Address to Europe
The communications of America and Europe have always run in two
channels: our fumbling, foolish diplomacy, our direct, candid,
successful dealings with the people.
Our first word was to the people of Europe; the Declaration of
Independence tried to incite the British people against their own
Parliament; and the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" refers
to citizens, not to chancelleries. The Declaration was addressed to
the world; it was heard in Paris and later in a dozen provinces of
Germany, and in Savoy and in Manchester, and presently along the
Nevski and the Yellow River. Since 1776, the people of the world have
always listened to us, and answered. We have never failed when we have
spoken to the people.
After the Declaration, the American people spoke to all the people of
Europe in the most direct way: they invited Europeans to come here,
offering them land, wages, freedom; presently our railroads and
steamship lines solicited larger numbers; and the policy of the
government added inducements. Free immigration, and free movement,
demanded in the Declaration, made possible by laws under the
Constitution, were creating America. In domestic life we saw it at
once; but the effects of immigration on our dealings with Europe were
not immediate.
We need only remember that for a hundred and twenty years the peoples
of Europe and the people of the United States were constantly writing
to one another; not merely doing business together, but exchanging
ideas, mingling in marriage, coming together as dispersed families
come together. Whatever went on in the Mississippi Valley was known
along the fjords and in the Volga basin and by the Danube; if sulphur
was discovered in Louisiana it first impoverished Sicily--then brought
Sicilians to Louisiana; Greeks knew that sponges were to be found off
Tampa. And more and more people in America knew what was happening in
Europe--a famine, a revolution, a brief era of peace, a repressive
ministry, a reform bill. The constant interaction of Europe and
America was one beat of our existence--it was in counterpoint to the
tramp of the pioneer moving Westward; immigration and migration meshed
together.
Our government from time to time spoke to the governments of Europe. A
tone of sharp reproof was heard at times, a warm word for
revolutionaries was coupled with indignation against tyrants: Turkey,
the Dual Monarchy, the Tsar, all felt the lash--or Congress hoped they
felt it; in the Boer War, England was the victim of semi-official
criticism; and whenever possible, we were the first to recognize
republics, even if they failed to maintain themselves on the ruins of
monarchy. We fluttered official papers and were embarrassed by
protocol, not believing in it anyhow, and were outwitted or
out-charmed by second-rate diplomatists of Europe.
_People and Protocol_
The campaign platforms always demanded a "firm, vigorous, dignified"
diplomacy; the diplomacy of Europe was outwardly correct, inwardly
devious, shifting, flexible, and in our opinion corrupt. But our
address to the _people_ of Europe was, in all this time, so candid, so
persuasive, that we destroyed the chancelleries and recaptured our
losses. The first great communication, after 1776, was made by
Lincoln--it was not a single speech or letter, it was a constant
appeal to the conscience of the British people, begging them, as the
Declaration had done, to override the will of their rulers. And this
appeal also was successful; few events in our relations with England
are more moving than the action of the starving Midlanders. Their
government, like their men of wealth and birth, like their press and
parliament, were eager to see America split, and willing to see
slavery upheld in order to destroy democracy. But the men and women of
Manchester, starved by the Northern blockade of cotton, still begged
their government not to interfere with the blockade--and sent word to
Lincoln to assure him that the _people_ of Britain were on the side of
liberty, imploring him "not to faint in your providential mission.
While your enthusiasm is aflame, and the tide of events runs high, let
the work be finished effectually. Leave no root of bitterness to
spring up and work fresh misery to your children." Nor did Lincoln
fail to respond; Americans who could interest Britain in the northern
cause were unofficial ambassadors to the people; and our minister,
Charles Francis Adams labored with all sorts and conditions of men to
make the government of Britain accept the will of the British people.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a final step in the domestic
statesmanship of the war; it was also a step in the diplomacy of the
war, for it insured us the good will of the British people; and that
good will was vital to the success of the Union. The North was coming
close to war with the _government_ of Britain, and the people's open
prejudice in favor of Lincoln and freedom kept England from sufficient
aid to the Confederacy.
The next address of the United States to the people of Europe is a
long tragedy, its consequences so dreadful today that we can barely
analyze the steps by which the great work for human freedom was
destroyed.
_Wilson to the World_
Following the precedent of the Declaration, Woodrow Wilson began in
1916 to address himself to the people of the nations at war in Europe.
To ministries, German and British both, Wilson was sending
expostulations on U-boats and embargos; to the peoples of Europe he
addressed those speeches which were made at home; presently he wrote
inquiries to the ministers which they were compelled to make public
(since publication in neutral countries was certain). Then, after the
Soviets of Russia had gone over the heads of the Foreign Offices, to
appeal to the workers of the world, Wilson carried his own method to
its necessary point and, after we entered the war, began the masterly
series of addresses to the German people which were so effective in
creating the atmosphere of defeat.
They created at the same time the purposes of allied victory. The war
ended and one of the magnificent spectacles of modern times occurred:
the people of Europe were for a moment united, and they were united by
an American declaring the objectives of American life. The moment was
so brief that few knew all it meant until it had passed; in the
excitement of spectacles and events, of plots and processions, this
moment when Europe trembled with a new hope passed unnoticed.
What happened later to Woodrow Wilson is tragic enough; but nothing
can take away from America this great moment in European history--to
which every observer bears testimony, even the most cynical. The
defeated people of Germany saw in America their only defence against
the rapacity of Clemenceau, the irresponsible, volatile opportunism of
Lloyd George, the crafty merchandising of Orlando; the first "liberal"
leader, Prince Max, had deliberately pretended acceptance of the
fourteen points in order to embarrass Wilson; but he spoke the truth
when he said that Wilson's ideals were cherished by the overwhelming
majority of the German _people_; and quite correctly the Germans saw
that nothing but American idealism stood between them and a peace of
vengeance. The enthusiasm of the victorious peoples was less selfish,
but it was equally great; a profound distrust of their leaders had
grown in the minds of realistic Frenchmen and Britons, they sensed the
incapacity of their leaders to raise the objectives of the war above
the level of the "knockout blow" or the _revanche_. As the Germans
cried to be protected in their defeat, the victorious people asked to
be protected from such fruits of victory as Europe had known for a
thousand years. The demagogues still shouted hoarsely for a noose for
the Kaiser and the old order in Germany began to plan for the next
time--but the people of Europe were united; they had gone through the
same war and, for the first time in their history, they wanted the
same peace. It was the first time that an American peace was proposed
to them.
_How Wilson Was Trapped_
Woodrow Wilson made a triumphal tour of the allied capitals and by the
time he returned to Paris for the actual business of the peace, he had
become the spiritual leader of the world. He was not, however, the
political leader of his own country--he had lost the Congressional
elections and he allowed the diplomats of Europe to make use of this
defeat. They began to cut him off from the people of Europe; he fell
into the ancient traps of statesmanship, the secret sessions, the
quarrels and departures; once he recovered control, ordered steam up
in the George Washington to take him home; but in the end he was
outguessed--in the smart word, he was outsmarted. He had imagined that
he could defeat the old Europe by refusing to recognize its intrigues.
He had, in effect, declared that secret treaties and all commitments
preceding the fourteen points couldn't exist; he had hoped that they
would be cancelled to conform to his pious pretence of ignorance. And
Clemenceau and Lloyd George kept him quarreling over a mile of
boundary or a religious enclave within a racial minority; they stirred
passions; they starved German children by an embargo; they rumored
reparations; they promised to hang the Kaiser; they drew Wilson deeper
into smaller conferences; they promised him a League about which their
cynicism was boundless, and he let them have war guilt and reparations
and the betrayal of the Russian revolution and the old European system
triumphant. They had fretted him and tried him and they had made their
own people forget the passionate faith Wilson had inspired; they made
Wilson the agent of disillusion for all that was generous and hopeful
in Europe. They could do it because the moment Wilson began to talk to
the premiers, he stopped talking to the people. From the moment he
allowed the theme of exclusive war guilt to be announced, he cut
himself off from all Germany; he did not know the temper of the
working class in Europe, and he refused to listen to the men he
himself had sent to report on Russia, which did not help him with the
radical trade unions in France or the liberals in England. One by one
the nations fell back into their ancient groove, the Italians sullenly
nursing a grievance, the French whipping up a drama of revenge and
memory in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the British "isolating"
themselves in virtual control of the Continent, everybody frightened
of Russia--and everyone still listening for another word of honest
truth from Wilson, who was silent; for America was starting on a long
era of isolation from Europe (the first in a century), an aberration
in American life, against all its actual traditions, in keeping only
with its vulgar oratory.
_The Excommunication of Europe_
The United States had no obligations to the nations which emerged out
of the Treaty of Versailles, only a human obligation to their people
to keep faith with them. The people of Germany believed in all fervor
that they had gained an armistice and sought peace on the basis of the
fourteen points; the people of France and England believed that their
own governments had accepted the same points. And the same people
might have been stirred to insist on a peace of reconciliation--not
with princes and ministers, but with peoples--if Wilson and the
Americans had continued to communicate with them.
We withdrew into a stuffy silence. Just as we played a queer game of
protocol and refused to "recognize" the USSR, so we sulked because the
old bitch Europe wasn't being a gentleman--the only communication we
made to Europe was when we dunned her for money. We have seen how the
years of Harding and Coolidge affected our domestic life; they were
not only a reaction against the fervor of the war months; they were a
carefully calculated reaction against basic American policy at home
and abroad; they betrayed American enterprise, delivered industry into
the hands of finance, degraded government, laughed at corruption, and
under the guise of "a return to normalcy" attempted to revive the dead
conservatism of McKinley and Penrose in American politics.
In this period, it is no wonder that we failed to utter one kind word
to help the first democratic government in Germany, that we trembled
with fear of the Reds, sneered at British labor until it became
respectable enough to send us a Prime Minister, and excluded more and
more rigorously the people of Europe whose blood had created our own.
Slowly, as the depression of 1929-32 squeezed us, we began to see that
our miseries connected us with Europe; it was a Republican president
who first attempted to address Europe; but Mr. Hoover's temperament
makes it difficult for him to speak freely to anyone; the talks with
Ramsay MacDonald were pleasurable; the offer of a moratorium was the
first kindness to Europe in a generation of studied American
indifference. It failed (because France still preferred to avenge
herself on Germany); and thereafter we had too many unpleasant things
to do at home.
_One Good Deed_
We had, in the interval, spoken once to all the world. On the day the
Japanese moved into Manchuria we had, in effect, notified the British
that we chose not to accept the destruction or dismemberment of a
friendly nation. The cynical indifference of Sir John Simon was the
first intimation of the way Europe felt about American "idealism". It
was also the first step toward "non-intervention" in Spain and the
destruction of Europe at the hands of Adolf Hitler. When we were
rebuffed by Downing Street, we sulked; we did not attempt to speak to
the people of Asia, or try to win the British public to our side. We
had lost the habit. We were not even candid in our talks with the
Chinese whose cause we favored because we had Japan (and American
dealers in oil and scrap iron) to appease.
In 1933 Adolf Hitler was elected leader of a Germany which had been
out of communication with us for a generation. The United States which
had been in the minds of generations of Germans, was forgotten by the
people. In a few years Hitler had overthrown the power of France on
the Continent, challenged Communism as an international force, and
frightened the British Empire into an ignoble flutter of appeasement.
To that dreary end our failure of communication had tended. We were
the one power which might have held Europe together--in a League, in a
mere hope of friendship and peace between nations, in the matrix of
the fourteen points if nothing more. The moment we withdrew from
Europe, its nations fell apart, not merely into victors and
vanquished, but into querulous, distrustful, and angry people, each
whipped into hysteria by demagogues or soothed to complaisance by
frightened ministers.
The obligation to address Europe is no longer a moral one. For our own
security, for the cohesion of our own people, for victory over every
element that works to break America into hostile parts--now we have
the golden opportunity again, to speak to Europe, and to ask Europe to
answer. As we look back on our ancient triumphs with the peoples of
Europe and the sour end to which we let them come, this new chance is
heaven-sent, undeserved, as if we could live our lives over again. And
it is nearly so--for if we want to have a life to live in the future,
if it is still to be the confident, secure life of a United America,
we must speak now to Europe.