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512
PARTISAN REVIEW
tion any more than that of political re-organization-could now be
solved along strictly national lines.
Today the Resistance has become as absorbed in economic
ques~
tions of the home front and other purely domestic issues, and as apa–
thetic towards the
qu~tion
of Europe as a whole, as the Popular Front
was on the brink of its defeat. Again, the old powers try to capitalize
on the existing political vacuum, try to restore the old framework,
hoping that its very weakness will help them to preserve what power
is left to them. This time, they are offered and are accepting the help
of the Communists-which certainly adds a new flavor but hardly
inspires more confidence in the whole business of restoration.
One of the fundamentals of the national state is its sovereignty,
and one of the outstanding reasons for the impossibility of restoring }
the national state in Europe is the fact that no nation of the old con–
tinent is great or strong enough to retain its sovereignty. That these
elementary conditions of power no longer exist was first manifested
in the remarkable decline of popular nationalistic feelings at the be–
ginning of this war, then in the simultaneous movement of
all
the
resistance groups toward European solidarity. Today there is an al–
most automatic return to the pre-war mentality in foreign policy.
This mentality in the pre-war period was such that despite the
im–
mediate threat of a German-dominated Europe, nobody could even
attempt an independent political line in foreign affairs, but everybody
was either pro-English and anti-German, or pro-German and anti–
English, or pro-Russian and against Germany and England. Today,
with the defeat of Germany, the picture has changed slightly: for all
practical purposes there exists only the dividing line between those
who are more or less pro-Russian and those who are pro-English and
pro-American. De Gaulle's attempt to create an independent, all-out
French policy has ended with his trying to play one side against the
other, and he has succeeded only in creating maximum confusion
and in provoking the greatest "humiliation" for his country.
This situation, which simply demonstrates that we can have
either a federated Europe or a Europe dominated by non-European
powers, would be bad enough if confined to the field of external
politics. It grows worse, however, as the old distinction between for–
eign and Clomestic politics
br~aks
down. This means that on the do–
mestic scene, too, the fronts will be divided between those who are
more inclined to accept Russian influence and those who prefer an
American or English inspired government, no matter how foolish these
view points are in themselves. The point is that all political life shows
-a
tendency to revolve around sympathies or hatreds of peoples, a con-
