APPRECIATING AMERICA
By WILLIAM PATON
N that tremendous period at the beginning of last December, when the Russians turned the tide of Nazi advance and Japan cked in the Pacific, the public mind in this country seemed ously slow to realise the biggest thing among all the big things t had happened. The fact that the United States of America had come a belligerent, with a national unity far beyond the dreams the most enthusiastic " interventionist" of a month before, was y very slowly taken into the British consciousness ; and yet it s a fact of final importance for any estimate of the probable out- e of the war.
We realise it now, but it still seems true that there is little otional response to it. There is nothing even remotely corre- ending to the enthusiasm with which our Russian ally is univer- y regarded, although our fortunes have been bound up with the pport of the United States much longer than with Russia. Far be from me to minimise the importance of understanding Russia, or strength of the factors, admirably stated by a correspondent in he Spectator last week, which contribute to the strong emotional ing of the national feeling towards Russia. The historic moment which the Soviets became joined with us in the struggle against Nazi tyranny may well turn out to be one of the decisive periods world history. But even so, that is no reason for a failure to do tice to the overwhelming fact that the man-power, the industrial teatial tncl the national resolve of the United States are now ed decisively in the great conflict.
It is very important that we should learn to take America seriously. recollect hearing Dr. T. R. Glover say, years ago, " the Americans v talk big about America, but they don't talk as big as it is." It big, very big, and I still do not think that even Americans generally 'se how big it is. On my last visit to the United States—I left
York six weeks ago—I listened to a report being made to a
• resentative council of the Churches on the subject of the supply chaplains. It was stated, without any excitement, that ten usand chaplains were needed for an army of ten millions—of se over a period—but that was the scale on which the Churches • e asked to prepare themselves. If one thinks over what this s, and if one adds to it the sort of knowledge about American ustrial production which is now getting publicity here, such as nry Ford's bomber-an-hour plant, a picture gradually takes shape, it is a picture of truly gigantic strength.
American power is gigantic, and what is not less important than mere size of her resources is that there is now being born some- g like a national determination to use those resources in the blishment of a world order. One reason why the closest under- ding between the United States and the British Commonwealth necessary is that the movements of thought and policy within the peoples are in a sense converging, and may result in a unity of ose such as has not existed since the Revolutionary War. On side there is a widespread recognition that the kind of world- ice for which at its best the Empire has stood must be carried r into a more fully international system. On the American side, ugh isolationism is not dead, there are many signs of an awaken- determination to take the sort of responsible share in the world ch so powerful a nation must take, for if it attempts to evade it, result can only be world confusion instead of world order.
As evidence of this I will quote two rather different types of American thinking. One is the series of resolutions passed at a representative conference of the Protestant Churches in the U.S.A. held in March at Delaware, Ohio. In this meeting there was a considerable body of opinion which till recently had been to some extent isolationist and to a larger extent pacifist. The gathering unanimously registered its conviction that the United States must play its full part in the creation of an international order, and realised clearly the economic as well as the political consequences of its view. The other is the remarkable supplement published by the influential journal Fortune on May 1st, entitled "The United States in a New World: Relations with Britain." This paper, the result of much corporate work, outlines a fairly complete programme of combined Anglo-American action, military, political and economic, intended to lead on to a more fully international system but quite clearly based on the conviction that unless these two countries can act together nobody else will. When it is realised that the ideas behind this paper are held in important Republican quarters their significance becomes evident.
In the way of any such closer understanding there are all sorts of obstacles, and I am not going to pretend that the one to which I am drawing attention is the chief ; it is, however, one far too little noticed. Americans of education and standing, when they can overcome their politeness and speak with candour, show plainly that they feel how often British people who ought to know better are content to remain ignorant of American achievements in educa- tion, in the arts and sciences, in the sphere of inter-racial study and in many other realms in which America has a great deal to give. They feel that they are regarded as a young nation, rich and poten- tially powerful and therefore to be carefully regarded, but not to be studied with the sort of interest that is applied to a European people with an ancient culture ; in fact, they feel that the " colonial " atti- tude is still too common among us.
Here, on the other hand, is a quotation from Mr. Henry Luce's The American Century. "America is already the intellectual, scientific and artistic capital of the world." I daresay that to many of us that statement will seem not merely bombastic but just plain silly ; nevertheless, it is much nearer the truth than is the " typical British reaction," as the Americans would call it. It would make a considerable difference to our relationships with America if we could master the fact that we have something to learn from her, and that, while she has not got the attraction of an ancient and intricate culture such as those of Europe or the East; she is one of the great experimental fields in which new things of vast importance for the world are being worked out. When 1 lived in India I came to realise that without exception all the most important experiments in the field of rural education and teacher-training, especially for the backward castes, were in the hands of American missionaries or Indians trained by them.. This goes back to the fact that the best negro educational work, such as at Hampton and Tuskeegee, has been adapted, and its lessons applied to the needs of other backward peoples, in a way for which the world ought to be grateful.
Or theology ; Reinhold Niebuhr is deservedly known, but how many others? One American professor of theology told me that the reason why they imported a number of British and European theological teachers was that the tendency of their own colleges was to turn out a very good average but only rarely anybody above it. Even so, there is a group of some dozen to twenty young-to- middle-aged theologians who meet regularly, who are coming to form something of a school of thought though they have their own differences, and whom it would not be easy to match in this country. And in mathematics, that austere exercise of pure reason, I am told that Princeton is now a centre of world importance not second even to Cambridge (Eng.).
In short, we need to take America seriously ; not fawn upon it, nor patronise it, nor talk sentimental nonsense about sharing the tongue that Shakespeare spake, but realise that it has a distinctive interest and qualities of its own from which we can learn, criticisms to make of us which we may in part rebut but from which we can profit, and a point of view that is characteristic and must greatly influence world affairs.
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