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Home Rule for Scotland WHY NOTHOME RULE for ENGLAND?**** BOTH SIDES OF THE BORDER BACK SCOTS INDEPENDENCE ****A DISUNITED KINGDOM****NEW LABOUR HAS DESTROYED THE UNION- SO USE THE WORDSAN OBITUARY TO YOUR COUNTRY WHICH NEED NOT HAVE HAPPENED**** EU WIPES ENGLAND OFF THE MAP**** THE ENGLISH DID NOT MOVE THEMSELVES SO ARE NOW SLAVES IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP EUROPE****"...What kind of people do they think we are?" by WINSTON CHURCHILL****THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND BY WINSTON CHURCHILL. |
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Almost everything, which is most precious in our Civilisation, has come from small States.
PART I
With
so much talk these days of the so-called importance of all nations in joining
together in large Federal Unions. Not
might we add on the premise of the USA which even today is comprised of over 50
States who are exceedingly jealous of their own State Independence and
fortunate that their beginnings were from the roots of the mainly Anglo-Saxon
people who with other previously oppressed people from Europe accepted their
new role in the declaration of Independence and the birth of the Federal
Government of the United States Of America on the 4th July 1776. To
compare the present monstrosity called the European Union and soon if you let
it The United States of Europe even before it becomes a legal entity
should the new EU Constitution be accepted -which is most unlikely -particularly in the UK -with the American
Interstate system is an impossibility as the EU is even now beginning to
unravel because of its forced and unnatural imposition of a federal structure
from the Elite privileged proletariat and not from the ‘roots’ of its
peoples The
following extracts which follow are from a lecture by the Right Hon. Herbert
Fisher delivered in the Great Hall of King’s College Oxford in 1915
-within a year into the First World War.
The work was in 1919 published by the Clarendon Press- Oxford
under the title of Studies in History & Politics. During the early years of the war H.
Fisher [Liberal] was with the Board of Education in1916. The
purpose of putting this instructive and interesting account of: THE
VALUE OF SMALL STATES before
you is to highlight the obvious advantages, which are common to all small
States. WE already have an excellent
article already on our Top Topics Board by the respected Labour
politician [Lord] Peter Shore but the following extracts will give
the feelings held in this subject almost a hundred years ago which are as true
today in 2005 as they were in 1915. * Almost everything, which is most precious in our
civilization, has come from small States - the Old Testament, the
Homeric poems, the Attic and Elizabethan drama, the art of the Italian
Renaissance, the Common Law of England. Nobody needs to be told what humanity owes to Athens,
Florence, Geneva, or Weimar.
The world’s debt to any one of these small States far exceeds all that
has issued from the militant monarchies of Louis XIV, of Napoleon, of the late
Emperor of Germany [Written in 1915] It may, perhaps, be objected that the apparition of artistic, literary, or scientific genius is an incalculable matter of hazard unaffected by the size of the political community in which the great man happens to be born, and that we are only entitled to infer from these examples that a small state may provide an atmosphere in which genius may thrive. It is, however, a relevant answer to much criticism
now levelled in Germany against small states, to remind ourselves that in the
particular points of heroic and martial patriotism, civic pride and political
prudence, they have often reached the highest levels to which it is possible
for humanity to attain, and that from Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, as
well as from the illustrious school of Florentine historians and publicists,
the world has learnt nine-tenths of its best political wisdom. America has particular reasons for gratefully
recognizing one of the smallest and most illustrious of the city-states of
Europe. The seed of modern
democratic theory was sown in Geneva, and being scattered on the hither
shore of the North American continent by small communities, organized on the
model of Calvin, burgeoned into the great Republic of the West. Nor is it fanciful, in estimating the causes which
contributed to the particular brilliance first of the Greek and then of the
Italian city-state, to attribute some weight to the question of size. Indeed, if we do this, we shall only be echoing the
voice of antiquity itself. In a famous
passage in which he depicts the lineaments of the ideal state, Aristotle gives
the opinion that a city so large that its citizens are unable to hear the voice
of a single town crier has passed the limits of wholesome growth. This conclusion was based on the view that every
citizen must take a direct part in the political deliberations of the State to
which he belongs. Indeed had the states
of antiquity exceeded the limits compatible with direct government, the world
would have lost a good part of its political education. As it was, the contracted span of these communities
carried with it three conspicuous benefits.
The city-state served as a school of patriot virtue, not in the main of
the blustering and thrasonical type, but refined and sublimated by every grace
of instinct and reason. It further enabled the experiment of s free direct
democratic government to be made, with incalculable consequences for the
political thinking of the world. Finally, it threw into a forced and fruitful
communion minds of the most different temper, giving to them an elasticity and
many-sidedness which might otherwise have been wanting or less conspicuous, and
stimulating, through the close mutual competition which it engendered, an
intensity of intellectual and artistic passion which has been the wonder of all
succeeding generations and such as can never be reached in great states
organized for the vulgarity of aggressive war. So much at least will be generally conceded. The question for us, however, is not to
assess our debt to the city states of the past, but to consider what arguments
may be found for safeguarding the existence of the smaller nation states of the
modern world. And first of all it is relevant to ask whether there
may not be some advantage to humanity at large arising from the fact that
certain communities are withdrawn by the reason of scale from the competition
of armaments. To certain
military minds in Germany it seems to be a lamentable thing that any community
of human beings should be organized on the basis of peace, or that the policy
of any Government should be steadily directed towards the preservation of its
subjects from the horrors of war. Let us assume for the moment that this extravagant proposition is true, and that the Swiss, the Danes, the Dutch, and the Belgians would be greatly improved in their general morality if they were thrown into some big military empire with an aggressive world-policy and a Providential destiny to impose its culture on the world, and all the other familiar paraphernalia of the Potsdam philosophy. We have still to ask ourselves the question whether even from the selfish point of view of the Great Powers, who are blessed with the moral luxury of a conscript army, there may not be some convenience attaching to the continued existence of small oases of peace in a world nervously equipping itself for Armageddon? Has Italy no cause to be grateful to the Swiss Confederation? Would The Scandinavian kingdoms preserve
their unruffled neutrality if the Danish Peninsula were swallowed up by
Germany? And had the disappearance
of Poland really benefited the two greatest partitioning Powers whose past
appetites have brought them the heritage of restless anxiety which belongs to
the vigil of conterminous states? Indeed
it is not easy to measure the injurious consequences, which have grown from the
disappearance of that middle kingdom of Lotharingia, which once served as a
buffer between France and Germany, or from the extinction of the Polish nation
at the close of the eighteenth century. By common confession European diplomacy suffers from nerves; and the nervous tension is necessarily increased with every addition to the ranks of the rivals. [As
with Russia and the European Union in 2005]
The
entanglements likely to give rise to conflicts are proportionate to the number
and weight of the Powers, which stand inside the ring. [Britain’s
historic role has been as a countercheck to any dangerous balance of power
question- inside the EU our independent wish to assist a particular
nation-state could be vetoed] Every
ally who joins one or other of the coalitions brings with him a cluster of new
interests to defend, and thereby increases the chance of war. [As with our
forces in 2005 in Bosnia- the Congo and other trouble spots worldwide.] Every
Power, which stands aside, lessons the general strain and contracts the area of
inflammable controversy. But the advantages to be derived from the existence of small buffer states are subject to the clear condition that their independence and neutrality are respected. Let us consider for the moment what the world would have
gained if the German Emperor and his advisers had all along regarded the
violation of Belgian neutrality as an unthinkable crime. Not only would Great Britain be
now at peace [1915] but also no general war would have taken place at
all. The challenge to Russia was thrown down by Germany because it was calculated in Berlin that by marching through Belgium the Germans could easily crush France before the Russian peril became insistent. It is absurd to speak of the violation of Belgium neutrality as a ‘bitter necessity’ ‘ forced upon a reluctant country in an unforeseen emergency. It was, on the contrary, the deliberate groundwork for a careful edifice of aggressive diplomacy. The entire plan of the campaign against France was framed on the supposition that the Germans would march through Belgium. The whole scheme of operations against Russia was based on the believe that the total weight of the German military power could be thrown on the eastern frontier by reason of the rapid and crushing success which a German army, advancing through the Belgium gateway, would be able to achieve in France. And upon these two military calculations the ambitious edifice of German world-policy was built. All the plans of the General Staff were secretly framed on the supposition that Belgium would be treated as a part of the German Empire in the event of war. It was with this prospect in view that Germany thought it safe to defy Russia in 1909 and to repeat the defiance in 1914. And though it would be difficult to set bounds to the military presumption of Germany, it may be safely assumed that if the Belgium doorway had been patently barred, the diplomacy of the German Empire would have been tuned to a more modest key. The
moral of all this is clear enough. The
small states should not be abolished: on the contrary, their neutrality should
be supported by a guarantee so formidable that the strongest Power would never
be tempted in future to infringe it. We may test the value of these communities by another
criterion. The Hague Tribunal
has been the object of much silly depreciation, and the military parties in the
world are never tired of giving voice to the contempt in which they involve the
principle of arbitration. It is true that the belief in the value of pacific solutions
chiefly flourishes in small unmilitary states like Holland or in that large and
imposing aggregate of small [Independent] civilian states which goes by the
name of the United States of America. And it is equally true that no nation has yet consented
or, in the present state of public ethics, is likely to consent to refer
matters affecting its ‘vital interests, independence, or honour’ to an International
Tribunal. Nevertheless, a considerable number of arbitration treaties have been concluded agreeing to refer differences to the Hague Tribunal; and in the course of the North sea incident of 1904 the strained relations between England and Russia were greatly eased by the fact that the Hague Conference had already provided a method of procedure by which the dispute might be adjusted without loss of dignity to either side. Arbitration cannot banish war, but it can diminish the accumulation of minor grievances which, if untended, are apt to create that inflamed state of public opinion out of which wars easily arise; and in the case of larger disputes recourse to arbitration has at least the advantage of gaining time. Now the condition of mind which supports the principle of arbitration, and which provides facilities for recourse to it, is only made possible by the existence of communities organized for peace, and standing outside the armed and vigilant rivalries of the great continental powers. It is symptomatic of the Prussian spirit to disparage any manifestation of natural feeling which runs counter to the assumed necessities of a militant Empire; and so in books written even by such eminent and moderate men as Prince von Bulow, the late Chancellor of Germany, we find a fixed intention to suppress, so far as may be, the national characteristics of the Poles, Danes, and men of Latin race which have been incorporated in the Empire. WE in England, who have some experience of minor nationalities, cannot read of the recent developments of Prussian policy in Poland without feeling how unintelligent and oppressive it is, and how much better it would be in the interests of internal peace and consolidation, if Germany would throw her mind into a generous and liberal attitude towards the men of alien type whom she has absorbed by conquest. But it is part of the Prussian genus-if, a drillmaster can have genius-to regard all variety, not only troublesome, which it often may be, but as injurious, which it very seldom is. Indeed, one of the principle arguments in favour of the preservation of the small states of Europe (and the same argument applies to the preservation of the State system in America) lies in the fact that these small communities do vary from the set type which is imprinted by steady and powerful governments upon the life and behaviour of the larger Powers. The mere fact of this variety is an enrichment of human experience and a stimulus to self-criticism and improvement. Indeed, the existence of small states operates in the large and imperfect economy of the European system very much in the same way as the principle of individual liberty operates in any given state, preventing the formation of massive and deadening weights of convential opinion which impair the free play of individuality, and affording a corrective to the vulgar idea that the brute force of organised numbers is the only thing that matters in the world. The critic of small states may also be asked what he means by the word ‘civilization’. If civilization is a phrase denoting the sum of those forces which help to bind men together in civil association, it means benevolence, dutifulness, self-sacrifice, a lively interest in the things of the mind, and a discerning taste in the things of the sense, then there is no reason to think that these qualities are the special prerogative of great states. Indeed, there is a certain type of harsh and stoical patriotism, which, by reason of its austere and arrogant exclusiveness, is inimical to the growth of civilized feeling. It is not confined to big states, for it was present in ancient Sparta; nor is it the necessary accompaniment even of huge military monarchies. But it is the spirit of modern Prussia, a spirit consistent indeed with the heroic qualities of the barbarous ages, but lacking the sane and temperate outlook of civilized life. All through history the great enemy of human reason has been fanaticism. And there is no reason to believe that the fanaticism of a military state, served by the most destructive artillery in the world, is any bit less injurious to mankind than the spirit, which for many centuries of history condemned the religious heretic to the torments of the stake. It is difficult rightly to assess the contributions, which the smaller states of Europe have made during the past century [Written in 1915] to the sum of human culture. Nor would a mere list of eminent men such as Ibsen and Maeterlinck, of whom every cultivated person has heard, or Gramme, the Belgian inventor of the dynamo, or Van’t Hoff, the famous Dutch chemist, prove more than the indisputable fact that the intellectual life of the highest quality may be carried on in such communities. It is of course possible that, if Holland were forced into the German Confederation, Dutch painting, which has now reached a level higher than any attained in recent years in Germany, would suffer no eclipse, and that the Dutch universities would persevere in their work of scholarly theological exegesis. It is possible that, under the same conditions, the wonderful perfection to which the little kingdom of Denmark has brought the arts of dairy farming and agriculture would still be maintained. But it would depend entirely upon the degree of liberty and autonomy which the German Emperor might be willing to concede, whether this would be so or not, whether the natural currents of hopeful energy would continue to flow or whether they would be effectively sealed up by the ungenial fiat of an alien taskmaster Upon this it is unnecessary to speculate. [As will be likely in the United States Of Europe in
2005 which our people must oppose not only for our own Freedom and way-of-life
but also for the new-comers to the EU who many of them are unaware of the
danger to their hard won Freedoms particularly Poland renowned for its Solidarity
movement.] But it is strictly pertinent to the argument to remember
that the three small states, whose existence is closely and specially
threatened by the expansion of Germany, have each developed not only a peculiar
and strongly marked economy, but certain special excellences and qualities
such are most likely to be developed in an atmosphere of comparative
tranquillity. Thus, apart from the school of landscape painting, the Dutch have set a model to the world in all that pertains to the scientific classification and management of archives, vanquishing in this particular even the French, whose organization of historical learning is so justly framed. Denmark, too, has its own speciality in a very perfect organism for co-operative production in agriculture. Indeed,
one of the advantages flowing from the existence of the smaller states consists
in the fact that they serve as convenient laboratories for social experiment. A point likely to be appreciated in America, in view of the great mass of material for the comparative study of social and industrial expedients which it provided by the [FREE] American State legislatures. Such experiments as women’s suffrage, so as the State prohibition of the public sale of alcoholic drink, or as a thoroughgoing application of the Reformatory theory of punishment, would never be seriously discussed in large, old and settled communities, were it not for the fact that they have been tried upon a smaller scale by the more adventurous legislatures of the New World. Man is an imitative animal, and a study of such an organ as the Journal of Comparative legislation exhibits the increasing uniformity of the problems, which confront the legislator, and the increasing monotony of the solutions, which he finds to meet them. All over the world industrial, educational, penal legislation tends to conform to type. And within limits the tendency is the necessary and wholesome consequence of the unifying influence of modern industrial conditions. But our enlarged facilities for imitation present obvious dangers, and among them the fatal temptation to borrow a ready-made uniform which does not fit. Small States may fall into this pitfall as well as big
ones, but at least their continued existence presents some guarantee for
diversity of life and intellectual adventure in a world steadily becoming more
monotonously drab in its outer garment of economic circumstance. [As we find in 2005-over ninety years later] No
historical State can be driven out of its Identity without suffering a moral
impoverishment in the process. The evil
is not only apparent in the embitterment and the lowering of the citizens of
the conquered community- [Or in 2005 subjected to the doctrine of the United States of Europe if the people mislead the signs to a Dictatorship and vote to join the suspect promised land which is a mirage in the sand hiding a land of collectivist equality where everyone must conform to the norm and no further.] -whether they are compelled to the agonies of a Polish dispersion, or linger on nursing their rights and wounded pride in the scene of their former independence, but it creates a problem for the conqueror, which may very well harden and brutalize his whole outlook on policy. It is never good for a nation to be driven to
the employment of harsh measures against any portion of its subjects. Upon whatever plausible grounds of immediate expediency such measures may, be justified, they invariably harden the tone of political opinion, and create an atmosphere of insensibility which spreads far beyond the sphere of the special case and occasion. The acquisition of the Alsace-Lorraine by Germany is a case in point. The result of the forcible incorporation of these provinces in the German Empire has been bad for the governed and equally bad for the governors. Coercion is a virus, which cannot be introduced into any part of the body politic without risk of a general diffusion of poison. [Note- Mr Blair]
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