Portrait of Europe - Salvador de Madariaga pdf torrent

The author studied engineerings in Paris and London just before 1914. In the 1920s taught spanish literature in the u. of Cambridge and in the 1930s was ambassador of the Spanish Republic in the Society of nations.

All this gave him a first hand knowledge of european affairs and social psychology in one of the most foolish of times.

The book is a subjective depiction of Europe , half literature , half history.



FOREWORD

"""THREATENED from without and from within, from amechanized Jenghiz Khan in Moscow, and from her ownself-destructive inner tendencies, Europe is in mortal danger.That is why we are awakening to our love for her.Whether she will survive or perish depends above all onwhether she becomes aware of herself vividly enough torealize that she lives, and, therefore, that she must live.The situation may be briefly putas follows : the men and nations of Europe are already woven by the material circumstances of their lives into a close physical soli darity, such as that which welds together into a ribbon all the cars circulating on a narrow road.
But, just as the hundreds of drivers of those cars are perhaps in their hearts wishing each other in hell, the men and nations of Europe are still totally lacking in moral solidarity. Thus, while, owing to our physical solidarity, the solution of the problems which beset all Europe can only be found on a European basis, this solution is unattainable owing to our lack of moral solidarity. Europe is already one body; it is not yet one consciousness, such as Britain or Italy.

A Spanish humorist, Julio Camba, wrote once of the United States that she was such a nice country, it was a pity she had no name; for, he explained, "the United States of America" is not a name but a description, as if a girl, instead of calling herselfMary or Joan, had herself called 'the blonde girl of the second storey' . To which may be argued that the United States have absentmindedly stumbled into the most wonderful name of all, which may be read on the uniforms of their soldiers :
U.S.
US, we, that is, the mystic word which expresses collective awareness. During the last war, a toothless, tottering, old woman was heard to say: "Last night we bombed Berlin."

By the mystic power of that we, she, the human ruin, had shared…"""