We expect yourhelp.
Being on the stage one slowly notices how with thegrowing political tension in Yugoslavia something also moves in Europeanauditorium. It is February:
In the civilized zones of Europe an interest has been awakened in what is going on in this zoo. It means two things: either they are fed up with this dark panslavic howling, or they are already seized by a panic that the far and wide known Balkan-Byzantine-Bolshevist fairness could also infect their own people
The Croatian cause already searches directly for recognitionand help from Europe. Croatian Youth sent an open letter in April to theEuropean Parliament saying:
... the artificially created Yugoslavia does not guarantee mutual recognition of the Yugoslav people * . On the contrary, it is a danger for peaceful European co-existence. (...) We believe that you do not want to take responsibility for the destruction of one of the oldest European nations which was for centuries antemurale christianitatis and now by defending itself also defends peace in Europe. We expect your help.
These cries for help didn't remain without echo. TheInternational Paneuropean Union for Alpe-Adria area at their conference(in July) passed a resolution:
The united and great Europe of tomorrow can found itself only on the equal right of self-determination of all nations and ethnical-cultural communities, because it is the only way it could accept the challenge of coming problems .
The Croats want to be recognised exactly in their rightof self-determination, but in the context of their own projection of Europeanfuture and their own ideas about principles on which the common Europeanhouse has to be built.
At that time (July) the mutual misunderstandings begantoo. We read:
The trio Spain-France-Italy stretches the formula of unified Yugoslavia to the utmost limit and even over the borders of a realistic insight into the bloody reality of "northwestern republics" - fearing that a green light for Slovenian and (or) Croatian subjectivity in the sense of international law could make up the fire under the boiling kettle of autonomous-separatist movements from Catalonia to Corsica, from Basque Provences to South Tyrol. Great Britain which has always been very interested in the Balkans and has traditionally without restriction decided in favour of the "Serbian cause", and would certainly engage its whole influence in order to prevent the emergence of two new states who are not in the condition to avoid, even if they would like to do it, a flood of German interests flowing to Middle and Eastern Europe.
The surplus ofbutter and cheese
In the Croatian media, the homogeneous image of Europefalls apart and will never be reconstructed. In parallel there grew afterJuly, a revolt against the European attitude towards the escalating warin Yugoslavia.
There is a growing mass of arguments about the incapability of Western European political factors to deal constructively with the bloodshed in the middle of the continent and to understand that behind the local "ethnic conflicts" lies an ultimate danger for European freedom. EU-Europe is torn between the (German) conclusion that an "enforced Yugoslavia" is untenable and the (French) doctrine, according to which any Yugoslavia would be better than that what could emerge through its desintegration. (...) Europe is lost in meanders of its narrow-minded interests, its phobias, its confused perception of Croatian striving for independence as a belated nationalism (...) Further on we agree of course with those who say "one should not quarrel with the whole world" - but we don't believe that one should behave oneself towards the world as towards an infallible authority with unquestionably the best intentions ... it is time to put ones cards on the table and in this context to ask loud and clearly: what is the price of European consternation - 100, 200, 300 or 1000 Croatian victims?
But even earlier the single particles of the Europeanimage, now desintegrating in the eyes of Croatian media, developed theirown dynamic, and consequently started to exercise their own influence onreal events in Yugoslavia.
A foreign correspondent in Germany gives us one exampleof this. In January he wrote about German criticism of the light-headednessof Croatian politics and the Croatian "operetta-mentality". TheGermans, he wrote, see in the Croatian politics:
... certain disillusion as necessary.
In April the same correspondent reported that the mediain Germany wrote about
... certain "illusionism" of Croatian politics which expresses itself on one side in self-destructing tacticism and hesitation, and misleading expectations from the West on the other. (...) The fact is that none of the world's politicians openly supports the Croatian or Slovenian striving for independence and that they will hardly do so before such independence happens. It is quite another thing that the European democratic public (particularly the German press) are inclined to support the Croatian and Slovenian drive for independence and freedom and resolutely support it in the fight against the byzantine-communist-military-unitarist complex. (...) Roughly speaking, most observers in Bonn who used to think very highly of Croatian politics, now show with reference to actual or possible events much less understanding for Croatia's peculiar Gandhism.
The correspondent in Germany sees not just the Germancriticism of Croatian political passivity, but he also notices one pointin which the German view joins the Croatian one - in criticism of Europe.
Observers in Germany think Europe is helpless, unable or unwilling.
And further on, writing about a commentary in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in September:
This article points out that what has otherwise been said in Germany and written many times: Croatia should finally take its fate into its own hands, and organise its defence without taking into account what the politicians say. Politicians for whom the butter and cheese surplus are a more serious problem then destroyed Croatian cities and villages.
The correspondent from Vienna writes about similarAustrian criticism of Europe:
European Union is helpless, confused and quarrelling, (...) Austrian press commentaries are not chary of criticizing a Europe that cannot withstand a storm.