Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

FRANCE IS TO BLAME 709politics remain democratic? The new system o£ bilateral agreementsgradually dissolved the system o£ collective security which was moresymbolized than realized in the League of Nations. Cardinal Hlond,Archbishop of Gniezno, head of the Polish Church and with Pilsudskithe most powerful man in this almost completely Catholic country,praised the German-Polish pact in an interview with a French journalist;he expressed his belief in a slow but sure improvement of Polish-German relations and said — exacdy as Hitler had before him — thatthis pact was a 'prelude to a future Franco-German pact,' which wouldcomplete the work of pacification in Europe.In less mild and hopeful words spoke the chief of government ofanother small nation the existence of which for a century had dependedupon the effectiveness of a system of European security, although thissystem had not been able to spare the country a terrible ordeal duringthe First World War. On March 6, 1934, Count de Brocqueville made aspeech in the Belgian Senate which resounded throughout Europe like acry of alarm. The Versailles Treaty, he complained, was an illusionwhich disregarded all historic lessons. The men of Versailles, deBrocqueville said, had believed that it was possible to keep a greatnation like Germany in a state of permanent disarmament. But howcould anyone imagine — and remarks full of the most elementarywisdom now followed — that the twenty-seven nations, which wereallied when the treaty was signed, would preserve their harmony in thefuture and impose upon Germany what Napoleon I, the autocrat ofalmost all Europe, had been unable to impose upon Prussia alone? Whohad ever seen such treaties survive the circumstances out of which theywere born? The Germany of today was no longer that of November 11,1918; and what had become of the common will of the twenty-sevennations which were supposed to defend the Treaty of 1919? Anunchanging law of history decrees that the defeated shall rise againsooner or later. Germany's rearmament, de Brocqueville went on, couldno longer be prevented, for the only way to accomplish this would be byimmediate war; 'but I refuse to drive my country into such anadventure.' What could and should be prevented was a general race forarmaments. It is true that here de Brocqueville