BOOKS OF THE DAY
American Foreign Policy
America and the Axis War. By Denys Smith. (Cape. iss.) Cordell Hull. A Biography by Harold B. Hinton with a foreword by Sumner Welles. (Hurst and Blackett. 12s. 6d.)
TWICE in a quarter of a century the United States has found herself at war with Germany, and whatever may have been the case in 1917, there can be no doubt this time that profoundly serious issues are involved for America, and that it has become a question of " we or they." As President Roosevelt warned his countrymen, it was a rash assumption to be confident that America could determine when and where, and in what degree, she would participate in this war. Hitler and his allies were capable of deciding for themselves and at the time that seemed best to them. They have done so, and we have probably paid too much attention to the unifying effect of Pearl Harbour on American opinion, and to the alleged depressing effect on German opinion of Hitler's declaring war on the United States, and not enough to the possibility that the excellence of his timing may more than set off the psychological liabilities he in- curred. It is the main lesson of these two books that a democracy cannot, in this sense, time well. No leader dare plan to make pre- ventive war, no matter how wise and humane such a war might be ; only when pushed into the corner will a free nation fight. Since this is known to the rulers who need not take too much notice of public opinion which they can, in any case, manufacture if they do not ignore it, they can- with great success take on one nation after another. To be eaten last becomes the object of many peoples and statesmen who, of course, do not admit that this is their policy, or perhaps realise that this it is. They cling to the hope that the tiger will eat his fill before he comes to them, or that one or two of the sheep will successfully resist them. These illusions were not shared by Mr. Hull, or by his chief, and the theme of these two interesting books is their fight to get a few home truths into the heads of their complacent countrymen, whose profound sense of moral superiority had an unappreciated basis in the facts of a geographical and military situation rapidly changing for the worse.
Of the two books, the more interesting and more original is that of Mr. Denys Smith. The small band of addicts who take a permanent and serious interest in American affairs, especially in America:[ politics, have long learned to make the Washington cor- respondence of The Daily Telegraph required reading. A book by Mr. Smith was therefore sure of a welcome. It is all the more distressing to have to admit that the welcome must be seriously qualified, for the care, the acuteness, and the ability that have gone to making the book, are present in so abundant quantities that they make its basic fault all the more obvious. That basic fault is a fault of temper. Years of contemplating the ostrich tactics of American isolationism, and of the in-and-out running imposed on the President and the Secretary of State by the power of this blind bloc of hopeful thinkers, seem to have soured Mr. Smith. I have read his book with great interest and with care. I may have mis- understood his language in a few places, and have missed indications that he realises that much American muddle was based on a not discreditable sentimentality. I may have failed to find signs that Mr. Smith understands the real role played in American attitudes to foreign policy by real and critical moral standards. But if there are such indications of understanding they are few and far between. For instance, the American attitude to China is described in terms of simple economic motivation that seem to me to be specimens of the higher naivety so common in America, which thinks that all necessary questions have been asked when an answer has been given to the question-begging query, " what is in it for whom? " Mr. Smith has a slashing way of using terms like " Congress " when Part of Congress would be more just, and in some cases, even on his own terms, his view seems to be distorted enough to be this- leading. Thus his account of the attitude of the American Press in the period of the phoney war is, I think, unjust. So, too, is his description of the motives that led to the amendment of the Neutrality Act in 1939. Even if Mr. Smith believes that the ethical Motives advanced by defenders of the change in the law were hypo- critical, he is bound to account for the fact that it was worth While to advance them. And a book on a foreign country that takes so gloomy a view of its intelligence and of the character of most of its leaders, would gain from an occasional admission that the writer comes from a country with a fair area of glass open to tone-throwing. That many American politicians and leaders of opinion commit this fault is no defence. We expect a lot more of Mr. Smith than of political and clerical moralists who are spiritual contemporaries of Messrs. Jefferson Brick and Chadband. Sir Arthur Salter once said that it was possible to draw up a list of the sins of omission and commission of each of the victor nations of 1919, a list which would show that those sins were enough to account for the present sad state of the world. But I imagine that Sir Arthur Salter expected each nation to rely on home talent for the drafting of this confession of error.
Mr. Hinton's book is a good enough specimen of a not permanently important type of book, the " life" written from the point of view of the newspaperman who cannot use confidential documents, who has been accustomed to see the story coming out in brief instalments, and who has not the time or the inclination to get away from the subject to organise his narrative.
D. W. BROGAN.
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