and North America something like a thousand times, as large a population
in much greater comfort, with no period of famine, with the whole
population living much more largely and deriving much more from the soil
than did the men of the Heptarchy, or the Red Indians, the "struggle for
bread" does not now take the form of struggle between groups of the
population. The more they fought, the less efficiently did they support
themselves; the less they fought one another, the more efficiently did
they all support themselves.
This simple illustration is at least proof of this, that the struggle
for material things did not involve any necessary struggle between the
separate groups or States; for those material things are given in
infinitely greater abundance when the States cease to struggle.
Whatever, therefore, was the origin of those conflicts, that origin was
not any inevitable conflict in the exploitation of the earth. If those
conflicts were concerned with material things at all, they arose from a
mistake about the best means of obtaining them, exploiting the earth,
and ceased when those concerned realized the mistake.
Just as Britain supported its population better when Englishmen gave up
fighting between themselves, so the world as a whole could support its
population better if it gave up fighting.
Moreover, we have passed out of the stage when we could massacre a
conquered population to make room for us. When we conquer an inferior
people like the Filipinos, we don't exterminate them, we give them an
added chance of life. The weakest don't go to the wall.
But at this point parenthetically I want to enter a warning. You may
say, if this notion of the rivalry of nations is false, how do you
account for the fact of its playing so large a part in the present war?
Well, that is easily explained--men are not guided necessarily by their
interest even in their soberest moments, but by what they believe to be
their interest. Men do not judge from the facts, but from what they
believe to be the facts. War is the "failure of human understanding."
The religious wars were due to the belief that two religions could not
exist side by side. It was not true, but the false belief provoked the
wars. Our notions as to the relation of political power to a nation's
prosperity are just as false, and this fallacy, like the older one,
plays its part in the causation of war.
Now, let us for a moment apply the very general rule thus revealed to
the particular case of the United States at this present juncture.
American merchants may in certain cases, if they are shrewd and able, do
a very considerably increased trade, though it is just as certain that
other merchants will be losing trade, and I think there is pretty
general agreement that as a matter of simple fact the losses of the war
so far have for America very considerably and very obviously
overbalanced the gains. The loss has been felt so tangibly by the United
States Government, for instance, that a special loan had to be voted in
order to stop some of the gaps. Whole States, whose interests are bound
up with staples like cotton, were for a considerable time threatened
with something resembling commercial paralysis.
While we may admit advances and gains in certain isolated directions,
the extra burden is felt in all directions of commerce and industry. And
that extra burden is visible through finance--the increased cost of
money, the scarcity of capital, the lower negotiability of securities,
the greater uncertainty concerning the future. It is by means of the
financial reaction that America, as a whole, has felt the adverse
effects of this war. There is not a considerable village, much less a
considerable city, not a merchant, not a captain of industry in the
United States that has not so felt it. It is plainly evident that by the
progressive dearness of money, the lower standard of living that will
result in Europe, the effect on immigration, and other processes which I
will touch upon at greater length later, any temporary stimulus which a
trade here and there may receive will be more than offset by the
difficulties due to financial as apart from industrial or commercial
reactions.
This war will come near to depriving America for a decade or two of its
normal share of the accumulated capital of the older peoples, whether
that capital be used in paying war indemnities or in paying off the cost
of the war or in repairing its ravages. In all cases it will make
capital much dearer, and many enterprises which with more abundant
capital might have been born and might have stimulated American industry
will not be born. For the best part of a generation perhaps the
available capital of Europe will be used to repair the ravages of war
there, to pay off the debts created by war, and to start life normally
once more. We shall suffer in two ways.
In a recent report issued by the Agricultural Department at Washington
is a paragraph to the effect that one of the main factors which have
operated against the development of the American farm is the difficulty
that the farmer has found in securing abundant capital and the high
price that he has to pay for it when he can secure it. It will in the
future be of still higher price, and still less abundant, because, of
course, the capital of the world is a common reservoir--if it is dearer
in one part, it is dearer to some extent in all parts.
So that if for many years the American farmhouse is not so well built as
it might be, the farm not so well worked, rural life in America not so
attractive as it might be, the farmer's wife burdened with a little more
labor than she might otherwise have, and if she grows old earlier than
she might otherwise, it will be in part because we are paying our share
of the war indemnities and the war costs.
But this scarcity of capital operates in another way. One of the most
promising fields for American enterprise is, of course, in the
undeveloped lands to the south of us, but in the development of those
lands we have looked and must look for the co-operation of European
capital. Millions of French and British money have poured into South
America, building docks and railroads and opening up the country, and
that development of South America has been to our advantage because
quite frequently these enterprises were under the actual management of
Americans, using to the common advantage the savings of the thrifty
Frenchman and the capital of the wealthy Englishman.
For, of course, as between the older and the newer worlds there has gone
on this very beneficent division of labor: the Old World having
developed its soil, built its cities, made its roads, has more capital
available for outside employment than have the population of newer
countries that have so much of this work before them. And now this
possibility of fruitful co-operation is, for the time being, and it may
be for many years, suspended. I say nothing of the loss of markets in
the older countries which will be occasioned by sheer loss of population
and the lower standard of living. That is one of the more obvious but
not perhaps the most important of the ways in which the war affects us
commercially.
Speaking purely in terms of commercial advantage--and these, I know, do
not tell the whole story (I am not for a moment pretending they
do)--the losses that we shall suffer through this war are probably very
much more considerable than those we should suffer by the loss of the
Philippines in the event, say, of their being seized by some hostile
power; and we suffer these losses, although not a single foreign soldier
lands upon our soil. It is literally and precisely true to say that
there is not one person from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn that will not be
affected in some degree by what is now going on in Europe. And it is at
least conceivable that our children and children's children will feel
its effects more deeply still.
Nor is America escaping the military any more than she has escaped the
commercial and financial effects of this war. She may never be drawn
into active military co-operation with other nations, but she is
affected none the less. Indeed the military effects of this war are
already revealing themselves in a demand for a naval programme immensely
larger than any American could have anticipated a year ago, by plans for
an enormously enlarged army. All this is the most natural result.
Just consider, for instance, the ultimate effect of a quite possible
outcome of the present conflict--Germany victorious and the Prussian
effort next directed at, say, the conquest of India. Imagine India
Prussianized by Germany, so that, with the marvelous efficiency in
military organization which she has shown, she is able to draw on an
Asiatic population of something approaching 400,000,000.
Whether the situation then created would really constitute a menace for
us or not, this much would be certain--that the more timid and timorous
among us would believe it to be a menace, and it would furnish an
irresistible plea for a very greatly enlarged naval and military
establishment. We too, in that case would probably be led to organize
our nation on the lines on which the European military nations have
organized theirs, with compulsory military service, and so forth.
Indeed, even if Germany is not victorious the future contains
possibilities of a like result; imagine, what is quite possible, that
Russia becomes the dominant factor in Europe after this war and places
herself at the head of a great Slav confederacy of 200,000,000, with her
power extending incidentally to the Pacific coast of Asia, and, it may
be the day after tomorrow, over 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 of Asiatics.
We should thus have a militarized power of 200,000,000 or 300,000,000 or
400,000,000 souls, autocratically governed, endowed with western
technical knowledge in the manipulation of the instruments of war,
occupying the Pacific coast line directly facing our Pacific coast line.
It is quite conceivable, therefore, that as the outcome of either of the
two possible results of this war we may find ourselves embarked upon a
great era of militarization.
Our impregnability does not protect us from militarism. It is quite true
that this country, like Russia, cannot be permanently invaded; it is
quite true that hostile navies need not necessarily be resisted by
navies of our own so far as the protection of our coasts is concerned.
But there is no such thing as absolute certainty in these matters. While
personally I believe that no country in the world will ever challenge
the United States, that the chances are a hundred to one against it, it
is on just that one chance that the militarist bases his plea for
armaments and secures them.
But, unfortunately, we are already committed to a good deal more than
just mere defense of American territory; problems arising out of the
Philippines and the Panama Canal and the Monroe Doctrine have already
committed us to a measure of intervention in the political affairs of
the outside world. In brief, if the other nations of the world have
great armies and navies--and tomorrow those other nations will include a
reorganized China as they already include a westernized Japan--if there
is all that weight of military material which might be used against us,
then in the absence of those other guarantees which I shall suggest, we
shall be drawn into piling up a corresponding weight of material as
against that of the outside world.
And, of course, just as we cannot escape the economic and the military
reaction of European development, neither can we escape the moral. If
European thought and morality did, by some fatality, really develop in
the direction of a Nietzschean idealization of military force, we might
well get in the coming years a practical submergence of that morality
which we believe to be distinctively American, and get throughout the
older hemisphere a type of society based upon authority, reproducing it
may be some features of past civilizations, Mongol, Asiatic, or
Byzantine. If that were to happen, if Europe were really to become a
mere glorified form of, say, certain Asiatic conceptions that we all
thought had had their day, why, then, of course America could not escape
a like transformation of outlook, ideals, and morals.
For there is no such thing as one nation standing out and maintaining
indefinitely a social spirit, an attitude toward life and society
absolutely distinct and different from that of the surrounding world.
The character of a society is determined by the character of its ideas,
and neither tariffs nor coastal defenses are really efficient in
preventing the invasion of ideas, good or bad. The difference between
the kind of society which exists in Illinois today and that which
existed there 500 years ago is not a difference of physical vigor or of
the raw materials of nature; the Indian was as good a man physically as
the modern Chicagoan, and possessed the same soil. What makes the
difference between the two is accumulated knowledge, the mind. And there
never was yet on this planet a change of ideas which did not sooner or
later affect the whole planet.
The "nations" that inhabited this continent a couple of thousand years
ago were apparently quite unconcerned with what went on in Europe or
Asia, say, in the domain of mathematical and astronomical knowledge. But
the ultimate effect of that knowledge on navigation and discovery was
destined to affect them--and us--profoundly. But the reaction of
European thought upon this continent, which originally required twenty,
or, for that matter, two hundred or two thousand years to show itself,
now shows itself, in the industrial and commercial field, for instance,
through our banking and Stock Exchanges, in as many hours, or, for that
matter, minutes.
It is difficult, of course, for us to realize the extent to which each
nation owes its civilization to others, how we have all lived by taking
in each other's washing. As Americans, for instance, we have to make a
definite effort properly to realize that our institutions, the sanctity
of our homes and all the other things upon which we pride ourselves, are
the result of anything but the unaided efforts of a generation or two of
Americans, perhaps owing a little to certain of the traditions that we
may have taken from Britain.
One has to stop and uproot impressions that are almost instinctive, to
remember that our forefathers reached these shores by virtue of
knowledge which they owed to the astronomical researches of Egyptians
and Chaldeans, who inspired the astronomers of Greece, who inspired
those of the Renaissance in Italy, Spain, and Germany, keeping alive and
developing not merely the art of measuring space and time, but also that
conception of order in external nature without which the growth of
organized knowledge, which we call science, enabling men to carry on
their exploitation of the world, would have been impossible; that our
very alphabet comes from Rome, who owed it to others; that the
mathematical foundation of our modern mechanical science--without which
neither Newton nor Watt nor Stevenson nor Ericson nor Faraday nor Edison
could have been--is the work of Arabs, strengthened by Greeks, protected
and enlarged by Italians; that our conceptions of political
organization, which have so largely shaped our political science, come
mainly from the Scandinavian colonists of a French province; that
British intellect, to which perhaps we owe the major part of our
political impulses, has been nurtured mainly by Greek philosophy; that
our Anglo-Saxon law is principally Roman, and our religion almost
entirely Asiatic in its origins; that for those things which we deem to
be the most important in our lives, our spiritual and religious
aspirations, we go to a Jewish book interpreted by a Church Roman in
origin, reformed mainly by the efforts of Swiss and German theologians.
And this interaction of the respective elements of the various nations,
the influence of foreigners, in other words, and of foreign ideas, is
going to be far more powerful in the future than it has been in the
past. Morally, as well as materially, we are a part of Europe. The
influence which one group exercises on another need not operate through
political means at all; indeed, the strongest influences are
non-political.
American life and civilization may be transformed by European
developments, though the Governments of Europe may leave us severely
alone. Luther and Calvin had certainly a greater effect in England than
Louis XIV. or Napoleon. Gutenberg created in Europe a revolution more
powerful than all the military revolutions of the last ten centuries.
Greece and Palestine did not transform the world by their political
power. Yet these simple and outstanding truths are persistently ignored
by our political and historical philosophers and theorists. For the most
part our history is written with a more sublime disregard of the simple
facts of the world than is shown perhaps in any other department of
human thought and inquiry.
You may today read histories of Europe written by men of worldwide and
pre-eminent reputation, professing to tell the story of the development
of human society, in which whole volumes will be devoted to the effect
of a particular campaign or military alliance in influencing the
destinies of a people like the French or the German. But in those
histories you will find no word as to the effect of such trifles as the
invention of the steam engine, the coming of the railroad, the
introduction of the telegraph and cheap newspapers and literature on the
destiny of those people; volumes as to the influence which Britain may
have had upon the history of France or Germany by the campaigns of
Marlborough, but absolutely not one word as to the influence which
Britain had upon the destinies of those people by the work of Watt and
Stephenson.
A great historian philosopher laying it down that the "influence" of
England was repelled or offset by this or that military alliance,
seriously stated that "England" was losing her influence on the
Continent at a time when her influence was transforming the whole lives
of Continental people to a greater degree than they had been transformed
since the days of the Romans.
I have gone into this at some length to show mainly two things--first,
that neither morally nor materially, neither in our trade nor in our
finance, nor in our industry, nor in all those intangible things that
give value to life can there be such a thing as isolation from the rest
of Christendom. If European civilization takes a "wrong turning"--and it
has done that more than once in the past--we can by no means escape the
effects of that catastrophe. We are deeply concerned, if only because we
may have to defend ourselves against it and in so doing necessarily
transform in some degree our society and ourselves.
And I wanted to show, secondly, that not only as a simple matter of fact
as things stand are we in a very real sense dependent upon Europe, that
we want European capital and European trade, and that if we are to do
the best for American prosperity we must increase that dependence, but
that if we are effectively to protect those things that go deeper even
than trade and prosperity, we must co-operate with Europe intellectually
and morally. It is not for us a question of choice. For good or evil, we
are part of the world affected by what the rest of the world becomes and
affected by what it does. And I want to show in my next article that
only by frankly facing the fact (which we cannot deny) that we are a
part of the civilized world and must play our part in it, shall we
achieve real security for our material and moral possessions and do the
best that we know for the general betterment of American life.
II.
AMERICA'S FUTURE ATTITUDE
In my last article I attempted to show how deeply must America feel,
sooner or later, and for good or evil, the moral and material results
of the upheavals in Europe and the new tendencies that will be generated
by them. I attempted to show, too, how impossible it is for us to escape
our part of all the costs, how we shall pay our share of the
indemnities, and how our children and children's children may be
affected even more profoundly than we ourselves.
The shells may not hit us, yet there is hardly a farmhouse in our
country that will not, however unconsciously, be affected by these
far-off events. We may not witness the trains of weary refugees trailing
over the roads, but (if we could but see the picture) there will be an
endless procession of our own farmers' wives with a hardened and
shortened life and their children with less ample opportunities.
And our ideals of the future will in some measure be twisted by the
moral and material bankruptcy of Europe. Those who consider at all
carefully the facts hinted at in my last article--too complex to be more
than hinted at in the space available--will realize that the "isolation"
of America is an illusion of the map, and is becoming more so every day;
that she is an integral part of Occidental civilization whether she
wishes it or not, and that if civilization in Europe takes the wrong
turn we Americans would suffer less directly but not less vitally than
France or Britain or Germany.
All this, of course, is no argument for departing from our traditional
isolation. Our entrance into the welter might not change things or it
might change them for the worse or the disadvantages might be such as to
outweigh the advantages. The sensible question for America is this: "Can
we affect the general course of events in Europe--in the world, that
is--to our advantage by entering in; and will the advantage of so doing
be of such extent as to offset the risks and costs?"
Before answering that question I want to indicate by very definite
proposals or propositions a course of action and a basis for estimating
the effect. I will put the proposal with reference to America's future
attitude to Europe in the form of a definite proposition thus:
That America shall use her influence to secure the abandonment
by the powers of Christendom of rival group alliances and the
creation instead of an alliance of all the civilized powers
having as its aim some common action--not necessarily
military--which will constitute a collective guarantee of each
against aggression.
Thus when Germany, asked by the Allies at the prospective peace to
remove the menace of her militarism by reducing her armaments, replies,
"What of my protection against Russia?" Christendom should, with
America's help, be in a position to reply: "We will all protect you
against Russia, just as we would all protect Russia against you."
The considerations which support such a policy on America's part are
mainly these: First, that if America does not lend the assistance of her
detachment from European quarrels to such an arrangement, Europe of
herself may not prove capable of it. Second, that if Europe does not
come to some such arrangement the resulting unrest, militarism, moral
and material degeneration, for the reasons above indicated and for
others to be indicated presently, will most unfavorably affect the
development of America, and expose her to dangers internal and external
much greater than those which she would incur by intervention. Third,
that if America's influence is in the manner indicated made the deciding
factor in the establishment of a new form of world society, she would
virtually take the leadership of Western civilization, and her capital
become the centre of the political organization of the new world State.
While "world domination" by military means has always proved a dangerous
diet for all nations that have eaten of it heretofore, the American form
of that ambition would have this great difference from earlier
forms--that it would be welcomed instead of being resisted by the
dominated. America would have given a new meaning to the term and found
a means of satisfying national pride, certainly more beneficial than
that which comes of military glory.