New Europe Group and Atlantic Initiative for the Order of Man

A Speech by DIMITRIJE MITRINOVIC

International Organiser, New Europe Group, at the Luncheon Press Conference, Simpson's Restaurant Strand, London, W.C.

Friday, 17th February 1950

PROPOSALS TOWARDS A WORLD SYSTEM OF FOREIGN POLICIES

SEVERELY IMPARTIAL PROPOSALS AND INTEGRALLY INCLUSIVE

MR. CHAIRMAN, Professor Soddy, General Fuller, and Represen¬tatives of the Press, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Speaking to you as I do as the Organising Secretary of the New Europe Group and chief political adviser to the Group on Continental and international affairs, I beg to convey to you that I am speaking also as belonging natively to my Yugoslav nation and my Serb people inside of it. In fact you can take it safely that the view I shall expound is essentially the cultural or spiritual view of the, let us call it, INTERMARIUM populations in the East of Europe, between Russia and the Central Europe proper, and stretching, if I do not exaggerate, from Finland — which is a semi-independent country, though precariously endangered by the might of the Communist Russia — down to irritated and uncertain Turkey far to the South. Speaking technically, and merely diplomatically, the problem is of the Balkans and the whole South Eastern Europe, with Turkey on the fringe of the belt of nations to which I referred as Intermarium, meaning between the Arctic and Baltic Seas and the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Seas.

Now my first proposal of any, merely as a matter of beginning and yet focussing the attention to the central nerve of the world and of Europe, is that in no case should the Balkans be divided or split, as is the case now both with Yugoslavia and with Greece. Not that I plead for Communism, nor for the inclusion of the whole European East into the Soviet Union system of the people's republics and new democracies. What I propose is to the human spirit and European intelligence: with British intermediation, to induce, somehow, the formation of Eastern European Federation, Turkey joining in voluntarily together with Finland, the other nations being already in the Soviet power orbit, however unfederated and unfree.

Now I propose in all earnestness, that the United States should become, by common human agreement, the protector power guaranteeing peace, freedom and prosperity to the Pacific or World Eastern formation. Similarly I propose that South America becomes the power basis and protector of the Latin European or Catholic countries. Similarly I propose that Great Britain offers her protection power to the nations of Nordic Europe, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Benelux countries included.

This is the crux of the situation of course, and it is not for me to enlarge on atom warfare or on the world-self-exploding hyd¬rogen bomb. The mighty men and mighty nations prefer their mights, and they need their guarantees and protectorates, but we ordinary humanity nevertheless deserve human survival and, with the help of Providence, and our own enduring in freewill— human fulfilment.

But, Ladies and Gentlemen, should we mankind of the West, we of Europe and Britain particularly, start thinking now—in these days of war preparations and Atlantic Charters, of dictatorships of the proletariat and the immense Soviet and American imperialisms, with Japan prohibited from thinking and speaking of human synthesis and organisation, and with the great China reduced to mere and strict co-partnership in the Communist world offensive; should we not, I say, consider the strange and unique position of the Indian sub-continent in the far Eastern conformation of our one, common, indivisible humanity?

For I plead urgently for the consideration by us of the Western thought of the marvellous and ancestral culture-bloc of the Asiatic humanity, and of the Pacific ocean hemisphere. It is neces¬sary not to lose ourselves in the fractional issues of the Russo-American conflict, however titanic and fateful this issue is. I pro¬pose that the very notion and idea 'Atlantic' be modified now, and adapted to the whole reality of the human situation.

By 'Atlantic', as an adjective, we should mean the specific modern scientific world of the European and American West, the world of the modern technological civilisation. But we should also mean it with the culture background of the West; this means, with the ancestral or genesic background of the individualist psychology, and therefore of Christian axiology, or of Christianity as the spiritual essence of our culture, however much it looks as though the Soviet millions in their materialism persecute and deny Christian religion or morality.

While basically Scythian, or Eurasian, the Soviet humanity is also essentially Slavonic or Indo-Germanic, Aryan, racially. Also, while the ineffably rich and poor India is a racial alchemy of many Eastern nations, the essence of the Indian philosophy, or world-view, the Vedanta and Buddhism, including Jainism, the essence of the spiritual India is remarkably Aryan, and very acces¬sible to European scientific or classical philosophy.

Both Russia and India should be considered as woven into the * Western web of thought. Here the soul of China remains alone of the vast cultures and powers of the East. Not in any sense that anyone should query the ability of China to modernise or Wes¬ternise itself in either the Communist or the non-Communist sense; but the truth remains that our own planetary and human Japan cannot be just simply allowed to remain in the American kind and imperious tutelage.

Just as we should understand Germany, and help her to adjust herself to the new human organisation of the future, of our eirenic dreams, so we ought to, and must, consider and re-consider the human mission or services of the great and high element of Nippon—of Nippon, Japan—however necessary it was to defeat that Japan. We absolutely must work out and verify a world-integrative policy, and to this anthropo-polity, or eirenic world-polity, belongs the knowledge that the East is indivisible also, and not only the West, and that a new and re-vivified East—Japan, China, India, with the rest belonging to their bloc—will be a glory, sanctification and regenerative force to our whole humanity.

Now a remark here. Let me mark this remark. Not in the least do I propose a Euro-American Alliance with the Soviet Socialist Union because we of the West, or at least we Europeans should fear the great Yellow Peril, or provoke it into existence through fear. I only plead for human and spiritual consideration of the culture arid genius of the great ancestral and world-bearing and much maltreated and neglected East, demanding liberty for them to organise themselves into the Pacific balance to our Atlantic Initia¬tive, forming thus, both of us, the one whole of the two hemi¬spheres of the one Anthropos.

From this I hope it will be clear that by Atlantic Alliance I mean the Triune, or Fourfold Alliance of Russia, of America, of the British world and of the European continent. If the Soviets are not taken into our Western Alliance, modern in civilisation as they are going to be, and Christian in culture-genesis as they have been, both the Slavonic race and the European continent as a whole will be torn in pieces and thwarted and disfigured for ever in their development.

We need, then, two world-initiatives, constituting the one single, universal peace initiative and initiative for human survival and fulfilment; we need a triune Eastern Alliance of the Pacific, and a triune Western Alliance of the Atlantic, and there shall be peace, and humanity, and culture, and revival and mutual fulfil¬ment and perfection between the two Alliances.

Under Atlantic Alliance, then, I mean the World Alliance, World Peace Alliance, the first and saving Peace Alliance of America, Russia, and Europe, on the basis of British intermedia¬tion and initiative.

My very earnest and admonishing proposal is that Great Britain and her Commonwealth of the British Nations should propose themselves as the basis of this necessary Alliance of the West—as its neutral, creative, beneficent, mediatrix and protection. For America and the Soviet Union need, not only momentarily, but perpetually, the British intermediation; for Britain is the only properly surviving Europe left to us—surviving in power and elementalness of a world-factor from Europe. Here again, inside of Europe itself, Great Britain is the only intermediating effective factor left to us in our tragic Europe; but European unity and revival is only possible inside of the whole Western Alliance, of the whole Atlantic Alliance of Russia, America, and the British world.

Of immediate and astonishing effect would be a British pro¬posal, supporting, inducing and championing the Catholic Euro¬pean West, or the Latin Federation. With South America, or 'Christophia' in the parlance of the world-integrative proposal of the third or Senate element—with South America, or Christophia as its power-ground, or protecting body, Latin Europe, with Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, would induce the necessary uplifting renaissance of the Catholic Latin world element universally, and the most fundamental of human foundations, namely the Catholic Church, would be re-founded properly and necessarily in the human universal organics.

But for the establishment of the world-function of Britain proper, of the Anthrope-Albion, of the Senate Nation of humanity —the Senate Church of humanity itself, (the Catholic Church not being a nation, but only a Church), there is immediate need of reconciliation, or proper and full understanding between the immense and beneficent Britain, and the imperishable (however small) State of Israel—this revived Jewish republic in Palestine. It is impossible for Britain to fulfill her role of world initiative or world leadership, by her intermediation, justice) embracing sym¬pathy and good humour; this role of Britain would not be guaran¬teed of effective unless Israel in all earnestness and fullness, both from her State of Israel in her Palestine home and from the World-Jewry throughout the world gave their recognition and their affirmatory agreement to Great Britain as the Senate Nation of the world.

Now the mission of Anglican Christianity, of the Church of England should not be forgotten or under-rated. The Church of England is called to intermediate between Protestantism and Catholicism, as also between Catholicism and the Greek Orthodox Christianity: for the human schism and human disaster funda¬mentally is the war and mutual misunderstanding of the two Holy Churches of Christendom—of the Orthodox and the Catholic Church.

We can now in more detail (though only in the barest formula), approach to the Anthropo-Eirenicon of the New Europe Group today. I plead, pray, and propose, that the neutral states in Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland, Portugal and Israel (though Israel did not exist as a State during the war)—that the not-too-much dis¬tressed and occupied, not-so-much confused and defeated, neut¬rals, should propose to the Third World Element, to Great Britain, that she should convene, either in London, or within the Commonwealth associated with Britain—in Ireland, perhaps, or in Geneva, or again, in America, or in Russia herself, or in one of the States of the Russian world-sphere—a Conference, urgent and radical in its mission, of proposing a NATIONAL UNION of the three Empires of the World, the Empires of the U.S.A., the U.S.S.R. and the British Commonwealth.

NATIONAL UNION? Yes: National Union, the formation of the World-Western Alliance called the Atlantic Alliance, the imperial world-union of the three world-protecting powers, Britain inter¬mediating. Britain intermediating, Great Britain, supported by Israel in Palestine and Israel everywhere, would become the foundation of the human peace and the Senate nation of Man: Albion, primus inter-pares; not even Albion in primacy, if neces¬sary, but Albion in effect and reality. China would be attracted to this peace initiative of Britain and the West, and therefore the Pacific world, the human East would be free, and invited to its own foundation—contribution of the newly re-born world of peace, for the honour of suffering and sinful humanity, and for the glory of God.