American World Policies

Walter E. Weyl

American World Policies

PART I

OUR IDEALISTIC PAST

AMERICAN WORLD POLICIES

CHAPTER I

AMERICA AMONG THE NATIONS

The Great War has thrown America back upon itself. It has come as a test and challenge to all our theories. Suddenly, yet subtly, it has shaken our optimism and undermined our faith in the peaceful progress of humanity. Our isolation is gone, and with it our sense of security and self-direction. Americans, who a few days ago would have dared to abolish army and navy as a supreme earnest of good faith, reluctantly agree to arm. "Self-defence," they now say, "comes before progress. We must lay aside our hopes of a world at peace and must guard our gates."

Doubtless there is some exaggeration in our change of mood. Men speak as though a miracle had swept away the Atlantic Ocean, leaving us stranded on Europe's western shore. Fortunately the Ocean, always America's ally, still lies there, narrowed and curbed, yet three thousand miles of storm-swept water. Physically and morally, however, our isolation has dwindled. Dreadnaughts, submarines and airships can now reach us and our commerce, industry and national ambitions are interwoven with those of Europe. We shall never again stand aloof from the world.

To Americans this change has come so suddenly, though it has been long preparing, that we fail to visualise the new situation. We glibly repeat that our isolation is gone, but do not ask ourselves what is the nature of the bond that has ended our isolation. Is it amity or enmity? Are we to become one of a dozen clutching, struggling, fighting nations, seeking to destroy each other, or are we to contribute to a solution of the problems that now divide nations into warring groups? Though our isolation is gone, we still preserve a latitude of action. We may choose between two foreign policies, between Nationalistic Imperialism and Internationalism. We may elect to fight for our share of the world's spoils or to labour, and, if necessary, to fight for a world peace and for just international relations, upon which alone a permanent peace can be based.

Such a choice involves for Americans the main trend of our civilisation; for Europe it is hardly less vital. Our influence upon Europe, like hers upon us, has grown with the shrinking of the earth's surface. Our bulk, our resources and our remnant of inaccessibility give us a weight in world affairs far in excess of our military power. We are advancing in population, wealth and general education, and our future progress in these directions is likely to be more rapid than that of Western Europe. Moreover we are the only strong nation not tied up in existing international enmities. Our hands are unbound. How we shall act, therefore, whether we shall add to the complications of Europe or aid in disentangling them, is a world as well as a national problem.

In the main such national determinations are dependent upon great economic forces, acting upon the nation from within and without. These economic forces, however, do not work upon stones but upon those loose bundles of instincts, reactions, ideals and prejudices that we call men. We need not dig deep into American history to uncover the human elements that will influence our decision. On the surface of our life appear two strong tendencies pulling in opposite directions.

It is easier to describe than to define these tendencies. The first we might perhaps call pacifism, liberalism, humanitarianism, democracy, though none of these words exactly defines the generous, somewhat ineffectual, peace ideal, which has grown up in a democratic people with no hostile neighbours. At this moment by the light of the European camp-fires we are likely to belittle this easy do-nothing idealism. We find our idealists prosaic. They are not gaunt fanatics consumed by their own passion, but hard-working, self-respecting, religiously inclined men, asking good prices and high wages, eating good food, wearing good clothes and perhaps running a Ford automobile. To some of these meliorists, Europe seems almost as distant as China, but towards the peoples of both places they preserve a vague and benevolent missionary attitude. They want peace with Europe and peace for Europe, and would even be willing to pay for it, as they pay for relief for Belgium and Martinique. There is little passion in this good-will but there is even less hypocrisy. One may ridicule this cornfed, tepid idealism, but it is none the less the raw material out of which great national purposes are formed. The present desire of Americans for a world peace is no vaguer or more ineffectual than was the seemingly faint sense of the wickedness of slavery, as it existed in our Northern States in the days of the Missouri Compromise. Yet out of that undirected, crude and luke-warm emotion, there burst forth within a generation the white-hot flame, which consumed the detested institution and freed the millions of Negro slaves.

But not all Americans are idealists even of this commonplace sort. In our ultra-keen capitalistic competition we have evolved an American of different type. Self-centred, speculative, narrow, measuring success by the dollars gained and spent, this individualist has a short way with idealisms and larger ends. To him our involuntary rapprochement with Europe is an opportunity not for service but for gain. War is good or bad as it is profitable or the reverse. He is a realist, as is the mole, attached to the earth and not worrying about the skies. His ideal is that of a selfish nation dominated by selfish, social classes.

Here then we have the two Americanisms, both of them native and redolent of the soil, both vital and growing. Both have appeared in many of our national controversies, in the Philippine question, in Porto Rico, in our relations with Mexico. The one is liberal, democratic, often visionary, though confident because many of its visions have come true; the other is concrete, short-sighted, intense but with a low moral sensibility. Each appeals to a patriotism formed in the image of the patriot.

It is upon this divided America that there comes the sense of the impinging of Europe. These men of two opposed types (with innumerable intermediate variations) suddenly perceive that the great war is being fought not only near our shores but even within our borders. They dimly perceive that the war is but an incident in a greater, though less spectacular contest, that it is in reality a phase of a long drawn-out economic struggle in which we too have blindly played our part. To both groups, to all Americans, the war comes close. It is being fought with motives like our motives and ideals like our ideals. It is a conflict which proves to us that international peace is still very far from attainment. War on a scale never before known: war—deliberate, organised, scientific—fought by combatants and noncombatants alike, reveals itself as one of the central facts of our modern life, a fact not to be ignored or preached or argued away, a fact which for us on this side of the ocean, whatever our instincts and our philosophies, has its deep and permanent significance. Our changed relation to this central fact of war constitutes one of the gravest problems that we face to-day. Growing up in a peaceful environment we had imbibed the idea that war was a thing alien to us, monarchial, European. We had come to hold that a nation could avoid war by not desiring it, by not preparing for it, by minding its own business. We believed that what share in the world we had and wanted was what every reasonable nation would willingly concede us, and if certain powers proved refractory and unreasonable—a most improbable contingency—we could always send forth our millions of minute men, armed with patriotism and fowling-pieces. With European conflicts we had no concern; we might deplore the senseless brutality of such wars, but need not take part in their conduct or in their prevention. In due course Europe would learn from America the lessons of republicanism, federalism and international justice and the happiness and wisdom of an unarmed peace. Ourselves unarmed, we could peacefully wrest the weapons from Europe's hand.

The sheer, unthinking optimism of this earlier American attitude ended abruptly on the outbreak of the present war. It is not surprising that our first reaction towards this war, after its full sweep and destructiveness were visible, was one of fear. If a peaceful nation like Belgium could suddenly be overrun and destroyed, it behooved us also to place ourselves on guard, to be ready with men and ships to repel a similarly wanton attack. The result was a demand for preparedness, an instinctive demand, not based on any definite conception of a national policy, but intended merely to meet a possible, not clearly foreseen, contingency. The whole preparedness controversy revealed this rootlessness. It was in part at least an acrid discussion between careless optimists and unreasonable scare-mongers, between men who held positions no longer tenable and others who were moving to positions which they could not locate. Our ideas were in flux. Whether we should arm, against whom we should arm, how we should arm, was decided by the impact of prejudices and shadowy fears against an obstinate and optimistic credulity.

Nothing was more significant of the externality of these debates than the fact that they seemed to ignore everything that we had cared about before. The case for armament was presented not as a continuation of earlier national policies but as a sort of historical interlude. Past interests were forgotten in the insistence upon the immediate. Until the war broke in upon us we had been groping, both in foreign and domestic policies, towards certain forms of national expression; arbitration, international justice, democracy, social reform. Throughout a century, we had believed that we had blundered towards these goals, and that our history revealed an aspiration approaching fulfilment. We had settled a continent, built an ordered society, and amid a mass of self-created entanglements, were striving to erect a new civilisation upon the basis of a changed economic life. Now it was assumed that all this stubbornly contested progress was forever ended by the conflict engulfing the world.

This whole idealistic phase of American life was disparaged by our sudden ultra-patriots. These men, with a perhaps unconscious bias, opposed their brand new martial idealism to what they falsely believed was a purely materialistic pacifism. Actually both advocates and opponents of increased armaments were contending under the stress of a new and bewildering emotion. For decades we had concerned ourselves with our own affairs, undisturbed by events which convulsed Europe. But the present war, because of its magnitude and nearness, had set our nerves jangling, excited us morbidly, dulled us to horror and made us oversensitive to dread. We read of slaughter, maiming, rape and translated the facts of Belgium and Servia into imaginary atrocities committed against ourselves. We wanted to be "doing something." Not that we wished war, but rather the chance to rank high according to the standards in vogue at the hour. While hating the war, we had insensibly imbibed the mental quality of the men who were fighting. We were tending to think as though all future history were to be one continuing cataclysm.

For the moment, like the rest of the world, we were hypnotised. Upon our minds a crude picture had been stamped. We were more conscious of peril than before the war, though the peril was now less. Our immediate danger from invasion was smaller than it had been in June, 1914; yet while we were perhaps foolishly unafraid in 1914, in 1916 we trembled hypnotically.

It was to this state of the American mind that all sorts of appeals were made. Those who wanted universal conscription and the greatest navy in the world argued not only from dread of invaders but from the necessity of a united nation. They wanted "Americanism," pure, simple, undiluted, straight. There was to be no hyphen, no cleavage between racial stocks, no line between sections or social classes. America was to be racially, linguistically, sectionally one.

It was an ideal, good or bad, according to its interpretation. A more definitely integrated America, with a concrete forward-looking internal and foreign policy, could aid disinterestedly in untying the European tangle. In the main, however, the demand for Americanism took on an aggressive, jingoistic, red-white-and-blue tinge. Out of it arose an exaggerated change of mood toward the "hyphenate," the American of foreign, and especially German, lineage. Newspapers teemed with attacks upon this man of divided allegiance.

In other ways our agitation for a United America took a reactionary shape. Though a pacific nation, we experienced a sudden revulsion against pacifism and Hague tribunals, as though it were the pacifists who had brought on the war. Contempt was expressed for our industrialism, our many-tongued democracy, our policy of diplomatic independence. Those most opposed to Prussianism, as it has been defined, were most stubbornly Prussian in their proposals. We heard praises of the supreme education of the German barracks, and a clamour arose for universal service, not primarily industrial or educational but military in character. A decaying patriotism of Americans was deplored quite in the manner of Bernhardi. More than ever there was talk of national honour, prestige, the rights of America. Our former attitude of abstention from European disputes was called "provincial," and we were urged to fight for all manner of reasons and causes. Even though we cravenly desired peace, we were to have no choice. An impoverished Germany, beaten to her knees, was to pay her indemnity by landing an army in New York and holding that city for ransom. Around such futilities did many American minds play.

All this appeal would have been more convincing had it not been most insistently urged by influential financial groups. The extent of certain financial interests in large armaments, in a spirited foreign policy and in other widely advertised new doctrines, was obvious. The war had built up a vast armament industry, war stocks had been widely distributed, and upon the advent of peace these properties would shrink in value unless America made purchases. More important was the complex of financial interests, likely to be created in Latin America and elsewhere. Speculators were dreaming of great foreign investments for American capital. We were to become a creditor nation, an imperialistic power, exploiting the backward countries of the globe. We were to participate in international loans, more or less forced, and to make money wherever the flag flew. For such a policy there was needed the backing of a patriotic, united, disciplined and armed nation, and to secure such arms, any excuse would suffice.

At the most, of course, these financial adventurers were merely leaders in a movement that arose out of the peculiar conditions of the moment. The roots of our sudden desire for armament and for an aggressive foreign policy ran far deeper than the interests of any particular financial group. A sense that American ideals were in peril of being destroyed by a new barbarism impelled us to new efforts. We dimly perceived that we must solve new problems, accept new responsibilities, and acquit ourselves worthily in new crises.

The most obvious result of this campaign for preparedness was a largely increased expenditure for armies and navies. Its deeper significance, however, lay in the fact that it marked the end of our former theory that war can be ended by precept and example and that no nation need fear war or prepare for war so long as its intentions are good. Hereafter the size and character of our national armament was to be determined in relation to the possibility of war with Europe and of war in Europe. The campaign for military preparation is not ended. It will not end until some relation is established between our new armament and the national policy which that armament is to serve.

So long as these preparedness debates lasted we believed that the fundamental cleavage in American sentiment was between those who wished to arm and those who did not. Yet the proposal to increase the army and navy was defended by men of varying temperaments and opinions, by liberals and conservatives, by workmen and capitalists, by members of peace societies and representatives of the Navy League. As the first stage of mere instinctive arming passes, however, it suddenly appears as though the true cleavage in American thought and feeling runs perpendicular to the division between those who favour and those who oppose armament. The real issue is the purpose to which the arms are to be put. We may use our armed strength to secure concessions in China or Mexico, to "punish" small nations, to enter the balance of power of Europe or to aid in the promotion of international peace. We may use our strength wisely or unwisely, for good or for ill. We began to arm before we knew for what we were arming, before we had a national policy, before we knew what we wanted or how to get it. Our problem to-day is to determine upon that policy, to create out of the constituent elements forming American public opinion a national policy, determined by our situation and needs, limited by our power, and in conformity with our ideals. It is the problem of adjusting American policy to the central fact of international conflict and war.

As we approach this problem we discover that the two great elements in our population tend to pull in contrary directions. In the question of defence the one instinctively follows the lead of European nations, piling up armies and navies and attempting to make us the most formidable power in the world; the second seeks by understandings with other nations to prevent disagreements and to avert wars. The first group emphasises American rights on "land and sea," the property rights of Americans, our financial interests in backward countries, and the military force necessary to secure our share; the second thinks of establishing international relations in which such rights may be secured to all nations without the constant threat of force. Both of these elements are national in the sense that they desire to preserve the country's interest, but while the first group envisages such interest as separate and distinct from others, to be defended for itself alone as a lawyer defends his client, the other sees the national interest in relation to the interests of other nations and seeks to secure international arrangements by which conflicting claims can be adjusted. The first element lays stress upon the legalistic attitude, upon our honour, our rights, our property; the second is less jingoistic, less aggressive, less jealous in honour.

Which of these two elements in our population will secure the ascendency and dictate our foreign policy, or which will contribute more largely to the decision, will be determined chiefly by the course of our internal evolution and especially by our economic development. Whether we are to go into international affairs to get all we can—concessions, monopolies, profits—will depend upon how great is the internal economic strain pressing us outward, upon whether our conditions are such that the gains from a selfish national aggrandisement will outweigh the large, slow gains of international co-operation. Ideals will also count, as will tradition and precedent. Even chance enters into the decision. If, for example, by some change in the internal affairs of Germany we are thrown into an alliance with England, France and Russia, a direction will be given to our international policy which it may take years to change. The accident which found Admiral Dewey in Asiatic waters on a certain day in April, 1898, has not been without its influence upon the ensuing foreign policy of the United States.

For those who wish to use our armed forces to secure special advantages (trade, monopolies, fields for investment), the road is broad and clearly marked. They have only to do what other aggressive and imperialistic nations have done—prepare the means of fighting and threaten to fight either alone or with allies whenever a favouring opportunity offers. But for those of us who desire to make America an agency in the creation of international peace the problem is infinitely more difficult. Peace and internationalism cannot be secured by fervent wishes or piety but only by persistent effort and measureless patience. That for which men have sought in vain during so many centuries will not fall like ripe fruit into our laps.

Towards this goal of internationalism all that is best in America aspires. The American tradition points towards internationalism. Our early settlers, as also many of our later immigrants, came to these shores to escape political and religious warfare, and brought with them a broad humanitarian ideal, an ideal of peace, internationalism, freedom and equality. They also brought an antipathy towards those monarchical and aristocratic institutions, with which in America we still associate conceptions of imperialism and war. The simplicity and inherent equality of our frontier life, its self-government and its local independence, tended to reinforce our leaning towards a peaceful internationalism. Our large spaces, our ease of movement, our freedom from the militaristic and excessively nationalistic traditions of the European Continent influenced us in a like direction, as did also the merging of many peoples into one nation. We were not disillusioned by any conflict with harder-pressed nations, desiring what we had or having what we desired. We believed vaguely in an inevitable beneficent internationalism, which would bring all nations into harmony and banish war from the world.

Actually our pacifists and internationalists have accomplished little, if anything, towards a realisation of this ideal. What has hampered them, apart from the overwhelming difficulty of the problem, has been the fact that they did not realise how distant was the goal towards which they were marching. Their approach to the problem was not realistic. They conceived of the World as a group of nations in all fundamentals like America and of peace as a process by which these other nations would approximate to the United States. The great solvents of war were democracy, education and industrialism. Democracy would take from the ruling classes the right to declare wars; education would destroy in the people the last vestiges of bellicosity and international prejudice, while industrialism would in the end overcome militarism, and turn battleships and howitzers into steam-ploughs and electric cranes. The triumphant progress throughout the world of democracy, education and industrialism would speedily bring about peace and a firm internationalism.

Unfortunately the problem of imperialism and war is far more intricate than this popular theory assumes. All these forces tend perhaps in the general direction of peace but they do not bring about peace automatically and in many cases actually intensify and augment the impulse towards war. Our present age of advancing democracy, education and industrialism has been, above all other periods, the age of imperialism, of exaggerated nationalism and of colonial wars. Democratic peoples have not been cured of nationalistic ambition, and education, in many countries at least, has aided in the creation of an imperialistic and militaristic spirit. Even our unguided industrialism has not ended wars or brought their end perceptibly nearer. There is no easy road to internationalism and peace, and those who strive for these ends without understanding the genesis and deep lying causes of war are striving in vain.

If in America therefore, we are to contribute to the promotion of internationalism and peace, we must recognise that war is not a mere accident or vagary but a living thing growing out of the deepest roots of our economic life. It is not caused alone by human unreason, by the pride of individuals, the greed of social classes, the prejudices of races and nationalities, but is closely intertwined with those economic ideals upon which the best as well as the worst in our civilisation is reared. We had believed that industrialism and militarism were mutually opposed and that the factory would automatically destroy the army. To-day we see how each of these has entered into the spirit of the other and how each helps the other. The army is industrialised and the national industry is put upon a military, fighting basis. The same forces that impel a nation to develop its trade, increase its output, improve its industrial technique, also impel it to raise large armies and to fight for the things for which men work. To divorce economic ambition from the national aggression that leads to war will not be easy. It is a sobering task which faces those who wish to use America's influence in the cause of peace.