Glimpses of World History

by Jawaharlal Nehru

  From early in 1922 Anglo-French friction became a chronic feature of European politics. On the surface there were smiles and courteous words, and their statesmen and prime ministers met frequently and were photographed together, but the two governments often pulled in different directions. England was not in favour of the Allied occupation of the Ruhr valley, when Germany defaulted in the payment of reparations in 1922, but France had her way in spite of England. The British, however, did not take part in the occupation.

  Another old ally, Italy, fell out with the French, and there was constant friction between the two countries. The reason for this was the seizure of power by Mussolini in 1922, and his imperialist ambitions, which were obstructed by France. Of Mussolini and fascism I shall tell you in my next letter.

  The post-war years also brought into evidence certain disruptive tendencies in the British Empire. I have discussed some aspects of this question in other letters. Here I shall only refer to one aspect. Both Australia and Canada were being drawn more and more into the American sphere of cultural and economic influence, and one of the joint dislikes of all three countries were the Japanese, and especially Japanese immigration. Australia is in special danger from this, as it has vast uninhabited areas, and Japan is not far, and has an overflowing population. Neither these two Dominions nor the United States liked England’s alliance with Japan. England wanted to please America, for America was dominating the world both as creditor and otherwise, and also wanted to keep the Empire going as long as possible. So she sacrificed the Anglo-Japanese alliance at the Washington Conference in 1922. I have written to you about this conference in my last letter on China. It was there that the Four-Power Agreement and the Nine-Power Treaty were made. These treaties related to China and the Pacific coast, but Soviet Russia, which was vitally interested, was not invited, in spite of her protest.

  This Washington Conference marked a change in England’s eastern policy. So far England had relied on Japan to help her in the Far East, and even in India if need arose. But now the Far East was becoming a very important factor in world affairs, and there were conflicts of interest between the different Powers. China was rising, or so it seemed, and Japan and America were becoming more and more hostile to each other. Many people thought that the Pacific would be the chief centre of the next great war. As between Japan and America, England changed over to the side of America, or rather it would be more correct to say that she left the side of Japan. Her policy was definitely one of keeping friends with powerful and wealthy America, without making any commitments. Having ended the Japanese Alliance, England started preparing for a possible Far Eastern war. She built enormous and very expensive docks at Singapore, and made of this place a great naval base. From this place she can control the traffic between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. She can dominate India and Burma on the one side, and the French and Dutch colonies on the other; and most important of all, she can take effective part in a Pacific conflict, whether it be against Japan or any other Power.

  This breaking up of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance at Washington in 1922 isolated Japan. The Japanese were driven to look towards Russia, and they began cultivating better relations with the Soviets. Three years later, in January 1925, there was a treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union.

  In the early years after the war, Germany was treated by the victorious Powers very much as an outcast nation. Not finding much sympathy with these Powers, and with a view to frightening them a little, she turned to Soviet Russia and made a treaty—the Treaty of Rapallo— with her in April 1922. The negotiations for this had been secret, and so when publicity was given to the treaty, the Allied Governments had a shock. The British Government was especially put out, as the English ruling class disliked the Soviet Government intensely. It was really the realization that if Germany was not treated well and conciliated, she might go over to Russia, that brought about a change in British policy towards Germany. They became quite appreciative of Germany’s difficulties, and made friendly unofficial advances to her in many ways. They stood apart from the Ruhr adventure. All this was not because of a sudden love for Germany, but because of a desire to keep Germany away from Russia and in the anti-Soviet group of nations. This became the keystone of British policy for some years, and success came to them in 1925 at Locarno. A conference of the Powers was held at Locarno, and for the first time since the war there was a real agreement between the victorious Powers and Germany on some points, which were embodied in a treaty. There was no complete agreement; the tremendous question of reparations as well as other questions remained. But a good beginning was made, and many mutual assurances and guarantees were given. Germany accepted her western French frontier as defined by the Treaty of Versailles; as to her eastern frontier, with the Polish Corridor to the sea, she refused to accept it as final, but she promised to use peaceful means only in her attempts to get it changed. If any party broke the agreement, then the others bound themselves to stand together to fight it.

  Locarno was a triumph for British policy. It made Britain to some extent the arbiter in a dispute between France and Germany, and it brought Germany away from Russia. The chief importance of Locarno was, indeed, that it brought together the western European nations in an anti-Soviet bloc. Russia got nervous, and within a few months she countered with an alliance with Turkey. This Russo-Turkish Treaty was signed in December 1926, just two days after the decision of the League of Nations against Mosul, which decision, you may remember, was against Turkey. In September 1926 Germany entered the League of Nations, and there was much embracing and hand-shaking, and everybody in the League smiled and complimented everybody else.

  And so these moves and counter-moves went on between the European nations, often influenced by their domestic policies. In England, a general election in December 1923 resulted in a Conservative defeat, and the Labour Party in Parliament, although it had no clear majority, formed the government for the first time. Ramsay MacDonald was the Prime Minister. This government had a brief life of nine and a half months. During this period, however, it came to an agreement with Soviet Russia, and diplomatic and trade relations were established between the two countries.

  The conservatives were opposed to any recognition of the Soviets, and in the next British general election, which came within a year of the last one, Russia figured greatly. This was due to the fact that a certain letter, known as the Zinoviev letter, was made a trump card by the conservatives in the election. In this letter communists in England were urged to work secretly for revolution. Zinoviev was a leading Bolshevik in the Soviet Government; he denied absolutely having written the letter and said that it must be a forgery. But still the conservatives exploited the letter fully and, partly with its help, managed to win the election. A Conservative Government was now formed with Stanley Baldwin as the Prime Minister. This government was repeatedly asked to investigate the truth or falsity of the “Zinoviev letter”, but it refused to do so. Subsequent disclosures in Berlin showed that it was a forgery made by a “white” Russian—that is, an anti-Bolshevik émigré Russian. The forgery, however, had done its work in England and put an end to one government and brought in another. By such trivial incidents are international affairs influenced!

  Later in the same year a new development, this time in the Far East, was a source of great irritation to the British Government. A strong united national government suddenly appeared in China, and this seemed to be on intimate terms with the Soviets. For many months the British were in great difficulties in China, and they had to swallow their prestige and do many things that they disliked. And then the Chinese movement, after a brief day of success, split up and went to pieces. The generals massacred and drove out the radical elements in the movement, and preferred to place their reliance on the foreign bankers in Shanghai. This was a great defeat for Russia in the international game, and her prestige went down in China and elsewhere. For England it was a triumph, and she sought to improve the occasion by pressing home the defeat on th
e Soviet. Attempts were again made to organize the anti-Soviet bloc and to encircle Russia.

  About the middle of 1927 action was taken against the Soviets in different parts of the world. In April 1927, on the same day, raids took place on the Soviet embassy in Pekin and the Soviet consulate in Shanghai. Two different Chinese governments controlled these areas, yet they acted together in this matter. It is a very unusual thing for an embassy to be raided and an ambassador insulted; almost inevitably it leads to war. It was the Russian belief that the Chinese governments had been made to act in this way by England and other anti-Soviet Powers to force a war on Russia. But Russia did not fight. A month later, in May 1927, another extraordinary raid took place, this time on Russian trade offices in London. This is called the “Arcos” raid, as Arcos was the name of the Russian official trading company in England. This was also a great and, as the event proved, a wholly unjustified insult to another Power. It was immediately followed by a break in diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries. Next month, in June, the Soviet Minister in Poland was assassinated in Warsaw. (Four years earlier the Soviet minister in Rome had been assassinated in Lausanne.) All these events, each coming quickly after the other, upset the nerves of the Russian people, and they fully expected a combined attack on them by the imperialist Powers. Russia had a big war scare, and in many of the western European countries the workers demonstrated in favour of Russia and against the war that seemed to be coming. The scare passed, and there was no war.

  In that very year, 1927, Soviet Russia celebrated on a big scale the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. England and France were very hostile to Russia then, but Soviet Russia’s friendship with eastern nations was shown by the fact that official delegations from Persia, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Mongolia took part in the celebrations.

  While these alarms and war preparations were going on in Europe and elsewhere, there was also a great deal of talk of disarmament. The Covenant of the League of Nations had laid down that “members of the League recognize that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations”. Apart from laying down this pious principle, the League did nothing else at the time, but it called upon its Council to take necessary steps in this matter. Germany and the other defeated Powers were, of course, disarmed by the peace treaties. The victorious Powers had undertaken to follow, but repeated conferences failed to bring about any solid result. This was not surprising, when each Power aimed at a kind of disarmament which would result in making it relatively stronger than the others. To this, naturally, the others would not agree. The French stuck all along to their demand for security before disarmament.

  Of the great Powers neither America nor the Soviet Union were members of the League. Indeed, the Soviet looked upon the League as a rival and hostile show, a group of capitalist powers ranged against the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was itself considered (just as the British Empire is sometimes spoken of) as a League of Nations, as there were many republics federated together in the Union. The eastern nations also looked upon the League of Nations with suspicion, and considered it a tool of the imperialist Powers. Nevertheless America, Russia, and nearly all countries took part in the League conferences to consider disarmament. In 1925, the League appointed a Preparatory Commission which was to prepare the ground for a great World Conference on Disarmament. This commission went on interminably for seven years, examining plan after plan, without any result. In 1932 the World Conference itself met and, after many months of futile talk, faded away.

  America not only took part in these disarmament discussions, but her interest in Europe and European affairs increased because of her dominating economic position in the world. All Europe was her debtor, and she was interested in preventing the European countries from cutting each other’s throats again, for, apart from higher considerations, what would happen to her debts and trade if this happened? The disarmament discussions not yielding any quick results, a new proposal to help in the preservation of peace appeared in 1928, as a result of talks between the French and American Governments. This proposal bravely attempted to “outlaw” war. The original idea was for a pact between France and America only; but this developed, and ultimately included nearly all the nations of the world. In August 1928 the pact was signed in Paris, and it is therefore known as the Paris Pact of 1928, or the Kellogg-Briand Pact, or simply as the Kellogg Pact. Kellogg was the American Secretary of State who took a lead in the matter, and Aristide Briand was the French Foreign Minister. The Pact was quite a short document condemning recourse to war for the solution of international controversies and renouncing war as an instrument of national policy in the mutual relations of the signatories of the Pact. This language, which is almost the wording of the Pact itself, sounds very fine, and if honestly meant would put an end to war. But it was soon evident how insincere were the Powers. Both the French and the English, and especially the English, made many reservations before signing it, which practically nullified the Pact for them. The British Government excluded from the Pact any warlike activity it might have to undertake in connection with its empire, which meant that it could really make war just when it wanted to. It declared a kind of British “Monroe Doctrine” over its areas of dominance and influence.

  While war was being thus “outlawed” in public, a secret Anglo-French Naval Compromise took place in 1928. News of this managed to leak out, and shocked Europe and America. This was evidence enough of the real state of affairs behind the scenes.

  The Soviet Union accepted the Kellogg Pact and signed it. Its real reason for doing so was to prevent in this way, to some extent at least, the formation of an anti-Soviet bloc which might attack the Soviet under cover of the Pact. The British reservations to the Pact seemed to be especially aimed at the Soviet. In signing the Pact, Russia took strong objection to these British and French reservations.

  Russia was so keen on avoiding war that she took the additional precaution of having a special peace pact with her neighbours—Poland, Rumania, Estonia, Latvia, Turkey, and Persia. This is known as the Litvinov Pact. It was signed in February 1929, six months before the Kellogg Pact became international law.

  So these pacts and alliances and treaties continued to be made in a desperate attempt to steady a quarrelsome and collapsing world, as if such pacts or patchwork on the surface could remedy a deep-seated disease. This was a period in the nineteen-twenties, when socialists and social democrats were often in office in European countries. The more they tasted of office and power, the more they merged themselves into the capitalist structure. Indeed, they became the best defenders of capitalism, and often enough as keen imperialists as any conservative or other reactionary had been. To some extent the European world had quietened down after the revolutionary ferment of the early post-war years. Capitalism seemed to have adjusted itself to the new conditions for another period of time, and there appeared to be no immediate prospect of a revolutionary change anywhere.

  So matters stood in the year 1929 in Europe.

  175

  Mussolini and Fascism in Italy

  June 21, 1933.

  I have brought up the outline of our story of Europe to 1929. But one important chapter has been omitted so far, and I must go back a little to deal with it. This relates to events in Italy after the war. These events are important not so much because they tell us what happened in Italy, but because they are of a new kind and give warning of a novel phase of activity and conflict all over the world. They have thus much more than a national significance, and I have therefore reserved them for a separate letter. So this letter will deal with Mussolini, one of the outstanding personalities of today, and with the rise of fascism in Italy.

  Even before the World War began, Italy was in the grip of severe economic trouble. Her war with Turkey in 1911-12 had ended in her victory, and the annexation of Tripoli in northern Africa was very
pleasing to her imperialists. But this little war had not done much good internally and had not improved the economic situation. Matters worsened, and in 1914, on the eve of the World War, Italy seemed to be on the brink of revolution. There were many big strikes in the factories, and the workers were only kept in check by the moderate socialist leaders of labour, who succeeded in putting down the strikes. Then came the war. Italy refused to join her German allies, and tried to take advantage of her neutral position to squeeze out concessions from both sides. This attitude of offering her services to the highest bidder was not a very edifying one, but nations are quite callous, and have a way of behaving in a manner which would shame any private individual. The Allies, England and France, could offer the bigger bribe, both immediate cash and promise of territory, and so in May 1915 Italy joined the war on the side of the Allies. I think I have told you of the secret treaty that was made subsequently, allotting Smyrna and a bit of Asia Minor to Italy. The Russian Bolshevik Revolution came before this treaty could be ratified and upset the little game. This was one of the grievances of Italy, and there was some dissatisfaction also at the peace treaties of Paris, a feeling that Italian “rights” had been ignored. The imperialists and bourgeoisie had looked forward to the annexation and exploitation of fresh colonial territories, and thereby easing the economic strain in their own country.