It is amusing in retrospect how after the World War, so many people had ovewrought visions of how another such catastrophe might occur. Take for example this memorandum of Sir James Headlam-Morley to Austen Chamberlain in February 1925:
"Has anyone attempted to realize what would happen if there were to be a new partition of Poland, or if the Czechoslovak state were to be so curtailed and dismembered that in fact it disappeared from the map of Europe? The whole of Europe would at once be in chaos. There would no longer be any principle, meaning, or sense in the territorial arrangements of the continent. Imagine, for instance, that under some improbable condition, Austria rejoined Germany; that Germany using the discontented minority in Bohemia, demanded a new frontier far over the mountains. . . and that at the same time, in alliance with Germany, the Hungarians recovered the southern slope of the Carpathians. This would be catastrophic, and, even if we neglected to interfere in time to prevent it, we should afterwards be driven to interfere, probably too late." https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.227068/2015.227068.Studies-In#page/n191
Can anyone see a scenario where Headlam-Morley's nightmare actually comes true--unlikely as it seems today after a century of peace in Europe?
"Has anyone attempted to realize what would happen if there were to be a new partition of Poland, or if the Czechoslovak state were to be so curtailed and dismembered that in fact it disappeared from the map of Europe? The whole of Europe would at once be in chaos. There would no longer be any principle, meaning, or sense in the territorial arrangements of the continent. Imagine, for instance, that under some improbable condition, Austria rejoined Germany; that Germany using the discontented minority in Bohemia, demanded a new frontier far over the mountains. . . and that at the same time, in alliance with Germany, the Hungarians recovered the southern slope of the Carpathians. This would be catastrophic, and, even if we neglected to interfere in time to prevent it, we should afterwards be driven to interfere, probably too late." https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.227068/2015.227068.Studies-In#page/n191
Can anyone see a scenario where Headlam-Morley's nightmare actually comes true--unlikely as it seems today after a century of peace in Europe?