- Yg. 1926, No. 32 -
The consolidation of Europe in some form has become a necessity today. I believe that one can set up this thesis without finding the contradiction of a thinkable person.
The consolidation of Europe has become necessary as a result of the economic crisis in which (with the exception of the British Empire) the European states are facing the crushing superiority of North America. I have once compared the European states with small traders, who have to make bankruptcy in their single competition with the big department North America, if they are weakened even by the customs and economic struggle among themselves or even organize processes and brawls among themselves. The only salvation for these once very wealthy merchants, the once very wealthy merchants, is the cooperative, that is, some kind of community.
They must, not because of morality, but quite alone from sober self-preservation, stand together, bury any thoughts of war with each other. From a almost every month Feeling out - I do not let anyone deny me - I preach for my person the Peace, Because I know that a new war means the downfall of Europe and thus of Germany.
It is not time today to deal with the question of peace from the worldview point of view. Every world view is "incorrect" because each must be subjective. But here is one objective constraint to a new community. A coercion that may be sympathetic to the ideological pacifist, perhaps unpleasant to the ideological violent friend - but which is simply a compulsion for both.
Nobody will want to demand from the German nationalist that he loves the Frenchman. The French nationalist also loves Germans. Not. But both must enter the society: "Germany, France and Cie." And work for common interests. You must, commercially speaking, from two competing companies become a joint company and other, even smaller record. Therefore no one should and need not become the servant of another.
Not only economically but also politically, this is necessary in view of the fact that all other parts of the world are consolidating. We move quickly from the period of national education to that of the continental. The Pan-American League of Nations is in the process of becoming. In Africa there is the cry: "Africa to the Africans". The pan-Asian idea, whose military design Russia has taken on, with a success that is unfortunately not yet sufficiently well-known in Germany, will in a few years even represent a military threat to Europe.
In view of these developments, it is a duty of self-preservation for Europe to think of its own consolidation. Without them it gets under the wheels!
But there is no healthy Germany in a broken Europe. We are inextricably linked with the fate of the continent.
That's why we have to European become. We must finally understand the common ground of distress, danger, the urgent need for communal feeling and action. I frankly confess that I would never write a word for peace and reconciliation if I knew that peace and reconciliation would harm Germany. Just because I know that there is no other salvation, that's why I write.
Others are equally active in their own field, and are economically small-scale, which may perhaps scourge them politically on a large scale (I say, perhaps because I do not know the views of the masters) as internationalism. An international tube agreement has just been put under cover that encloses the tube industries of Germany, France, Luxembourg and Belgium. This is a step towards economic Europe. It happened anyway because it was necessary. Hundreds of other steps will follow. The European customs union is a matter of course. It could already be there with greater insight of the politically authoritative today.
Europe is coming because it is coming got to, And with Europe, European peace comes as a matter of course. The thing is beyond sympathy and antipathy.
1926, 32 Franz Carl Endres