Ludwig von Mises · 1945
Ludwig von Mises’s short book review examines Joseph S. Roucek’s edited symposium on national aspirations and prospects for peace in Central and Eastern Europe. Its central objection is that assembling competing national claims does little to explain their incompatibility or the failure of proposed settlements. Mises moves from criticism of the symposium’s partisan presentations, through disputes over multinational rule and Soviet territorial expansion, to a diagnosis of the mentality obstructing peace. The review’s governing question is whether proposals for a durable settlement confront the unwillingness of national groups to relinquish claims contested by their neighbors.
It is questionable whether a symposium of this type is of much value.
This opening judgment concerns the symposium’s explanatory value. Mises’s satirical “Ruritanian” and “Laputian” figures represent familiar forms of national advocacy: declarations of an inalienable territorial entitlement and assurances that minorities have always received tolerant treatment. Such assurances fail to resolve the disagreement because the governed groups describe as oppression what the governing majority describes as justice. The review therefore shifts attention from professions of benevolence to incompatible understandings of legitimate authority.
Roucek’s defense of King Alexander’s efforts to unify his country and of Czech benefits to Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia supplies the first substantive test. Mises challenges the possessive language through which a ruler’s entitlement to a multinational territory is assumed. Croats and Slovenes regarded the territories in question as their own countries, not simply as parts of Alexander’s country. Likewise, even conceding Czech material benefits would not answer Slovak and Ukrainian demands for independence. For Mises, the issue is not whether outside rule brings advantages but whether those subject to it accept that rule.
They do not want to be "minorities" in a multinational state; they prefer to be majorities in their own country, even if it is only a small country.
The contrast between minority status and national majority clarifies why administrative benefits cannot settle the conflict. Mises also exposes an inconsistency: resistance to Czech supremacy invokes the same argument that Czechs use against Nazi territorial pretensions. He need not endorse every demand for separation to insist that its political force cannot be dismissed. Such antagonisms, he argues, sustain unrest and have already contributed to two world wars.
The review next juxtaposes five contributions defending Finnish, Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Polish independence with Heinz Eulau’s treatment of Soviet frontiers. Eulau presents Soviet territorial acquisitions as established conditions that realistic analysis must accept, notwithstanding questions about the legality or democratic validity of plebiscites conducted after military occupation. Mises challenges the distinction between this reasoning and German “Realpolitik.” Calling Soviet policy the opposite of capitalist imperialism does not, in his account, explain why force-backed possession should receive a different judgment. This section tests the consistency of political standards rather than supplying a detailed alternative frontier settlement.
Mises then turns from particular claims to the symposium’s peace proposals. Their weakness is methodological: they discuss familiar schemes without investigating why earlier attempts failed. His conclusion identifies uncompromising territorial aspirations as the obstacle those schemes leave untouched.
None of the linguistic groups concerned is ready to renounce the slightest of its pretensions for the sake of peace. As long as this mentality subsists, there can be no question either of peace or of democracy in this part of Europe.
The review closes with a condition for peace, not an institutional blueprint. Its relevance lies in the distinction between designing settlements and securing the willingness to accept them. Mises treats national self-description, claims of benevolent government, and appeals to accomplished facts as inadequate substitutes for confronting mutually exclusive territorial demands. His categorical conclusion makes restraint in national claims a prerequisite of both peace and democracy.
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