| …To Reality |
| Aristide Briand (1863-1932) |
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French Foreign Minister from 1925, Aristide Briand entered upon five and a half years of successful diplomacy. The first success was at Locarno. Briand seized upon Stresemann's offer of a pact of mutual guarantee and non-aggression. On 16 October 1925, he signed the Locarno Pact, which included various treaties and guarantees. Locarno embodied the Briand spirit - the humanization of politics.
With Locarno as a model, Briand sought to extend the arbitration concept to the United States, proposing in 1927 that France and the United States join in renouncing war as "an instrument of national policy". On 27 August 1928, at the Quai d'Orsay, fifteen nations signed the Pact of Paris, or Kellogg-Briand Pact, for the renunciation of war.
The last major proposal Briand offered to the world was his sweeping concept of a European Union. In his speech to the General Assembly of the League of Nations on 5 September 1929, Aristide Briand suggested establishing "some sort of federal connection" between the European nations. He asked the Secretary General Alexis Leger, to clarify his idea in a memorandum. The text, which in no way affected national sovereignties resulting from the 1919 treaties but envisaged the creation of a truly common market, received hardly any favorable responses in Great Britain, Germany and Italy
But when Briand was not reappointed to the foreign ministry in 1932, the proposal languished.
"I believe that a sort of federal bond should exist between the
nations geographically gathered as Europe countries; these nations
should, at any moment, have the possibility of getting in contact,
of discussing their interests, of adopting common resolutions, of
settling down among them a bond of solidarity that allows them, in
the adequate occasions, to face up to serious circumstances, in case
they arise. (...) Evidently, the association will take place mainly
in the economic domain: this is the most pressing question..."
Speech of Aristide Briand in the presence of League of Nations General
Assembly, Geneva, 5 September 1929. |
