Heirs to the new Europe

Media

Part of Panorama

Title: Heirs to the new Europe
Creator: Crawley, Aidan
Language: English
Source: Panorama Volume XV (No.9) September 1963
Year: 1963
Rights
Abstract: A British member of parliament reports on a journey with his wife to talk to studens in European universities
Fulltext: ■ A British member of parliament reports on a jour ney with his wife to talk to studens in European universities. HEIRS TO THE NEW EUROPE Aidan Crawley No generation ever had such a tantalising future as that which is now passing through the universities of Europe. They are the first which can reasonably hope to live their lives without fighting a major war; they have the propect of repairing the failure of the generation now ruling them and of building the first truly Eu ropean communty. At the same time they iriUst enter an ideological struggle which has,divided the whole world and threatens them with an nihilation. The young men and women who throng the lecture halls from Berlin to Naples in numbers which overwhelm their instructors have the destiny of Europe and of the Wsetern world in their hands.1 My wife and I visited uni versities in France, Italy and Germany to try to find out what these students feel and think. Everywhere we were struck with the apparent well-being, the good manners and, above all, the appear ance of the young people. Beatniks seemed non-exist ent; no black stockings, no long hair or dirty finger nails. But the students of France, whom one might have expect ed to aspire to European leadership in view of the attitude of their President, are the least interested. Al though almost all of them are critical of General de Gaulle and, even when avow ed Roman Catholics, tend to be Socialist, they have uncon sciously absorbed the Gen eral's propaganda and are obsessed with the future, not of Europe, but of France. There could scarcely be a more romantic setting for a University than the old once16 Panorama Roman city of Aix, which seems to grow out of the woods and hills and vine yards of Provence. The uni versity buildings themselves are new and oppressively ugly; but once the lectures are over the students leave them in droves and head for the broad Avenue de Mira beau. It is there, in the cafes on the side-walks, in spnshine dappled by the plane trees overhead, that the real life of the university goes on. Occassionally you hear Eng lish or German voices, for among the 11,000 students 800 come from abroad — 300 of them belonging to an Am erican Foundation. But most of the groups drinking coffee or “coke" were dark-complekioned and some, whose parents had recently come over from Algiers, were al most Arab in appearance. The students were delight fully easy to talk to. None of the French students spoke English or any second lan guage; few had been abroad or wanted to travel except to Africa; none would have voted for General de Gaulle. He was “old-fashioned,” “a man of another century." Yet although they would discuss at length who and what should come after him, in the same breath they would echo the General’s “regret" that Britain's terms for entry into the Common Market had been too harsh. The government-controlled radio and television services had done their work. The chief faculties at Aix are Letters and Law, and the usual student ambition is to become a civil servant or to practise law or medicine in a French city. It was the ad vantages or disadvantages of living in a particular part of France and not the possibili ty of living elsewhere that interested them. Those studying economics saw some point in the Common Mar ket from France’s point of view, but the idea of Europe as a Community had become quite unreal. It somehow seemed right that the section of the Uni versity of France which is es tablished at Grenoble should possess a nuclear reactor and be renowned for its faculty of science. There is nothing of the softness of Provence here; instead, the towering Alps hem in the university September 1963 17 so that the eye is inevitably carried upwards towards the space which the physicists are probing. The Dean o£ the scientific faculty, who gave us lunch in the nineteenth-century chateau which the State has converted into a club for its employees, was a celebrated young professor who at once claimed to be living an in ternational life; he admitted, however, that this was an eccentricity confined mainly to scientists. But unlike most professors on the Continent, he knew some of the students personally and offered to in troduce us to them. "But I warn you," he said as we parted, "that if you criticize Karl Marx you will get no thing out of them.” Student life at Grenoble seemed more of a struggle than at Aix. -Within a few minutes of talking to any group of students we found ourselves discussing the cost of living and the difficulty of paying for board, lodging and books on an allowance of less than £300 a year. And the professor was right. As at most French universities the number of women students outnumber ed men, and a charming girl with a crucifix round her neck told us although she and her closest friends still went to church, they were all "true Socialists.” Guy Mollet, the moderate leader of the French Socialist Party, was as much an object of derision as de Gaulle. In Grenoble we found definite hostility to the Common Market. The only student organ ization of any kind was the Socialists’ Student Union, and the president, a girl with fine brown eyes who was planning to be a teacher, poured scorn on the whole European idea. She admit ted grudgingly that it might have raised the standard of living a little, but because it had at the same time streng thened the "capitalist-mono polists” it was not in the in terests of France. "Let us socialize France first,” she said. "We can then think about Europe later.” And although in Paris we found sons and daughters of business men who took the opposite view, the interest in the Common Market was also purely economic. The 18 Panorama idea of a political union of Western Europe which M. Monnet and M. Schumann were advocating with such passion ten years ago, seems not to have pouched these young people at all. In Paris also we. met the one undergraduate — he planned to become a banker — who was actively hostile. He was guarded in his re plies to us, and afterwards the Frenchwoman who had introduced him- told us that he said to her, “How can I talk frankly to those .English people when everyone knows that England is our enemy and only wants to wreck all our plans?” « • « We had not been long in Milan before we realized that the - Alps have now tak en the place of the English Channel. In'political terms, crossing from France into Italy is to go from an island oh to the mainland. Already 2,500 of the 14,000 students at Milan University are learning English, and their interest in other countries — particularly Gremany — is al most greater than in Italy itself. Whether the students were the sons of famous Italian families or young men and women whose parents had recently migrated from the south, Europe seemed their ohe great hope. The idea of Europe — not de Gaulle's Europe of nations but a strong federal Europe with a parliament directly elected by the people — is the answer not only to their dreams but to their domestic problems as well. For Catholics the Europ ean Community is the best defence against Communism and the only cure for the un employment which is still visible everywhere from Na ples to Sicily. The Common Market is the beginning, not the fulfillment, of Italy’s mi racle; ' if prosperity is to spread downwards and the poverty of the South which has seemed eternal is really to disappear, then the Com mon Market itself must be expanded. Even the leaders of Italian Communism have deviated from the Moscow line far enough to recognize that Italy has benefited from the Treaty of Rome, and the young Communists are straying farther than their leaders. September 1963 19 The famous Pedrocchi cafe in Padua, where the hole made by the Austrian bullet which killed an Italian stu dent in 1866 is framed in the wall, is still the meeting place for the students of Europe’s second oldest uni versity. As we sat talking to two or three, more and more drifted " into the famous “White Room” until our cir cle must have numbered twenty. They explained, in a mix ture of German, French and English, that to them the new Europe was the natural extension of the Risorgimento. Italy had never become one nation; Italians must find their true expression in the European family. The Alps had not been a barrier under Austria; they did not think of them as a barrier now. Ever sirice the Common Market has been founded Italians have poured across the Alps, and although they do not assimilate easily with the French or Germans (or with any other of the north ern races) they feel passion ately that they have a right to work and settle among them. All this the students echo ed and re-echoed, yet every one of this particular group called himself a Communist and talked of the “alien ation” of their souls which would take place when they left the university and began to work for a “capitalist monopolist.” “Our labour is all we have to sell. It should not be bought by any individual/* they asserted. However, when I asked how they pro posed to effect their revolu tion they were shocked. “We do not agree with the Rus sians,* they said. “We are sure we can win the coope ration of our people.” Their simple faith in the humanity of the State as an employer was tempered only by their dislike of Rome. They explained to us the virtues of the proposals for “structural reform” which would turn Italy itself into a federation of autonomous provinces, several of which would be Communist con trolled. One young writer com plained that' only “porno graphic books could make money in Italy” and that nei ther a book nor a poem with 20 Panorama out a Left-wing slant has much chance of being publish ed: although not a Commu nist himself, he was prepared to accept a period of Commu nist rule as a "purge." But a professor pointed out that the authors to whom this young man was objecting could not really be described as pornographic, and the young Communists them selves dismissed the idea that corruption o r decadence among the upper classes had anything to do with the in crease of a million Commu nist votes at the last Italian election. Success was due simply to the force of Com munist ideas. Only one of those with whom we talked in Padua — and I took him to be their leader — had parents who wei'e members of the Com munist Party. The rest all came from Roman Catholic families, but said that they did not discuss their views at home. "Our parents simply do not understand and it would be useless to try to make them." But for all their zeal for Socialism, none of them was looking for a job at the hands of the State; the majorty of the little group in Padua were being trained as engineers and expected jobs in industry where high pay might to some extent com pensate them for the indig nities of private employment. The only student who intend ed to try for a job as a mem ber of Professor Hallstein’s European civil service was the son of an ancient and wealthy Italian family in Mi lan. • * • The impression that the northern passes of the Alps are less of a barrier than those between France and Italy is not purely subjective; in the most northerly Italian villages German is the com mon language and the church spires' take on a faintly By zantine look so that each vil lage might have been trans planted from the Danube valley. In Freiburg, the last uni versity town we were to visit the narrow streets were festoned with branches of birch and the entrance to the thir teenth-century cathedral was paved with patterns of flo wers in honour of the Feast of Corpus Christi. It was 21 too cold to sit in the square, but from seven o’clock, when the service of celebration fi nished and the bells were quiet, the cafes in the cathe dral square filled with stu dents. The young couple who came to- our table were engaged to be married, she a physical training instruct or, he studying to be a doc tor. They longed to talk and we were soon caught up in all the yearnings and anxie ties of the new Germany which seem only to increase with prosperity. The next night the whole of a fraternity, twenty young men living in the same house, came to dine at the invitation of an old friend of ours who had himself been at Freiburg in the 1920s. These fraternities are neither clubs ncir colleges, but sim ply houses, financed largely by past inmates,' where stu dents live together and run their own establishment. The twenty young men we met were a fascinating cross section of modern German life. Two impressions stood out after conversation lasting in to the small hours. These young Germans are already international i n outlook. During the afternoon their host had taken me up to a platform on the mountain above the town and shown me the panorama of the Rhine valley with the moun tains of the Vosges in the distance. "When I was a student,” he said, "we never went into France. Those lovely mountains were closed to us.” Today hundreds of students cross over into France every week-end and of those who came to dinner two had spent a year in the United States, two a year in England, a young woman who had just got her medical degree was soon leaving for Nigeria, and others had plans to work in Africa and the Middle East. In their outlook on Europe they Were not less enthusias tic than the young Italians, but far more practical. In spite of their admiration for President de Gaulle they had no interest in his vision of a Europe of the Nations; but in discussing a truly federal Europe they at once wanted to know just what powers the central government would have, how it would collect its taxes, through what insti 22 Panorama tutions it would govern and in discussing a truly federal Europe they at once wanted to know how it would organ ize its civil service. And for the first time we ourselves were plied with questions. Was England really interested in Europe? Were the British afraid of being dragged into a war by Germany as they had been told? Were the British still suspicious of Germany? As the evening wore oh and we became more inti mate, we were able to broach the subject of the war, and to ask what they were being taught about Hitler and what they thought of the inter-war years. All spoke nostalgically of the Weimai Republic and blamed its failure upon the Allies and the- Treaty of Versailles; about the war itself they knew practically nothing. Yet we learned from each student that Hitler was the great dividing line between them and their parents. For it seemed that each, at some time, had come to ask his parents the same question: how was it that they had al lowed Hitler to do the things that he did. And although they told us that their pa rents had tried to explain the power of the Gestapo and the psychological effect of terror, they had plainly been unable to exonerate themselves in the eyes of their children. As we drove slowly across France to Brussels, sorting out our ideas, we could not help feeling deeply depress ed. The dynamic has gone out of Europe. The vision which Sir Winston Chur chill resuscitated in 1945 of the world’s most talented peoples joining together to rekindle thq flame of West ern civilization, in alliance with, but not dependent upon, the United States — in opposition to Communism but also in the hope of be ing a catalyst which would bring understanding with the Communist world — is dying. For all the enthusiasm of the young Italians and Ger mans, one could not feel that they alone .would be able to revive it. We had been as tonished to learn that how ever politically-minded they might be, no student in any of the three countries we had visited belonged as a full member to a political party. September 1963 23 These young people will not join the parties because they despise the politicians who lead them. We realized, as we reflect ed, that not one student had proclaimed his intention of entering political life, and at Freiburg the young Germans had confessed that however strongly they held their views, they knew they would not have the slightest effect. In Brussels the Communi ty's liaison officer with uni versities and youth move ments within the Common Market countries reflected our anxiety. He was reliev ed to know that we had found any interest in Europe at all. He said that few of the youth organizations still took Europe seriously; the young farmers in particular, anti notably the French, were doing excellent work thrashing out in detail the harmonization <of the price and support systems of their respective countries. But when I suggested that all these youth officials would form the cadres of the new European community and would finally realize the European idea, he could do no more than hope that I might be right. Neither he nor any other politician or professor with whom we had talked could see any end to the pause in the evolution of Europe which General de Gaulle's rejection of Britain has brought about. And if the dilution of the Europe idea is to be prevented, if the en thusiasm of all the young Europeans outside France is to be harnessed before it evaporates, if the radicalism of the young French is to be given any other expression than a Socialism which would ally itself naturally with the Communists, then a new inspiration must be found. As a French professor said to us, "It is useless preachihg anti-Communism. Un less the philosophy of the in dividual can be vividly re clothed, liberalism in Europe will die." To the Continent al liberal Britain is still the supreme example of that phi losophy, and it is from Bri tain that the inspiration must come. What hope is there that we can fulfill this role? To 24 Panorama do so we need to be bold. We need to speak in Europe, unflinchingly, of our political beliefs. We need to op pose at home and abroad all trends towards personal gov ernments. We must take the initiative in forming new and responsible political in stitutions in Europe; and we must propose a form of fede ral government and define its power. — The London Times, July 28, 1963. THE WANT OF HAPPINESS The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more it does regu late its own affairs, and govern itself; but so con trary is the practice of old governments to the rea son of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish, x x x But how often is the natural propensity of society disturbed or destroyed by the operations of the government! When the latter, instead of being in grafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes the cause of the mischiefs it ought it prevent, x x x Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved. — Thomas Paine. 25
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