America's stake in Europe

Preface

The second volume in the "World Problem Discussion Series," lere offered, has been prepared on the same general plan as 'America's Stake in the Far East," and with the same methods of lse in view as in the case of the first book of the series. The hearty ind wide acceptance of the book on the Far East would seem to lemonstrate a felt need for this type of publication.

These chapters of questions here offered were not intended to >e all-inclusive or too deeply penetrative into the complex tangle )f things. They are an attempt to provide helpful aid and stimulus o groups and individuals here and there who, perplexed and disurbed by the baffling European situation, feel hopeless in any ittempt to think into the question of what America can or ought to >e doing at this time. Yet America is facing and must make great lecisions, and these should be decisions for the people and, so far is may be, by the people. If democracy is to find its way to cor- >orate judgment about great international issues, any dispassionite attempt whatsoever to state the questions in ways that will help he lay mind to grasp them and to formulate worthy opinion with eference to their solution ought not to be without value.

Certain limitations in the book must be recognized. In the irst place, the chapter subjects do not include by any means all he problems of American-European relationships. America's reationships to Scandinavia, to France and the other Latin nations, o the Balkans, to the new states of Central Europe, might have lad specific treatment. Yet to have done so would have made a >ook too elaborate and expensive and would have defeated the ends or which it was prepared. Moreover, within the scope of the haptens that are offered, the scholar and the expert will doubtless vish that more of the historical and technical questions bearing on iconomics and diplomacy and on national and international der elopment or retrogression had been called forth. The reference naterials offered in connection with each chapter are clearly in- .dequate both as to amount and as to content. It would require or each of certain of the chapters reference materials as voluminous :s the complete contents of this book, if these materials were to ie at all comprehensive. The reader may look in vain in the refrence materials for illuminative quotations concerning many of he questions raised. Yet within the necessary limits of space, it is toped that 'sufficient reference citations are offered to be of subtantial help to those who use the book. Most of the major issues

iii iv PREFACE

are touched upon, if not fully discussed from various angles, in the quotations offered. Many of the current periodicals, especially the weekly and monthly reviews and magazines, are rich with information and opinion regarding these matters.

A final limitation grows out of the fact of rapidly changing conditions and situations. No assurance is possible that many questions here raised will not speedily be matters of history only. Yet the attempt has been made to appraise the questions with reference to the probability that they will continue to be pertinent for some time to come, and to eliminate those which would seem to be of only passing significance.

Given such limitations as those mentioned, it is clear that the book ought not to be evaluated other than with reference to its intended purpose — a contribution to the effectiveness and helpfulness of personal consideration and group discussions of certain outstanding questions in American-European relations. That it can make such a contribution is the confident hope of those who have shared in its preparation and publication.

As in the case of "America's Stake in the Far East," the questions are based on rather extended research in books and current periodicals. The questions once formulated, the writer had the highly helpful collaboration of Mr. Harrison S. Elliott in choosing and arranging those most likely to be useful in the conduct of forums and discussion classes. Further aid was given, moreover, through the careful and penetrating criticism of Mr. Jay Urice, who had just returned from a six months' journey through twelve of the countries of Europe, in each of which he had opportunity for sensing those aspects of Europe's post-war life likely to be of the most significance for America. For the choice and abridgment of the reference materials the writer only is responsible.

Charles Harvey Fahs.

New York City, November i, 1921.

Contents

PAGE

'reface iii

I. What is America's Present Stake in Europe? i

Chapter I What Is America's Present Stake In Europe?

Sources of Information Concerning Overseas Subjects

i. Where do you get your information about Europe? How reliable is it ?

2. What books, magazines, and newspapers have you been reading? What help did each give you toward a better understanding of the situation in Europe?

3. What difference do you find the origin of a newspaper dispatch may make in its reliability? How far does propaganda tend to color the news?

4. What special correspondence do you feel is most reliable? What periodicals seem to have the most reliable information about conditions in Europe?

5. What magazines and newspapers appear to be the most biased by the special parties, groups, or interests they respectively represent ?

[. Reactions of the American Mind to Facts and Discussions

1. In your newspaper reading of the last six months what European questions do you recall as having been most featured in the headlines?

2. What seem to be the major friction and distress points in Europe ?

3. As you read the current periodicals, on what questions do you find them differing most as to the part America should take in European affairs?

4. On these questions on which there is such a difference of opinion, Americans must take some attitude. List these questions in the order of their importance, as you estimate their significance.

5. Is the average American interested in these questions ? Why ? Why not? Why, if at all? Ought he to be interested more than he is? By what process can he be made to be more truly and intelligently interested?

I

6. How is the average American to come to some trustworthy judgment on these large questions and on ways of solving them ?

7. Just how important do you feel it to be that trustworthy individual and social judgment on these questions should be arrived at in a democracy? Why? Shall we leave these questions to the experts in Congress and in the President's Cabinet or is an informed and disciplined public opinion desirable and essential? What are the reasons for your opinion?

8. What part does free discussion of the essential problems in American foreign relations and policy play in the formation of public opinion? What part should it play?

Chapter II Should America Reassert Her Former Isolation From European Affairs?

I. The Issue Facing America

1. Why do many Americans wish the Nation to return to a policy of isolation from European affairs? From just what would America desire to protect herself by reasserting this isolation ?

2. Are the American people desirous of avoiding international responsibilities? If so, why?

3. What evidence is there that America has experienced a revulsion of feeling toward European affairs ; what evidence that she is still willing to take her part in international cooperative enterprises? Is international cooperation possible without an accompanying possibility of the development of international political complications ?

4. What considerations lead many people to feel that the maintenance of her traditional isolation, if possible, would best enable America to fulfill her mission to the world? What do you think as to this point of view?

5. Should America attempt to reassert her former "splendid isolation' from European affairs ?

II. Considerations Bearing Upon America's Answer

A. The Historical Basis for America's Traditional Policy of Isolation

1. On what grounds did Washington urge aloofness from European affairs on the part of the new Republic ? To what extent are these reasons valid today ?

2. To what extent did the enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine imply that America would not take part in European affairs? What considerations led to the declaration of this policy? To what extent do these considerations still hold?

3. Just what has isolation meant in the past ? What was the first great break in America's traditional situation with respect to world affairs?

4. Did the entrance into the world war mark a sudden change of policy or had America been gradually, and perhaps unconsciously, shifting from the policy of isolation from European affairs before the beginning of the World War? On what evidence do you base your answer?

B. The Possibility of Maintaining an Isolated Position in the World

1. What does America need for her well being that she does not have within her own borders or can not obtain in the Western Hemisphere ?

2. Do America's chief political problems at present have to do with foreign affairs? Give reasons for your opinion.

3. How, if at all, is the United States concerned with the industrial situation in Europe and in other parts of the world ? What bearing does the industrial situation in any nation have on politics ?

4. What bearing do the European interests of our immigrant population have upon America's isolation from Europe? Can we deal adequately with the immigration problem apart from vital contacts with European governments?

5. What change has the war brought with respect to America's financial position among the world powers? Do Europe's economic ties with America seem to you to lessen or to increase the difficulties incident to any attempts on the part of America to maintain an isolated national life? Why?

6. Just how much of a protection from the distresses and tumults of Europe do you feel the Atlantic ocean is for us ? Have modern conditions of communication and transportation, as some claim, broken down the effectiveness of the Atlantic as an "estranging sea"?

7. Do you feel that the great war with its resultant settlements has increased or decreased the probability that America may again be drawn into war because of European difficulties ?

8. What elements in the present situation make isolation possible, what seem to make it impossible? Upon the whole, do you feel that America can or can not maintain an isolated position with respect to European affairs in the sense that all "entangling alliances" can be avoided?

C. A Policy of Isolation — Honorable or Dishonorable? 1. What obligation, if any, is upon America to "carry on" in seeking to achieve the aims of the war after having helped to bring the war to a conclusion ?

z. What does Europe really need that we have or could give? How necessary are these to her ?

3. Some say that America has thus far side-stepped her moral responsibilities in respect to the situation. Does there seem to you to be an ethical lack in America's attitude toward international affairs?

\. Should we in the United States look after our own industrial affairs and pay little attention to what is happening in other nations, or are we obligated to join with other civilized nations in an attempt to solve the larger industrial questions internationally ? What bearings do the international contacts and relationships of labor organizations have on this question?

5. How can America make the greatest contribution to world life : by working out her own democratic ideals so far as possible apart from world contacts, or by taking a place of aggressive leadership in the family of nations?

5. Does it seem to you possible for us to take an active and effective part in the reconstructive processes in Europe and still keep our national birthright of independence with respect to political action? Why or why not?

7. What considerations should guide America in determining the degree of leadership she should take in seeking to better conditions among the war-stricken peoples overseas?

III. America's Answer to the Question of Isolation

1. If war is to be prevented in the future, can America best help to this end by seeking to isolate herself so far as possible, or by entering as fully as possible into international life and affairs? Why?

2. Should America utilize her unparalleled economic situation as a leverage against war-making processes? If so, how can this best be done?

3. Should we insist on the ''open door" in trade everywhere? Should we make good that insistence where necessary by force of arms? How offset the danger that the part we take will be determined by the urge of our ambitious commercial classes and not out of a genuine desire to provide equal opportunity in commerce for all nations?

4. Ought America under any circumstances to assume responsibilitieS for newly freed nationalities of Europe which may need protection against the aggression of selfish neighbors or cooperation in organizing their economic and political life? Under what circumstances and with what acceptance of responsibilities should it be done?

5. Which is the more important for the future of America and of the world :

a. The further development of American life and ideals as those of a self-sufficient national and social entity, perhaps inspiring and even extraordinarily helpful to the rest of the world, but so far as possible separated from it ; or,

b. The full participation of America in world problems and activities and in the international outreachings toward a larger world life, even losing its own life in some measure on behalf of the larger social whole?

6. What things arc" we now doing as a nation which seem to you in the direction of assuming a permanent relation to European affairs? Should this tendency be hastened? If so, what in your judgment are the next steps to be taken?

7. Just what is possible in evoking an intelligent public opinion on America's relationships to Europe?

8. If there is a real summons to a world task, how can the national sense of that fact be stimulated, the growth of self consciousness as to national mission and destiny be hastened?

The Case for Isolation Political, Economic, and Defensive Self-Containedness

A stronger case could be made for the political and economic isolation of America than for that of any other country, partly because . . . she has within her political domain all the resources of national well-being; partly, also, because it is of supreme importance that the great experiment oi democracy should not he unduly hampered by excessive inpourings of ill-assimilable foreign blood, and by dangerous contacts with obsolete or inapplicable European institutions. ... A reasoned argument could be addressed to prove that the economy of national security and progress for this country lay along the lines of political, economic and defensive self-eontainedness. . . . Many must be led to support this policy, not on grounds of seliishness. because they desire to conserve for America alone her great opportunities, and not mainly from fear, lest America should be embroiled again in the dangerous quarrels of distant European nations, but because they are animated by that pure desire, which has animated so many generations of high-minded Americans, that American democracy should grow to its full stature by its own unaided efforts and save the world by its example. — J. A. Hobson, "The Morals of Economic Internationalism," pp. 28-30.

Thinking in Terms of America

If we are to be drawn into all the intrigues and broils of the rest of the world our own home problems must go unsolved. Let us attend to our own business for a while, and insist that the rest of the world attend to theirs. . . .

Let us think for a while in terms of America — wrongs are here to be righted — let us right them; problems are crying for solution, let us solve them. Let us promote, so far as we can, peace and the general welfare of the world, but let us think of America first and prosper America first and above all promote the peace and welfare of our own people at home. This republic has cost too much in blood and treasure to permit it to go down in a red sea of horror, wrecked on the rocks of Bolshevism and anarchy. — Senator Frank Willis, of Ohio, address at Madison Square Garden, New York City, March 18, 1921.

America's Distrust of Europe

Two million odd Americans saw Europe in the years 1917-1919, and very few will ever forget what they saw. Bloodshed, racial hatred, animosities that had their roots back behind Genghiz Khan and Julius Caesar, dynastic pride, secret diplomacy, religious bigotry, and a passion for self-determination which, once aroused, did not stop with races or peoples but raged in towns and hamlets until it almost seemed that there could not be a sizable village without an army, a navy, and goodness knew how many cabinet ministers, all praying for American assistance in the noble task of extirpating their next-door neighbors, the ex-cabinet ministers, and their other next-door neighbors — those-who-might-possibly-aspire-some-day-to-become cabinet ministers. The economic background was hunger and pestilence and Bolshevistic horror, class hate or race hate, abetted by religious hate, fanned by politicians and "patriots" and every hamlet crying out, "When will America come to set us free?"

It was not a lovely spectacle. It was a very disillusioning spectacle. Small wonder that men came back and cried out, "America to herself. Let Europe stew in the poisonous juices of her own passions. Let us keep America clean and unpolluted for our children. Let us remember Washington and Monroe and reject the League of Nations along with every other insidious attempt to embroil us in the selfishness of European diplomacy."

Natural conservatism and the lack of a trained personnel fitted for the exacting work of colonial or imperial administration are conditions which might after a considerable period be overcome. They are matters of purely domestic concern. More important for Europe to understand is the American's distrust of Europe, bred in him by a study of her endless succession of racial, religious and dynastic controversies, and fortified by his experience of the war of which Germany was the architect but for which all the nations of Europe undeniably furnished the materials and tools. This quality of American distrust may in the last analysis be a form of self-righteousness. But for better or worse, noble or ignoble, the trait exists.

On being invited to participate in European questions the American feels that he is being asked to take a hand in a game with players who, if they are not unscrupulous, are at least so much more astute and experienced than he that he is sure to lose. Excessive modesty is not commonly believed in Europe to be the besetting sin of Americans. In commercial matters they do not fear European competition or rivalries. But in statecraft, the American is afraid the wily European and the even more wily Oriental is going to "slip something over on him." The Peace Conference has emphasised this feeling. ... In the matter of mandates, America cannot help remarking that the mandates she was urged to assume were in localities where she could not profit and where she must of necessity spend large sums of money. Armenia was eagerly pressed upon us as a suitable field for a display of America's administrative talents. We were not urged to take the mandate of Syria or Mesopotamia. Both of those countries may become sources of profit to their mandatories. Syria has the ports of the rich hinterland of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia has oil, Armenia has massacres and starvation !

This distrust has been at the bottom of America's refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and accept her share of the varied burdens of world administration. The elimination of this distrust is the task for the next generation of European statesmen if for the good of mankind they genuinely desire American cooperation. . . . The obstacles are by no means insuperable. On the contrary time and honesty will win the most sceptical, but cynicism and corruption will only drive America into a deeper and deeper isolation. — Round Table, June, 1921, pp. 566-568.

The Question of Entangling Alliances

America's Traditional Policy of Isolation

It may be questioned whether the word "isolation" ever correctly described the foreign policy of the United States. From its very beginning it either voluntarily entered into, or was involuntarily drawn into, many world-problems. Its so-called "policy of isolation" consisted largely in its disinclination, to use Washington's words, to "implicate itself by artificial ties in the ordinary" — meaning thereby the local — concerns of European politics. In its early days of weakness it did not desire to become the shuttlecock of European politics. Of that it had had bitter experience in the colonial wars which preceded the foundation of the American Republic. It did not object to alliances so much as to "entangling alliances," and by this oft-quoted expression it meant such contractual obligations by treaty alliances as would impair its freedom of action in future crises or contingencies.

Assuming that "isolation" does truly define the past policy of America ; yet, from the time of the Spanish-American War, when, in another Treaty of Paris, the United States voluntarily assumed responsibilities in the far Orient, the policy of isolation was definitely abandoned. . . .

I agree that the United States, as a master-state of the world, has world-wide obligations from which it cannot escape without moral suicide. That America will play a great part in the future destinies of civilization, I do not doubt; but it will play a greater and more beneficent part if it does not dissipate its moral influence and impair its disinterested character as a great and friendly arbiter by intermeddling in the local concerns of Europe. As President Monroe's Secretary of State said just a century ago . . .: "// may be observed that for the repose of Europe as well as of America, the European and American political systems should be kept as separate and distinct from each other as possible." — James M. Beck, Fortnightly Reviezv, April, 1920, pp. 529, 530.

Linked to the Vicissitudes of Our Neighbors

We have inclined to think that the rest of the world was the sport of destiny, but that we, somehow, were insured against fate. If we are pinched enough and worried enough to make us feel that, in spite of isolation and riches and the position for the moment of being the great creditor nation of the world, we are still inseparably joined to the rest of mankind, and linked, willy-nilly, to the vicissitudes of our neighbors, it may bring us to a bolder spirit about joining with them to make the world safer and more salubrious for all hands. To be so fortunate that we dare not be neighborly for fear of catching something harmful or losing something valuable is to be not really in a strong position, but in a weak one. — E. S. Martin, Harper's Monthly Magazine, January, 1921, p. 264.

The Possibility of American Isolation Varied and Wonderful Resources

The Americans have much justification in calling their great land "God's own country." Providence has been exceedingly kind to them. It has concentrated the most varied and the most wonderful resources within the boundaries of the Great Republic, and its citizens have io AMERICA'S STAKE IN EUROPE

turned the great gifts of Nature into wealth with energy ami with wisdom. The United Stales possess halt the world's eoal and halt the world's iron ore, the two minerals which form the twin basis oi modern industry. Their water powers are so gigantic that a tithe would suffice to electrify all their machinery and all their railways. In its huge rivers and in its extraordinary chain of lakes the Republic possesses the most wonderful system of inland waterways in the world. To complete their lines of communication, the Americans have opened up their country by means of a vast railway system, the mileage of which is almost twice as great as that of the British Empire.

The American Republic extends through a variety of climes. Its plains and valleys yield enormous crops, and its mountains vast quantities of timber. Among the nations of the world the United States are by far the largest producers of coal, iron ore. copper, silver, petroleum. cotton, maize, wheat, oats, tobacco, etc. The American climate is extremely stimulating. American energy is largely due to the tonic properties of the air. Owing to the great wealth of their natural resources, and the boundless energy of the inhabitants, the United States, which only a few years ago were chiefly an agricultural country, have become by far the greatest industrial community in the world, and they wish to become the greatest commercial and seafaring nation as well. They produce more eoal. more iron, more steel, more machinery, and infinitely more motor cars than all the other States of the world combined, and they are by far the largest producers in the world of leather, boots, silks, furniture, and of other manufactured goods too numerous to mention. The United States have vast advantages over all the other countries of the world. Within a compact area they have boundless resources, the exploitation oi which has only begun, and the American race possesses at the same time the enthusiasm and the energy of youth and that sober ripeness of judgment which is usually found only in older nations. Men oi such a character and possessed of such resources are apt to go far. — Politicus, Fortnightly Review, December, 1920, pp.931, 03 j.

Understanding Post-war Developments in Europe

let no American feel that he can escape all relationship to post-war developments in Europe. That is impossible, and being impossible, we should at least aim to understand those developments sufficiently to recognize something of their significance to us and judge of our responsibilities to the outside world. The future of Europe is going to be largely shaped by the wisdom or the lack of wisdom that we in America show in our grasp of European affairs, in the way we seize our world opportunities and in the sincerity with which we discharge our world obligations and render service where service is due. If we are narrow, provincial, selfish, all those qualities will react on our own future. If

REASSERTING ISOLATION FROM EUROPE n

we are wise, broad and generous with our help, our recompense will he beyond measure. — Frank A. Vanderlip, "What Happened to Europe," pp. '72, i73- Water-tight Compartments and the War

We cannot longer he confined in isolated, water-tight compartments of selfish nationalism. Four years of war brought the whole world together in a common cause as previous centuries had failed to do. Forty millions of young men were drawn together from the cities, towns, and villages of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. They traversed new lands and seas, new continents of thought and experience ; they exchanged new ideas. They fought together in France, Italy, Russia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, and East Africa. Many entered as boys who returned as men ; they left home as provincials, to return with a cosmopolitan consciousness of Everybody's World.

The world not only fought together in a common cause ; for the first time it thought together and acted together. The resources of the earth were made common property, the harvests of agriculture, the products of industry, shipping and railways, coal and iron, were all found to belong to Everybody's World. Masses of men learned the value of social control. The individual had to recognize humanity; nationalism had to break its shell and emerge into a world of internationalism. — Sherwood Eddy, "Everybody's World," pp. 20-21.

The Hermitary Seclusion of America Impossible

I assert that the system of international relations under which we and our fathers have lived has broken down; that its collapse was due to the change of economic, commercial, financial, social and political conditions in the modern world ; that any attempt to reestablish it will be rendered nugatory by the continued existence of these conditions; that the sound instinct of the plain people of the world in all nations yearns and clamors for a new and better world-order ; and that if this instinct is disregarded and overridden by statesmen the gravest consequences are certain to ensue.

The world cannot go back to the 19th century system of a European balance of power and the hermitary seclusion of America. How can the balance of power be reestablished in Europe when Germany has been vanquished and when Russia, and Austria-Hungary, and Turkey have been disintegrated and resolved into their constituent parts and replaced by numerous independent nationalities? And how can America resume her ancient isolation after the war in which it has been demonstrated that, owing to new methods and means and instrumentalities of warfare, on land and sea and in the air, no great nation can probably ever again remain neutral but must, in defense of its interests and security and for the maintenance of law and justice, be inevitably drawn into the conflict whenever two or more great nations of the modern world resort to the dread arbitrament of war? — Dr. Jacob Gould Schurman, Forum, March, 1920, p. 320.

Ties That Bind

The world is strangely knit together to-day by rapid transportation and communication and by the frontier-crossing agencies of credit, contract, capital, and corporate organization. There is hardly a single national problem, political or economic, that does not have its international implications. Just now we are in great danger of ignoring this cardinal principle of modern politics and present-day economics.

On every hand there are bankrupt and peevishly partizan minds counseling us to sit tight as the resolute defenders of a hermit Americanism. One can only pity these strangely sundered persons whose bodies live in the twentieth century, their minds in the sixteenth. They seem to think that nations are isolated compartments, with the laws of cause and effect operating within their sealed frontiers. But in the modern world the laws of cause and effect are inter-state laws. . . . We are still shut up to an inexorable choice between these two alternatives: we must become either the plaything of world forces or a partner in their control. A policy of isolation is as dead as the dodo.