The Third World War

Alpbach, Tyrol

In the summer seminar here at Alpbach—a kind of Austrian Aspen, mingling splendid mountain scenery with subsidized culture—there has been no place for any Cold War issue either on the formal agenda of lectures or in the continuous talk, over schnapps and beer and white mountain wine, of the scores of professors and hundreds of students from all western Europe here gathered. Most of those Europeans who direct their concern beyond immediate and domestic boundaries—there are not many of them, of course—seem to be convinced that Europe’s eastern flank has for the present period been stabilized by American deterrent power plus NATO. On this assumption, not always openly expressed, they fix their primary interest on Africa and on the Common Market which is today’s concrete meaning of “the concept of Europe.”

JB

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James Burnham

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Alpbach, Tyrol

In the summer seminar here at Alpbach—a kind of Austrian Aspen, mingling splendid mountain scenery with subsidized culture—there has been no place for any Cold War issue either on the formal agenda of lectures or in the continuous talk, over schnapps and beer and white mountain wine, of the scores of professors and hundreds of students from all western Europe here gathered. Most of those Europeans who direct their concern beyond immediate and domestic boundaries—there are not many of them, of course—seem to be convinced that Europe’s eastern flank has for the present period been stabilized by American deterrent power plus NATO. On this assumption, not always openly expressed, they fix their primary interest on Africa and on the Common Market which is today’s concrete meaning of “the concept of Europe.”