International Affairs (1919-1945)

It gives me great pleasure in writing this short introduction to Mr. Dharam Chand Gupta's book on contemporary international affairs. His study of international affairs begins with the Peace Settlement following the first World War. The world situation in 1919 was materially different from that in 1914. It was beyond the intended scope of this study to survey the events leading to the World War in 1914. "The unification of Germany in 1870" said Bismarck "lay in the logic of history". Indeed this was the most important single factor of the post-French Revolutionary Europe. The building of railways in Europe, and the unification of Germany. led to the beginnings of a serious rivalry between Germany and England and generations of distrust and suspicion between Germany and France. The commercial advantages which were hitherto the sole monopoly of England had now come to be shared by Germany.. As Professor Knowles has put it, "She (Germany) became a Medi terranean Power by the completion of the railway over the St. Gothard in 1882. She obtained great economic influence in Northern Italy and Genoa became an important German outlet. In the same way, the railway to Constantinople made her a Power in the Balkans with the commercial interests in the Levant. She was connected by railway with France on the West and Russia on the East, and became the centre of the continental system of distribution, thereby affecting the hitherto unrivalled sea distributing position of England."

This Anglo-German rivalry now took the place of the old Anglo-French conflicts. In the changed world of the 19th century, France was not well equipped for rivalry with Britain. As. G. D. H. Cole has written "Coal supplies were small and the great iron-ore resources of Lorraine were of little value until new methods of steel-making by the basic processes, which eliminate the phosphor ous were introduced in the 1870's- and by that time Lorraine and its iron had passed from French to German control. Under these circumstances the old causes of rivalry between France and Britain tended largely to disappear."