WHAT AMERICA EXPECTS
By PROFESSOR D. W. BROGAN
AS the war news gets worse there is a natural reluctance to discuss the nature of the peace settlement or the nature of the precautions to be taken to prevent a return of the German fury. But as weariness (in the strict sense of the word) takes its toll of the belligerent peoples, the necessity of- understanding the problem pre- sented by German power and by the failure of the victors of the last war to preserve the assets of victory becomes more evident. Peace aims are part of war aims, taking war aims as being methods of winning the war, and even if there is room for legitimate difference of opinion on the question of how far we can weaken German war efficiency by any promises made while the German people have still reason to believe in victory, or in safety through trust in the Fluhrer, the case is very different when it is a question of the French, the Dutch, the various peoples of India, and, indeed, the peoples of Britain and America. No doubt it would be enough if we could convince the man in the street, in all these countries, that defeat by Hitler would be worse than death, but that negative conception is weak in inspiring action, in direct proportion to the distance of the people concerned from the Seminars run by Frank, Himmler, Seyss-Inquart, and the other ordinary professors of Germanity.
It may be assumed that some such considerations are in the minds of those American leaders who, in the past few months, have begun to direct the minds of the American people to designs for living in a world liberated from Hitler, but needing much more than that mere deliverance to be made a world in which the pursuit of happiness can be more than a practically hopeless obstacle-race for most of the runners. So we have had Mr. Wallace predicting a century of the common man ; we have had a more austere but not fundamentally different statement of the same purpose from Mr. Sumner Welles ; we have had very recently, from Mr. Hull, a plea for a world-organisation which, however vague in detail and undetermined in duration, will, if it comes into being, be not totally different from the League of Nations planned in 1919.
Nor are these statements by leading members of the Roosevelt administration the only signs of a campaign to prepare public opinion in America—and in the rest of the free or would-be free world— for a peace settlement that will not be limited to the destruction of the evil power of the Nazis. Mr. Hoover has recently published a book which, among other merits, denies the comforting premise that the American people can turn, as quickly as possible after victory, to exclusive cultivation of its own garden. Mr. Luce has been preaching through the admirably designed loud-speakers of his Press, radio, and cinema properties, the doctrine of " the American Century." Below the surface—and not very far below it—can be seen in contemporary America the growth of a realisation that there Is a job to be done and a conviction that America must do it.
It is proper, then, that our point of view should be defined and stated ; it is necessary that the discussion that is now beginning in America should not be confined to America. And Mr. Eden's recent speech is welcome if only as a signal that such discussions are part of the war effort. Yet there is a perceptible—and no reproach is intended or deserved—reluctance to pay too much attention to the American projects. It is not merely that there are people who think that war aims are superfluous, that survival is battle-cry enough. But there are, after all, still alive many millions who remem- ber 1919, the apotheosis of Woodrow Wilson, the establishment of a peace-system that took the form it did because it was assumed that the American people would continue to support a world-order that they had had so large a part in making. If we cannot be certain that 1920 will not come again, with another Harding, another Coolidge, can we safely devote much time and thought to American plans for a new world-system that may again turn out to be plans for all the world save the United States? It is a reasonable question, a reasonable fear, and had we but world enough and time, we might be able to afford to wait until American ideas and American will had crystallised before we went any part of the way to meet the ideas or to answer the questions of the leaders of any of the American schools of post-war planning. But we have not the time ; we have not the power to imitate the traditional man from Missouri who had to be shown, still less the man from Texas who had to have it in his hand. We must make a wager of faith.
And that wager must involve a decision as to the kind of world we want and a guess as to the kind of world the American people will want and be willing to pay to bring into existence. Some Americans may think that they can make their plans with little or no consultation of the other United Nations, either because they assume that American power will be overwhelming, or that American plans will be so self-evidently right and attractive that they will need only to be presented to be accepted. Not many Americans think this way, but it is quite certain that nobody on this islAnd who is in his right mind thinks that way ; we have had too expensive an education in the realities of our power and the limitations of our political sagacity. We fully understand that we shall have to per- suade far more than coerce, and that we may have to persuade the Americans first of all.. We shall have to persuade them that any water we may feel forced to pour into the generous wine of their enthusiasm is pure water, and that we are merely trying to prevent a hangover from which we should be as great*sufferers as they.
If we give the idea that we are anxious to preserve the old order for its own sweet sake, to salvage not the misled Magyar peasants but the Magyar gentry, for instance, much wise counsel that we might give America, much fruitful common work, will be made barren. For there is a danger that Americans will disregard some very important psychological facts about Europe, and think of the solution of its troubles as simply a matter of economic or political machinery, of food plus " democracy." The restoration of the economic life of Europe is fundamental; Europe cannot begin to live again without such a restoration; but men and nations do not live by bread (or milk) alone. Nor do they live by formal demo- cracy. This war is a war against tyranny. No democratic govern- ment could have planned the great German crime, no matter what its designs were. But the war is not a war for democracy in a simple mechanical sense. There does not seem to have been any obvious connexion between the extension of democratic institutions and resistance to the Germans.
This is a truth worth bearing in our, and insinuating into American, minds, but it can only be insinuated if we are really being candid friends of liberty and democracy, not hankerers after government by nice people. Now we are suspected in America of preferring the counter-revolution to the revolution. Our best course is to remind the American people (and ourselves) that there is a reality in self-determination and that a rationalisation of Europe that does not take tender care of the susceptibilities of at least those peopl:s who have earned our gratitude as combatants on our side, may be as efficient in sowing dragon's teeth as was Versailles. Too hard- boiled an attitude, too complacent a disregard of the rights of small peoples, may come ill from a nation which is not regarded by everybody in the United States as of equal rank with the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Still more disastrous would be an economic hard-
boiledness that would reduce our share in the peace settlement to bargaining for a favourable position in the race for economic privi- leges. That race cannot be won by us, whatever may be thought by the Federation of British Industries. If we are going forward to a world of super-mercantilism, our chances of being among the boss powers are not good. This island is too small, too crowded, too short of basic raw materials, to compete with the United States. Few of our combines or cartels can safely enter the heavy-weight class. I would give heavy odds on General Motors and General Electric and Standard Oil against'our trusts; indeed, I should give odds, if shorter odds, on I. G. Farben and A.E.G. To think other- wise to is continue to indulge in those romantic dreams to which British business men were prone from Manchuria to Prague.
We shall do best if we adopt a policy of enlightened self-interest. And the self-interest of this small island is in the peace, prosperity, the freedom and the content of the whole world, and especially of Europe. Natural giants like Russia and America can afford to harm themselves in harming others, without losing thereby the great possibilities of economic advance inherent in their natural resources. We cannot. We have a great deal to offer to the American planners of a freer, happier world, less hag-ridden by nationalist nightmares, less shackled by the past. We have experience in world economic organisation which no other nation can equal. We have learned a great deal about Europe in the last few years and we are still learn- ing. We should welcome these American projects, paying them the compliment of candid criticism while making sure that the criti- cism we may be led to offer is not made a cover for doing nothing, planning nothing, for leaving all to victory to settle.
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