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interruptions, it is both effective and irreversible. Post-Hitler Germany
is the clearest possible evidence of what happens to a country when it
has finally become thoroughly bourgeois. The wave of pacifism and
"neutralism" which so disturbs American diplomacy at the present time
is basically an aspect of this fundamental shift towards democracy and
reasonableness. Whatever its present connection with alarm over the
danger of nuclear war, it
is
at bottom a long-term reorientation on the
part of countries which have contracted out of world politics, or are
in process of doing so. The smaller democratic countries of northern
Europe-Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland-have long been in the van
of this secular movement. Britain, Germany, and France-until yester–
day great powers-are about to follow suit, though not without diffi–
culty and internal stresses, rising in the case of France to a sudden
dramatic pitch. From the outsider's viewpoint, there is little here to
cause a rush of blood, or even of ideology, to the head. It was never
very likely that medium-sized, democratically governed (on the whole)
countries would retain their former outlook in an age in which even the
two super-powers are having difficulty with the growth of their arms
budgets. Sputniks and ICBM's are for those who can afford them. The
countries of Western (and of Eastern) Europe are not among that
number, though one or the other may now and then let off a Hiroshima–
type bomb for prestige purposes. In this respect, too, the politics of
1970 are clearly going to be of a very different type from those of 1939,
not to mention 1914, when the terms "great power" and "European
power" were very nearly synonymous.
If
one looks beyond Western Europe, to the regions which were
once the chosen field of European expansion, the conclusion is similar.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to arraign European "capitalism
and imperialism," though doubtless the various Communist and/or
nationalist movements in the backward countries will for a while persist
in this routine, from sheer force of habit. For European expansion,
political and economic, is now very much a thing of the past. Here and
there a rearguard action is still being fought, the most spectacular at
the moment taking place in North Africa; but in general Western Eu–
ropean society may now be said to have effected the great withdrawal
and turned in upon itself. The expulsion of the European powers from
Asia is well-nigh complete; the Middle East and North Africa have
pretty nearly achieved the corresponding objective; and Africa south
of the Sahara is not far behind. What this is going to mean in terms
of economic development remains for the moment an open question,
but one thing is already certain: the bulk of foreign investment will not
