What Is Moral Support? America's Gratuity to Europe

IN the ‘News of the Day,’ as presented in a moving-picture hall last July, there was shown to the audience a photograph of President Coolidge speaking in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Washington’s taking command of the Colonial forces. The caption read: ‘President holds out helping hand to Europe.’

Naturally the photographer did not know what was in Mr. Coolidge’s outstretched hand; but the reporters for the press were better informed. The headlines of one newspaper, July 4, ran thus: ‘Coolidge Bids Europe Frame Security Pacts. Pledges Moral Support of United States But Specifically Excepts Political Participation.’ An editorial in another newspaper of the same date emphasized the President’s approval of ‘mutual covenants for mutual security,’ and quoted to this effect from his speech: ‘While our country should refrain from making political commitments where it does not have political interests, such covenants would always have the moral support of our Government.’

Words have a meaning. It is all that gives them value. Therefore the two words ‘moral support’ must have a tangible significance in the minds of those who use them. Henry Adams, who hated mental confusion, and had the prevailing discontent of the clearsighted, said that morality was a private and costly luxury. ‘Masses of men invariably follow interests in deciding morals.’ Yet, while Americans are frankly and reasonably determined to let their own interests dictate their policies, they retain morality as a political weapon, or at least as a political weight. They offer the approbation of the American conscience as something which is directly or indirectly an asset to the nations of Europe. If they are acute, as is President Coolidge, they admit that the financing of foreign enterprise is a matter of policy. If they are blatant, as is the occasional habit of politicians, they intimate that moral support is a species of largess in the gift of moral leadership, and that moral leadership is a recognized attribute of size and numbers, as exemplified by the United States. Like the little girl who was so good that she knew how good she was, we are too well-informed not to be aware of our preeminence in this field.

Last May the American Ambassador at the Court of Saint James delivered himself of a speech before the Pilgrims’ Dinner in London. In it he defined with great precision the attitude of the United States toward her former allies. His remarks, as reported, read like a sermon preached in a reformatory; but it is possible that they had a more gracious sound when delivered urbanely over the wine glasses, and that the emphasis laid upon ‘the position of the plain people of America toward the reconstruction of Europe’ was less contemptuous than it appeared in print.

‘The full measure of American helpfulness,’ said our representative, ‘can be obtained only when the American people are assured that the time for destructive methods and policies has passed, and that the time for peaceful upbuilding has come. They are asking themselves to-day if that time has, in fact, arrived, and they cannot answer the question. The reply must come from the people of Europe, who alone can make the decision. If it be peace, then you may be sure that America will help to her generous utmost. But if the issue shall continue to be confused and doubtful, I fear the helpful processes which are now in motion must inevitably cease. We are not, as a people, interested in making speculative advances. We can undertake to help only those who help themselves.’

I try to imagine these words addressed to an American audience by a British official (presuming conditions were reversed), and I hear the deepmouthed profanity rising from the heart to the lips of every American who listened to them. If we were taxing ourselves to the utmost in order to repay a debt to Great Britain, profanity would seem to be in order. Yet the American press in general expressed no distaste for such lofty hectoring. Editors reminded us that it ‘did no more than state the feeling of the nation’; that it sounded a ‘timely warning’ to Europeans who counted on our aid; and that it was ‘in the nature of an ultimatum from one hundred and ten millions of Americans.’

Our passion for counting heads is occasionally misleading. If one hundred and ten millions of Americans acquiesced seemingly in this ' timely warning’ to our creditors, it was because one hundred million knew little, and cared less, about the matter. The comments of the foreign press were naturally of an ironic order, though the London Times took the wind out of our sails by acquiescing cordially in our Ambassador’s views, and congratulating the United States on its ‘coöperation with Great Britain in the task of reconstructing Europe’; thus robbing us of the lead with a graceful and friendly gesture, and a reminder that England had yet to be paid the first of the debts of her allies. The Paris Temps, on the other hand, offered with exaggerated courtesy the suggestion that France was endeavoring to follow America’s advice to help herself, and was, at that very moment, engaged in repairing the devastations wrought by an invading army purposed to destroy. She was ‘peacefully upbuilding’ her shattered towns. As for the Berlin newspapers, they seemed unanimously disposed to consider both the speech and the ensuing discussion a personal affront to von Hindenburg.

The interesting criticisms from my point of view were contributed by the Cleveland Press, the New York Evening Post, and the New York Times. The Cleveland Press generously regretted that ‘our highly desired and much sought moral helpfulness had been conspicuously withheld from Europe.’ The Post said with severity: ‘The aid we are now giving, whether monetary or moral, will come to an end unless good faith and mutual trust drive out hatred and mistrust.’ The Times, with the habitual restraint of a vastly influential newspaper, contented itself with observing that ‘the Administration seems to believe the time has come for a show-down, and that Europe must display more earnestness in settling her own affairs if she is to keep on asking for American moral and monetary support.’

Here are three clear-cut recognitions of moral, as apart from financial or political, support, and three clear-cut intimations that moral support is in itself a thing of value which the nations of Europe would be loath to lose. Yet I cannot think that any one of those three journalists seriously believes that England and France covet our esteem any more than they covet the esteem of the rest of the world. Why should they ? Every nation must respect itself, and make that self-respect the goal and guerdon of all effort. ' Great tranquillity of heart hath he who careth neither for praise nor blame,’ wrote the wise à Kempis; and the single-mindedness of the man who has some better purpose than to please is but a reflex of the single-mindedness of the nation which reveres its own traditions and ideals too deeply to make them interchangeable with the traditions and ideals of other nations.

Suppose Italy were to threaten the United States with the withdrawal of her moral support. How droll the idea would be! Yet Italy is a country civilized to the core. Her ignorance is often less crude than is information elsewhere; her methods of approach have in them the charm of immemorial amenities. She is as seriously religious as we are, and her people are more lawabiding than ours, perhaps because they are given less choice in the matter. There is every reason why Rome and Washington should respect each other, and be as morally helpful to each other as they know how to be; but there is no reason on earth why the moral support of one should be of more value than the moral support of the other, unless we translate morality into terms of strength and wealth.

This is what the Governor of Wisconsin did when he besought President Coolidge last September to make no terms for the settlement of the French debts until the war in Morocco was ended. He assumed our moral right to dictate the foreign policies of France because France owed us money, and he assumed that America was qualified to decide what was right and what was wrong in Morocco because she was the creditor nation. He earnestly desired that our Government, by refusing negotiations with France, should lend its moral support to the Riffs, who are formidable fighters, and who would have been amazed rather than flattered if they had known how they ware being written about in sympathetic American newspapers, ‘ The murder of helpless, defenseless women and children’ was a picturesque, rather than an exact, description of the campaigns of Marshals Lyautey and Pétain in Morocco.

As there is nothing new under the sun, history supplies us with more than one instance of moral support offered in place of material assistance, and always by a nation strong enough to give weight to such an unsubstantial commodity. The great Elizabeth dealt largely in it because it cost her nothing, won the approval of her subjects, indicated her authority, nourished her sense of omniscience, and gave opportunity for the noble warding (she was a past mistress of words) of purposes never destined to be fulfilled.

How superbly, yet how economically, the Queen placed England on record as the champion of the oppressed, when, after the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew, she draped herself and her court in mourning before consenting to receive the importunate French Ambassador! What a magnificent gesture of grief and stern repudiation! It is probable that the unlucky Frenchman felt himself as embarrassed as he was meant to be, though he knew perfectly well that Elizabeth had never kept her ‘fair promises’ to Coligny, and that she had no mind to discontinue her international flirtation with the Duke d’Alençon, merely because his royal mother stood responsible for the murder of many thousands of French Protestants. He accepted the rebuff to his country as disagreeable but not dangerous, and created a diversion by producing a letter from d’Alençon — one of the many amorous epistles which passed between these make-believe lovers — which was very graciously received. Notwithstanding the fact that England was filled with ‘an extreme indignation and a marvelous hatred,’ the Ambassador was able, six weeks after his humiliating reception, to write to Catherine that the English Queen would stand firmly by her alliance with France.

The relations between Elizabeth and Catherine de’ Medici form an engaging page of history. Their correspondence is to be recommended as a complete course in duplicity. Both were accomplished liars, and each politely professed to believe the other’s lies. Catherine cherished the preposterous hope that the English Queen would marry one of her sons. Elizabeth had no such intention; but she liked — Heaven knows why! — to pretend she would. Her only bond with Catherine was their mutual fear and hatred of Spain. It was a heavy cross to her that she could not weaken France without strengthening Spain. Providence was hard on her in this matter. Providence was hard on her in the matter of the rebellious Netherlands, and in the matter of John Knox. She never wanted to give more than moral support to any cause, and she was constantly being pushed to the fore by virtue of the power she held.

The Protestant insurgents in the Netherlands had the sympathy of England. William of Nassau was a hero in English eyes, and Burghley stoutly advocated his cause. The London merchants raised a force at their own expense, and shipped it to Rotterdam, with Sir Humphrey Gilbert at its head. But Elizabeth held back her hand. It was not only that she hated to spend the money, and not only that she was by nature incapable of committing herself generously to any principle. It was that in her heart of hearts this daughter of the Tudors disapproved of subjects opposing their sovereigns. She was a sovereign herself, and she knew that fomenting rebellion is like throwing a boomerang. Being at odds with the Pope, she would lend moral support to the French Protestants; and, being at odds with Spain, she would lend moral support to the Dutch insurgents. This was in accord with her own conscience and with the conscience of England. But, like conscientious America a few centuries later, she would ‘refrain from making political commitments where she did not have political interests.’

With the same caution, and the same characteristic understanding of her own position, Elizabeth was content that John Knox should harass the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, and, later, the young Queen of Scots. Such harassments were commendable, as being a species of warfare against the Church of Rome. But as for permitting this firebrand, this arrogant defamer of feminine sovereignty, to set foot on English soil, she would as soon have thought of raising John Stubbs to the peerage. Her cold and vigorous understanding set at naught the protestations of a man who had presumed unwisely on her indulgence. So did the great Tsaritsa Catherine regard the Lutheran and Calvinistic clergymen, to whom she had lent her moral support when they were conveniently remote, and who, confiding in her good will, actually sought to enter Holy Russia, and build their chapels at her doors.

The interest felt by France in the rebellious American Colonies was called sympathy, an intelligible word with a modest and a friendly sound. The cause of the Colonists was extolled as the sacred cause of liberty. Franklin, like Mrs. Jarley, was ‘the delight of the nobility and gentry.’ If the French Government delayed sending money and men until the American arms showed some reasonable chance of success, it stood ready to turn that chance into a certainty. Louis the Sixteenth cherished a sentimental regard for principles which eventually conducted him to the scaffold. He gave Franklin six million francs out of his own deplenished purse; and the citizens of Franklin’s town repaid him by hailing with indecent glee the news of his execution. It is to be noted that the logical French mind never disregarded America’s real needs. France took no great risks; but neither did she offer her esteem as an actual asset to the Colonies.

So ‘moral support’ still defies analysis. The phrase appears and reappears without significance. Count Karolyi, President of the short-lived Republic of Hungary, a man of many grievances and of many words with which to give them utterance, declared last autumn that he was not permitted to speak to Americans because his unworthy country feared the withdrawal of America’s ‘moral and financial support.’ A writer in The World’s Work has recently intimated that the United States, being congested with money, stands in need of Europe’s ‘moral support’ — a novel but not a clarifying point of view. The only nation that makes its meaning plain is Russia. Her moral support is always translatable into solid substantialities. Moscow makes no idle boast of wealth; but she can afford the biggest standing army in Europe, and she can afford foreign propaganda on a scale of well-considered lavishness. While America puts on weight and wisdom, Russia puts on speed and dynamic force. America will mend the world in her way, Russia will mend it in hers; and the beautiful, dangerous world, which cannot be ‘dry-docked for repairs,’ is patched here and there with amazing ingenuity while she whirls on her unresting way.