ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´

Save Europe from obscurity

In past centuries it has been possible for small nations to achieve positions in the world quite out of proportion to their size. They were able to do this by their superior technical level in the arts of peace and war.

Anyone can think of examples. Rome, thanks to its genius for organising, supplying and using its armed forces, came to dominate the ancient world. Britain, having eliminated French competition, took over India in the 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed, the most surprising thing about the British Empire at its zenith in, say, 1900, was that it comprised nearly 400 million inhabitants over 12 million square miles, yet was based in the tiny United Kingdom.

This sort of thing will never happen again, for a new factor has come into power politics. That factor is science – not just the great accumulation of knowledge of the physical world which has built up in the last 100 years but also, and particularly, the method – the scientific method – by which it has been acquired. This is a process of collecting facts, designing and executing experiments to test theories, using rigid logical deduction and repeating the cycle in the light of new facts.

The only conclusion to draw from the adoption of such a method – although the transition may take a little time – is that power will move away from the relatively small, now highly advanced nations, and the great centres of Asia will come into their own.

China and India will become leading nations, perhaps eclipsing Russia and the US, and the little countries of Europe – Britain, Germany and France – will sink into obscurity. In fact, the only way to avoid this is a United Europe: this would produce a power that was only just first-class, but it might have a future.

From The New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, 27 June 1957