Evening star., 1933-10-08
EUROPE NEEDS HIGH IDEALS
INCOPINC WITH HITLERISM
Diplomatic Action and Polite Vienna
Measures Must Give Way to Economic
Federation and Creative Policy.

Europe to wish that even the present
clerical and feudal Austria, however
imbued with Fascist prejudices, may
live independent, saved from the brutal
claws of Hitlerian violence.
But the struggle for Austrian inde-
pendence against the pan-German en-
croachments Of the Third German
Reich can be waged only on basis of
ideals which are the very antithesis of
Nay more, it is inconceivable that it
can be won except by the principles
from which emerged the American Rev.
olution and the French Revolution
liberty, cooperation, human solidarity.
Today there are no longer two systems
of diplomatic equilibrium as was the
case in July, 1914. Today much more
is at stake-two different worlds, two
conceptions Of life, are armed against
each other.
Sanctity Of Life and Success.
If democratic Europe is convinced
that 1t stands for the sanctity of human
life. the liberty of the individual, the
defense against a return of Eastern bar
barism, if it realizes the futility of
diplomatic palavers, if it ventures to
look the peril in the facets success
IL.
But if against the menacing tide the
potentially gigantic strength of free
Europe is going to waste itself in set
ting up little sand castles-then it will
mean defeat. or at least a confession of
weakness which may be next door to
defeat.
In this matter of Austria and of the
Anschluss with the Nazi Reich, it is not
enough for Europe to say no. Europe
must pursue creative policy which
should be not ashamed to derive its ac-
tlons from the highest principles Of
idealism.
This creative policy must seek its
weapons not in sterile and artificial
diplomatic formulae. but in the expan-
sive force of liberty.
The situation is serious, because the
question OF Austria is test Of force for
Hltlers Germany The situation is
serious because of the Willful blindness
of certain countries and governments
which seem afraid to admit the extent
of the peril. Nothing. indeed, shows
more clearly the prevailing confusion
In the minds of people all over Europe
and the morbid terror which grips all
hearts than the hopes and fears
aroused by the fate of Austria. The
danger which overhangs Austria is so
patent and the consequences which
would result from her absorption in Hit
lerlte Germany are so fraught with
evil that many statesmen are afraid to
look the future in the face
Greater Action Needed.
The hope that tiny half-Fascist Aus
tria may in the long run. resist gigan-
tic Hitlerian Germany is childish What
must be erected as bulWark against
the Hltlerite offensive is something more
than the diplomatic action and the
police measures of the Viennese semi
dictatorial government; what is needed
is a project of economic federation
among co-equal states without any lin
gering trace of the ideas Of hegemony
which vitiated the old diplomacy.
If We succeed in this, we shall have
lit a beacon of hope for those parts of
Europe which are beginning to despair.
But if Europe goes into her first de-
cisive battle against German Fascism
with her hopes for victory resting not
on her program for liberty, but on a
small personally respectable but po-
litically inconsistent group of Fascist
and semi-Fascist Austrian forces. the
result will be the same as when imperial
Rome called in tribe of Teutons to
fight another tribe Of Teutons.
Pertinax. famous French writer. will dis
cuss Fascism in France in an article to ap-
Sunday