We have yet to find our greater selves. We have also yet to realize
that Europe, since the Spanish War, has counted us in the concert of
great nations far more than we have counted ourselves.
Somebody wrote in the New York Sun:
_We are not English, German, Swede,
Or Austrian, Russian, French or Pole;
But we have made a separate breed
And gained a separate soul._
It sounds well; it means nothing; its sum total is zero. America
asserts the brotherhood of man and then talks about a separate soul!
To speak of the Old World and the New World is to speak in a dead
language. The world is one. All humanity is in the same boat. The
passengers multiply, but the boat remains the same size. And people
who rock the boat must be stopped by force. America can no more
separate itself from the destiny of Europe than it can escape the
natural laws of the universe.
Because we declared political independence, does any one still harbor
the delusion that we are independent of the acts and fortunes of
monarchs? If so, let him consider only these four events: In 1492 a
Spanish Queen financed a sailor named Columbus--and Europe reached out
and laid a hand on this hemisphere. In 1685 a French King revoked an
edict--and thousands of Huguenots enriched our stock. In 1803 a French
consul, to spite Britain, sold us some land--it was pretty much
everything west of the Mississippi. One might well have supposed we
were independent of the heir of Austria. In 1914 they killed him, and
Europe fell to pieces--and that fall is shaking our ship of state from
stem to stern. There may be some citizens down in the hold who do not
know it--among a hundred million people you cannot expect to have no
imbeciles.
Thus, from Palos, in 1492, to Sarajevo, in 1914, the hand of Europe
has drawn us ever and ever closer.
Yes, indeed; we are all in the same boat. Europe has never forgotten
some words spoken here once: "That government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." She waited
to hear us repeat that in some form when The Hague conventions we
signed were torn to scraps of paper. Perhaps nothing save calamity
will teach us what Europe is thankful to have learned again--that some
things are worse than war, and that you can pay too high a price for
peace; but that you cannot pay too high for the finding and keeping of
your own soul.
[FINIS]
* * * * *
Printed in United States of America.
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