I do not know how far Americans are aware of the trend of feeling in Europe at the present time.Both France and Great Britain have a sense of righteousness in this war such as no nation, no people, has ever felt in war before.We know we are fighting to save all the world from the rule of force and the unquestioned supremacy of the military idea.Few Frenchmen or Englishmen can imagine the war presenting itself to an American intelligence under any other guise.At the invasion of Belgium we were astonished that America did nothing.At the sinking of the /Lusitania/ all Europe looked to America.The British mind contemplates the spectacle of American destroyers acting as bottleholders to German submarines with a dazzled astonishment.
"Manila," we gasp.In England we find excuses for America in our own past.In '64 we betrayed Denmark; in '70 we deserted France.
The French have not these memories.They do not understand the damning temptations of those who feel they are "/au-dessus de la melee./" They believe they had some share in the independence of America, that there is a sacred cause in republicanism, that there are grounds for a peculiar sympathy between France and the United States in republican institutions.
They do not realise that Germany and America have a common experience in recent industrial development, and a common belief in the "degeneracy" of all nations with a lower rate of trade expansion.They do not realise how a political campaign with the slogan of "Peace and a Full Dinner-Pail" looks in the middle west, what an honest, simple, rational appeal it makes there.
Atmospheres alter values.In Europe, strung up to tragic and majestic issues, to Europe gripping a gigantic evil in a death struggle, that would seem an inscription worthy of a pigsty.Achild in Europe would know now that the context is, "until the bacon-buyer calls," and it is difficult to realise that adult citizens in America may be incapable of realising that obvious context.
I set these things down plainly.There is a very strong disposition in all the European countries to believe America fundamentally indifferent to the rights and wrongs of the European struggle; sentimentally interested perhaps, but fundamentally indifferent.President Wilson is regarded as a mere academic sentimentalist by a great number of Europeans.
There is a very widespread disposition to treat America lightly and contemptuously, to believe that America, as one man put it to me recently, "hasn't the heart to do anything great or the guts to do anything wicked." There is a strong undercurrent of hostility therefore to the idea of America having any voice whatever in the final settlement after the war.It is not for a British writer to analyse the appearance that have thus affected American world prestige.I am telling what I have observed.
Let me relate two trivial anecdotes.
X came to my hotel in Paris one day to take me to see a certain munitions organisation.He took from his pocket a picture postcard that had been sent him by a well-meaning American acquaintance from America.It bore a portrait of General Lafayette, and under it was printed the words, "General Lafayette, /Colonel in the United States army./""Oh! These Americans!" said X with a gesture.
And as I returned to Paris from the French front, our train stopped at some intermediate station alongside of another train of wounded men.Exactly opposite our compartment was a car.It arrested our conversation.It was, as it were, an ambulance /de grand luxe/; it was a thing of very light, bright wood and very golden decorations; at one end of it was painted very large and fair the Stars and Stripes, and at the other fair-sized letters of gold proclaimed--I am sure the lady will not resent this added gleam of publicity--"Presented by Mrs.William Vanderbilt."My companions were French writers and French military men, and they were discussing with very keen interest that persistent question, "the ideal battery." But that ambulance sent a shaft of light into our carriage, and we stared together.
Then Colonel Z pointed with two fingers and remarked to us, without any excess of admiration:
"/America!/"
Then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled down the corners of his mouth.
We felt there was nothing more to add to that, and after a little pause the previous question was resumed.
I state these things in order to make it clear that America will start at a disadvantage when she starts upon the mission of salvage and reconciliation which is, I believe, her proper role in this world conflict.One would have to be blind and deaf on this side to be ignorant of European persuasion of America's triviality.I would not like to be an American travelling in Europe now, and those I meet here and there have some of the air of men who at any moment may be dunned for a debt.They explode without provocation into excuses and expostulations.
And I will further confess that when Viscount Grey answered the intimations of President Wilson and ex-President Taft of an American initiative to found a World League for Peace, by asking if America was prepared to back that idea with force, he spoke the doubts of all thoughtful European men.No one but an American deeply versed in the idiosyncrasies of the American population can answer that question, or tell us how far the delusion of world isolation which has prevailed in America for several generations has been dispelled.But if the answer to Lord Grey is "Yes," then I think history will emerge with a complete justification of the obstinate maintenance of neutrality by America.It is the end that reveals a motive.It is our ultimate act that sometimes teaches us our original intention.
No one can judge the United States yet.Were you neutral because you are too mean and cowardly, or too stupidly selfish, or because you had in view an end too great to be sacrificed to a moment of indignant pride and a force in reserve too precious to dispel? That is the still open question for America.
