Proclaim Liberty! Part 9

NOTE: I have used the phrase "becoming American" and defined it as it defined itself; legally, in the customs of the country, it seems to mean becoming a citizen; experimentally "becoming" has happened to us, we have seen it happen, it means that we recognize an essential affinity between an immigrant and Americans, living or dead.

Yet to many people the words may be vague; to others they may seem a particularly dangerous lie. Those who are interested in certain foreign groups, less promptly "Americanized", will protest that for all this "becoming", some are not accepted as American; those who are basically haters of all foreigners will say that the _law_ accepts citizens, but no power on earth can make them Americans.

It is my experience that the phrases created by poets, politicians and people are often the truest words about America; and one of the profound satisfactions of life is to see the wild imagery of the poet or the lush oratory of the politician come true, literally and exactly true, scientifically demonstrated and proved.

In this particular case, absolute proof is still lacking, because we are dealing with human beings, we cannot make controlled experiments.

We can observe and compare. Under the inspiration of the eminent anthropologist Dr. Franz Boas, the research has been made; so far as it goes it proves that the children of foreigners do become Americans.

Specifically, their gestures, the way they stand and the way they walk, their metabolism and their susceptibility to disease, all tend to become American. In all of these aspects, there is an American norm or standard; and the children of immigrants forsaking the norm or standard of the fatherland, grow to that of America.

The most entertaining of these researches was in the field of gesture.

The observers took candid movie shots of groups of Italians and of Jews; they differ from one another and both differ from the American mode (which is a composite, with probably an Anglo-Saxon dominant).

The observers found that the extreme gesture of the foreign-born Jew is one in which a speaker gesticulates with one hand while with the other he holds his opponent's arm, to prevent a rival movement; and one case was noted in which the speaker actually gesticulated with the other man's arm. To the American of native stock this is "foreign"; and research proves that the American is right; such gestures are foreign even to the American-born children of the foreigner himself.

The typical foreign gesture disappears and the typical American gesture takes its place.

And this is not merely imitation; it is not an "accent" disappearing in a new land. Because metabolism and susceptibility to disease are as certainly altered as gait and posture. The vital physical nature changes in the atmosphere of liberty--as the mind and the spirit change.

The frightened lie of racial doom which has fascinated the German mind (under its meaner guise of racial superiority) was never needed in America. Seeing men become Americans, the fathers of our freedom declared that nothing should prevent them; they were not afraid of any race because they knew that the men of all races would become Americans. Their faith of 1776 begins to be scientifically proved today; a hundred and sixty-six years of creative America proved it in action.

It is on the basis of what Europeans became in America, that we now have to consider our relations with the Europeans who remained in Europe.

CHAPTER VII

Address to Europe

The communications of America and Europe have always run in two channels: our fumbling, foolish diplomacy, our direct, candid, successful dealings with the people.

Our first word was to the people of Europe; the Declaration of Independence tried to incite the British people against their own Parliament; and the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" refers to citizens, not to chancelleries. The Declaration was addressed to the world; it was heard in Paris and later in a dozen provinces of Germany, and in Savoy and in Manchester, and presently along the Nevski and the Yellow River. Since 1776, the people of the world have always listened to us, and answered. We have never failed when we have spoken to the people.

After the Declaration, the American people spoke to all the people of Europe in the most direct way: they invited Europeans to come here, offering them land, wages, freedom; presently our railroads and steams.h.i.+p lines solicited larger numbers; and the policy of the government added inducements. Free immigration, and free movement, demanded in the Declaration, made possible by laws under the Const.i.tution, were creating America. In domestic life we saw it at once; but the effects of immigration on our dealings with Europe were not immediate.

We need only remember that for a hundred and twenty years the peoples of Europe and the people of the United States were constantly writing to one another; not merely doing business together, but exchanging ideas, mingling in marriage, coming together as dispersed families come together. Whatever went on in the Mississippi Valley was known along the fjords and in the Volga basin and by the Danube; if sulphur was discovered in Louisiana it first impoverished Sicily--then brought Sicilians to Louisiana; Greeks knew that sponges were to be found off Tampa. And more and more people in America knew what was happening in Europe--a famine, a revolution, a brief era of peace, a repressive ministry, a reform bill. The constant interaction of Europe and America was one beat of our existence--it was in counterpoint to the tramp of the pioneer moving Westward; immigration and migration meshed together.

Our government from time to time spoke to the governments of Europe. A tone of sharp reproof was heard at times, a warm word for revolutionaries was coupled with indignation against tyrants: Turkey, the Dual Monarchy, the Tsar, all felt the lash--or Congress hoped they felt it; in the Boer War, England was the victim of semi-official criticism; and whenever possible, we were the first to recognize republics, even if they failed to maintain themselves on the ruins of monarchy. We fluttered official papers and were embarra.s.sed by protocol, not believing in it anyhow, and were outwitted or out-charmed by second-rate diplomatists of Europe.

_People and Protocol_

The campaign platforms always demanded a "firm, vigorous, dignified"

diplomacy; the diplomacy of Europe was outwardly correct, inwardly devious, s.h.i.+fting, flexible, and in our opinion corrupt. But our address to the _people_ of Europe was, in all this time, so candid, so persuasive, that we destroyed the chancelleries and recaptured our losses. The first great communication, after 1776, was made by Lincoln--it was not a single speech or letter, it was a constant appeal to the conscience of the British people, begging them, as the Declaration had done, to override the will of their rulers. And this appeal also was successful; few events in our relations with England are more moving than the action of the starving Midlanders. Their government, like their men of wealth and birth, like their press and parliament, were eager to see America split, and willing to see slavery upheld in order to destroy democracy. But the men and women of Manchester, starved by the Northern blockade of cotton, still begged their government not to interfere with the blockade--and sent word to Lincoln to a.s.sure him that the _people_ of Britain were on the side of liberty, imploring him "not to faint in your providential mission.

While your enthusiasm is aflame, and the tide of events runs high, let the work be finished effectually. Leave no root of bitterness to spring up and work fresh misery to your children." Nor did Lincoln fail to respond; Americans who could interest Britain in the northern cause were unofficial amba.s.sadors to the people; and our minister, Charles Francis Adams labored with all sorts and conditions of men to make the government of Britain accept the will of the British people.

The Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was a final step in the domestic statesmans.h.i.+p of the war; it was also a step in the diplomacy of the war, for it insured us the good will of the British people; and that good will was vital to the success of the Union. The North was coming close to war with the _government_ of Britain, and the people's open prejudice in favor of Lincoln and freedom kept England from sufficient aid to the Confederacy.

The next address of the United States to the people of Europe is a long tragedy, its consequences so dreadful today that we can barely a.n.a.lyze the steps by which the great work for human freedom was destroyed.

_Wilson to the World_

Following the precedent of the Declaration, Woodrow Wilson began in 1916 to address himself to the people of the nations at war in Europe.

To ministries, German and British both, Wilson was sending expostulations on U-boats and embargos; to the peoples of Europe he addressed those speeches which were made at home; presently he wrote inquiries to the ministers which they were compelled to make public (since publication in neutral countries was certain). Then, after the Soviets of Russia had gone over the heads of the Foreign Offices, to appeal to the workers of the world, Wilson carried his own method to its necessary point and, after we entered the war, began the masterly series of addresses to the German people which were so effective in creating the atmosphere of defeat.

They created at the same time the purposes of allied victory. The war ended and one of the magnificent spectacles of modern times occurred: the people of Europe were for a moment united, and they were united by an American declaring the objectives of American life. The moment was so brief that few knew all it meant until it had pa.s.sed; in the excitement of spectacles and events, of plots and processions, this moment when Europe trembled with a new hope pa.s.sed unnoticed.

What happened later to Woodrow Wilson is tragic enough; but nothing can take away from America this great moment in European history--to which every observer bears testimony, even the most cynical. The defeated people of Germany saw in America their only defence against the rapacity of Clemenceau, the irresponsible, volatile opportunism of Lloyd George, the crafty merchandising of Orlando; the first "liberal"

leader, Prince Max, had deliberately pretended acceptance of the fourteen points in order to embarra.s.s Wilson; but he spoke the truth when he said that Wilson's ideals were cherished by the overwhelming majority of the German _people_; and quite correctly the Germans saw that nothing but American idealism stood between them and a peace of vengeance. The enthusiasm of the victorious peoples was less selfish, but it was equally great; a profound distrust of their leaders had grown in the minds of realistic Frenchmen and Britons, they sensed the incapacity of their leaders to raise the objectives of the war above the level of the "knockout blow" or the _revanche_. As the Germans cried to be protected in their defeat, the victorious people asked to be protected from such fruits of victory as Europe had known for a thousand years. The demagogues still shouted hoa.r.s.ely for a noose for the Kaiser and the old order in Germany began to plan for the next time--but the people of Europe were united; they had gone through the same war and, for the first time in their history, they wanted the same peace. It was the first time that an American peace was proposed to them.

_How Wilson Was Trapped_

Woodrow Wilson made a triumphal tour of the allied capitals and by the time he returned to Paris for the actual business of the peace, he had become the spiritual leader of the world. He was not, however, the political leader of his own country--he had lost the Congressional elections and he allowed the diplomats of Europe to make use of this defeat. They began to cut him off from the people of Europe; he fell into the ancient traps of statesmans.h.i.+p, the secret sessions, the quarrels and departures; once he recovered control, ordered steam up in the George Was.h.i.+ngton to take him home; but in the end he was outguessed--in the smart word, he was outsmarted. He had imagined that he could defeat the old Europe by refusing to recognize its intrigues.

He had, in effect, declared that secret treaties and all commitments preceding the fourteen points couldn't exist; he had hoped that they would be cancelled to conform to his pious pretence of ignorance. And Clemenceau and Lloyd George kept him quarreling over a mile of boundary or a religious enclave within a racial minority; they stirred pa.s.sions; they starved German children by an embargo; they rumored reparations; they promised to hang the Kaiser; they drew Wilson deeper into smaller conferences; they promised him a League about which their cynicism was boundless, and he let them have war guilt and reparations and the betrayal of the Russian revolution and the old European system triumphant. They had fretted him and tried him and they had made their own people forget the pa.s.sionate faith Wilson had inspired; they made Wilson the agent of disillusion for all that was generous and hopeful in Europe. They could do it because the moment Wilson began to talk to the premiers, he stopped talking to the people. From the moment he allowed the theme of exclusive war guilt to be announced, he cut himself off from all Germany; he did not know the temper of the working cla.s.s in Europe, and he refused to listen to the men he himself had sent to report on Russia, which did not help him with the radical trade unions in France or the liberals in England. One by one the nations fell back into their ancient groove, the Italians sullenly nursing a grievance, the French whipping up a drama of revenge and memory in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the British "isolating"

themselves in virtual control of the Continent, everybody frightened of Russia--and everyone still listening for another word of honest truth from Wilson, who was silent; for America was starting on a long era of isolation from Europe (the first in a century), an aberration in American life, against all its actual traditions, in keeping only with its vulgar oratory.

_The Excommunication of Europe_

The United States had no obligations to the nations which emerged out of the Treaty of Versailles, only a human obligation to their people to keep faith with them. The people of Germany believed in all fervor that they had gained an armistice and sought peace on the basis of the fourteen points; the people of France and England believed that their own governments had accepted the same points. And the same people might have been stirred to insist on a peace of reconciliation--not with princes and ministers, but with peoples--if Wilson and the Americans had continued to communicate with them.

We withdrew into a stuffy silence. Just as we played a queer game of protocol and refused to "recognize" the USSR, so we sulked because the old b.i.t.c.h Europe wasn't being a gentleman--the only communication we made to Europe was when we dunned her for money. We have seen how the years of Harding and Coolidge affected our domestic life; they were not only a reaction against the fervor of the war months; they were a carefully calculated reaction against basic American policy at home and abroad; they betrayed American enterprise, delivered industry into the hands of finance, degraded government, laughed at corruption, and under the guise of "a return to normalcy" attempted to revive the dead conservatism of McKinley and Penrose in American politics.

In this period, it is no wonder that we failed to utter one kind word to help the first democratic government in Germany, that we trembled with fear of the Reds, sneered at British labor until it became respectable enough to send us a Prime Minister, and excluded more and more rigorously the people of Europe whose blood had created our own.

Slowly, as the depression of 1929-32 squeezed us, we began to see that our miseries connected us with Europe; it was a Republican president who first attempted to address Europe; but Mr. Hoover's temperament makes it difficult for him to speak freely to anyone; the talks with Ramsay MacDonald were pleasurable; the offer of a moratorium was the first kindness to Europe in a generation of studied American indifference. It failed (because France still preferred to avenge herself on Germany); and thereafter we had too many unpleasant things to do at home.

_One Good Deed_

We had, in the interval, spoken once to all the world. On the day the j.a.panese moved into Manchuria we had, in effect, notified the British that we chose not to accept the destruction or dismemberment of a friendly nation. The cynical indifference of Sir John Simon was the first intimation of the way Europe felt about American "idealism". It was also the first step toward "non-intervention" in Spain and the destruction of Europe at the hands of Adolf Hitler. When we were rebuffed by Downing Street, we sulked; we did not attempt to speak to the people of Asia, or try to win the British public to our side. We had lost the habit. We were not even candid in our talks with the Chinese whose cause we favored because we had j.a.pan (and American dealers in oil and sc.r.a.p iron) to appease.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler was elected leader of a Germany which had been out of communication with us for a generation. The United States which had been in the minds of generations of Germans, was forgotten by the people. In a few years. .h.i.tler had overthrown the power of France on the Continent, challenged Communism as an international force, and frightened the British Empire into an ign.o.ble flutter of appeas.e.m.e.nt.

To that dreary end our failure of communication had tended. We were the one power which might have held Europe together--in a League, in a mere hope of friends.h.i.+p and peace between nations, in the matrix of the fourteen points if nothing more. The moment we withdrew from Europe, its nations fell apart, not merely into victors and vanquished, but into querulous, distrustful, and angry people, each whipped into hysteria by demagogues or soothed to complaisance by frightened ministers.

The obligation to address Europe is no longer a moral one. For our own security, for the cohesion of our own people, for victory over every element that works to break America into hostile parts--now we have the golden opportunity again, to speak to Europe, and to ask Europe to answer. As we look back on our ancient triumphs with the peoples of Europe and the sour end to which we let them come, this new chance is heaven-sent, undeserved, as if we could live our lives over again. And it is nearly so--for if we want to have a life to live in the future, if it is still to be the confident, secure life of a United America, we must speak now to Europe.

CHAPTER VIII

The Science of Short Wave

What we say to Europe is to be an incitement to revolution, a promise of liberation, a hope of a decent, orderly, comfortable living, in freedom; but it must be as hard and real and un-dreamlike as the Declaration, which was our first word to the people of the world.

We have to begin by telling all the peoples of Europe, our friends and our enemies, what they have done for America, and what America has done for them. We have to destroy the slander that the Italians were kept at digging ditches, the Yugoslavs in the mills, the Hungarians and Poles and Czechs in the mines and at the boilers, the Greeks at the fruit stands; we must destroy the great lie that all the "lesser races" whom Hitler now enslaves were first slaves to our economic system. We can begin by reading the roster of the great names, the men who came to America and were liberated from poverty and prejudice, and made themselves fame or wealth, and deserved well of the Republic, and were honored.