One year later, a vicious world war ripped Europe apart, from which it took over 60 years to recover. If there's a lesson from history about this, it’s surely that ‘The Brotherhood of Europe’ should never be broken again. Our strength is being united and together.
The Brotherhood of Europe
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Front page of the 'Children's Newspaper' from
the 1930s. It was published
every Thursday and
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"In these bitter days it is worthwhile for us to realise that war in Europe is a civil war. All Europe is one Brotherhood. Apart from the hate fostered by Dictators for their own purposes, Europe is the home of a great family of people who wish to be left alone to enjoy the treasures with which the Continent is crowded from end to end.
"We only have to look round for a moment to realise what the Brotherhood
of Europe really is. One of the most effective instruments of social government
in these perilous years is the Labour Exchange, which keeps an army of idle
people off our streets, an asset of a good and safe society which we owe to
Germany. So to the old Germany we owe
the example of some of the wisest elements in our social life – the movements
for the better housing of the people, for the better planning of our towns, and
for the insurance of the industrial population. The truth is that Europe is
international, its countries sharing a life that is common to all.
"How many of us owe our lives to Pasteur of France or to Koch of
Germany? Who can live in any part of
Europe without the railways we gave the world?
What would become of the industries of nations without the discoveries
made in the laboratories of German universities? How could the business of Europe be carried
out for a single week without the wires which all protect in common, without
the postbag we all share in common, without the laws we all observe in common?
"How many precious pages of the book of knowledge would be unwritten now
but for this brotherhood of the wise that knows no boundaries? The great monuments of people – their
parliaments and schools, their municipal governments and national
organisations, their inventions and discoveries, their marvels of electrical
mechanism; their telephone and telegraph systems, their workshops with almost
illimitable power, their banks and systems of invisible finance – all these
foundations of prosperity in Europe are from no one country in particular, but
are the common products of many or all.
The greatest treasure of Europe is, indeed, the common interest which
binds its people together in bonds stronger than steel, which must endure after
these dark days have passed."
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