Suchergebnisse

The African scramble for independence has led to two major political trends which have at least the superficial look of being contradictory but which may still turn out to be complementary. One is the consolidation of states, and, it may be, of nations, within the frontiers traced on the map of Africa with an imperial flourish by the colonial powers. The other is the unceasing agitation and conferring to secure some sort of African unity which would bring together within a common framework either all the African peoples or such more limited groupings of them as are now prepared to join forces for general or particular purposes. The unanswered, and still unanswerable, question is whether the states which have been emerging in such quantities, with more still to come—29 African Members of the UN at the end of 1961 as against five in 1955—will serve as the building blocks for a greater African union or whether they will jealously guard the separate identity which they have now achieved.

In practical politics the vital thing is not what men really are, but what they think they are. This simple truth, so often overlooked, is actually of tremendous import. It gives the key to many a riddle otherwise insoluble.The European war is a striking case in point. That war is very generally regarded as being one of "race." The idea certainly lends to the struggle much of its bitterness and uncompromising fury. And yet, from the genuine racial standpoint, it is nothing of the kind. Ethnologists have proved conclusively that, apart from certain palaeolithic survivals and a few historically recent Asiatic intruders, Europe is inhabited by only three stocks: (1) the blond, long-headed "Nordic" race, (2) the brown, round-headed "Alpine" race, (3) the brunet, long-headed "Mediterranean" race. These races are so dispersed and intermingled that every European nation is built on atleast two of these stocks, while most are compounded of all three. Strictly speaking, therefore, the present European war is not a race-war at all, but a domestic struggle between closely knit blood-relatives.