Page:Ian Hay - The New America - The Times - 1917-07-16 a.jpg



Twelve months ago the average American could see no particular reason for joining in the war. To-day he is in it. Why?

Roughly speaking, countries (and individuals) fight for one of four reasons. They may fight from sheer lust of conquest, or because their liberties are actually in danger, or because the provocation received is so severe that self-respect renders a further passive attitude impossible, or—and this is what can raise war from the level of the abattoir to the level of the crusade—because a great principle is at stake.

Until recently none of these four propositions made any great appeal to America as a whole. In the first place, to a peace-loving people, inhabiting "God's own country" already, a war of aggression was superfluous and unthinkable. Nor was it apparent to America as a whole that American liberties were in danger. To the Missourian farmer there appeared to be not the remotest relation between his own tranquil and prosperous existence and the fact that the British Navy was abroad on the high seas. Again, the issue for which the Allies were fighting—the great principle at stake—the principle upon which the American Constitution itself is founded—had been so clouded and distorted by the arts of and his press-gang, that America in general inclined to the view that there was a good deal to be said on both sides, and that John Bull in particular was not in the habit of indulging in war simply for exercise. Lastly, although national pride had been stung to the quick by the Lusitania outrage, the German propagandists were able to point out with perfect truth that those who perished in the Lusitania had been officially "warned" before going on board. This astonishing piece of impudence impressed quite a number of stay-at-home Americans into a hazy belief that if neutrals are foolish enough to travel on belligerent ships they render themselves justly liable to instant assassination. German propaganda also insisted on the fact that the British blockade was interfering with neutral rights, and actually succeeded in many cases in creating an impression that there is no moral difference between taking life and taking property.

That, a year ago, was the general attitude of the American proletariat towards the four fundamental causes which may bring a nation into war. To the British people, face to face with the grim realities of the struggle, this attitude was absolutely unintelligible. With little opportunity, and less leisure, to study or consider the variegated local conditions in America's 48 States, all that the average Englishman saw across the sea was a people which "came not forward in the day of battle"—a people which, not being for us, was against us—led by a President who demanded satisfaction for German insults solely through the medium of futile correspondence. Perhaps that was a severe attitude, but the average Englishman may be forgiven for adopting it, because it was the attitude of a very large and very important section of the American people as well. Hard things may have been said about America in France, and Great Britain, and Canada during the first two years of the war, but they are benedictions compared with some of the things which Americans have said about themselves. All over the country, in New York, and New England, and Virginia, and Kentucky, and California, and Oregon (and very particularly at Oyster Bay), I have heard the most unsparing criticisms uttered by thinking, travelled Americans against their own apathetic countrymen. Such men were bitterly ashamed of the figure which their beloved America had cut in the eyes of the world, and they were burning to see her step forward and play her part in the war, not merely because of the principle at stake, but in order that she might "make good" in certain matters of national honour.

With this earnest and powerful influence at work, why did America hold aloof so long? That is the question which has been debated in Allied circles for many a day. It has been debated, as already noted, with even greater vehemence in certain American circles. And the explanation—the explanation which the stay-at-home Englishman and the stay-at-home American have both failed equally to grasp—can be found by looking at the map and comparing the size of the United States with the size of the other countries of the world. We who live in an island which it is possible to traverse in a day; where everybody is acquainted with everybody else's point of view; where the population contains practically no foreign element; where it is possible to read the London papers in practically any part of the country on the morning of publication, can have but little conception of the different angles of vision, the conflicting interests, and the abysmal ignorance of one another which characterize the heterogeneous elements of the great nation across the sea.

What does the map show us? A country—or rather continent—stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Tropics to Canada. New York State alone is not much smaller than England; California is larger. Within the boundaries of this huge federation you will find every type of humanity, several distinct languages, every degree of education, every shade of public opinion. Most countries are dominated by their capital. In America there are a vast number of populous cities, each a little centre in itself, with its own newspapers and its own opinion of things in general and the rest of America in particular. Again, the sturdy American democrat is apt to smile upon our social watertight compartments, and tells us that "in the United States we are one class only." But in truth America is, above all other countries, the home of intellectual and social extremes. Let us take a few examples. In the universities of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, to mention only a few—for this great land is literally sown with seminaries, nobly endowed—you will find scholars of world-wide reputation. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and the great cities of the South you will find families of wealth and refinement whose ancestry can be traced back three