The Netherlands in the World of the Future
Prime Minister Gerbrandy's views on the road towards the Four Freedoms

A cynic has once said that experience is nothing but the repetition of the same mistakes. If this epigram were true post-war reconstruction would be a futile and a tragic undertaking. For it is clear that if we are to have any hopes of building a better world we must learn from our mistakes rather than repeat them. The lessons are clear enough, especially those lessons the world has so dearly bought with the great experiment of the League of Nations. As long as it was possible, the Netherlands-far from standing aloof as an indifferent neutral as is sometimes erroneously thought-supported the experiment fully and unreservedly. They were with the League word and deed, and within the League one cannot speak of neutrality. But as time went on and the great powers followed a policy more and more outside the League-one of the things rendering the covenant virtually worthless-the Netherlands had to find a different path to follow. I am of the opinion that the Rhineland occupation offered the last opportunity for putting collective security into practice.

When this opportunity was allowed to go by default, there was no other possibility for a country like the Netherlands than to return to the policy of neutrality. This does not mean that the Netherlands were not aware of the deadly threat against mankind and human life of Nazism. From the beginning the vast majority was spiritually on the side of the Allies. But there was no basis on which this could have been translated into an effective international agreement, because there was a lack of preparation and collective machinery on the side of the non-Nazi powers: The only existing path, that of the Covenant of the League of Nations, had been neglected. Another could not be improvised.

 

So much for the past. What lessons can we draw from this experience for the future? If something in the nature of the League of Nations has to be set up again-and I am convinced that this will have to be done-we must choose between the principle of universality and the principle of likemindedness. I choose the latter. Collaboration as conceived by the League is not possible between nations one of which has some understanding of the partnership of might and law, while the other in word and deed glorifies might as a leading principle in the field of international relations.

We have to be modest and realistic. Collaboration in the spirit I have indicated aims at solving quarrels between States in the sphere of growing international law. This is only partly possible. The vast political problems and interests of great powers cannot, at least certainly not yet, be brought within the limits of this growing international law. And in so far as it is possible for the lesser ones, we have to realize that ultimately the choice is not between war and peace, but between arbitrary war and war as a regulated international instrument.

We shall definitely need to take police measures against the aggressor nations. Perhaps the most obvious of these will be the concentration of aircraft in the hands of a board of the collaborating democratic peoples, combined with control of aircraft in the defeated countries.

 

If there is to be a grouping of interests in any future co-operative system, it will be asked, of course, who should be associated on the basis of common needs and interests? This question may be answered along these lines. In the coming relations between peoples the urge to prevent aggression, on the one hand, will act with far greater strength than in the years which followed the last war. On the other hand, the lessons of the past will have strengthened the conviction that in the cooperation among peoples one should not overreach oneself. The regulation of future relations within these two poles points in the direction that the Netherlands Kingdom, which is neither an ordinary small state nor a powerful state-such as the British Empire or the United States-will with singleness of purpose seek to link up-and find a response for it-those states whose historic and political principles and interests in the international sphere are akin to its own.

 

A State is not a geographical conception but above all a historic-political unit. Real collaboration can be expected only between those States which have a historic- political similarity. For four centuries the kingdom of the Netherlands has been scattered over four continents, and the interests it defends are worldwide. It is closely knit and its constituent parts cannot be considered separately. Therefore, we would have no use for an unreal conception such as a purely European grouping of nations, a United States of Europe. Nor can there be any question of neutrality as far as the Netherlands is concerned. I hold the opinion that neutrality will be made an atavism in the future framework.

 

I hope that collaboration in this war will reveal a useful political similarity between most of the present Allies. I assent to the proposition that there is a greater community of interest between the Low Countries-and indeed of most coastal States-and Britain, the United States, and other countries overseas, than with a purely European grouping.

In the economic field permit me to turn to the Middle Ages for an analogy-to the times when, centrally by governments, and locally by guilds, trade was controlled and prices of material and labor fixed according to the concept of ‘justum pretium.’

We have now to revert to some such system, but in a higher and better form. In Holland, before the war, influences had long been at work, as in many other countries, tending towards the establishment of some kind of planning. Moreover, we, like most of them, had been forced by the economic policy of other countries to take measures such as the maintenance of domestic agriculture, the fixing of prices in the international market, government subsidies, and so on.

 

After the war we cannot escape from some sort of additional international planning to prevent wild competition between industries in the supplying of Europe with food and raw materials, especially between the pre-war industries striving to regain their old markets and those industries, artificially fostered by the war, striving to retain their newly-acquired markets.

There will be three tendencies leading towards planning and away from what one might call the ‘liberal’ economy of pre-war Europe: the tendency arising from the special conditions prevailing in the post-war world; the tendency already working just before the war, due partly to the international political situation, which seemed to require autarchy; the tendency already working in the nineteenth century which I can best summarize in the words ‘justum pretium.’ The first tendency is passing, the second uncertain, and the third permanent and growing.

 

In the face of these tendencies the problem is how to find a harmonious combination of freedom and initiative with the necessary organization. It is capable of solution.

 

It is on occasions contended that national planning must harden into economic nationalism, but planning does not necessarily mean State Socialism, nor does it necessarily bring about tension in the whole field of economics. Planning such as I have in mind consists, first and foremost, in developing and enlarging existing factors. You can but guide and regulate that which flows naturally.

 

All discussions about future collaboration in the political sphere generally takes for granted many things which are uncertain. There are at work forces which are capable of upsetting seemingly very sound plans. The rate of population growth, for instance, has far-reaching consequences. Consider simply the problems presented by the still rapidly growing populations of Russia, Japan, and the Netherlands Kingdom, the declining birthrate in Great Britain, and the stationary population in France.

 

The actions of men and nations usually have been conceived in the mind long before. What they do is what they have thought earlier. So it was with Nazism and Fascism. Therefore, the system of higher education in a nation is of the utmost importance. The leading principles in education and thought are decisive. When God and His Word are left out of them, collaboration between nations has failed and will continue to fail notwithstanding splendid organization. Justice is so easy to speak of when we gain by it, so difficult when we have to make sacrifices for it.

 

It is easier to win this overwhelming war than to maintain peace in justice. Every age needs its leading men. We need statesmen more than economists. Much will depend on whether at the critical moment the world can discover statesmen and whether it is ready to use them. And the statesman must be more than the expression of what is living in his people. He must guide them beyond that, so that when he expresses himself his people will say, ‘Yes, that is what we feel; that is what we want!’