Reconstruction in Central Europe

The area of small nations between the Baltic and the Mediterranean has always been exposed to the rivalries and pressures of the Great Powers, due to its strategic and commercial importance, and because of its location on crossroads of conflicting cultures, religions, political and economic systems. A like situation might again arise at the end of the present war when the peasant peoples of these regions find themselves faced with the growing strength of the Soviet socialism and an expanding Western capitalism, whose application of the principles of the Atlantic Charter and of the Four Freedoms might widely differ. The problem of reconstruction of this part of Europe should be examined, therefore, from the point of view of the possibility of reorganizing this zone of perennial friction and insecurity into a politically and economically balanced and stabilized unit, and into a constructive link between the two diverse worlds of ideas and of institutional practices. The internal political difficulties of these countries, from Poland to Greece, have in the main resulted from the incompatibility of the feudal-like régimes with the growing political activation of the people. The states formed on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire inherited many of its feudal characteristics. In Poland, a military group, landed gentry, and state officials, supported by the Church hierarchy, ruled the country, while the parliament and the written constitution existed only nominally. In Hungary, the landed magnates and gentry were the actual ruling classes, and in Austria medieval scholasticism and clericalism were the ideological and political agents behind the authoritarian régime. Of all succession states, Czechoslovakia alone seemed superficially free of feudal remnants, because this industrially advanced country had an independent and liberal bourgeois class.