman;

the other founding members of this committee were: Bishop Carl Alter, Hale Boggs, Harry Woodburn Chase, Richard S. Childs, John W. Davis, William J. Donovan, Stephen Duggan, Allen Dulles, James A. Farley, Clayton Fritchey, Robert J. Gannon, Frederick W. Gehle, Harry D. Gideonse, William Green, Christian A. Herter, Herbert Hoover, Hans V. Kaltenborn, John Y. Keur, Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Joseph J. Larkin, Alice Longworth Roosevelt, Clare Boothe Luce, Robert Moses, Robert P. Patterson, Philip D. Reed, George N. Shuster, Norman Thomas, Dorothy Thompson, George E. Warren, Thomas Watson and Arnold J. Zurcher.

After all the hectic bustle of New York and Washington, our cabin on the Queen Elizabeth seemed like a sanatorium. Tien was now a recognized passenger and Idel was no longer confined to our cabin on his account. Those few days of rest and complete relaxation on the high seas were always a most agreeable break in our routine and I have wonderful memories of them.

We landed at Cherbourg on 4th May. Two days later we found ourselves in the festive atmosphere of The Hague. In a sense, the whole Congress revolved round the outstanding personality of Winston Churchill. Among the delegates we met many old friends and collaborators of pre-war days. It was as if all the supporters of Pan-Europe had agreed to meet here and celebrate their sixth Congress. From all sides there were congratulations on the astonishing progress of our project. There were many familiar faces which we remembered from the Gstaad Congress; more than two hundred parliamentarians had come to The Hague, among them several Germans.

We are proud and happy to greet in our midst our president of honour, the greatest statesman of our age, the man who has thrust the glory of his immortal name into the balance for a United Europe: Winston Churchill!

His name means victory: yesterday, victory over Hitler's tyranny; today, victory for a United States of Europe!

Our Congress, my friends, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Pan-European movement. Twenty-five years of struggle for Europe, its peace and its liberty is little in the course of history but it is much in a human generation.

While we are here discussing a United Europe, our unhappy continent is cruelly split in two by the Iron Curtain.

To content ourselves with the union of free Europe while sacrificing our brothers and sisters behind the Iron Curtain would mean to betray the great idea we are standing for.

I hope that our Congress will serve not only the cause of European Union, but also that of European reconciliation.

For Europe cannot live while its hatreds persist.

The peoples of Europe have suffered enough; they have hated more than enough. Time has come to end these sufferings and these hatreds. Time has come for reconciliation and reconstruction.

Hitler has been crushed, but his evil spirit has survived. Europe needs a thorough re-education and denazification. We must reject the barbaric and totalitarian notion of collective guilt and collective punishment. We all must learn more tolerance, more generosity, more mercy.

If Europe is to rise again, we must base its future upon the two noblest foundations of its past: on Greek individualism and Christian socialism; on the dignity of the human person, and on generous help for those in need.

After all, Hitler has also tried to create a United Europe and Stalin is striving toward a similar goal.

The basic difference between them and ourselves is that we are aiming at a free and at a human Europe.

We wish to unite Europe not for the benefit of a single race or of a single class, but for the benefit of all its men, women and children.

We wish to unite Europe to assure permanent peace between its peoples and to prevent the horrors of a war of total destruction.

We wish to unite Europe, to raise, by means of a continental market and a stable currency, the standard of living of millions of Europeans from their present state of utter misery.

We wish to unite Europe, to protect every single European man and woman against murder and deportation by secret police, against torture and concentration camps. These are the reasons why Europe has to unite. This is the goal toward which we are striving.

If, therefore, in the course of our deliberations we are in doubt how to decide, let us think in terms of people, rather than of governments. Let us think rather of the powerless than of those in power; rather of the poor than of the rich; rather of those who are unhappy than of those who are happy!

Let us always keep in mind that we are here on this strange planet, not to conquer empires nor to grab fortunes, but to help one another to carry the heavy burden of living.

In this spirit, my friends, I salute the Congress of Europe.

I then read the following message from Senator Fulbright and our American Committee to the Congress:

My dear Count Coudenhove-Kalergi:

As President of the American Committee for a Free and United Europe, I send to you and the members of the Conference an expression of the hopes of the Committee and, I am sure, of the American people, that your meeting will be successful.

The American Committee is, I believe, truly representative of the American people and is positive evidence of their genuine interest in the creation of a united, peaceful and prosperous Europe.

We do not wish to force our ideas upon any country, but it is felt in America that we have a legitimate interest in the recreation of a strong and peaceful Europe. We have, I am sure, consideration for the independence and self-respect of Europeans, but as their partners in undertaking to preserve in the world an opportunity for men to be free, we wish to encourage in every possible way the political unification of Europe.

The European peoples must themselves voluntarily bring about their unification in their own way and in a manner consistent with their history and culture. We recognize that a forced unification by any non-European power will be neither satisfactory nor lasting. Without unity, however, we are unable to see how prosperity or peace among your people can be re-established and maintained.

The one way that the people of Europe can repay the American people for their sacrifices in two wars and in the European Recovery Programme is to overcome their ancient nationalism, recognize the identity of their interests and create a living, vital European community, able once more, as they have in the past, to contribute to the forward march of Western Christian civilization.

May God be with you in your efforts!

Now that the people of Europe and their parliamentary representatives had expressed themselves so clearly in favour of European Union, the Governments could no longer remain silent. On 20th July 1948, at the Hague Meeting of the five Foreign Ministers of the Brussels Treaty Powers, Georges Bidault surprised his colleagues and the world with his unexpected proposal to take the initiative for a European Union and a European Assembly elected by its member Parliaments.

One week later, on 28th July, the Foreign Policy Committee of the French National Assembly adopted a resolution tabled by François de Menthon, calling for the formation of a European Assembly in the spirit of the decisions taken at Gstaad and at The Hague. De Menthon as well as Eduard Bonnefous, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had been delegates at the Gstaad meeting. On the basis of this resolution, which was accepted by twenty-one votes to six—with one abstention—the French Government headed by André Marie decided on 18th August to incorporate the project of a European Union and a European Assembly in the official foreign policy of France, and to invite the other members of the Brussels Treaty Organization to co-operate to this end. The initiative for this historic decision came from Bidault's successor, the new Foreign Minister—Robert Schuman, and from the Minister of Defence—Paul Ramadier.

The Belgian Government, under its Prime Minister, Paul-Henri Spaak, at once accepted the French proposal.

A few days later hundreds of parliamentarians and journalists arrived at Interlaken, and on 1st September the second Congress of the European Parliamentary Union was formally opened. There was much rejoicing and pride at the rapid progress which the movement had made since the Gstaad Congress. The Franco-Belgian initiative had at last

moved the project into the realm of reality and no one had any doubts now as to its ultimate accomplishment.

Western Germany was represented by the President of its Parliamentary Council, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who had been a pioneer of Pan-Europe ever since the days of Stresemann.

There were also two guests of honour from America, representing our European Committee: Ambassador Bullitt and Congressman Hale Boggs.

The Congress was unanimously of the opinion that, as a result of the Franco-Belgian initiative, the Gstaad and Hague resolutions were now assured of a successful outcome. Hence our interest and our discussions centred on a new and vital question: should Europe be organized as a Union of sovereign states—or on the federal principle?

The Congress decided in favour of a federal state. The so-called Interlaken Plan was accepted unanimously—with only one abstention.

The Interlaken Plan provides for a European Parliament, a Federal Executive and a Supreme Court, following the main outlines of the Federal Constitution of Switzerland. It demands clearly that basic elements of national sovereignty be transferred to organs of the federation in matters of foreign affairs, defence, economy and for the protection of human rights.

This Interlaken Plan was subsequently signed by more than five hundred members of European Parliaments. Among these signatories figure many members of governments, such as the Frenchmen Bidault and Guy Mollet, the Germans Adenauer and Lehr, and the Italians Sforza and Saragat.

After all the excitements of the Congress and of our American journey, we were glad to resume our normal routine in the peaceful atmosphere of Gstaad.

At the time of year when fog descends over the lowlands and the weather generally takes a turn for the worse, the Bernese Oberland basks daily in a clear autumn sun. At that period the Saanenland lies well above fog and cloud. The air is crystal-clear and the landscape looks timeless—as if time had stood still altogether. The visitors from the cities have returned

home and the herds of cattle are on their way down from their summer pastures. Day and night one hears the clanging of their bells, as if they were mobile cathedrals roaming the fields. Forests are full of mushrooms of all kinds. We used to pick them for hours and return home, our baskets full to overflowing. At the end of the mushroom season, there was generally a second spring, a kind of mountain spring, in the late autumn. Gentians, dark-blue trunks and light-blue stars, blossomed a second time and there was a mass of cowslips and hare-bells. I remember that in 1948 we found gentians on the upper slopes as late as 12th December.

Shortly after the Interlaken Congress I wrote a pamphlet for New York University, entitled Europe Seeks Unity.¹

Meanwhile the Franco-Belgian initiative for the unification of Europe proceeded apace. On 28th October 1948 a conference of the five Foreign Ministers took place in Paris and it was decided to set up a Study Group for European Union.

The chairmanship of this Study Group fell to Edouard Herriot, who invited me, together with a delegation representing the European Parliamentary Union, to submit our plans and proposals to his Study Group on 8th December.

The proceedings of the Group showed at once how deep was the cleavage of views between France and Britain. France, like most other continental nations, wanted a radical solution of the European problem. The French realized only too well that collaboration with Germany, on a basis of equality, would only be possible within the frame of a European federation.

Britain saw the problem in a different light. Her obligations towards the Dominions made it impossible for her to tie herself too closely to the Continent. There was also a psychological factor of some importance. Britain has no written constitution either for the home country or for the Commonwealth. Public opinion was therefore deeply opposed to any continental attachment on the basis of a written constitution; nor, for the same reason, was there much enthusiasm for the

^<sup>1 Europe Seeks Unity, by R. Coudenhove-Kalergi, with an introduction by William C. Bullitt, New York University, N.Y.

prospect of having to obey laws decreed by a continental majority against the British vote. Britain was therefore opposed to a federal state, though she was prepared to join an alliance of Sovereign nations.

To prevent the setting up of a Constituent Assembly and the drafting of a constitution, the British members of the Study Group, led by Hugh Dalton, a member of His Majesty's Government, voted for the creation of a European Council nominated by and dependent on the member Governments themselves. The French, on the other hand, in conformity with the decisions taken at Gstaad and The Hague, insisted on a European Parliament elected by the national legislatures.

This critical stage of the Pan-European negotiations caused us to change our plans for the winter months. It was clear that our presence would now be more urgently required in Europe than in America. We therefore cancelled the steamer passages to New York which we had already reserved for 25th January.

This gave us the opportunity of spending the first winter of our lives in Gstaad—and of learning the secret which every winter lures thousands of holiday-makers from all over the world into this isolated valley of the Bernese Oberland. In its colouring, the winter landscape around Gstaad resembles the national flag of Bavaria: half white and half blue, the white very pure and the blue deep and beautiful. So warm was the sun that reached us through the clear winter air that we spent many hours each day sitting out of doors—admiring the beautiful view of mountain peaks, gentle slopes and valleys, all covered with a layer of soft snow.

I was able at last to give some time to the reorganization of the Pan-European Union which I had in recent years tended to neglect in favour of its two post-war successors: the European Parliamentary Union and the American Committee for a Free and United Europe. Hitler had succeeded in destroying almost every one of our national groups. The Swiss branch alone had survived the war and I decided to rebuild the Union around it. Without the generous assistance of old and new friends in Switzerland we would have been hard put to raise the necessary funds for our two congresses at Gstaad and Interlaken.

Since the Committee of Experts had been unable to find a solution, the five Foreign Ministers took up personally the question of European Union. In the last days of January they met in London to see if a compromise between their views were possible.

On 28th January we heard the wonderful news through Radio Luxemburg: the five Governments of Western Europe had reached agreement! They would set up a Council of Europe and invite all other free states of Europe to take part in negotiations for its establishment.

Finally, the London Conference chose Strasbourg as the seat of the Council and Assembly.

This was indeed a triumph for Pan-Europe!

CHAPTER XXX

VICTORY

On 5th May 1949, representatives of ten Governments attended in London the ceremonial signing of the Statute of Europe.

Six days later we visited the new capital of Europe, Strasbourg. We were most cordially received by the Prefect, René Paira and the other authorities. The Mayor of Strasbourg, Charles Frey, kindly placed at our disposal for our next Conference, the beautiful rooms of the City Hall, which some weeks later became the headquarters of the Committee of the Ministers of the European Council.

Our meeting of the Council of the European Parliamentary Union was held on 2nd and 3rd July. It was the first international meeting of importance in this new centre of European life. Among the German delegates was Konrad Adenauer, accompanied by his faithful adviser, Herbert Blankenhorn. The Strasbourg Communists wanted to prevent our meeting. They distributed leaflets, calling their comrades to protest against Adenauer and against the presence of German delegates at Strasbourg.

On 8th August the Committee of Ministers started the first Session of the Council of Europe.

Robert Schuman helped him in this effort. I always like to talk with this genuine European, partly educated in France and partly in Germany, who has been a tool of Providence for bringing about the reconciliation of these two great nations. Free from vanity and ambition, he serves the cause of France, of Europe and of peace with admirable patience and idealism.

Highly respected by all who have ever approached him, he is a remarkable and rare example of an almost religious conception of political duties.

When I met Norway's Foreign Minister, Halvard Lange, I was struck by his resemblance to his father, Christian Lange, who had been my partner and companion during my first lecture-tour in the United States. I also renewed my old relations with Paul-Henri Spaak. I had met him last in New York during the war. Meanwhile he had become one of the leading pioneers of a united Europe.

Two days later, on 10th August, the Parliament of Europe opened its first session. This memorable day was really the birthday of Pan-Europe.

For Idel and me this 10th of August 1949 was a grand day. When a friend asked me how I felt, I replied: 'Were I dead, everybody would now say: "What a pity that Coudenhove did not live to see this day! How happy he would have been to see his dream come true!" Thanks to God, I am still alive and very happy!' From all parts of the world letters and telegrams of congratulation came. We appreciated greatly a little note from Duncan Sandys, now chairman of the European Movement:

My dear Richard,

I am writing to tell you how much I am rejoicing with you on this great day of the opening of the first session of the Council of Europe. Those of us who have joined your crusade in its later stages pay our tribute to its founder and leader.

I know I am speaking not only in my own name but in that of all my colleagues in the European Movement when I say that Europe today owes you a great debt of gratitude for all your faith and inspiration in the past and will continue as much as ever to need your vision and leadership in the future.

With kindest regards to you and your wife to whom our cause owes also so much.

Yours ever, Duncan.

I went almost every day to the university to follow the debates of the Assembly. Their level was high. The delegates acted as Europeans rather than as representatives of rival nations.

On the other hand, it soon became evident that no genuine federation would emerge from the Council of Europe. Neither was there the necessary two-third majority for federalism within the Assembly, nor could it be expected that the Committee of Ministers would ever agree to any such programme. For Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian states were not prepared to sacrifice vital elements of their national sovereignty. They were willing to co-operate sincerely within a European Union of sovereign states but sternly opposed to any federal government or federal constitution.

Thus the Council of Europe was bound to follow the pattern of the Pan-American Union rather than that of the United States or of the Swiss Confederation.

The success of Strasbourg also affected American opinion. Among the American visitors who came was General William Donovan, who had become the successor of Senator Fulbright as chairman of The American Committee for a Free and United Europe that now was called American Committee for a United Europe.

Two weeks after this memorable session of the Strasbourg Assembly, on 19th September, the European Parliamentary Union opened its third Congress in Venice in the beautiful hall, decorated with frescoes by Tintoretto, at the Palace of the Doges.

This Congress was brilliantly organized by Senator Celeste Bastianetto of Venice and my wife, who as usual was greatly assisted in her work by our daughter Erica. Bohy presided. From Rome the President of the National Assembly, Gronchi, and the Vice-President of the Senate, Alberti, had come to greet our Congress.

My opening address began as follows:

Friends,

We may be proud and gratified, for we are celebrating a decisive victory in this most beautiful city of our great community.

Only two years ago our Congress of Gstaad launched the idea of a European Parliament to be elected by national Parliaments; now this idea has been realized.

In 1947 it still appeared utopian. In 1948, with the support of many parliamentary resolutions, it was adopted first by the Congress of The Hague and then by the French and Belgian Governments. Finally, in 1949, it came into being in the form of the European Parliament of Strasbourg. . . .

There are close ties between our Union and the Strasbourg Parliament: one quarter of its members are veterans of our two Congresses of Gstaad and Interlaken—and the members of our Union form a solid majority within that Parliament.

This victory of the European Parliamentary Union within such a short lapse of time as two years is no miracle. It is explained by the fact that throughout free Europe the supreme key of power is in the hands of members of Parliaments. We have been guided by this fact, in the conviction that Europe would be united not by victorious armies, or revolutionary masses, or Governments jealous of their national independence—but by the united force of members of Parliament. As soon as majorities pronounced in favour of the Union within your own Parliaments the game was won: the rest was but a matter of procedure.

All delegates were staying at the splendid hotels of the island of the Lido, opposite Venice. The time for debates was limited, since we all had to cross the sea to reach the Palace of the Doges; here a strict rule forbids the installation of lighting in the historic halls. Thus, every evening, dusk put an early end to our discussions and gave us a great opportunity to enjoy the incomparable beauties of the city: to glide about in gondolas through narrow waters, and to visit the ancient palaces whose hosts received us with traditional hospitality. One evening was spent at the famous Theatre Fenice, where the great French actor, Jean-Louis Barrault, gave a special performance, another at a brilliant banquet at the Excelsior Lido Palace, offered to the Congress by the Venetian Committee of Reception, headed by Signor Pasquato. The Patriarch of Venice, Monsignore Agostino, celebrated a High Mass at the famous San Marco for the success of the Congress and extended his blessing upon our work. All of Venice was decorated with Pan-European flags. These blue flags with the red cross on the golden sun matched wonderfully the picturesque scenery of the Piazza San Marco and the Canale Grande.

While we were holding our meeting in Venice, the first Parliament of Western Germany began its work by electing my old friend Adenauer federal chancellor. Thus it was easy to organize a German section of the European Parliamentary Union, headed by Heinrich von Brentano, the brilliant Chairman of Adenauer's party in the Bundestag.

In Paris there still was a strong feeling against Germany's admission to the Council of Europe; and since Germany had not recovered its sovereignty and therefore was not admitted to the Committee of Ministers, many Germans were opposed to becoming members of an organization that barred them from full equality.

In Paris I paid a visit to General de Gaulle, with whom I

VICTORY 301

had been in correspondence ever since our first meeting at New York. I was again fascinated by this grand personality, now standing between a great past and an uncertain future. De Gaulle faces politics not like a business-man, nor as an adventurer; not like a fanatic or a philosopher; neither like a gambler nor a prophet; but as a historian of action. He draws no dividing line between politics and history. He is not attracted by power, but by glory. He voluntarily cast away power when he might have become a dictator. He would be ready to share the tragic but glorious fate of Jeanne d'Arc, rather than spend a comfortable life as an average President of the French Republic. His manners are rather those of a legitimate king than of a dictator: simple, polite and by no means theatrical.

Almost all modern dictators are or were of short stature. Their physical inferiority created, when they were still boys, an inferiority complex. They dreamed of becoming one day stronger than their taller and stronger companions who bullied them. Their early dream of power and revenge led them to dictatorship.

De Gaulle is tall and free from inferiority complexes. Were he a head smaller, he might have dreamed after the Liberation of becoming another Napoleon. Instead, he is now a private citizen, waiting for a new call of destiny.

De Gaulle had just read the German version of my life-story that I had sent him. He liked the book, but wondered why I had published my memoirs while still young and in the midst of my campaign. I explained to him that my book was an attempt to spread my ideas without boring my readers by presenting them in a dry political volume. I could not know if I still had time to postpone my book, and could always complete it by a new chapter or volume. Then I asked him if he had written his memoirs. 'Of course I have put on paper some notes,' was his answer, 'but I cannot publish them. For either my story would not be true, and consequently it would be worthless, or if I were to tell the whole truth, I would offend too many people.'

We discussed the European question and found a wide field of agreement. De Gaulle, a nationalist by sentiment and tradition, is far too broadminded to overlook the fact that isolated France, between Russia and America, has no future. Only her European mission can restore her ancient greatness, but this mission demands a sincere reconciliation between France and Germany.

I had also had a good talk with André Malraux, one of De Gaulle's closest advisors. I had met him years before when he still was a Communist. Now he has cast in his lot with de Gaulle's. Like Lord Byron, Malraux is a rare combination of a dreamer and a hero. His brain is one of the best and finest in the world and de Gaulle was lucky to gain his support. Of course we were in entire agreement upon the European issue, since Malraux has remained a genuine cosmopolitan.

The new year 1950 began with our Franco-German Parliamentary Conference at Basle, on 6th January. On both sides, all political parties, with the exception of the Communists, were represented among the sixty-five members of the Bonn and the Paris Parliaments. Full agreement was reached on Germany's participation in the Council of Europe and other issues. The Conference decided to meet soon again. This second meeting was held in June, at Rheinfelden, a charming little Swiss town near Basle. We were glad to see once more our dear old friend, Paul Loebe, who had been Pan-European from the very start and who had remained all his life faithful to Europe. He who had been honorary chairman at the first European Congress in 1926 in Vienna was now again elected honorary chairman of the Conference, together with Francisque Gay, the French Catholic leader, one of the pioneers of our European Parliamentary Congress at Gstaad.

On 2nd February 1950 we again sailed for New York. At Washington, Bullitt invited me together with Paul G. Hoffmann, head of the Marshall Plan Organization.

I was delighted to meet the great American who has done so much to help Europe rise and unite. We entirely agreed upon the European question, and I only regretted that his power was limited to economic issues. Two weeks later I had a second very pleasant talk with him, and also with his collaborator Averell Harriman and William C. Foster, his successor.

Expressing his deep sympathy with our movement, Paul G. Hoffman sent me some months later the following message at the occasion of our Constance Congress:

On the occasion of your meeting I wish to send greetings and every good wish for the success of your deliberations. The realization of the objective you seek, a united Europe, is essential to the economic health and security of the free world, indeed to its very survival. The aims of the Marshall Plan run parallel to yours on this vital issue. The sweep of world events has caught up with your inspired vision and now more than ever free men everywhere recognize the urgent and inescapable necessity of working together and fighting together in building one world of freedom. I share with others who have been aware of its perseverance over the years the greatest admiration for your pioneering effort to achieve the goal toward which all men of goodwill aspire. We in the Economic Co-operation Administration feel that the European Payments Union will be potent factor in the integration of the economies of the European nations and that it will contribute importantly in every other sphere. This establishment of a European Payments Union we believe represents a great forward stride toward achieving the kind of economic unity which is the prologue necessary to unity in other fields to-day. Unity in purpose and in deed is the insignia of freedom.

the City of Aachen, one-time capital of Charlemagne's European Empire, had decided to resume its great tradition by founding a Charlemagne Prize, consisting of a gold medal and a money award. Every year this prize would be conferred upon the person who had done most for uniting Europe. The jury—composed of Aachen's most prominent citizens, unanimously decided to confer the first Charlemagne Prize upon me, and invited me now to come to Aachen to receive it on 18th May, Ascension Day.

Back in Europe, we prepared for this pleasant trip to Aachen. Just before we started from Gstaad, good news came from Paris: the Foreign Minister Schuman had taken the initiative of pooling Europe's coal and steel production; he declared frankly that he considered this measure as the first step towards a United States of Europe and a solid ground for Franco-German reconciliation and co-operation.

Now that Pan-Europe had been organized at Strasbourg, a new goal appeared to the European continent: a genuine federation, embracing the nations that eleven centuries before had been united within the huge Empire of Charlemagne; this King of France, Germanic hero and Roman Emperor.

Coming from Belgium, we crossed the German border, for the first time since February 1933, near Aachen. As we were guests of the City of Aachen, our apartment had been reserved at the Hotel Quellenhof. There we had stayed more than twenty years before, during a lecture tour through Germany. At that time the Quellenhof had been one of Europe's most beautiful hotels. Now it was almost a ruin. Still, the wing with our apartment had been restored and was as neat and clean as any first-class hotel in Europe or America. Meanwhile one room after another, one wing after another were being reconstructed rapidly, carefully, and methodically; and nobody doubts that the hotel will soon regain its former splendour.

This story of the Quellenhof is but a symbol of what is going on in Aachen and throughout Germany. Heaps of ruins are rising to new and modern cities. You can see with CICTORY 305

your own eyes that human will is harder than stone, and that, transcending all tragedies, the spirit of a nation is the decisive force in history.

Our apartment was crowded with lilies of the valley, and so were the hall and dining-room of the hotel. For our charming hosts had discovered from my book that this was Idel's favourite flower.

On 18th May the Charlemagne ceremony started with a High Mass in the cathedral of the great emperor. Here his remains are still preserved in a beautiful golden shrine—and the throne on which he attended Mass had remained unchanged. During the Mass celebrated by the dean of the cathedral, the latter gave a touching address, blessing my work for Pan-Europe. The famous choir of the cathedral accompanied the Mass with their angelic voices.

From the cathedral we drove to the Palace of the Emperors. Its great hall had witnessed the coronation of thirty-four Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire; it has been badly damaged by the war. Now it was opened, for the first time since its reconstruction, to the public. Only half restored, its walls were covered with branches of fir trees to hide its wounds; thus, it gave the impression almost of a grove. This curious blend of ancient splendour, of destruction and reconstruction was most impressive, as a symbol of Europe. On one of the huge pillars of the hall we saw an old coat-of-arms of the Aachen Chapter embodying united Europe: one half with the German eagle, the other with the French fleur-de-lys.

Then the Mayor, Dr. Maas, made a most impressive speech, recalling the long story of the Pan-European Movement. He quoted many of my old predictions that unfortunately had come true.

Stepping down from the rostrum, he then conferred upon

me, to the enthusiastic cheers of the audience, the first Charlemagne Prize: a huge golden medal, with the ancient seal of Aachen, representing Charlemagne on one side and a very flattering inscription on the other.

Then Dr. Wildermuth, member of the German Federal Government, extended the official greetings of the Bonn Government, while the Minister of Rhineland-Westphalia, Dr. Weitz, joined in with wishes for the final success of my work.

From Chancellor Adenauer the following telegram was read:

On your being honoured with the Charlemagne Prize I send you my most cordial congratulations. I believe that the City of Aachen could not possibly have chosen for this important prize any personality more worthy and with greater merit among the pioneers of the European idea. Indefatigably working for many years, you have great historic merits in preparing for a union of the European nations. You will certainly be most gratified that with the French Government plan for a pooling of the German and French coal and steel industries a new step has been reached on the road to European federation. We Germans acclaim this French plan with all our hearts, because it seems more than anything else capable of uniting the French and German peoples to work together in the service of peace.

My speech which followed dealt with Charlemagne as a symbol of unity and of reconciliation between the great nations that had been united under his sceptre: the Germans, French and Italians. I said:

It was indeed a bold and imaginative step for your city, by the institution of this prize, to cast a bridge across the eleven centuries that lie between the grandiose tradition of the Empire of the Franks and the greatest hope of our time: the United States of Europe.

What an expanse of blood and tears that bridge must span! The eleven-hundred-year-old war between France and Germany, which was to destroy all that Charlemagne created, began with the battle of Fontenay as a fratricidal struggle between his heirs—and has continued to rage as a fraticidal struggle throughout the centuries.

To our generation falls the task of breaking this chain of wars, of putting an end for ever to this hereditary enmity. It is our task

And England? Was it not its traditional policy for centuries to prevent the mainland of Europe uniting for fear that the united continent might turn against Britain? Only with the signing of the Atlantic Pact, by which America, England and the European mainland are merged in a single defence system, has that fear lost its point. England has, on the contrary, everything to gain by having on the opposite coast of Europe a strong ally capable of holding up the advance of an enemy towards Calais, should the occasion arise. The realization of the Union Charlemagne is hence just as much in the interest of England as of America. The Atlantic Union would thereby become a Triple Alliance with Britain as the bridge between America and Europe.

The revival of the Carolingian Empire in the spirit of the twentieth century would be a decisive step forward towards the unification of Europe. A great new empire would thus come into being, with a population greater than that of the United States of America and whose territory, stretching from the Baltic to Katanga, would be second only to the Soviet Union in vastness. With a huge domestic market of two hundred million people and almost inexhaustible reserves of raw materials, it could, within a few years, cause economic prosperity to blossom forth as never before in Europe. Unassailable from the military point of view, it could ensure for its member peoples a long period of peace. For Eastern Europe it would act as a lodestone, drawing first Eastern Germany and then the nations of Eastern Europe into its orbit.

For this decisive step out of a tragic past into a brilliant future to be possible, all that is required is determination and initiative on the part of the leaders and people of France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries. It depends on them whether Europe shall founder amid the smoke-clouds of atom bombs—or whether, Phoenix-like, it shall emerge out of the flames of the last world war with renewed splendour.

At the end of the ceremony, my wife and I were invited to sign our names in the Golden Book of the city of Aachen.

A few hours later a big crowd awaited me on the square facing the Palace of the Emperors, around an old well crowned with a statue of Charlemagne. From the terrace of the Palace I addressed this meeting, speaking about the mission of Europe's young generation. This time I did not speak of politics. On the contrary, I explained that even the most perfect federation was unable to save Europe, if its young generations did not live up to the great common ideals of our past: Greek liberty, Christian charity and the heroic conception of medieval chivalry, transformed and integrated into a modern way of life.

To endless cheers, Idel and I descended the stairs to reach our car. This was very difficult indeed, for we were immediately surrounded by a group of Dutch boy-scouts who had crossed the border to attend the meeting. The crowd that filled the large square did not move. With tears in their eyes, men and women were waving their hands, hats, and handkerchiefs; when our car passed, they lifted up their children to see and greet us.

We were deeply impressed and moved by this spontaneous demonstration of popular enthusiasm in this beautiful city that has been transformed by the war into a heap of ruins. It was evident that its people, who had suffered so much after having been misled by false prophets, were now setting all their hopes upon a United States of Europe which would at last permit them to live their lives in peace and liberty.

From Bonn we drove slowly, across ruins and blossoms, to our Swiss mountain home.

A few days later we received a beautiful volume bound in black and gold leather. It contained a parchment with the arms of Aachen, signed by all members of the jury of the Charlemagne Prize.

Printed and painted like a medieval document, in bold red, gold and black lettering, it reads as follows:

The City of Aachen, at one time centre of the Carolingian Empire, stretching from the Pyrenees to the limits of the Slav nations, as a border-city ever active in its endeavours to bridge over these borders by spiritual links, has found no one more worthy to be awarded for the first time with this, her highest distinction.

Aachen, 18th May 1950.

One year after these happy days at Aachen, I was a widower. The world around me seemed to collapse. My health and mood were low and only the uninterrupted work for Pan-Europe, which more than ever was nearing its goal, upheld me.

In this darkest period of my life, the miracle of a new love brought sudden light and recovery. When on April 3rd, 1952, I married Countess Alix de Tiele-Bally at the Church of St. Pierre de Chaillot in Paris, a new chapter of my life started. But this is another story.

To accomplish this new task, the Pan-European Movement¹ has renewed its old activities in a new spirit.

As a mountaineer turns to look down the long and steep path that lies below him before going down, so this book is the story of the long way that led Pan-Europe from the dream to a book, from a book to a movement, from a movement to a political achievement.

It is the story of an idea, which captured the imagination first of hundreds, then of thousands, then of millions—until it became a reality; like a rivulet in the mountains swelling to a river, to merge with the broad stream of human history.

¹The new headquarters of the Pan-European Movement is 10 rue Central, Lausanne. Secretary General: Dr. Ernst Steffan.

RUSSIA, POLAND AND THE WEST

Waclaw Lednicki