The Road Not Taken

VOLUME 165

NUMBER 3

MARCH 1940

BY DAVID L. COHN

— W. B. YEATS, 1938

ONE afternoon in November 1937, I walked into the gallery of a London art dealer with Edward Wolfe, the well-known South African painter. A droopingly tall man stood there looking at Wolfe’s paintings. My friend introduced me to his friend, and without further ado I asked him: ‘When do you think war will begin in Europe?’ This naïve query enraged the tall man, and he shouted at me with the exquisite modulation of tone achieved only by public-school Englishmen when, on rare occasion, they are moved to shout: ‘Only Americans think there will be war in Europe.’ In the sudden silence, amid the genteel hush that seems perpetually to brood in dealers’ galleries and funeral homes, I could hear the parenthetical phrase my new-found acquaintance had politely omitted from his reply — ‘ and fools.’

That man was Mr. J. M. Keynes. He, perhaps more clearly than any other person, had foreseen the consequences of the treaties that concluded the World War. His vision was buttressed by an incomparable knowledge of world economics; he had been for years economic adviser to Britain, and latterly, it was rumored, to Washington. I felt, therefore, that the man whose foresight had been so prophetic in 1919 could not fail after twenty years’ experience of postwar Europe to note that the forces were heading toward war, and my confusion was the greater because I had just come from America, where freshmen as well as veteran observers had long predicted a new European war. I retired to bind up my wounds before a portrait of a Russian lady, and reflect upon my two-sentence conversation with Mr. Keynes.

If, I said to myself, Mr. Keynes should prove a poor prophet, that is of no importance to anyone save perhaps himself. But what if his point of view should be the expression not of private prophecy but of British opinion? Then it might have consequences tragic for the world. In July 1987, he had written: ‘Our capacity for cunctation is one of our most powerful and characteristic weapons’ (New Statesman and Nation). So it is, I told myself, and the little gallery seemed suddenly filled with ghostly ‘Amens’ from the throats of the World War dead. Britain had employed this capacity — formerly called ‘muddling through’ — throughout the dangerous summer of 1914, until half the world was at war and sad-eyed Sir Edward Grey, looking down into the street from his chancellery windows, noted that the lights were going out all over Europe and concluded they would not come on again in his time. Yet there are those — and they do not speak entirely without authority, although they address themselves to one of the maddening ‘ifs’ of history — who say that if Britain had plainly told Germany she would fight if Belgium or France were invaded there might have been no war.

Copyright 1940, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

I remembered that Britain, under George III, had used her weapon of cunctation until His Majesty’s North American Colonies were lost to the Empire. And more than a century later — such are the ribald vagaries of history — the Lost Colonies (by now no strangers themselves to cunctation) fought victoriously in a European war which, if it did nothing else, preserved the British Empire. But what if America had continued to debate beyond that desperate April of 1917 when England was within two weeks of starvation? Would Mr. Keynes have then in 1937 been looking at pictures in London, a free subject of his King? Or might he have become a vassal of Kaiser Wilhelm II?

Where has cunctation led Britain during the past decade? From the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 until September 1939, when she was again at war with Germany, it has led her from diplomatic humiliation to diplomatic humiliation, from loss of prestige to greater loss of prestige, and finally into conflict on a gigantic scale. The time came when Japanese could machine-gun a British Ambassador with the impunity of an Iowa farm boy potting a robin; when British guarantees to little countries (‘An Englishman’s word is his bond’) were not only valueless but actually the seal of death; when the Prime Minister who had been bullied in Munich was applauded in London; when ‘peace in our time’ was briefly enjoyed along with the strange concomitants of colossal arms budgets and an unparalleled conscription in the absence of war. At the rainbow’s end of ten years of evasion, hesitation, and concession there is the pot of dynamite in the North Sea.

II

All this belongs to history. But merely to parade the diplomatic mistakes of Britain — mistakes for which men are dying and women are weeping — would be cheap and without point unless the errors that have been made can be employed to prevent greater errors. Americans must remember — we who send up barrages of words behind our remote battlements — that for several years we have sneered at Britain’s refusal to fight under circumstances of extreme provocation, or to say firmly under what conditions she would fight. Some of us have even descended to the abysmal vulgarity of calling the European struggle a ‘phony war.’ We have recently been reminded, however, by Jean Giraudoux in Paris, that the Allies, even though we may cry for madder music and stronger wine at their expense, have no intention of shedding their blood merely for the amusement of an audience three thousand miles away.

But while we have been busy pointing out what we take to be the mistakes and stupidities of British foreign policy, every American has now become a volunteer Paul Revere galloping up and down the countryside warning his neighbors against the dangerous subtleties of British propaganda. Thus the British are at once far more stupid than we and far more intelligent. Deriving from our rustic suspicion of the international city slicker is the legend that, whenever an American diplomat sits at the council table with a British diplomat, the American rises without his shirt. In our theology a Past Grand Commander of the Knights of Pythias, representing the United States at the Court of St. James’s, is inevitably of a lower mental order than a British diplomat whose boiled shirt is emblazoned with the Garter. But since we have for several years also believed that the Briton lost his shirt whenever he sat down with a German, Italian, or Japanese, we can only conclude by our own definition that we rank at the bottom of the list in intelligence. It would seem to follow, therefore, that we ought to retire our entire diplomatic corps to a home for the feeble-minded or concentrate them in Haiti among a people given to both fantasy and tolerance.

What meaning has the European war for us in 1940? Compare 1914-1917 with the period 1939-1940. Now, as then, most of the world is at war. Again we are neutral; again our neutrality is tilted to favor one side; again we contemplate the consequences to ourselves if that side should lose. What are some of those consequences? President Roosevelt pointed them out to the nation in his recent annual message to Congress: —

We must look ahead and see the possibilities for our children if the rest of the world comes to be dominated by concentrated force alone — even though today we are a very great and a very powerful nation.

We must look ahead and see the effect on our own future if all the small nations throughout the world have their independence snatched from them or become mere appendages to relatively vast and powerful military systems.

We must look ahead and see the kind of lives our children would have to lead if a large part of the rest of the world were compelled to worship the god imposed by a military ruler, or were forbidden to worship God at all; if the rest of the world were forbidden to read and hear facts — the daily news of their own and other nations — if they were deprived of the truth which makes men free.

We must look ahead and see the effect on our future generations if world trade is controlled by any nation or group of nations which sets up that control through military force.

In other words, we must look ahead to the time when Britain and France may be crushed, and a large part of the world may fall under the dominance of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Looking ahead, we conclude that no matter what may happen in Europe, and eventually perhaps to ourselves, we will not raise effective hands to affect our destiny. Ninety-six per cent of the American people, according to a recent Gallup poll, arc opposed to our entrance into the European struggle.

Note how closely both in attitude and in unanimity we are following the demonstrably bankrupt British policy of cunetation. We will not, we say, fight unless our vital interests are attacked. It follows, therefore, that the possible disappearance of Britain and France, along with their empires, is not a vital interest of America. Remember how Britain acted from 1931 to the end of 1939. Manchuria was no vital interest of hers. It was in distant Asia, and Japan would be reasonable. Ethiopia, Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, were not vital interests of Britain. The destruction by Hitler of the treaties of Locarno and Versailles, and the march into the Rhineland, were merely the whimsies of an unpredictable and dangerous man who might do unpredictable and dangerous things if he were asked — or compelled — to conform to the canons of Western civilization, one of which is a decent respect for the opinion of mankind. Such a policy — or lack of it — is, as we now know, suicidal. In a close-knit, interdependent, world it is the equivalent of saying that if my neighbor is being murdered I must refrain both from helping him and from calling the police. After all, the homicide is private to the murderer and the dead man’s family, and any intervention on my part means the abandonment of an ‘objective attitude’ whose preservation is more important than the preservation of life or the law or even, eventually, my own safety.

Transfer the argument to the larger sphere of American foreign policy, and the results become passing strange. Deeply embedded in that policy is the doctrine of non-recognition of territories acquired by force. Asserted by Hoover in Asia, it has been reaffirmed by Roosevelt both in Asia and in Europe. Thus we do not recognize Manchukuo. The dead sovereignties of Poland and Czechoslovakia are still accredited to Washington, where flesh-and-blood ministers represent ghostly countries and continue to live in the legations of nations which exist only as memories of the past, symbols of the present, or hopes for the future. But what is at the bottom of the doctrine of non-recognition? Evangelistic though we may be, is our objection to the acquisition of territories by force merely moral? Not at all. It is because we believe that seizures of territories by force bring war; that war, wherever it begins, may spread until it finally threatens the peace and welfare of the United States. The doctrine is therefore an aspect of self-interest, and as such it makes sense.

The Manchurian invasion by Japan in 1931 which Britain — but not the United States—looked upon as a ‘localized war’ has become the years-long SinoJapanese war whose ramifications face us in 1940 with grave issues vis-à-vis Japan, not excluding the possibility of war. And the conquest of Manchuria, which signalized the death of the League of Nations and gave notice to bold dictators that they might seize whatever they pleased without fear of the so-called strong nations, led to Ethiopia (‘Just a lot of niggers’); to Austria (‘Well, they oughta belong to Germany’); to Czechoslovakia (‘Yeh, that was Wilson’s boner’); to Poland (‘Those guys don’t know nothing about fighting’); to the present European war (‘It’s none of our business’).

III

Let’s watch the American mind and diplomacy at work in Asia. There we pursue our own policy of cunctation and hamstring our own doctrine of nonrecognition. For forty years we have been telling Japan she must not close the Open Door in China; for forty years she has been closing it. Oh, we have protested often enough. We send notes. Japan hisses politely through her teeth; files away the notes; gives us more promises which she breaks, or returns an enigmatic reply to our protests. (These notes, let those remember who regard our letter-writing propensity as harmless, are not altogether innocuous. They constitute a diplomatic background for war.) Occasionally we do more. We frustrated Japan’s notorious TwentyOne Demands upon China during the World War. We provided the world with the spectacle of a strange anabasis during that same war when Kansas and Nebraska boys floundered through the snows of Siberian winter, ostensibly to assist Czechs retreating out of Russia, but actually to prevent Japan from seizing large areas of Siberia. In general, we do just enough to irritate Japan without deterring her from her larger purposes. Is it likely that a people who performed the unparalleled miracle of transforming a hermit kingdom into a world power within eighty-five years, and who only thirty years after their emergence had already embarked upon a career of conquest and empire, are to be deterred by verbal slaps on the wrist? A people, moreover, whose philosophy is such that it was held up by General Ludendorff to the Germans as an admirable model to follow?

Since the start of the Sino-Japanese war and our refusal to recognize its first fruits in the form of Manchukuo, we have been denouncing Japan and at the same time supplying her with indispensable war materials. An efficient, time-saving people, we have worked out a system whereby a note of diplomatic protest accompanies each cargo of scrap iron to Japan, so that when the iron is hurled at the Chinese our protest automatically pops up. This does not hamper Japan, and it keeps the Associated Junk Dealers of America happy. In fact, no one is harmed but the Chinese, and they understand us, since we are their friends. Have not our missionaries long taught them, ‘Better arc the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy’?

It is important that we understand the implications of our actions in Asia because they affect, our position not only on that continent but throughout the world. Thus, while the American people approve of the relatively unimportant surface aspect of the non-recognition doctrine, — after all, Japan has managed to struggle along without our formal approval of her Manchurian conquest, — the same people reject the essential basis on which the doctrine rests. For to approve of it would be to do precisely what we do not wish to do: that is, face the stark reality of the world in which we live and recognize without blinking that war anywhere on earth and by whomever waged is a potential danger to our own peace. (That this is true is not only the lesson of history, but is attested by our present novel — even revolutionary — methods to escape participation in the European war.) If we go this far, we must go further and assume the burden, in company with other nations, not of winning wars in which we engage or helping others to win wars in which we do not engage, but of that effort which is at once an expression of self-preservation and the highest, noblest use of diplomacy and power — preventing tears from starting.

The fact is, however, that we will not face the music of our own logic, and we therefore content ourselves with the iteration of a doctrine whose reason for being we reject by our failure to pursue that doctrine to its inexorable conclusion. We find ourselves, consequently, in the uncomfortable (not to say absurd) position of applying non-recognition to our own policy of non-recognition. But now at long last, logic or no logic, policy or no policy, half-hearted action or dilatory cunotation, we face a showdown with Japan.

At home we note a strange phenomenon. While we protest that the European war is no business of ours, it seems to be our sole business. Our emotional and intellectual capacities appear to be almost absorbed by it. Domestic issues over which we fought bitterly a year ago seem trivial today. Yet we still have a grave agricultural and unemployment problem; debts mount and taxes rise; the business structure sways in the winds; even the anticipated war boom that was to save us has not materialized. (It is a measure of our appalling lack of faith and direction that we, the world’s richest country, should expect to be saved by the death throes of Europe.) But who, save Senator Taft, loses sleep now over the unbalanced federal budget? We are building costly battleships, and if they must float in seas of red ink, where is the man to say that the hand of the naval architect shall be stayed? We are filling our skies with airplanes; the midnight meditations of cattle on the Western ranges are disturbed by the thunderings of our military machines overhead. Who desires to singe their wings? What has become of the WPA jokes? What has dissipated our once passionate interest in share-croppers? A nation hard-pressed at home is absorbed in the struggle overseas. It is evidently, therefore, of vital interest to us. But while it may be a struggle between two diametrically opposed conceptions of life and international order, and while we devoutly desire the victory of one side, seeing something of our own ease and security in the victory of that side, we extend it only our good wishes and our willingness to sell goods for cash.

IV

Consider specific events of the European war. Finland is invaded by Russia. We are struck with horror. Individuals give cash. Planes are diverted from our military services for Finland. Washington lends money to the beleaguered country. Its Minister to the United States is greeted with acclaim wherever he appears. Why? Is it merely that this nation’s individuals, who live largely on the installment plan, are filled with sporting admiration for a nation that meets its installments to us so promptly? Or do we aid the Finns because we believe they are a people much like ourselves and respond to the same impulses that move us? Is it that they personify values we cherish and are being attacked by a brutish giant whom we abhor? Beyond Finland lie the Scandinavian states — truly democratic, admirably governed, the objects of our esteem and affection. Are they doomed to disappearance if Finland should disappear? we ask ourselves uncertainly.

Consider the British-German naval action off Uruguay in which the Graf Spee was scuttled. Our newspapers played it up exultantly as if it were an American victory. But when H.M.S. Royal Oak was torpedoed at Scapa Flow, men in little Southern villages discussed it sadly with lowered voices as if this were a personal tragedy that had happened in their midst, or an important American defeat. Why? The French Army is behind the Maginot Line, Gibraltar’s guns brood over Africa and Mediterranean Europe, French colonials keep watch over Syria, Scottish Highlanders patrol where once the doleful procession marched up Calvary Hill, merchant ships of the Allies dot the seas, gold lies in yellow mounds in the Banks of England and France. But these forces are impotent in the absence of the one value that gives them life. That value is the British Navy, and we all know it.

Reversing the process of physical evolution moving from simplicity to complexity, we see how the intricacies of the modern political-industrial world, functioning in war, have brought about a situation in which the movement is from complexity to simplicity. The whole vast structure of the British and French empires, and with them a certain concept of life and living, rest ultimately upon seventy or eighty shining cylinders of metal called naval rifles, installed upon fourteen floating platforms called capital ships of the British Navy. (‘Admiral Jellicoe,’ said Winston Churchill, speaking of the World War, ‘was the only man on cither side who could lose the war in an afternoon.’) Destroy those platforms, put those rifles out of action, and a cataclysmic crash of empires will convulse the earth for generations. Hitler knows this too, and in order to destroy his enemies he must first destroy the handful of long-nosed cylinders on which they rest. We know it also, and the vortices that marked the sinkings of Royal Oak and Courageous carried down not only their hulks but also a portion of our hopes. The war in which they disappeared is not, however, any of our business.

But, strangely enough, as British ships go down in European waters we plan to lay down more war vessels in American yards. The Chairman of the House Naval Committee talks of building monster battleships of 60,000 or even 80,000 tons at a cost of $130,000,000 apiece. Are they too big to go through the Panama Canal? Then widen the canal; build more locks; construct another ditch at Nicaragua. We must have the ships, and the ships must have mobility. Why? If Britain and France win the war, are we to fear them? If they emerge victorious are we to fear Japan, whose course in Asia runs counter to the interests of France, Britain, the Netherlands, and ourselves? Or is it that, while the present war is no business of ours, we fear that a German victory might convert it into a post-war business for us to face? In our arithmetic, however, it is cheaper to build ships to face a possible German victor than to give money to Germany’s enemies to make her victory impossible; in our reasoning it is wiser to confront a possibly hostile world alone than in the company of others.

This by no means exhausts the devices of our ingenuity. We are already looking forward to the peace which must ultimately come, and President Roosevelt, as part of our effort, has sent a personal representative to the Vatican. Who believes that if Germany wins the war we shall be allowed to say anything about the peace? Our peace efforts must be founded, therefore, upon a victory of the Allies. If the war goes on for years, or results in total war and the destruction of British-French cities and civilian populations, who believes that the Allies, if victorious, will permit us to arbitrate the peace when our contribution to their victory will have been merely our helpful but profitable willingness to sell them goods for cash? And, moreover, the next time we turn up in Europe to arrange a peace, is it likely that Europe will have forgotten that the American President responsible for the League of Nations was repudiated by his own country and sent to his grave a brokenhearted man?

If, however, we should be unable to arbitrate the peace, we can take such action at home as will make any peace that Europe arbitrates a peace impossible or difficult to keep. The lobbyists are already gathering in Washington expecting to dance around the remains of Secretary Hull’s Trade Agreements. Again we pursue the policy we followed after the World War, Again we seek legislation that will close the world’s greatest market to a post-war impoverished Europe precisely at the moment when Europe shall be in greatest need of that market; again we embark upon a course that will force Europe into barter agreements, debased currencies, retaliatory tariffs, fanatic nationalism, and so, in time, to more wars. (And when they come we may say they are none of our business.) This upon the theory that by keeping most of the world in poverty we shall promote peace abroad and prosperity at home.

In the spring of 1828, a stage rolled along the road from Providence, Rhode Island, to Hartford, Connecticut. Among the passengers was the English traveler, James Stuart. Somewhere en route an American got on the stage, and Stuart reports the following: —

‘On our way to Hartford, Mr. Lad, a gentleman who lives in the northern part of New England . . . joined the stage. ... We found him a very agreeable companion, and possessed of a great deal of information. . . . He was confident that, at no distant period, Britain, America, and France, would form an association to prevent future wars over the earth.’

If time has proved Mr. Lad to be wrong in his vision of the future, he had at least an opinion about the world in which he lived and a conviction about how its peace might be kept. Let us listen to a young American speaking to us one hundred and twelve years after the conversation in the Hartford stage. He spoke for the benefit of the youth forum now being conducted by McCall’s Magazine. This is what be said: —

‘Well, I’ve been thinking right here. . . . I’ve been sitting here racking my brains to see whether there’s anything at all I thought about, definitely and positively, and really, I’ve no faith in anything. I’m getting afraid to think, because I fear I may get emotional about it.’

Is this the credo of a nation in the fourth decade of the twentieth century, or its obituary?