United States or Martinique ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This service of unification, creating close-knit communities possessing the ability, the will, and the power to pursue a common ideal, has prepared the ground for the advent of a still larger understanding: for the solidarity of Europeanism, which must be the next step towards the advent of Concord and Justice; an advent that, however delayed by the fatal worship of force and the errors of national selfishness, has been, and remains, the only possible goal of our progress.
Lord Cromer characterized many of the "Europeanized" Egyptians as "at the same time de-Moslemized Moslems and invertebrate Europeans"; while another British writer thus pessimistically describes the superficial Europeanism prevalent in India: "Beautiful Mogul palaces furnished with cracked furniture from Tottenham Court Road. That is what we have done to the Indian mind.
On a planet which currently hosts 140 sovereign states this policy of putting the interests of the part before the interests of the whole results in controversy, conflict, and may result in collective self-destruction. It is reassuring and encouraging to compare the rise of nationalism and Europeanism during the past thousand years with the rise of planetism and worldism from 1450 to 1970.
The feeling was widespread that the way to effect this was by some form of internationalism, by the broadening, deepening, and quickening all that was implied by Europeanism, by co-ordinating the collective energies of all progressive peoples, and causing them to converge toward a common and worthy goal.
That magnificent spendthrift Khedive Ismail, whose reckless contraction of European loans was the primary cause of European intervention, prided himself on his "Europeanism" and surrounded himself with Europeans. Indeed, the first stirrings of Egyptian nationalism took the form of a protest against the noxious, parasitical "Europeanism" of Khedive Ismail and his courtiers.
Now that Europe's up, and West Asia down, France, Italy, and England hold it from Egypt to the Atlantic; and in a few centuries' time, no doubt it will be quite Europeanized. But West Asia, early in its last manvantara, flowed out over it from Arabia, drove out all traces of Europeanism, and made it wholly Asiatic.
Indeed, I could think of sluggish, hesitating races, which even in our rapidly moving Europe, would require half a century ere they could surmount such atavistic attacks of patriotism and soil-attachment, and return once more to reason, that is to say, to "good Europeanism."
The French, the Italians, the British have to reckon with Islam and the Arab; where the continental deserts are, there the Arabs are and there is Islam; their culture will never be destroyed and replaced over these regions by Europeanism. The Allies who prepare the Peace of the World have to make their peace with that.
The German, on the contrary, as we saw, associates his every work and undertaking with ideas of almost cosmic breadth and is actuated by interests to which all the larger problems of humanity are akin. And he took timely possession of every lever that might contribute to the success of his revolt against Europeanism, when his far-reaching scheme was yet in the early phases of execution.
We can hardly realize in America how flagrant Europeanism has been in the Manila Bay; how the big German guns bought by Spain looked from their embrasures; how a powerful German fleet persisted in asserting antagonism to Americanism, and tested in many ways the American Admiral's knowledge of his rights and his country's policy until Admiral Dewey told, not the German Admiral, as has been reported, but his flag lieutenant, "Can it be possible that your nation means war with mine?
Word Of The Day