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.Besides, life in prison was tedi-ous, even though there were opportunities to study, read and talk withthe other hostages many of whom belonged to the Dutch politicalelite.However, as he wrote to his family, Maybe we will be neededafter the war, and we will be mentally and physically fit and longing foraction then (Kohnstamm 2005, 28).So there was time to read, and one of his favourite books was E.H.Carr s The Twenty Years Crisis (1939).It was a remarkable preference,because he was also highly interested in Clarence Streit, who in manyways contradicted Carr s ideas about international problems in the twen-tieth century.Both authors were to have a deep impact on Kohnstamm sthinking about post-war Europe (Harryvan and Van der Harst 2001, 83).During his stay in America his father had advised him to read Streit(Kohnstamm and Kohnstamm 2003, 70), the author of Union Now, alsopublished in 1939.Streit was through and through a liberal, and stressedthe importance of founding a Federal Union to defend the principlesof democracy and freedom in the world (Lebbing 1996, 38 41).Thefuture was the responsibility especially of people in democratic coun-tries: the United States, the British Commonwealth, France, Belgium,the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.These countries, so Streit argued, include the world s greatest, oldest,most homogeneous and closely linked democracies.Geographicallythey have the enormous advantage of being all grouped [.] aroundthat cheap and excellent means of communication, a common bodyof water (Streit 1940, 130).They also shared a common history, and acommon concept of the state, based on principles of freedom, equalityand representation.Together they should set up a powerful union.Thefuture, according to Streit, was in their hands:If we [the democratic countries] cannot unite, the world cannot.Ifwe will not do this little for man s freedom and vast future, we can-not hope that others will; catastrophe must come and there is no oneto blame but ourselves.But the burden is ours because the power isours, too.If we will Union we can achieve Union, and the time wetake to do it depends only on ourselves.(Streit 1940, 60)E.H.Carr, to whom Kohnstamm frequently refers in his letters to hisfamily, seems far away from this utopian way of thinking.Carr was veryclose to Keynes, and stressed the importance of politics and power, therealities and the facts of life.In a letter to his father, Kohnstamm wrote: You don t like Carr, do you? But I am very impressed by his book, and 164 Annemarie van Heerikhuizenthink we can learn a lot from it (Kohnstamm 2005, 84).Accordingto Carr, the failure of the League of Nations and the liberal economicsystem had made clear that liberal thinking was over, that it was some-thing of the past.The real problems were those between the haves and have nots among the powers in the world.Priority number one wasinternational cooperation, including with Germany, the internationaloutlaw after the First World War.International conciliation was directlyconnected to successful economic reconstruction.In accordance withKeynes, he argued: Not for the purpose of earning profit, but for thesocial purpose of creating employment, and so sound politics. The wel-fare of all countries including the defeated ones was at stake. Thistoo is utopian , he admitted, but it stands more directly in the lineof recent advance than visions of a world federation or blueprints of amore perfect League of Nations. Those elegant superstructures, Carrconcluded, must wait until some progress has been made in diggingthe foundations (Carr 2001, 219).Kohnstamm liked Carr s analysis of international politics, but, at thesame time, he had great difficulty with the latter s lenience towardsGermany.Therefore he wrote to his father that he was of the opin-ion that Carr was right in his analysis of pre-war politics, especially inhis criticism of utopias, but that he underestimated Germany s lust forpower.He concluded that what we needed after the war was a verystrong Anglo-American hegemony. This will bring order in the firstplace, not yet order based on law
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