402
GEORGE LlCHTHEIM
Cold War, but whether the United States and the Soviet Union can
be trusted to continue Europe's traditional role in the world. De–
pending on how one stands on this issue, one may be classed as a
"Westernizer" or as something else. One may also form significantly
different conclusions about the probable survival of what it is con–
ventional to describe as civilization.
I confess to some slight impatience with historians who keep
reminding us that the European age in world affairs is over. The
fact itsdf is indisputable. Differences arise at the point where some
of these writers-Professor Geoffrey Barraclough comes to mind–
seem to imply that the displacement of Europe from the central
position it occupied in the spread of civilization was both inevitable
and in some sense desirable. No sensible person is going to deny
that as the world's power center, Europe has indeed committed
suicide. Nor, with memories of the "final solution" and other horrors
still fresh in our minds, are we likely to assert that the loss of esteem
Europe has suffered is unmerited. The fact remains that the moral
values in whose name the crusade against Germany was waged were
themselves of Western origin. Significantly, they evoked no marked
response in the Orient. Let me also recall a small but relevant
circumstance which was brought home to me by conversations with
survivors of the Armenian catastrophe in Turkey half a century ago.
What struck them was the conspicuous difference between postwar
German "restitution" and the callous attitude of the present genera–
tion of Turks to the rCurd of their then national leaders (who in–
cluded some of the later founders of the Turkish Republic). So far
as I am aware, it has never occurred to anyone in authority in
present-day Turkey to voice regret at the Armenian massacres.
Similarly, in the well-publicized mudslinging that goes on daily
between Delhi and Karachi, it seems to be tacitly taken for granted
that no words need be wasted over the respective share of Hindus
and Moslems in the events accompanying the partition of India in
1947. Yet that upheaval, and the ensuing civil war and "religious"
massacres, cost the lives of some two million people, while tens of
millions were driven from their homes. Admittedly human life
has traditionally been cheap
in
Asia, and who are the Westerners
to blame Indians for trying to retain some calm in the face of a
