Baron d'Estournelles de Constant Quotes
France has imposed upon herself an average of more than 2 billion francs a year. This is the minimum price of armed peace for one country only …. Think what United Europe might have done with these millions, had she consecrated even half to the service of progress.
Little heed was paid either to the principle of disarmament or to a United Europe. It took two World Wars and a Cold War to create a United Europe.
Baron d’Estournelles de Constant, *, French Senator, 1913
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was an incredibly prescient and visionary statement regarding the EEC. It would be years after his death that his vision was finally turned into reality.
This is an example of some of the early views about the federation of Europe.
The proposal had many of the characteristics of the EEC adopted years later.
One major problem at the time was that the Soviet Union was supporting and instigating revolutions in many parts of the world. When most nations of the UN wanted to provide peace keeping troops to quell the conflict, the Russians would veto and block the effort, Vandenberg wanted the UN to change the rules regarding the veto. The original right of veto for the major nations was originally included at the insistence of the United States and many Americans did not want to give it up or have any exceptions lest there be more. The Russians at that time also did not want to give up any of their veto powers. Another method that Vandenberg wanted to solve the Russian peacekeeping blockage problem was for America to engage in more collective security pacts so that action could be taken without UN Security Council unanimity by going around the UN.
Napoleon was finally stopped by a multinational coalition led by England.
Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet d'Estournelles de Constant, Baron de Constant de Rebecque, was a French diplomat and politician, advocate of international arbitration and winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize for Peace.
