Vol. 107

No. 4

A

GENTLEMAN asked me at Geneva: "Is America fit to join the League of Nations?"

I made an unintelligible noise. "Here, now," he said, "none of this patriotism! I am in earnest. I should welcome Russia in the league, and Mexico, and of course Germany. But I think it might be a great misfortune to have America in the league."

“But,” I said, “I hear nothing else but the desirability of America joining. English statesmen are getting housemaid's knee praying for America to join. Every few weeks we are assured by liberals that civilization is again being 'menaced' because America has not joined. And you, a serious official of the league, raise the question of America's fitness."

"I do," he interrupted. "I should not be afraid in five or six years. By that time the league will be strong enough to stand the big dose of conservatism that it must swallow when America comes in. But now it might be fatal. You see, America is too imperialistic, too nationalistic, too capitalistic, too militaristic, too powerloving and too power-seeking to come into the league."

"I suppose," I said to this smiling European, "that no other such powers are members of the league."

"On the contrary, the league is the creature of just such governments. It is n't the instrument of a new society. It is the instrument of the same old society that brought about the war. It does not definitely represent those elements in the world that are decently radical. It represents the powers that be. And it is not itself a government or a state, no matter what poor Harding thought. It is a white sheet on which the members throw their moving-picture. But, believe me, the picture is definitely better because there is an international audience watching it and because it is composed for their benefit. But I don't want America in. America is not ready for the international audience.”

"You forget," I urged with some heat, "the kind of part that America took in the war. American idealism was not lacking when America sent its millions over to Europe. And Wilson had every one behind him when he said, "There is only one sort of peace that the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing.' He said that, or

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something like it, when he was putting forward the fourteen points."

"You mean when he was pressing the fourteen points into the brow of Germany, before he helped to nail Germany to the cross. But we'll leave Wilson out of it. The war idealism of America was sincere, but shoddy. The war could not have been fought except on manufactured opinion. Opinion was manufactured wholesale, 'ready to wear,' both in England and America. The mind of England and the mind of America were systematically debauched, but the mind of America was easier to debauch, because it is, on the whole, the crudest mind in the socalled literate world. It was debauched on the subject of Germany. It was later debauched on the subject of Russia. Hughes on Russia is still the prim little Baptist criticizing an adding-machine under the delusion that it is a roulette device. Nothing can be done internationally with material like Hughes.

"The danger of America in the league is not really that it is a powerloving and power-seeking country. It is that as yet it has no international mind. Europe, you may say, is rotten. Granted. The war was a satanic bean-feast; it could not have occurred in a sane society. But Europe, for all its rottenness, is politically minded. It may have a bad heart, but it comprehends its problem. America, on the contrary, does not comprehend."

"Which is better," I asked, "a bad heart and comprehension or a good heart and no comprehension?"

"I never said that, politically speaking, America has a good heart."

He left me with that phrase for a moment. Then he returned.

"Now," he said, "you have been a year in Europe. Do you still think that America is on a higher moral level than the rest of the world?"

"In some respects; in the sphere of politics, yes."

His eyes glittered.

"Where?" he demanded.

"Not in regard to enemy aliens," I admitted, "not in regard to negroes. Not in regard to political prisoners. Not in regard to minorities. Not in regard to trade-unions. Not in regard to labor legislation. Not in regard to civil service and office-holders' honesty. Not in regard to oil concessions and the rest. But, well, in China America has tried to arrange for benevolent exploitation, and in the Philippines it has done well."

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"Well, do you still think it is too good to associate with Europe? Do you think Europe should be allowed to stew in its own juice?"

"I'd rather hear your opinion," I murmured.

"From most Americans I gather this impression, and I should like to be corrected if I'm wrong. Europe, they consider, is a mess. Down in the depths of their groveling nationalisms are all these brawling states. First it was Germany that behaved like a mad dog; now it is France. Great Britain is better, but Great Britain uses the difficulties of others and has its eye eternally on trade. The Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Russians, and the Turks-these ignorant foreigners live in a moral zone too black to be depicted. The Poles and the Rumanians are no better. Something good must be said for the clean Northern neutrals, for Holland, for Switzerland,

perhaps for Czechoslovakia. But the rest of Europe is a loss. Spain is defunct. So is Austria-Hungary. The Serb-Croat-Slovene state is uncivilized. Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia are margarin nationalities. As for Italy, it is summed up in the melodramatic Mussolini, the greatest operatic performer Italy has ever produced.

"To keep out of this mess is an American instinct. 'We have contributed to the diseased and faminestricken,' they might say, 'we have responded to one money-collecting campaign after another, and have listened open-hearted to innumerable appeals. But that 's as far as we 'll go. Every day we read fresh news of European excess and violence, of crushing taxation or governments overthrown, of currency gone mad. Inside the British Empire, which is continually held up for admiration, we have followed the Irish business, first watching the black-and-tan atrocities and then seeing the Irish live up to their reputation and fighting among themselves. In India the patriots are sent to jail wholesale. In Egypt we see continuous insurrection, with a promise of self-determination that is not kept. In England itself we see a business man's government and a great improvement in dividends, but many strikes, a threat of increased unemployment, and the violence of Labor members in Parliament. In France we find the meanest self-seeking, bitter, unchristian vengefulness, the most unscrupulous chauvinism, and a totally corrupt press. A nation that had suffered from militarism uses a cruel militarism to avenge itself. It uses black troops against the Germans, spreads syphilis among the German women, lavishes the death penalty, wrecks industry,

fails to pay its own debts, and yet expects monstrous sums in reparation.

"The Germans, formidable and insolent in 1914, are crushed and disorganized. Their capitalists, we hear, are grown rich, but misery has eaten deep into the tissue of the people, and they tremble sickeningly on the edge of a revolution of which England is mortally afraid. The French are cynical in believing that in Germany it will never come.

"Italy is united at the price of liberty. Greece is completely demoralized. Spain fumes with a revolutionary ferment. Turkey, the author of the worst savageries of the war, is released and triumphant. The Poles have used their new freedom to attack Lithuania. The Serbs have encroached on Albania. The Rumanians have denuded their Hungarian proprietors. Finland quarrels with Soviet Russia. Even Norway is bickering with Denmark about Greenland.""

"That is Europe!" I exclaimed. "You need n't go on. Leave out the assassinations and the hardships of the Austrian and Russian aristocrats. Leave out the secret societies and fascismo, leave out the decay of the intellectuals. The Americans do see Europe more or less as you paint it, and they see it right."

"They see it as pure idealists. But how do our pure idealists see America?" "Most unfavorably." "I agree. American American militarism, after all, is very much alive. America is preparing for war in the air. If certain great monopolies make a taxi of the American navy, that is none of our business, but it is rather shocking to the coast-towns of Albania. But our moralists have a somewhat larger