Europe - Whither Bound - free ebook by Stephen Graham

EUROPE—WHITHER BOUND?

(Quo Vadis Europa?) Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 1922...

9 minute read

Read Chapter

PREFATORY NOTE

The Author's gratitude is due to many people in connexion with this book—to Bishop Nicholas of Zicca and the Rev. Hugh Chapman, of the Savoy, and Col. Treloar and Major-General Sir Fabian Ware, and the Editor of the "Narodny Listi," at Prague, and Mr. Hyka,—to these and many others who helped a traveller on his way. The letters from each capital were published in "Country Life" under the general title of Quo Vadis Europa? A few after-thoughts have now been written on "Extra Leaves," and sewn in

1 minute read

Read Chapter

EUROPE—WHITHER BOUND?

Europe, whither goest thou?—the poignant question of to-day. The pride of Christian culture, the greatest human achievement in history, with, as we thought before 1914, the seal of immortality set upon her, is now perhaps moving towards dissolution and death. Europe has begun a rapid decline, though no one dares to think that she will continue in it downward until she reaches the chaos and misery and barbarity from which she sprang. Affairs will presently take a turn for the better, Europe will

15 minute read

Read Chapter

EXTRA LEAVES

(i) On Passports and "Circulation" Mr. H. G. Wells, in "The Salvaging of Civilization," has very pleasantly contrasted the States of America with the States of Europe—the Disunited States. America, where you can travel by through trains without showing passports, without customs-barriers, without change of currency and without police-inquisition; America where there is a free interchange of peoples and opinions, Europe lying in unexampled obstruction and stagnation; America with its cheap post a

12 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

It has been a bleak early spring with snow on the uplands of Thrace. For those who travel from Paris to Constantinople on that Western moving shuttle, the Orient Express, there would be nothing to trouble the mind unpleasantly—except in that the more comfortable we are, the more we demand and the more we grumble. But if you travel by the ordinary unheated train, where even the first-class carriages are more or less bereft of glass and have the windows loosely boarded up with bits of old packing-

13 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL:

A night's journey in a trawler brings you to the Dardanelles—the outermost vital significance of dominion at Constantinople. By the use of mines an invincible protection is easily thrown out. By the simple closing of the straits Russian trade is throttled, and even all the powers of imperial Russia before the great war could not open a way. No wonder that all ambitious Russians desired Constantinople and the Straits. If it ever becomes possible for some small power to stand in Russia's way again

18 minute read

Read Chapter

EXTRA LEAVES

(ii) On "Charity" and the Stagnation of Peoples In company with Mme. Tyrkova-Williams, I subsequently visited the offices of the "Save the Children Fund" in London to try to get some extra help for Constantinople, being convinced that the sufferings of the children there far exceeded those of the children of Vienna and Budapest and Prague. But no money can save the Russians at Constantinople, or the "little things" which Wrangel's army leaves behind them. Refugee men and women ought, perhaps, to

3 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

The last night at Constantinople was memorable, and it is strange to contrast the brilliance, the clamour, the poignancy, of that time with the quiet gloom and dirt of Sofia. Dinner with two young Russians at the "Kievsky Ugolok"; vodka was taken as if it were part of a rite. We were served by a beautiful woman with little hands. All the lights were shaded and the violins crooned. "The best of my youth gone in senseless fighting," said Count Tolstoy. "Twenty-two to twenty-eight, think of it; sur

12 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

A personal friendship with Bishop Nicholas of Zicca brought the gift of his rooms in the Patriarchia, opposite the Cathedral. Nicholas, better known during the war years as Father Nicholas Velimirovic, being on a mission to the United States, his simple white-walled rooms hung with bright-coloured ikons were free, and could be a home for a wanderer in an over-crowded city. Kostya Lukovic, who during the war graduated at Cambridge, treated me as if I were the England to whom he could repay the gr

15 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

Up on the cliff one evening a party of Serbs were listening to a Russian soldier, one of Wrangel's army invalided to a hospital camp near Belgrade. "Which of these rivers is the Danube?" said he. The Serbs pointed out where the Save joined the main stream, like a thread of silver joining a silver ribbon. "Ah," said the Russian. "And my grandfather was killed on that river, fighting to free the Slavs. Defenceless little brothers, the Slavs! When the war began the enemy was right into your capital

10 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

The ill-health of our new Europe needs no demonstration. "She's an ailing old lady," says Engineer N. "She's a typhoid convalescent," says Dr. R. "She's deaf and dumb and paralytic and subject to fits. She has sore limbs and inflamed parts—in fact, a hopeless case," says a cheerful Hungarian. "But what does it matter whether Europe lives if her young daughter Hungary survives her?" "That young daughter Hungary has already been in the Divorce Court," I hazarded. "Well, Hungary is not going to ala

15 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

At Budapest you begin to suspect that you are in Europe; at Vienna you are sure of it—with its great array of fine shops, full of elegancies and delectable grandeur which leave Paris and New York in the shade. The whole press of Europe seems to have "written up" Vienna as "the ruined city" and "the end of a great capital," and even at Constantinople where terrible affliction was constantly before the eyes, the fiction held that Vienna was even worse. You are, therefore agreeably surprised to fin

15 minute read

Read Chapter

EXTRA LEAVES

(iii) On Money and League of Nations Currency In the course of this little tour of Europe I bought 1,000 francs and 4,000 liras, and 1,500 drachmas, 3,000 dinars, and the same number of levas, some lei and 20,000 piastres, 7,000 Hungarian crowns and 32,000 Austrian crowns, 3,000 Czech crowns, 10,000 German marks, 15,000 odd Polish marks, 500 Belgian francs, and some paper money of the principality of Monaco. You have to be somewhat of an arithmetician to think one week in piastres and the next i

3 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

Czecho-slovakia is the watchdog of the new peace in Central Europe. She is the strongest new power, and is manifestly the best governed State which has arisen out of the ruins of the old. The new Bohemia (for Czecho-Slovakia is truly Bohemia) is a much more credible resurrection than the new Poland. One London daily refused to believe in the existence of Czecho-Slovakia for a long while. "Unless I see it," said the editor, "I will not be convinced." But Czecho-Slovakia is quite convincing—and is

15 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

As at Constantinople, there is great over-crowding. There are three times as many people on the pavements as on the pavements of Vienna or Prague. The Marshalkowsky is a-flocking from end to end. Finding a room for the night is a hard task. You will see a great deal of Warsaw before you find a room. It is not a bad way to obtain a first impression. I arrived at one in the afternoon and found a place for myself only at ten at night. The once luxurious Hotel Bristol was full to-day, no hope for to

15 minute read

Read Chapter

EXTRA LEAVES

(iv) On Nationality and an Armistice Baby The personal idea of nationality suffered some heavy blows in the war and even heavier ones in the peace which followed. A mature Austrian suddenly becomes a Czech, a Hungarian who knows only Magyar becomes a Roumanian, a self-conscious Prussian is written into a Pole, and their hearts are supposed to respond to new loyalties. The famous lines: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead" have now a comical effect when recited in some parts of Europe. Men ar

2 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

The first day in Munich was marked by police inspection in bed. The police come early to the hotels so as to catch people before they have got up and gone out. The only people who are immune are Bavarians. If you are a foreigner, even if you are a German from another part of Germany—a Saxon, a Prussian, a Westphalian, it is all the same, you must present yourself at the police-station and obtain permission to reside in Munich. This means some hours in a stuffy room. You must write a request for

9 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

Old men and war-cripples as porters at the station, dirty streets encumbered by hawkers and their wares, strings of pitiful beggars shaking their hands and exposing mortified limbs—can this be Berlin, Berlin the prim, the orderly, the clean? Something has happened here in seven years, some sort of psychological change has been wrought in the mind of a people. Here, as in some Slav countries, there are laws and they are not kept, regulations and they are not observed. Unshaven men and ill-washed

17 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

Berlin is a city of reason, not a city of faith. You cannot get people to try and do the impossible there. It loves to grade itself upon the possible and do that. Hence the apathy regarding Germany's resurrection. Here all is measured and planned and square and self-poised. No buildings aspire. The golden angels and the other things which are high—are perched there. Some one put them up; they did not fly so high. All the great capitals of Europe are redeemed more by their past than adorned by th

14 minute read

Read Chapter

EXTRA LEAVES

(v) On "Clay Sparrows" and the Failure of Freedom France and Germany are hazardously in agreement in regard to English and American liberal idealism. They think it moonshine and the League of Nations a failure, and that Freedom has been tried and found wanting. We are at school with Christ and have made our clay sparrows. Wilson's birds fly—ours won't. France is an obstinate clay sparrow who sits perched on the wall. And what shall we say of the other clay sparrows? Do they look like flying? The

5 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

All roads lead to Rome. It would doubtless be tedious at this point to describe the obstacles on the road, and, when Rome has been achieved, the all-night hunt for a room in a hotel, an adventure which now commonly befalls the traveller to Rome. But it is a wonderful impression which you receive of this mighty city in the silent watchful hours, when all are sleeping, and the living are nearer to the famous dead. The scenery seems laid for some great historical drama—but it is in truth only laid

14 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

The voice of a man in the Riviera express: "I am absolutely broke. I'm up against it, up against the great It, and it's neck or nothing for me, my boy—so I'm off for Monte Carlo. I'm going to leave it to Chance, and Chance is the best counsellor after all. What's human wisdom by the side of Chance? Just a turn of the wheel, and all my troubles are solved." "God d—-n it, it's more sporting than fretting my brains out in a dirty city like London or Paris, and trying to find a way out of my tangle.

9 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

You would hardly think that the greatest drama in world history is being played out in Europe, and that England was taking a part. You would hardly think that England herself was in mortal danger. London astonishes the traveller. It seems entirely given over to trivial and alien interest. Betting on horses has never reached such dimensions. Whilst the street-criers of Belgrade keep calling " Politika, Politika! " and the attention of Berlin is ruefully pinned down to Reparations, and Paris is di

15 minute read

Read Chapter

LETTERS OF TRAVEL

France is the mainspring of the new mechanism, and Paris the control. That is why I chose to go to Paris last—so that all, even London, could be related to her. The initiative in European politics is taken by France and she has the most active policy. Most other States wait to see what France is doing and shape their policies accordingly. London is generally in opposition to Paris, but English action is so sluggish and so independable that even those States who loathe the new France are obliged

19 minute read

Read Chapter