The Lesson

There are a few lessons which thoughtful men might well learn from the recent plebiscite in the Saar—lessons which men emotionally involved in the issues which were projected in that arena find it difficult to learn.

The results of the Saar plebiscite were a bitte# pill to swallow for all the liberal and anti-Fascist: forces of the world which had hoped for a sufficiently large vote in favor of the status quo that could have been interpreted as a repudiation of Hitlerism. The ten-to-one vote in favor of the return of the Saar to the Fatherland was a staggering blow to these hopes.

The vote of the Saarlanders is but another demonstration that the prime emotional complex of the Western world today is nationalism and that whenever the issue of nationalism is involved all other considerations are definitely subordinated.

In the elections in the Saar held in 1932, before the advent of Hitler, the Nazis, together with the German Nationalists, received no more than 47,000 votes. The Center polled 157,000 votes and the two Socialist parties, 127,000. Two years later, with the consequence of two years of Nazi terrorism before their very eyes, with the full story of the ruthless dictatorship in the Fatherland disclosed to them—the suppression of all liberties, the destruction of the labor unions, the attack upon the Church, and all the other malodorous facts which have made Hitler’s Germany a hissing and a by-word in the civilized world—the two Socialist parties in the Saar, together with the Catholic opposition and all other opponents of the Hitler regime could poll no more than 47,000 votes! …

An even more revealing fact is that on January 6, seven days before the plebiscite, some 90,000 Saarlanders entitled to vote, in Saarbruecken and its environs, marched in a public demonstration in favor of retaining the status quo. These prospective voters publicly demonstrated their opposition to Hitler’s Germany and their determination to keep the Saar from returning to Germany as long as Hitler remained in power. They were not afraid to make public avowal of their preferences. Nevertheless, seven days later, in the secrecy of the voting booth, just a little over half of that number in the whole Saar territory voted for the status quo! . . .

What is the answer? Nationalism has become in the Western world, as someone has put it, man’s other religion. In fact it is supplanting man’s traditional religions which, in spite of their theologic partisanship, stressed certain universal concepts touching human brotherhood and the ultimate unity of all mankind.

The Saar folks voted for a regime which had proved itself hostile to the Catholic Church—and the Saarlanders are predominantly Catholic. They voted for annexation to a country wherein economic conditions were definitely worse than in their own with the prospect of their own economic status becoming adversely affected by such annexation. They willingly sacrificed their liberties to a dictatorship which they knew would reduce them to helpless groundlings. All in the name of nationalism! All for the sake of the Fatherland! They welcomed the executioner of their freedom because he came to them garbed in the dress-suit of patriotism.

It is clear that whenever and wherever the issue is formulated as one between economic, religious or personal interests on the one hand, and national patriotism on the other, the latter will always win out, especially among peoples smarting under a sense of national humiliation, caused by defeat in war.

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries built up the dogma of nationalism to a point where it has become a sacrosanct fetish and a menace to the highest interests of humanity. Super-nationalism is definitely provincializing the individual. Instead of lifting him to an outlook of world-citizenship it is sharply restricting him intellectually and emotionally to his own little corner in a shattered and fragmentized world. Modern nationalism is definitely ghettoizing the individual. Mankind has come to the edge of a wilderness. . . .

What is the solution? An internationalism based on proletarian class-consciousness is simply not making any headway in the modern world. The Second Internationale broke down in the World War. The Third Internationale finds itself confined within the borders of the Soviet Union. The doctrine of the class-struggle must by its very nature appeal only to a part of each nation, not to the nation as a whole. But the whole is always greater than any of its parts. . . .

There seems to be no recourse or refuge from the ravages of modern super-nationalism and no hope for the future except in the patient efforts of whatever liberal forces are still left in the world, secular and religious, which still have the courage to preach the higher loyalty to humanity as a whole and who are not afraid to confront the atavistic heresies of our day with the immemorial dogma of international brotherhood and human solidarity.