Europe is the book’s central stage for the First Men’s unstable passage from rival nations toward world government. Its wars arise not simply from incompatible ideals but from financial dependence, resource competition, cultural antagonism, and accidental provocations; even movements toward peace repeatedly carry the possibility of renewed conflict. Europe’s successive destruction makes it both the setting of political catastrophe and a measure of how little institutional unity can accomplish when the underlying habits of the First Men remain unchanged.

A Continent Between Rival Loyalties

In the aftermath of the European War, Europe briefly seemed capable of turning suffering into a broader political loyalty. The war, also called the War to End War, had divided its opponents into camps that each claimed to defend civilization, although the narrative finds no clear difference of principle between them. Both sides committed acts of brutality, but both also showed unusual heroism and generosity. As the conflict dragged on, a genuine desire for peace and a united world emerged among the warring peoples. The peace that followed became significant precisely because its promise remained incomplete: the impulse to rise above tribalism coexisted with the old loyalties that continued to shape national policy.

The later relation between Russia and Germany exposes the economic pressures beneath Europe’s declared principles. The two countries might have been partners, exchanging machinery and grain, but Russian dependence on United States capital altered the balance. American finance and organization spread across Russian lands, while Germany—not the United States—became the symbolic target of Russian hostility. The resentment was encouraged by Americans seeking to retain control of Russian finance, although the account presents the United States as a major cause of Russia’s departure from its own communistic ideal. Germany, meanwhile, resented American competition for Russian business and oil. Europe’s political antagonisms thus formed within a connected economic system: the power to finance industry and secure fuel shaped which country could be treated as a rival.

Wars, Reconstruction, and Confederation

The Anglo-French War begins with an accident after England has sent a peace message to France. A French airman, misdirected by a miscalculation or defective instrument, comes to grief in London; the incident ignites a conflict just as France’s militaristic government has fallen and its peace party has gained control. Paris is obliterated, and fighting leaves both countries’ cities and national administrations in disarray. France’s air force is overwhelmed by the better-organized British Air Force, but England is too crippled to exploit its advantage. Famine, disorder, and disease bring the war to a halt and leave both states dependent on outside assistance.

The League of Nations temporarily takes over the management of France and England and oversees reconstruction. The aftermath differs sharply from the settlement after the European War: there is no pursuit of reparations or security through rival alliances, and the two former enemies cooperate in rebuilding one another as well as themselves. This change follows the collapse of national institutions, the growing influence of pacifist and anti-nationalist Labour, and the League’s publication of the war’s origins, which exposes both combatants to public scrutiny. The peace message’s accidental interruption therefore becomes a hinge in the history of Europe: the narrative suggests that, without the airman’s mishap, the movement toward unity might have strengthened before mental deterioration and further wars undermined it.

After the Russo-German War, Europe moves toward final political consolidation. Fear of the financial power of the United States helped draw European peoples together, while the immediate cause of the war was a German author’s offensive account of supposed Nordic and Slavonic destinies. Moscow demanded an apology and suppression of the book; Berlin professed regret but defended freedom of the press, and escalating hostility led to war. In its wake, all European nations except Russia surrender sovereignty to the European Confederacy and pool their armaments. The arrangement is presented as a peace measure, but the United States interprets it as directed against itself and withdraws from the League of Nations; China remains in the League, hoping to use it against its rival. The Confederacy can appear unified from outside, yet remains insecure within, and its unity is sustained less by common allegiance than by shared fear of the United States.

Destruction and the Afterlife of Europe

Europe’s conflict with the United States grows from long-standing resentment of American finance and the presence of American business interests in European life. Neither side initially wants war, but a chain of provocations—beginning with a murder in South Italy and continuing through inflammatory press coverage, killings, and the dispatch of an American air fleet to occupy Italy—brings the Euro-American War into existence before it is formally declared. The first aerial clash briefly checks the American advance, but the United States answers with a devastating attack. Its poison gas kills across European cities; the gas loses its potency after three days, allowing American sanitary forces to enter the cities within a week. The account emphasizes the scale of the loss through the silence of the cities and the bodies left at different heights as people tried to escape the rising gas.

The war ends Europe as a center of intellectual life. Only uplands and mountains in the agricultural regions remain untouched, and the European spirit survives thereafter in fragments within the minds of Americans, Chinese, Indians, and others. The British Empire disintegrates: Canada sides with the United States, South Africa and India declare neutrality, and Australia soon becomes neutral amid divided loyalties. In New Zealand, resistance continues in the mountains for a year, a distant and difficult expression of loyalty to England and to one aspect of Europeanism. The victors also inherit a lasting consequence: Americans are left with collective guilt for the destruction, which intensifies their fear of criticism and their hostility toward critical intelligence.

Europe in the World State and Its Collapse

After the Euro-American War comes a century of smaller national conflicts and then a century of strained peace, while the United States and China grow increasingly at odds. Europe’s later political fate is tied to the planet’s attempt to manage shared resources. A century-old oil famine had enabled the League of Nations to impose cosmopolitan control over oil and coal, with restrictions on their use; this fuel policy persisted after the League was superseded. When productive exploitation of Antarctic fuel deposits became possible, the supply lay outside the World Fuel Control Board’s jurisdiction. The United States sought to use it for its own advancement and its project of Americanizing the planet, while China demanded that the deposits be brought under the Board. Both peoples had returned to nationalism, and war again seemed nearly inevitable.

The First World State eventually inherits the longer consequences of this energy regime. Its early citizens conserve fuel and develop wind, water, volcanic, and subterranean sources, but these alternatives never fully replace coal. The Antarctic coal fields, once treated as inexhaustible, finally fail. The civilization’s collapse is bound to this shortage and to its inability to redirect power away from costly ritual flying. Europe’s history therefore belongs to a wider pattern: political union and technically sophisticated resource management can postpone crisis, but neither guarantees that a society will adapt when the material basis of its order gives way. The continent’s recurring wars are not isolated reversals; they foreshadow the difficulty of sustaining any civilization whose institutions cannot master the loyalties and appetites of the people who inhabit it.