What if..........?

One of my interests is family history. Every so often I come across a gem that I feel should be shared more widely and this is one of those moments. 

During my research I have had the opportunity to read a newspaper report of a municipal conference in Paris involving 115 civic dignitaries from the cities of  Amsterdam, Brussels, Ghent, Liege, The Hague, London, Madrid, Moscow, St Petersburg, and Westminster. One of those attending representing the City of Westminster was then Alderman Robert Woolley Walden my first cousin three times removed. 

The report in the Shoreditch Observer of Saturday 6 June 1914 includes the bold headline "Plea for an Inter-Communal Parliament". Intrigued, I read the report in greater detail and in it there includes a most inspirational speech by M. Chassaigne-Goyon, President of the Paris Municipal Council which I want to share in full:-

“It is to England, to London, that I address my first welcome, to your admirable City which was praised by Tacitus, and the municipal organisation of which goes back to the days of the Magna Charta. There is nothing equal to the majesty of London, where each monument, each tomb, each stone brings to us a great and virile lesson in patriotism and national continuity, as well as the charm and beauty set in relief by their contrasts. What a prodigious animation, what unrivalled activity in the City, in those immense docks, those world-famed warehouses, which it would be necessary to have visited in order to understand your national character, compounded of concentrated energy, reflective will-power, and methodical and conscientious heroism.

What delicious freshness, what an impression of calm satisfaction are on the other hand evoked by your parks, the luxuriant vegetation of which creates the illusion of being far away in the country. What sweetness and grace are to be found in these homes, where you shelter your family virtues, and of which we were privileged in 1905 to taste the charm and delicious intimacy, a truly ideal framework for this British, reserve, hiding such cultivated minds, and such fine and delicate sentiments. What poetry in this incomparable view over the Thames, which your gentle sunlight plays, delicately shadowed by grey smoke tempered with white puffs of steam, which like a gauze veil, painted with gold, envelopes those Gothic monuments of Westminster, true marvels of architecture, those palaces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where we have had the honour of being received by you. We shall ever have present in our minds the splendour of that festival at the Guildhall, where all your nobility of blood, heart, and intelligence gave such a beautiful tribute of honour to our respected President of the Republic, who, in your eyes, embodied France.

My discourse would be but a repetition if I wished to set forth all the beauties of the cities where so generous and luxurious a hospitality has been offered to us. Our close proximity has permitted us repeatedly to accept the kind invitations of Belgian municipalities. The reception by your capital and your great cities, gentlemen, was a genuine competition in attentions in an atmosphere of charm and elegance. 

Brussels, with her aristocratic thoroughfares, has preserved the centre of so modern a city that marvellous group of ancient architecture, bearing witness to the heroism of your ancestors, which makes the square of your Hotel de Ville an unrivalled museum in stone. Nothing is more flattering to us than to hear your capital described as a second Paris. “Can Antwerp not attribute to herself what Taine said of Rubens: ' He enjoyed creating worlds!' Is not your enormous port and your prosperous city so rich in artistic treasures, a very world?

In the picturesque Walloon country of proverbial activity, Liege rises up, industrious, smart and proud upon the smiling banks of the Meuse. The warm sympathy you showed us there four years ago will remain among our most pleasant recollections. It seems like yesterday to me that we were received at Ghent with such friendly courtesy, where the splendours of horticultural exhibitions were side by side with your incomparable exhibitions of Flemish art, your belfry which rang out the freedom of the communes, and the feudal monuments of your “prodigious city as Albert Durer called it.

Is not the vessel which figures in the coat-of arms of the City Paris the living symbol of the warm sympathy uniting our capital to that of Denmark? Between the shores of the blue watered Sound, as on our river, the picturesque prow the valorous Vikings floats gaily, proudly ' over the swan's road.’

It would need the riches of the Castillian tongue to describe the reception given us by Madrid, where we spent some fairy-like hours last autumn. The renowned and chivalric courtesy of that glorious nation was a powerful fairy, foreseeing wishes, outstripping desire. Better than the flowers, even, were the radiant Spanish girls, adding beauty to the gate of Toledo; the ancient stones were enlivened by their youth, their grace and the pearl of Spain ornamented these monuments of antiquity with a living smile. For a moment I coveted the riches of Calderon’s language. ' It would need Eastern poetry as well to praise sparkling Andalusia.

Are not the beautiful flowing waters also one of the most beautiful ornaments of The Hague, where they wind gracefully through the eternal verdure of their flowery banks? In your City, royal, wealthy, distinguished, beautiful, enframed by a forest which seems to bring a fresh dowry of coolness each morning, the mirror of the Vyver reflects the Mauritshuis and the Binnenhof, whence the mighty souvenirs of your history live over again, beside the immortal works of your masters. What a sublime page you would add to this history, if in the splendid Palace of Peace, inaugurated last year, you should succeed in erecting dyke against war?

A dyke, is not that the very heart of Amsterdam? proud city rising like Venus out of the waters, city of refuge open all the proscribed, immutably true to its traditions, impassioned for independence, whose museums with their eternal masterpieces, the canals with their pure waters beautifully shaded, the vast harbour, where giant steamers, dainty sailing ships, and heavy caravels but lately left an indelible impression upon us.

On the delta of the Neva, where the majestic river becomes a branch of the sea, there is St. Petersburg, a centre of intellectual, economic and political life ; a city hospitable beyond any. The noble regularity of its views, brightened by the bright colours of the houses, surmounted by the gilded cupolas of your cathedrals, and the bold spire the Admiralty, is worthy of a great nation. Along the splendid quays, bounded by the pink granite of Finland, the Neva bathes innumerable palaces, museums, with priceless masterpieces, an ancient citadel, and its charming islands, as beautiful in the soft spring nights as in their winter dress. From his gigantic pedestal Peter the Great watches over his capital, so poetically described by your immortal Pouchkine.

It is the first time that a large city has seen together, called by its Municipal Council, such numerous and important delegations from foreign municipalities. Allow me to hope that it will not be the last, and that this day marks an epoch, the point of departure of a new era in the history of inter-communal and international relations. 

I believe that for the historians of the future the most characteristic feature of our time will perhaps be the irresistible movement leading men to unite in each country, and each country with another, where common interests draw them together, or similar conditions of life or identical aspirations. For the last fifty years we have seen International Conferences created, where, periodically, the chiefs amongst the politicians and lawyers of the great civilised nations, by studying, by discussing the complex and difficult questions, raised by the organisation of work and other important problems of social life, learn to know one another, to understand one another, and to appreciate one another ; we have seen, on the initiative of a large hearted monarch, all the powers concerting, and all the desires for peace of our epoch taking shape in the Conference of the Hague.

INTER-COMMUNAL PARLIAMENT 

Why should we not endeavour to establish among us a system of permanent relations, allowing us to share experiences, confide our attempts to one another, study together the causes of our successes and failures? 

It is certain that work would not be lacking in this kind of inter-communal parliament. The problems which the development of the modern city lays before us are practically the same for all latitudes, and do not cease to grow in extent and importance. Everywhere the country is becoming depopulated, and the workers are migrating to the towns; everywhere poverty, the overcrowding of slum dwellings, ignorance of the laws of hygiene, favour the spread of tuberculosis, and of epidemics generally. 

• What is the method suitable to adopt in order ensure the normal extension of the city? 
• How is the struggle against poverty and slums to be conducted? 
• How is knowledge of and respect for the laws of hygiene to be propagated amongst the workers?
• How shall a comfortable and healthy lodging at a reasonable price be procured for them and what method should govern the establishment of the budget of a great city?
• What is the best way of managing the great communal services? 

So many questions which, imperiously demand our attention and upon which it would be of the greatest interest to exchange views, require solution by us. “But, gentlemen, however great the practical importance of our meetings might be, their moral compass would be still greater. In the profoundly troublous period we are going through, where rival ambitions are searching for a perpetually unstable equilibrium, have not all often had the impression that, the forces of peace and the forces of war being practically equal, an imprudent movement, or a passionate movement, would be enough for a misunderstanding cleverly worked to let loose on the world a frightful catastrophe? 

It depends upon us to constitute an incomparable peace force by establishing from city to city an ever closer network of friendship, and with ever closer bonds. More free than the governments of our respective countries to follow the inspirations of our hearts, more representative on account of the order with which we are invested than simply private individuals, we can have our own role, quite our own, in preparing and consolidating these friendly relations which, propagated from country to country, will end, one day—l hope soon —by encircling the Universe.”

This speech was given on 2 June 1914. Just eight weeks later World War One broke out.

Makes you think does it not? What would have happened if such a Parliament had been established? What if the forces of peace had held sway against rival ambitions? How many millions of lives would have been saved?

Those who claim that NATO is the foundation of peace in Europe, are wrong in my view. The foundation of peace is the European Movement that Winston Churchill and others established as the anecdote to the tragedy that beset Europe in the 30 years that followed this speech. We should as a nation be seeking to nurture the European Movement at a time when once again those who promote nationalist rivalries are making ill informed attempts to unravel it all. 

Why have we, the nation that has stood up twice to the forces of nationalism that have come close to destroying Europe in the last century, reached a point where we consider that we have no role to play in that which we have helped to build? Why are we entertaining the values of nationalism that has been responsible for claiming millions of lives? We should - nay must reject those values and consign them to the past once and for all.