Democratic Control
The shape of this war was created in dark back rooms of cheap saloons,
in a lodging house in Geneva, in several prison cells, in small half
secret meetings, up back flights of stairs, behind drawn shades, in
boarding houses over the dining table, in the lobbies of movie-houses,
at lectures attended by the idle and the curious and the hopeless, in
the kitchen of a New York restaurant where waiters talked more about
the future than about tips; it was molded also in British pubs and by
the sullen lives of dole-gatherers; it took a definable shape and
could have been re-formed but was not, so that its shape today is the
result of the pressure of those who willed to act and the missing
pressure of groups which failed to meet and talk and plan.
The earth-shaking events of our time may have been created by the
great and mysterious forces of history, but their exact form was fixed
by obscure people: the Russian Revolution by Lenin and Trotsky,
students, impractical men, and the homeless Stalin; and the war by
Hitler, the house painter, the despised little man, the corporal who
couldn't get over his military dreams. These were the leaders, the
conspicuous ones. They planned--and wrote--and gathered a few even
more obscure followers, and talked and lived in utter darkness until
the time came for them to fight.
For a thousand years the destiny of mankind will be shaped by what
these men did in countries barely emerging into freedom--and we to
whom the gods have given all freedom, sit by and hesitate even to talk
about the future, folding our hands and piously saying that in any
case it will be decided for us. That is the result of forgetting our
democratic rights and duties; with them we have forgotten that the
future is ours to make.
It will not be made for us; it will not be made in our favor unless we
make it for ourselves; the weapons with which we fight the war will be
strong and terrible when we come to create the peace. And we will
create it either by using the weapons or by dropping them and running
away from our triumph, which is also our responsibility.
We will not escape the responsibility by saying that we cannot control
"the great forces", the "wave" of events. We can do what Hitler and
Lenin did, when they were starving and fanatic and obscure: we can
work and wait and work again. We must not say that we are helpless in
the face of international intrigue. We--not Churchill and
Roosevelt--wrote the Atlantic Charter, and we can un-write it and
write it over again; we the people, not Henry Cabot Lodge, crushed the
League of Nations by our indifference; we, not Congressmen bribed by
scrap-iron dealers, armed Japan by our greed, and we, all of us, let
Hitler go ahead by our ignorance. We have done all these things
without working; and the only thing we have not tried, is to put out
our hands and take hold of our destiny. In the first dreadful crisis
of our war, we saw China begin to plan the world after the war,
preparing a democratic center of 800 million people in Asia, putting
pressure on Britain to proclaim liberty for India, taking hold of the
future with faith and confidence--while we said not one open word to
Asia, and had barely spoken to our nearest friends, the oppressed of
Europe, to tell them that our purpose was liberty.
We cannot let the shape of the future be molded by other hands. The
price of living as we want to live is more than sweat and blood and
tears: we have to make the grim effort of thinking and take the risk
of making decisions. A painful truth comes home to us: we are no
longer the spoiled children of Destiny--our destiny is our action.
_Record of Isolation_
For more than a hundred years the people of the United States did not
have to act and avoided the consequences of Democracy in international
affairs. Officially we had nothing to do with Europe, except on
special occasions when we snapped at Britain, frightened the Barbary
pirates, helped Napoleon I, drove Napoleon III out of Mexico. We had
no continuing policy and the details of foreign affairs were not
submitted to the voter. This was natural enough; the eyes of America
turned away from the Atlantic seaboard toward the Mississippi Valley;
turned back from the Pacific to Chicago and the east; turned again to
Detroit and Birmingham and Kansas City.
We have not yet got the habit of thinking steadily about other
nations. Our post-war suspicion of the League, our terror of the USSR,
our pious agreements with England and Japan, our weak dislike of
Mussolini and Hitler, still left us unconcerned with _policy_. We
remained in the diplomatic era of William Jennings Bryan while Europe
marched back into the era of Metternich or Talleyrand.
Yet the voters have, since 1893, determined some aspects of our
foreign policy. They did not vote on a loan to China, but they did
keep in power the party that made war in Spain, bought the
Philippines, protected Cuba, and policed Central America. This
tentative imperialism was never the supreme issue of a campaign; the
Republican Party had always a better one, which was prosperity. In the
early twentieth century, the American voter only accepted, he did not
directly approve, the beginnings of a new international outlook.
Our tradition is obviously not going to help us here; but there is
another--the tradition of democratic control. It has not begun to
operate in foreign affairs; before it can operate, we will have to
clear our minds of some romantic illusions.
Our future lies balanced between Europe and Asia; the disagreeable
certainty, like a chill in our bones now, is that we cannot escape
the world. We still think of participation in world affairs negatively
as a favor we may, if we choose, bestow on less favored nations, or as
a mere necessity to keep the plagues of war and tyranny quarantined
from our shores. The prospect is disagreeable because we, the people,
have no experience of international affairs; we have not yet made over
diplomacy as we have made over domestic politics. We have begun to
send newspapermen into foreign lands and to trust them more than we
trust our ambassadors--because the journalists have begun to
democratize diplomacy. They have told us more, they have often
represented us more completely, and represented international business
less; they have been curious, indiscreet, and generally unaffected by
the snobbery which used to ruin our ministers to smart European
capitals. The correspondents have taken the characteristic American
democratic way of altering an ancient European institution, by
shrewdly publicised disrespect. Whenever we have had a strong
Secretary of State, something further has been done; but the permanent
officials of our State Department have completely accepted the
European style of international dealings; they have been so aware, and
ashamed, of being born on the wrong side of the Atlantic sheets, that
all the brash independence of America has been hushed; our leading
career diplomats have never been Americanized by the middle west; they
came from an almost alien institution, the private school; they
represented smart cosmopolitanism disproportionately; they represented
the East, banking, leisure, intellectualism; they did not represent
America.
On occasions, political chance brought a son of the wild jackass into
the State Department, or gave him an embassy; and the pained
professionals had to resort to the language of diplomacy for the
_gaffes_ and _gaucheries_ of American diplomacy. These awkward
Americans were slipping all over the polished floors of the
chancelleries of Europe; but they were not falling into the hands of
the European diplomats.
Neither the fumbles of our occasional ignorant envoys nor the correct
discretion of the career men gave us any habit of thinking about other
countries. On the west coast there is a tradition of wariness about
the Orient--but it rises from immigration, not international
relations. We have no habit of hatred as the French had for Germany,
no cultivated friendships except for the occasional visit of a prince.
We are not susceptible to European flattery if we live beyond the
Atlantic seaboard--or below the $50,000 income level; for crowds, a
Hollywood star is at least as magnetic as a Balkan Queen; and it is
not conceivable that we should ever treat the coming of a Russian
ballet as a part of a political campaign, as the French, quite
correctly, did in 1913.
We are now paying for our quiet unfortified borders, for the broad
seas so suddenly narrowed. We have to learn about foreign affairs,
about our own Empire (we hardly know that we have one). And this is
the hardest thing of all: that while we move in ignorance, _we have to
re-work all the basic concepts of international affairs_, or they will
destroy us. We will have some support in the people of Great Britain,
in the governments of Scandinavia, and in the diplomatic habits of the
USSR; but for the most part we must make our way alone.
_Debunking Protocol_
Again, as in the case of military strategy, the average man must study
the subject to protect himself. He can no longer risk his life, and
the fortunes of his family, in the hands of a few career men in the
State Department, working secretly, studying protocol, forgetting the
people of the United States.
The amateur statesman is as laughable as the amateur strategist, but
the laugh is not always going to be on us. We will popularize
diplomacy or it will destroy us. We have first of all to destroy the
myth of "high politics". We have to examine Macchiavelli and
Talleyrand and Bismarck and Disraeli with as much realism as we
examine Benedict Arnold and James J. Hill and Edison and Kruger. We
need journalist-debunkers to do the work, a parallel, by the way, to
the process of simplifying military discussion, which is being done by
newspaper and radio experts. We have to learn that the great tricks,
the great arrangements of power, have been as shady as horse-trades,
as ruthless as robbery, and often as magnificent as building a
railroad--but in all cases they have represented the desires of
certain groups, powerful enough at any given time to impose their
wishes on the people. War, business, patriotism, medicine, sociology,
religion, and sex have all been re-examined and debunked in the past
two generations; but diplomacy which can destroy our satisfaction in
all of them, still parades as the perfect stuffed shirt, with a red
ribbon across it. At the moment no one can say whether Hitler has
blasted the Foreign Office and our State Department; if he has, it is
an achievement equal to taking Crete; and we ought to thank him for
it.
We should learn that diplomacy has swapped national honor, and
betrayed it, and used it cynically for the advantage of a few--as well
as protected it. We should examine the assertion of "national destiny"
before the era of democracy, to see whether the private wealth of a
prince and the starvation of a people actually are predestined,
whether the mine-owners of France could have allowed German democracy
to live, whether Locarno satisfied national honor less than Munich.
And, above all, we should know that this great "game" of European
statesmanship, going on from the Renaissance to our own time, is a
colossal and tragic failure. At times it has brought incalculable
wealth to a thousand English families, to a few hundred Frenchmen, and
power to some others. But it has always ended in the desolation of
war--and the suspicion holds that to make war advantageously has been
the aim of statesmanship, not to avoid it with honor.
We have to rid ourselves of the intolerable flummery of the diplomats
because in the future foreign affairs are going to be connected by a
thousand wires to our domestic problems, and we propose to see who
pulls the wires. The old tradition of betraying a President at home
while supporting any stupidity abroad will have to be scrapped; and we
will be a more formidable nation, in external affairs, if we conduct
those affairs in our way, not in the way of our enemies.
_A "Various" Diplomacy_
It will not be enough to destroy the myth of high diplomacy and reduce
it to its basic combinations of chicanery and power-pressure, its
motives of pride and honor and greed. We have to take the positive
step of creating a new diplomacy, based on the needs of America, and
those needs have to be consciously understood by the American people.
Out of that, we may create a layman's foreign policy executed by
professional diplomats; just as we are on the way to create a layman's
labor policy, executed by professional statisticians, mediators and
agents. We have to recognize diplomacy as a polite war; and, as
suggested in connection with actual war, we must not fight in the
style or strategy of our enemies. We have always imitated in routine
statesmanship; and only in the past twenty years have we begun an
American style of diplomacy. The "strategy of variety" may serve us
here as on the battlefield; it may not. But the strategy of European
diplomacy is their weapon, and their strength; we are always defeated
when we attempt it, as Wilson was, as Stimson was over Manchuria. Our
only successes have been when we sidestepped diplomacy entirely and
talked to people.
The first step toward creating our own, democratic, diplomacy will be
to convince the American people that they will not escape the
consequences of this war. Many of us believe that we actually escaped
the consequences of the first World War by rejecting the League of
Nations; a process of re-education is indicated, for background. This
education can begin with the future and move backward--for our
relation to post-war Europe can be diagrammed almost as accurately as
a fever chart. We withdrew from the League for peace and found
ourselves in an alliance for war. It can hardly be called a successful
retreat. Actually we were in Europe, up to our financial necks, from
the moment the war ended to the day when the collapse of an Austrian
bank sent us spiralling to destruction in 1929; we stayed in it,
trying to recover the benefits of the Davis and Young plans by the
Hoover moratorium. We did everything with Europe except recognize its
first weak effort to federalize itself on our model.
Decisive our part in this war will be, but if we withdraw as we did
the last time, leaving the nations of Europe to work out their own
destiny, we will, as a practical matter, destroy ourselves.
The only other certainty we have is that the prosperity of the United
States is better served by peace in the world than by war. This is
true of all nations; the only difference for us is that the
dislocation may be a trace more severe, and that we have no tradition
of huge territorial repayments, or indemnities, by which a nation may
recoup the losses of war, while its people starve.
Given that basis, we can observe Europe and Asia after the present
war.
_Phases of the Future_
We ought at once to make a calendar. This war will probably not follow
the tradition of the last one; it may not gratify us with an exact
moment for an armistice; we may defeat our enemies piecemeal and miss
the headlines and tickertape and international broadcasts and cities
alight again and all the gaiety and solemn emotion of an end to war.
This war breaks patterns and sets new ones, so the first date on our
calendar is a doubtful one; but let us say that by a certain day we
will have smashed Germany and Japan; Italy would have betrayed them
long before.
Our next step is the "peace conference" stage. Again this war may
disappoint us; we may have a long armistice and a reorganization of
the world's powers, without Versailles and premiers in secret
conferences; perhaps by that time the peoples of Europe and America
will have captured their diplomats. Still, let us say that an interim
between armistice and world-order will occur.
The phases of the future grow longer as we progress. We will celebrate
the armistice for a day; the interim period may well be a year,
because in that time we are going to create the organization which
will bring us peace for a century--or for ever. This middle period is
the critical one; without much warning, we will be in it; the day
after we recover from celebrating the armistice, we will have to begin
thinking of the future of the world--and at the same time think about
demobilization and seeing whether the old car can still go (if we get
tires) and sending food to the liberated territories and smacking down
capital or labor as the case may be, and planning the next
election--by this time we will have forgotten that the desperate
crisis in human history has not passed, but has been transformed into
the longer crisis of planning and creating a new world--for which
there are even fewer good brains than there are for destroying the old
one.
We can take cold comfort in this: if we do not work out a form of
world-cooperation acceptable to ourselves and the other principal
nations, we will bring on an event in Europe beside which the rise of
Hitler will seem trivial; it will be world revolution, the final act
of destruction which Hitler began. And whatever comes out of it,
fascist, communist, or chaos, will be no friend to us; twenty years
later we can celebrate the anniversary of a new armistice by observing
the start of another European war, which will spread more rapidly to
Asia and ourselves. Those of us who went through the first World War,
and are in good moral status because we have been under shell fire,
may be resigned to a third act in the 1960's; but the men who fight
this war may be as revolutionary in England and America as they turned
out to be last time in Russia or in Germany. They may want assurance,
the day after the war ends, that we have been thinking about them and
the future of the world. They will give us the choice between world
organization and world revolution, and no amount of good intentions
will help us. We will have to choose and to act; fascism may be
destroyed, but an army returning to the turbulence of a disorganized
world will not lack leaders; we can have modified Communism or
super-fascism, all beautifully Americanized, if we have nothing
better, nothing positive to be achieved when the war ends. And by the
time it ends we may understand that disorganization at home or abroad
will mean starvation and plague and repression and death.
_Seven New Worlds_
Forming now, openly or privately, are groups to put forth a number of
different alternatives to revolution and chaos. Some of these are
based on political necessity or the desire to punish the Axis; some
correspond to the necessities of a single nation, some are more
inclusive. They can be summarized so:
Re-isolating America;
Collaboration with Fascism;
Collaboration with Communism;
Anglo-American domination;
American imperialism;
Revival of the League of Nations;
A federal organization of the world.
To some people in the United States, none of these seems possible, all
of them disastrous. If the confusion of propaganda continues, these
people will fall back on the principle of isolation; it is a fatal
backward step, but it is better than any of the seemingly fatal
forward steps; it is in keeping with part of our tradition; and if
Europe as always, with Asia now added, goes forward to another war,
the centre and core of America will say "we want out", and mean it.
But isolating America cannot be an immediate post-war policy; if we
plan to withdraw, we virtually hand over the world to revolution and
hand ourselves into moral and financial bankruptcy. Isolation can only
be a constant threat to the world, that we will withdraw unless some
of our basic terms are met. We have to know our terms, or our threat
is meaningless.
There is much to be said for isolation, or autarchy; I pass it over
quickly because I am not attempting to criticise each sketch of the
post-war world; only to note certain aspects of them all--notably
their relation to the America which I have described in earlier pages.
The next two programs are also easy to assay: they are at the opposite
extreme; they rise from no part of our basic tradition, and
collaboration with either fascism or communism would have to come
either by revolution after defeat or by long skillful propaganda which
would disguise the fact and make us think that we were converting the
world to our democracy.
It is, nevertheless, childish to assume that the thing can't happen.
Given a good unscrupulous American dictator we could have made peace
with the Nazis, and the Japanese, by squeezing Britain out of the
Atlantic and Russia out of the Pacific; our gain would have been the
whole Western Hemisphere; this would have gratified both the
isolationists and the imperialists; it would have preserved peace and
the Monroe Doctrine; the only disqualification is that it would
destroy freedom throughout the world--which is the purpose of fascism.
This was possible; it may become possible again. Unless Britain shows
more intellectual strength in the final phases of the war than she did
in the earlier ones, the chance to scuttle her will appeal to any
anti-European American dictator; liquidate Hitler, make peace with the
anti-Hitlerian Nazis, especially the generals, send our appeasers as
ambassadors, and in five years we can re-invigorate a defeated Germany
and start world-fascism going again.
The alternative is not so remote. It is a distinct and immediate
possibility.
_Red America_
A Socialist England after the war is promised, in effect, by everyone
except the rulers of the British Empire. Add a free China indebted to
Communist armies; add Russia victoriously on the side of democracy;
Red successor states will rise in Italy, Germany and the Balkans; and
our destiny would be the fourth or fifth international.
If we say these things are fanciful, we convict ourselves of inability
to break out of our own mythology. Either collaboration is as likely as
complete isolation; neither would shock us if a good American led us
into it. Sir Stafford Cripps is certain that the USSR and the USA fight
for the same ideals; and collaboration with Hitler's enemies is our
standing policy today. So that a "revolution" in Germany would
automatically lead us into friendly relations with the revolutionaries;
they will be either fascist or communist, quite possibly they will be
Hitler's best friends. Actually we may approach either a fascist or a
Communist world order by easy steps, our little hand held by proud
propagandists guiding us on our way.
_Parva Carta_
The dominant American relation to Europe, now, is expressed in the
Atlantic Charter which is not an alliance, not a step toward union,
but a statement of principles. However, the Charter has been used as a
springboard and been taken as an omen; so it must be examined and its
true bearings discovered. It has, for us, two essential points:
One of these is the Anglo-American policing of the world; it is a curt
reminder that this war is not waged to end war; that future wars are
being taken for granted and preparations to win them will be made. The
Charter was, however, a pre-war instrument for us. Presently the
necessities of war may force us to go further and declare our
intention to prevent war entirely.
The specific economic point in the Atlantic Charter promises "all
States, great and small, victor and vanquished ... access, on equal
terms, to the trade and the raw materials of the world which are
needed for their economic prosperity."
This is a mixture of oil and the mercantile philosophy of a hundred
years ago. It has a moral value; it knocks on the head all theories of
"rights" in colonies; a nation subscribing to the Atlantic Charter and
attempting to isolate a source of bauxite or pitchblende, will have to
be hypocritical as well as powerful. "Access to", even on equal terms,
does not however imply "power to take and use". Lapland may have
access to Montana copper, unhindered by our law; and copper may be
deemed vital to Lapland's prosperity (by a commission of experts); but
Lapland will not get our copper unless we choose to let her have it.
In effect, the maritime nations, England and America, have said that
if they can get to a port in the Dutch East Indies, they propose to
trade there, for oil or ivory or sea shells; and they have also said,
proudly, that Germany can trade there also, after Germany becomes
de-nazified.
No realistic attempt to face the necessity of organized production and
distribution is even implied in this point. Instead, President
Roosevelt was able virtually to write into an international document a
statement of his ideals; as Woodrow Wilson wrote his League of Nations
into the Fourteen Points.
Mr. Roosevelt's freedoms are specific; people (not "nations") are to be
free from want, from fear, from oppression. Freedom from want is the
actual new thing in the world; want--need--hard times--poverty--from
the beginning of European history these have been the accepted order,
the lot of man, the inescapable fate to which he was doomed by being
born.
The Charter rose out of our history and out of England's need. Let me
outline again the connection with our history. In 1776, the
Declaration of Independence showed a way out of the poverty-labyrinth
in the destiny of man; the Declaration declared for prosperity (then
synonymous with free land) and offered it to all (citizenship and
equal rights to the immigrant, the chance to share in this new belief
in prosperity by becoming American). In a century and a half Europe
has scoffed and sneered at this (relatively successful) attempt to
break through economic damnation--and at the end, as Europe rocks over
the edge of destruction, an American offers this still new and
imperfect thing as a foundation stone of peace in the world: freedom
from want. It has not yet been completely achieved in America; but we
know it can be achieved; we have gone far enough on our way to say
that it can be achieved in the whole world.
The American standard is far above freedom from want. It is based, in
fact, on wanting too many things and getting a fair percentage of
them. But President Roosevelt's point does not involve "leveling"; it
is not an equal standard of living all over the world (which is the
implied necessity of international Communism). The negative freedom
from want is not freedom from wanting; it is explicit, as the words
are used: it means that men shall have food and shelter and clothes;
and medicine against plague; and an opportunity to learn and some
leisure to enjoy life; in accordance with the standards of their
people.
This is a great deal. It was not too much for the Soviet Republics to
promise, and to begin to bring, to Kalmucks and Tartars and Georgians;
it is more than we have brought to our own disinherited in the South,
in mining towns, in the fruitful valleys of California. Our partial
failure is a disgrace, but not a disaster; our success, though
incomplete, is important. For we have carried forward in the light of
the other great freedom which Communism has had to sacrifice, which is
freedom from fear. All the specific freedoms--to think, to utter, to
believe, to act, are encompassed in this freedom from fear. Our basic
disagreement with Communism is the same as our attack on
nazi-fascism--both are based on illegitimate power (not power
delegated or given, not power with the consent of the governed): hence
both live on domination; on their capacity to instil fear. The war
will prove how far this fear penetrated in Russia and in Germany, and
how much longer it will be the instrument of coercion in either
country.
The President's freedoms are a wide promise to the people of the
world--a promise made, like Woodrow Wilson's promises, before entering
any agreement with any foreign power. Into the Atlantic Charter, Mr.
Roosevelt also injected his basic domestic policies and, by some
astute horsetrading managed to make them _theoretically_ the basis for
international agreement. This point promises improved labor standards,
economic adjustment, and social security throughout the world.
Improvement, adjustment, security--they are not absolutes; freedom
from want is, in effect, security; any reasonable adjustment between
owners and workers will be an improvement in most countries. But the
principle behind the labor point is as clear as the inspiration of the
points on raw materials and freedom: it is that wars are caused by the
miseries of peoples; when the people rule, they will prevent wars
unless their miseries are acute; if they are not in dire want, if they
have a chance to work, if they are free of coercion and threat, they
will not make war--nor will they fall under the hand of the tyrant and
the demagogue.
In plain practical statesmanship, Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill
apologized for Versailles, which denied Germany access to raw
materials and prevented improvement in labor standards and drove
millions of Europeans into want and fear; and at the same time they
acknowledged the connection between high diplomacy and the food and
shelter and comforts of the citizen. The eight points reiterate some
of the fourteen; they withdraw from others; but the new thing is all
American, it is the injection of the rights of the common man into an
international document.
But there the Atlantic Charter ends. As an instrument of propaganda
and as a basis of making war and peace, it was outlawed by events; it
is forgotten.
_What Is Lacking_
The Charter could not carry its own logic beyond a first step: since
we were not allied to Britain we could not discuss a World system--all
we could say was that aggressors would be disarmed (by ourselves and
Great Britain, neither gaining a military or naval predominance) and
later we also might disarm--when the world seemed safe. This was on
the power side; on the economic side, our role was gratifyingly vague.
Out of the Atlantic mists a few certainties rose, like icebergs. We
soon saw:
1. That Britain has no method of organizing Europe; its
tradition is isolation plus alliances.
2. That Britain has no system of production parallel to the
slave system of Germany, by which Europe would restore the
ravages of war.
3. That Britain cannot impose its relatively democratic habits
and relatively high level of comfort on the Continent.
In effect, after an uprush of enthusiasm following the defeat of
Hitler, the democratic countries will face with panic their tragic
incapacity to do what the fascists have almost done--unify the nations
of Europe.
_Slow Union-Now_
It was not the function of the Charter to outline the new map of
Europe. But the map is being worked over and the most effective of the
workers are those led by Clarence K. Streit toward Union-now. Long
before the Atlantic Charter was issued, Federal Union had proposed
free access to raw materials, even for Germans if they destroyed their
Nazi leaders; and the entire publicity, remarkably organized, has a
tone of authority which makes it profoundly significant. I do not know
that it is a trial balloon of Downing Street or of the White House;
but in America a Justice of the Supreme Court and a member of the
Cabinet recommend the proposal to the "serious consideration" of the
citizens and it has equally notable sponsors in England.
I believe that union with the British Commonwealth of Nations stands
in the way of America's actual function after the war; I see it as a
sudden reversal of our historic direction, a shock we should not
contemplate in war time; it does not correspond to the living
actualities of our past or present. But I think we owe the Unionists a
great deal; they have incited thought and even action; they serve as
the Committee to Aid the Allies did before last December, to supply a
rallying point for enthusiasts and enemies; we are doing far too
little thinking about our international affairs, and Federal Union
makes us think.
It has two aims: the instant purpose of combining all our powers to
win the war, using the fact of our union as an engine of propaganda in
occupied and enemy countries; and second, "that this program be only
the first step in the gradual, peaceful extension of ... federal union
to all peoples willing and able to adhere to them, so that from this
nucleus may grow eventually a universal world government of, by and
for the people". (It sounds impractical, but so did the Communist
Manifesto and Hitler's "ravings".)
As to the immediate program, it would instantly revive the latent
isolationism of tens of millions who used to insist that the Roosevelt
policy would end in the sacrifice of our independence; we should have
a unified control of production, but some 40% of our producers would
lose all faith in our government. In the midst of winning the war, we
should have to re-convince millions that we had not intentionally
betrayed them.
Military and productive unity can be independent of political unity.
Unified command was achieved in France in 1918 and in the Pacific in
1942, without unions.
As for effect abroad, propaganda could present a better case to
Frenchmen who believe Britain let them down if complete Anglo-American
union were not an accomplished fact; and the whole Continental and
Russian and Asiatic suspicion of our motives might be allayed if we
did not unite completely and permanently with "the people of Canada,
the United Kingdom, Eire, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of
South Africa" while we were not so fondly embracing the peoples of
India, China, and the Netherlands East Indies. The abiding union of
literate, superior, capitalist white men is not going to be taken as a
first step to world equality by Slavs and Orientals; and much as the
British Empire may wish not to acknowledge the fact, Communism has
completely undermined the idea of white supremacy, and has given a new
hope to Asia and Africa. It may have been a very bad thing to do, but
we cannot stop for recriminations now. There are new soldiers for
democracy in the world, and if they are fighting beside us, we cannot
ignore them and fall into the arms of their traditional oppressors. We
have a great work to do with the Chinese and the Indians, and all the
other peoples who can stand against our enemy; we cannot begin to do
it if our first move is accepting British overlordship in the East,
uncritically, without pledges or promises.
As a post-war program Federal Union is more persuasive. It begins with
a Wilsonian peace offer--the influence is strong and supplies the deep
emotional appeal of the organization. It guarantees free access to
rubber and oil and gold; it accepts any nation whose people had
certain minimal freedoms; it implies, of course, free trade--with new
markets for our manufactured products, and no duties on British
woolens; plans for the Union Congress "assure the American people a
majority" at the start. (As between the United States and the British
Commonwealth; as soon as "all peoples willing and able" to, enter, the
200 million American and British Commonwealthers would be swamped by
800 million Chinese and Indians and other Asiatics.)
The average American pays a great tribute to the largeness of the
concept of "Union-now"--he doesn't believe that anyone really means
it. He thinks it is a fancy name for a war alliance, or possibly a new
simplified League of Nations. The gross actuality of Iowa and
Yorkshire ruled by one governing body, he cannot take in. And as the
argument develops, this general scepticism is justified; for the
American learns that while he may be ruled, he will not be over-ruled,
and he wonders what Mr. Churchill and the man in the London street
will say to that, or in what disguise this plan is being presented to
the English or the Scots or the New Zealanders. So far no responsible
British statesman has offered union to the United States, but Mr.
Leslie Hore-Belisha has said that we need a declaration of
inter-dependence and our Ambassador to the Court of St. James's told
an international Society of writers that we need a sort of
international citizenship. Mr. Wendell Willkie however has said that
"American democracy must rule the world."
_Entry Into Europe_
By union or by alliance, American or Anglo-American rule over the
world will have some strange consequences for us, citizens not
accustomed to worry over "foreign affairs". Perhaps the strangest
thing is that the results will be almost the same whether we are
partners with Britain or alone in our mighty domination, with England
as a satellite. An American or Anglo-American imperium can only be
organized by force; it is, in effect, the old order of Europe, with
America playing Britain's old star part, Britain reduced to the
supporting role of France or Holland or Portugal. In any controversy,
we step in, with our vast industrial power, our democratic tradition,
our aloofness from Europe, just as England used to step in with _her_
power and traditions; the Atlantic is to us what the Channel or North
Sea was to Britain. England's policy was to prevent the rise of any
single Continental power, so she made an alliance with Prussia to
fight France in 1814 and made an alliance with France to fight Prussia
in 1914. In an Anglo-American alliance, England would be our European
outpost, just as Prussia or France was England's Continental outpost.
Our policy would still be the balance of power. Like England, we
should be involved in every war, whether we take up arms or not--as
she was involved in the Crimea and the Balkans, and South Africa and
North Africa; we should have our Fashodas and our Algeciras and our
Mafeking; our peace will be uneasy, our wars not our own.
The Atlantic Charter suggests a "policing" of the world after the war;
it holds off from anything further; it does not actually hint that a
reorganization of power in the world is needed. Yet, at the same time,
the creation of an oceanic bloc to combat the European land bloc is
hinted. It is all rather like a German professor's dream of
geo-politics; Russia becomes a Pacific power and Japan, by a miserable
failure of geography, is virtually a Continental one, while the United
States is reduced to two strips of ocean frontage, like a real estate
development with no back lot, with no back country, with no background
in the history of a Continent.
The Sea-Powers unit is as treacherous as "the Atlantic group" or "the
Democratic countries"; the intent is still to create a dominant power
and give ourselves (and Britain) control of the raw materials and the
trade of the world. No matter how naturally the group comes together,
by tradition or self-interest, it becomes instantly the nucleus for an
alliance; and as the alliance begins to form, nations we omit or
reject begin to crystallize around some other centre, and we have the
balance of power again, the race for markets and the race for
armaments.
This will be particularly true if we begin to play the diplomatic
game with the stakes greater than those ever thrown--since we are the
first two-ocean nation to enter world affairs. At the moment nothing
seems more detestable than the policy of Japan; but diplomacy
overcomes all detestation, and if we are going in for the game of
dealing with nations instead of peoples, we can foresee ourselves
years from now as the great balance between the Atlantic and the
Pacific, between Japan and England, or Japan and Germany, perhaps the
honest broker between the two sets of powers. In 1942 we are
independent, fighting for freedom, helping all those who fight against
tyranny; and we can do this because we have kept out of the groupings
and combinations of the powers. But we are being pushed into a
combination and we know now that there is only one way to avoid
entanglement: we must prevent the combination from coming into
existence.
_Our Historic Decision_
In 1919 an attempt was made, by America, to put an end to all European
combinations of power. That attempt was unanimously approved by the
people of the United States, some of whom voted for the League while
the others endorsed a Society of Nations, to which W.G. Harding
promised our adhesion. The Society of Nations was never seriously
proposed, and Harding betrayed the American people; at the same time
it was monumentally clear that France, with England's help, had
sabotaged the actual League by making it a facade for a punitive
alliance. Between these two betrayals, the idea of world organization
was mortally compromised.
We may quarrel over the blame for the impotence of the League; did
France invade the Ruhr because, without us in the League, she needed
"protection"? or did we stay out of the League because we knew France
would go into the Ruhr? That can be argued for ever. We know
reasonably well why we kept out of the League; but no one troubles to
remember how earnestly we wanted the League and prayed for it and
wanted to enter, so that it remained always to trouble us as we tried
to sleep through the destruction of Ethiopia or Spain or
Czecho-Slovakia.
The League was not a promise of security to the _people_ of the United
States. Our Government may have felt the need of a world order; we did
not; the war had barely touched us, yet even those whom it had touched
least were enthusiasts for a new federation of nations. It was neither
fear nor any abstract love of peace. The League, or any other
confederation of Europe, corresponded to our American need, which was
to escape alliance with any single power or small group; to escape the
danger of Europe united against us; and to escape the devil's
temptation of imperialism--_because the people of the United States do
not want to rule the world_. There is an instinct which tells us that
those who rule are not independent; they are slaves to their slaves;
it tells us that we are so constituted that we cannot rule over part
of Europe or join with any part to rule the rest; it is our instinct
of independence which forbids us in the end to destroy the liberty of
any other nation.
This goes back to the thought of union with the British nations. If we
unite, and we are dominant, do we not accept the responsibility of
domination? The appetite for empire is great and as the old world
turned to us in 1941, as the War of the Worlds placed us in the centre
of action, as more and more we came to make the decisions, as
Australia, Russia, China, Britain called to us for help--the image of
America ruling the world grew dazzling bright. It was our duty--our
destiny; Mr. Henry Luce recognized the American century, seeing us
accepted by the world which already accepts our motor cars, chewing
gum and moving pictures. To shrink from ruling the world is abject
cowardice. Did England shrink in 1914? Or France under Napoleon? Or
Rome under Augustus? Or Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus?
No. No despotism ever shrank from its "destiny" to destroy the freedom
of other nations.
But the history of America will still create our destiny--and our
destiny is _not_ to rule the world.
_Our destiny is to remain independent and the only way we can remain
independent is by cooperation with all the other nations of the earth.
That is the only way for us to escape exclusive alliances, the pull of
grandiose imperial schemes, the danger of alliances against us, and a
tragic drift into the European war system which can destroy us._ There
is an area of action in which nationality plays no part: like labor
statistics--and this area is steadily growing; there is another area
jealously guarded, the area of honor and tariffs and taxes. We have to
mark out the parts of our lives which we can offer up to international
supervision and the parts we cannot. It will surprise us to see that
we can become more independent if we collaborate more.
"_Far as Human Eye Can See_"
I have no capacity to describe the world order after the war. If, as I
have said, the war is fought by us in accordance with our national
character, we will create a democratic relationship between the
nations of the world; and our experience added to that of Britain and
the USSR will tend toward a Federation of Commonwealths; the three
great powers have arrived, by three separate experiences, at the idea
of Federation; two of them are working out the problems of sovereign
independent states within a union; the third, ourselves, worked the
problem out long ago by expunging States Rights in theory and allowing
a great deal in practise. As a result of our experience, we
dogmatically assert that no Federation can be created without the
ultimate extinction of independence; we may be right. But the thought
persists that independence was wanted for the sake of liberty; that
independence without security was the downfall of Czecho-Slovakia and
France; and that we have cherished independence because the rest of
the world did not cherish liberty as we did. Profoundly as I believe
independence to be the key to American action, I can imagine the
translation of the word into other terms; we are allied to Britain and
the Netherlands and the Soviets today, we have accepted alien command
of our troops and ships; we are supplying arms to the Soviets and
building a naval base in Ecuador and have accepted an agreement by
which Great Britain will have a word in the creation of the most
cherished of our independent creations, the tariff. Independence, so
absolute in origin, is like all absolutes, non-existent in fact; we
know this in private life, for the man of "independent means" may
depend on ten thousand people to pay him dividends; and only the mad
are totally independent of human needs and duties.
We will not willingly give up our right to elect a President; we may
allow the President to appoint an American member to an international
commission to allocate East Indies rubber; in return for which we will
allocate our wheat or cotton or motors--on the advice of other
nations, but without bowing our neck to their rule. We have always
accepted specific international interference in our affairs--the
Alabama claims and the Oregon boundary and the successive troubles in
Venezuela prove that our "sovereign right" to do what we please was
never exercised without some respect for the opinion of mankind--and
the strength of the British navy. Indeed recent events indicate that
for generations our independence of action, the reality of
independence, rested on our faith in the British fleet.
The moment we become realistic about our independence we will be able
to collaborate effectively with other nations. We got a few lessons in
realistic dealings in 1941--lend-lease and the trade for the naval
bases were blunt, statesmanlike but most undiplomatic--moves to
strengthen the British fleet, to extend our own area of safety, and to
give us time against the threat of Japan. They protected our
independence, but they also compromised it; the British by any
concession to Japan might have weakened us; we took the risk, and our
action was in effect an act of defensive war against Germany. Like
Jefferson, buying Louisiana to protect us against any foreign power
across the Mississippi, President Roosevelt acted under dire necessity
and as Jefferson (not Roosevelt) put it, was not too deeply concerned
with Constitutionality. The situation in 1941 required not only the
bases but the continued functioning of the British fleet in the
Atlantic; and we got what we needed.
The economic agreement of 1942 is probably a greater invasion of our
simon-pure independence of action; although it empowers a post-war
President to decide how much of lend-lease was returned by valor in
the field, it specifically binds us to alter our tariff if Britain can
induce its Commonwealth of Nations to give up the system of "imperial
preference". All our tariffs are horsetrades and the most-favored
nation is a sweet device; but heretofore we have not bartered our
tariffs in advance. Certainly a post-war economic union is in the
wind; certainly we will accept it if it comes to us piecemeal, by
agreements and joint-commissions and international resolutions which
are not binding, but are accepted and become as routine as the law of
copyright which once invaded our sacred national right to steal or the
international postal union which gave us the right to send a letter to
any country for five cents.
When we think of the future our minds are clouded by memory of the
League; we are psychologically getting ready to accept or reject the
League all over again. We are worried over the form--will it be Geneva
again or will headquarters be in Washington; will Germany have a vote;
will we have to go to war if the Supreme Council tells us to. These
are important if we are actually going to reconstitute the League; but
if we are not, the only question is what we want the new world
organization to do. In keeping with our political tradition we will
pretend that we want it to do as little as possible and put upon it
all the work we are too lazy to do ourselves; but even the minimum
will be enough.
_Our Standing Offer_
Everything points to an economic council representing the free nations
of the world; the lease-lend principles in time of peace may be
invoked, as Harold Laski has suggested, to provide food and raw
materials for less favored nations; and the need for "economic
sanctions" will not be lost on the nation which supplied Japan with
scrap-iron and oil for five years of aggression against China and then
was repaid at Pearl Harbor.
If there is any wisdom--in the people or in their leaders--we will not
have a formulated League to accept or reject; we will have a series of
agreements (such as we have had for generations) covering more and
more subjects, with more and more nations. We have drawn up treaties
and agreements with twenty South American States, with forty-six
nations united for liberty; we can draw up an agreement with Russia
and Rumania and the Netherlands so that England and the Continent and
China get oil; and another agreement may give us tungsten; we may have
to take universal action to stop typhus--and no one will be an
isolationist then. If the war ends by a series of uprisings we may be
establishing temporary governments as part of our military strategy.
Slowly the form of international cooperation will be seen; by that
time it will be familiar to us--and we will see that we have not lost
our independence, but have gained our liberty.
We began the war with one weapon: liberty. If we fight the war well,
we will begin the long peace with two: liberty and production. With
them we will not need to rule the world; with them the world will be
able to rule itself. All we have to do is to demonstrate the best use
of the instruments--and to let others learn.
Before our part in the war began, it was often suggested that America
would feed and clothe Europe, send medicine and machinery to China,
and make itself generally the post-war stockpile of Democracy as it
had been the arsenal and treasury during the war; and the monotonous
uncrushing answer was about "the money". Realities of war have blown
"the money" question into atoms; no sensible person pretends that
there is a real equation between our production and money value; we
can't in any sense "afford" bombers and battleships; if we stopped to
ask where "the money" would come from, and if the question were
actually relevant, we would have to stop the war.
Another actuality of war relieves us of the danger of being too
generous--the actuality of rubber and tin and tungsten and all the
other materials critical to production in peace time. Since we will
have to rebuild our stocks of vital goods, our practical men will see
to it that we get as well as give; we may send food to Greece and get
rubber from Java, but on the books we will not be doing too badly.
Neither money nor the bogey of a balance of trade is going to decide
our provisioning of Europe and Asia; the cold necessity of preventing
revolution and typhus will force us to rebuild and re-energize; in the
end, like all enlargements of the market, this will repay us. The rest
of the world will know a great deal about mass production by the end
of the war: Indians and Australians will be expert at interchangeable
parts; but we will have the immeasurable advantage of our long
experience on which the war has forced us to build a true productive
system. We will jump years ahead of our schedule of increase and
improvement because of the war; and we will be able to face any
problem of production--if we want to, or have to. The choice between
people's lives and the gold standard will have to be made again, as it
was by many nations in the 1930's; only this time the choice is not
without a threat. After wars, people are accustomed to bloodshed; they
prefer it to starvation.
_Alternative to Prosperity_
The greatest invention of democracy is the wealth of the people. We
discovered that wealth rested more firmly on prosperity than on
poverty and the genius of our nation has gone into creating a
well-to-do mass of citizens. Unfinished as the job is, we can start to
demonstrate its principles to others. In return they may refrain from
teaching us the principles of revolution.
Recovery and freedom are our concrete actual offer to the nations of
Europe, counter to the offer of Hitler. Without this literal, concrete
offer, we shall have to fight longer to defeat Hitler--and every added
day costs us lives and money and strength inside ourselves which we
need to create the new world; if we can defeat Hitler without the aim
of liberty, our victory will be incomplete; we will not automatically
emancipate France or Jugo-Slavia, or draw Rumania back into the orbit
of free nations. Within each nation a powerful group profits by the
Nazi-system; within each a vast population, battered, disheartened,
diseased, wants only the meanest security, one meal a day, shelter
only from the bitter days, something more than a rag for clothing--and
an end to the struggle; these are not heroes, they are old people, men
and women struck down and beaten and starved so that they cannot rise,
but can drag down those who attempt to rise. These we may save only by
giving them food and forgetfulness. On the other side there are the
young--carefully indoctrinated, worked over to believe that the offer
of fascism is hard, but practical; it is an offer of slavery and
security; whereas they are told the offer of the democratic countries
is an hypocrisy and--worse still--cannot be made good. We have to face
the disagreeable fact that the Balkan peasant in 1900 heard of
universal suffrage and high wages in America, and his grandchildren
know more about our sharecroppers and race riots and strike breakers
than we do--because the Goebbels machine has played the dark side of
our record a million times. The first year of the war was bound to
show the "superiority" of the German production technique over ours,
since Europe will not know that we are still at the beginning of
actual production. The mind of Europe knows little good of us; we
have not yet begun to undermine the fascist influence by words, and
our acts are not yet planned. Even after Hitler is destroyed, we will
have to act to overcome impotence in political action which years of
Nazi "conditioning" induces, and to compensate for the destruction of
technical skill in the occupied areas. To us the end of the war is a
wild moving picture of gay processions, swastikas demolished, prisons
opened, and the governments-in-exile hailed at the frontiers; all of
these things may happen, but the reality, after the parade, will be a
grim business of re-making the flesh and the spirit of peoples. The
children of Israel rejoiced and sang as they crossed the Red Sea; but
they had been slaves. So Moses led them forty years in the wilderness,
when he could have gone directly to the Promised Land in forty months,
because he wanted a generation of slaves to die, and a generation of
hardy freemen to be in full mature power.[A] The generation we will
raise to power in the occupied countries will have great experience of
tyranny, none of freedom; it will know all about our shortcomings and
nothing of our triumphs; it will distrust our motives and methods; it
will have seen the Nazis at work and know nothing of new techniques of
production; we will have to teach them to be free and to work.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: I have not traveled the route; but General Sir Francis
Younghusband who had, gave me the figures--and the motive.]