TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WHAT OF AMERICA ?
flOW can we, the people of the British Empire, best serve the world ? By placing a clear and definite policy before mankind, by showing ourselves willing to make sacrifices to obtain it, and by asking other people to follow our example. What is that policy ? It can be easily stated—to make a settlement just and lasting in respect of (1) German Reparations ; (2) Security for France ; (3) Inter-Allied Debts. These three things hang together. No one of them can be really settled except in conjunction with the others. And now is " the acceptable time." Not only the agreement at Chequers, but the course of events in Germany, show that there is at last a real desire to take action in regard to the Dawes Report. What is now wanted is courage and foresight. Mere courage to make a beginning is not enough. There must be the more rare courage of carrying action through to the end, and of facing the consequences.
In the present predicament what the peoples of the British Empire are specially required to realize is that all turns on the Inter-Allied Debts. If we have enough imagination and enough great-heartedness to be bold here, and to see that self-sacrifice and self-preservation may well go together, all may yet be well. We have got to give the world a lead, and we have got to do it from in front, not from behind. We have got to say, " Come on," not " Go on." We must not be misled into doing some- thing narrow-minded for fear of the gibe, " So we are to pay everybody, and nobody is to pay us." We have got to tell France and the other Allied Powers that in order to arrive at a European settlement we shall be willing, either to let them off their debts, provided that the Powers who are expecting reparations from Germany will not press their claims in such a way as to kill Europe.
But that is not all. We have got to ask America to follow our example. Happily, we can do so without any accusation of selfishness or of a desire merely to obtain something for ourselves. One of the strongest reasons I have had for urging so often that our debt to America must be paid in full, and for not asking for any remissions, however strong our case might be, was the thought that the time would come when we should be called upon to set an example and ask others to make a sacrifice. How could we do this to a people remote from, and not unnaturally suspicious of, European statecraft, unless we could prove to them that we had no ulterior motives ? We cannot and will not ask favours from America for ourselves ; but we can ask them for others, including America herself. America has duties as well as rights, and nobly have Americans, as individuals, admitted those duties and acted upon them. There is nothing in the history of the world comparable to the way in which the purses, not only of American millionaires, but of all classes, have been opened to relieve the sufferings of the Continent. It will not, I am confident, be necessary for us, or anybody else, to ask America to forgive Europe its debts. Anyone who understands the psychology of the American people will realize that I am not playing with this question. If you go to an American and try to convince him that he will make a good investment by doing this or that, he will show himself one of the closest and most suspicious of bargainers. He will test every allegation and investi- gate every proposition with what will seem hard-hearted shrewdness. If, however, you ask him to do something which can never benefit him, but which will, instead, mean great expenditure on his part, and great sacrifices, you find him a different man. The true American is not to be won over by an alleged business argument. In such matters he knows well enough that he has little to learn. What attracts him is an opportunity to satisfy his instinct of helpfulness. Why or how that instinct has become one of the dominant traits of the American people I do not profess to be able to say. All I know is that the American people and their actions are not intelligible until one has realized its existence.
And now comes a crucial point. The ordinary man here will say, " What you urge is probably quite sound, but if we are going to make the proposal you suggest to America, we ought not to make it absolutely. We ought to make a condition—that is, that we will forgive Europe its debts to us, but only if America will do the same, and forgive, not us, of course, but the other Allies and Associated Powers their debts to her." Any attempt at such bargaining would be a profound mistake.
If America does the right thing she will do it on her own initiative, and not under any argumentative or moral compulsion from outside. The action contem- plated would lose all its magnanimity if America, could not say with that competitive altruism, which I for one honestly admire in her, " We are not going to let the British people beat us in a matter of this kind. We will show them that if they can afford to be generous, so can we."
I am not going to ask the British people to be generous because generosity is their best policy. Generosity indulged in on such grounds becomes a piece of mean commercialism. I ask the British people to be generous, and not to weigh consequences ; but to use their last ounce of energy, courage and determination to pull the European waggon out of the morass into which it is sinking. Therefore I refuse to talk about the reward which they will in fact get by bold and generous action. Nor shall I, though I feel so certain of it myself, dwell upon the damnosa haereditas which is bound to follow when a country receives huge payments from other countries without an exchange of goods, but through onesided payment. Payments, remember, can only be made in goods. But if goods are sent into a country and nothing is taken back in exchange, then the workers of that country will know, what it means to have the luxury of rest—in other words, will become unemployed.
I want our Government, without thought of America, to have the boldness to say to Europe, and especially' to France and Germany : " If the method by which the Dawes Report is applied to Germany is one of which we can heartily approve, if the scheme for affording security to France is accepted by Germany and the other Powers concerned, and, finally, if a wide and gener- ous scheme is adopted for opening the League of Nations to all the Powers now outside it, then we, without asking for any advantages for ourselves, will remit the debts owed to us." I am confident that if we say that, America will follow suit.
I shall be asked, of course, whether I do not realize that there is a Presidential Election going on in America. I do, and I am convinced that whichever party has the courage to put remission in its programme will represent the true America. Once more, the Americans are the most idealistic people on the face of the earth and honestly desire to do the right thing, not only by them- selves, but by humanity at large.
Even if my prophecy should prove to be false—though I am sure it will not, if the trial is made—I am certain that the call to our people has come and that we must answer it.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
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