Evening star., 1940-07-08
Foresees Economic
Peace Foundation
Political Settlements Held
Incapable Of Preventing
ForcibIe Reudiustments
BY BLAIR BOLLES.

BY BLAIR BOLLES.
1t is a little more than two weeks
since the grave French plenipotentiaries
signed the German truce in the dining
car at Compiegne. At the time men
generally wondered when Adolf Hitler,
the conqueror of Western Europe,
would take the next and final step to-
ward closing the hostilities by giving
the beaten nations the opportunity to
sign a treaty of peace. A German with
some standing and with great wish for
anonymity has revealed that Hitler will
arrange no such peace until the Eng.
lish phase of the war comes to an end.
Then, he said, Hitler will give to Eu-
rope "a permanent peace, peace that
will last for at least Is years" A Ger
man, of course, will admit no doubt Of
German victory.
Here is realist's idea of the mean
ing of the word permanent when it is
applied to European peace. Europe is a
heaving continent peopled by restless
nations. There are few periods in Eu-
ropes history when so long time as Is
years has passed without conflict of
some sort. From the truce of Com
piegne to the truce Of Compiegne was
less than % years. From the peace of
Versailles to the opening of the Ger
man-Polish War was scarcely over 20
years. And in those 20 years the map of
Europe was undergoing changes. There
was no time since nations existed in,
Europe that 25 years have gone by with
out some European boundary change
Lasting peace in Europe is an ideal
which has fascinated many great men.
Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa,
Charles v, Louis XIV and Napoleon are
a few. Most Of these, like Hitler, made
war their preface to permanent peace.
Their method was the imposition of
peace upon all of Europe by one domi-
nant throne or nation-in the case of
the first two, the Holy Roman Empire;
of the third, who held about as much of
Europe as anybody before Napoleon, the
Holy Roman Empire and Spain; of the
fourth and fifth. France.
If Hitler waits until his triumph Is
complete Hitler may never have the
pleasure of telling France, Belgium, the
Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg.
Norway and Poland, not to mention
;tNIo &e1,
how he has determined to insure Eu-
ropes permanent 25-year peace. Eng
land may thwart him. Russia may de-
fleet him. But in advance of any Hitler
peace conference, it is pretty generally
believed that the Nazis' leader intends
to arrange peace for Europe based al
most completely on economic considera-
tions
This is something new. In the past,
political arrangements have guided the
peacemakers. Whether economy is a
less tickle lover of peace than politics we
do not know. Politics, anyway, has not
proved great insurer of peace We have
to dip just short way into the past to
discover that-say. to 1800-when Ma
poleon was well started on his way to
greatness.
Unlike Hitler, Napoleon arranged
treaties of peace as he went along. And
his treaties were calling always for re-
arrangement by new treaties, built of
new wars. The catalogue of Napoleonic
treaties is long. There are Luneville,
1901; Amiens, 1902 Act of Mediation,
1903; Schonbrunn, December Is, 1905;
Pressburg, December g. 1905; Tlsit,
July. 1907; Fontainebleau, October, 1907;
Paris, 1914; Congress of Vienna, 1915.
The last two represented Napoleonic
defeats. The treaty of Paris crowned
the losses suffered on the march to Mos
COW. The Congress of Vienna was the
formal celebration by Napoleon's enc
mics and the end the continental victors
over France hoped, of all the libertarian
ideas born of the French Revolution and
spread wide by Napoleons victories.
The Congress of Vienna often receives
credit as the discoverer of the greatest
and most lasting peace insurance ever
provided for Europe. The method de-
vised at Vienna and managed for years
afterWard by the Austrian Chancellor,
Count Metternich, was the same sort of
method these days expect from Hitler
repression, repression of the popular in
stinct for liberty. There was, in truth,
no European war of continental magni-
tude between 1915 and 1914. But there
were revolutions in all the countries
that spread liberty far by the 10Th GEN.
tury's end, despite Metternich's efforts,
and the wars and boundary changes
were frequent
A few years after the Congress of
Vienna, the Greek subjects of the Turk
were at war for. their independence.
Belgium was carved from the Neither
lands. France fought beside England
against Russia. France fought Austria
in Italy. The many states of Italy were
combined into a nation. Prussia fought
Austria, Denmark and France in three
wars. Russia fought Turkey, and the
Congress of Berlin, convoked to evolve
a new system of peace, handed to the
Russian victory the province of Bessa-
rabia, which Russia retook for herself a
few days ago.
The birth of the Balkan countries
brought wars and insured boundary
changes up to the eve of the first World
War. Out of that war came new