My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleya healthy and prosperous agriculture, bring new hope to the hungry of the world, andprovide Europe with the means so to influence Asian and African policies that thecreed and intrigue of communism would be swept from the map. For reasons alreadysuggested, I would advocate also the inclusion in these arrangements of territories insouthern Africa under European government. When Britain at last decided on greatpolicies, it should ask the Queen of England to go, together with the President ofFrance, to invite Canada to enter the European community. I reiterate that Europe canonly be made, and great things can only be done, in a great way.Frontiers, armaments and lost landsA plague of relatively small problems will always bedevil Europe and inhibit itsdevelopment until we face the future together in Europe a Nation. I have never for amoment deceived myself that Europe will readily summon this resolution until smallpolicies have failed, but many symptoms indicate that this point may now be reachedbefore long. Humanity only steels itself for a hard effort in case of necessity, and untilthen is always well content to drift along with any makeshift arrangement which canwork for the moment. The decisive factor in the making of Europe will be economicin the modern age, because it will be found that nothing short of a Europeancommunity with its own government can overcome the imminent economic problems.Other questions menace the harmony of Europe and postulate the same solution evenbefore the economic question becomes acute. There is really no acceptable settlementof the problem of frontiers within Europe, until frontiers within Europe cease to exist.While the boundary marks of the old national states still stand they will be disputedwith increasing acrimony, and they can only vanish within Europe a Nation. Majorquestions of economic policy, mutual defence and foreign policy, should be the dutyof a European government subject to a European parliament. Inhibiting memories,rivalries and animosities would then gradually disappear. Questions closely affectingthe daily lives of the people should be dealt with by regional parliaments. We needdevolution throughout Europe, and should begin at once with Scotland and Wales.Dialogue of central and regional government, and of both with the people, should befrequent. I long ago suggested: 'Government should always know what the people arethinking, and the people should always know what government is doing'.Shall I again be met at this point with the long-exposed fallacy that we should lose ournational cultures and individualities? Previous unions of peoples within the nationalstates of existing Europe did not turn Englishmen into Scotsmen, Bavarians intoPrussians, Normans into Marseillais, or Sicilians into Lombards. On the contrary, allpresent evidence indicates that the only way of avoiding a universal amalgam in themelting-pot of an American or Soviet civilisation is to make Europe so strong that ithas the power as well as the will to guard and preserve its vital, precious, individualroots.Not only will frontier questions between European peoples prove insoluble untilEurope a Nation is a fact, but it will also be found that nations with long militarytraditions will never permanently accept the armament position of second-rate powers.The question of nuclear weapons within Europe will not be settled until we are somerged together that we cannot use them against each other, and this once againpostulates a common government within Europe a Nation. Otherwise we shall havecontinuing and increasing friction between leading European powers on the subject of401 of 424