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No German Rearming Without Atlantic Union:
Europe Alone Cannot Assimilate German Power
- Abstract
ONE COMMON characteristic of the British and American approach to politics is the illusion that no problem is really insoluble. If only people will be reasonable, we fondly believe, if only all sides will be ready to “forget their nationalist obsessions” and “reach a sensible compromise,” any conflict can be resolved without war or violence.
This illusion is natural enough in a people which is geographically secure, enjoys a well-established, democratic pattern of life, and knows that, in any international dispute that vitally concerns it, the compromise will always be of its own making. Neither Britain
nor the United States has ever lost a major war. Hence the widespread delusion that war settles nothing and that no one is the winner. Nor has either nation, in any postwar settlement, been compelled to sacrifice a vital national interest for what its allies assert to be the common good, as France was compelled to at Versailles, Czechoslovakia at Munich, and pre-Communist Poland at Yalta. It is easy to believe that every problem is soluble, as long as others bear the brunt of your solution!
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