Page:Ian Hay - The New America - The Times - 1917-07-19.jpg



Now that she is at war, what is America going to do about it?

Germany, with her infallible instinct for divining the mental processes of other nations, has assumed (and announced officially) that America will do nothing. In fact, to this day Germany has never even acknowledged that she is at war with America. Germany has too much good taste and feeling. America, explains Germany, has no Army, no Navy to speak of, no national spirit or discipline at all. It would be an outrage to make war upon such defenceless people. That is the official opinion of Germany—an opinion which would appear to have emanated from the distinguished thought—reader who once prophesied, inter alia, that Belgium would not fight, that Great Britain would not join the Allies, and that if she did the whole British Empire would promptly disintegrate itself into fragments of a size convenient for subsequent German absorption.

The attitude of the Allies is naturally one of confident expectation, coupled with extreme vagueness as to what America is really capable of doing. The fact is, America herself hardly knows what she is capable of doing. So vast are her resources, so great her population, so remarkable the individual capacity of her people, that her future as a military power is limited only by one thing-her willingness to submit to discipline. To make a nation efficient in a military sense a certain amount of individual liberty-liberty to go one's own way, to be one's own master, and, above all, liberty to ask Why?-must be sacrificed; and the average American, to whom the word liberty is a sacred obsession, may prove difficult in that respect. He is afraid of being put upon." He has a keen nose for "militarism." He is suspicious of the essential relations between officers and men. He dislikes the idea of being at any one's absolute disposal. When in doubt about anything, he repeats to himself, or to as large an audience as he can collect, Lincoln's famous dictum on the subject of "Government of the People, by the People, for the People"; and he experiences some difficulty in squaring this with the practice prevailing in barrack-yards. "Government of the Army, by the Army, for the Army," sounds good, equally good, but he has recently had practical object lesson in the fallibility of such ideals. In Russia the other day s newly-emancipated legions intimated to their leader their willingness to continue to follow him on condition that in future he should submit his plans of battle to a select committee of the rank and file. General Brusiloff promptly resigned. After a short and unhappy interval, the inevitable occurred. He was requested to resume the leadership of the Army on his own terms. He did so, and immediately led his followers to a brilliant victory. In the same way America—and it must be remembered that the America of to-day is not the America of the Revolution or the Civil War, but contains a far larger and less amenable population—will have to find out for herself, by the only infallible means open to man, namely, hard experience, to what extent the pure spirit of democracy must be diluted to meet the demands of military efficiency.

Also. America's national imagination is not yet fired. She wants time. The chief barrier which stands between her and the true spirit of this war—the factor which prevents the American pulse from quickening into instant enthusiasm for the cause which America has officially made her own—is the Atlantic Ocean. Such a barrier is not insuperable, as Canada has shown, to her eternal glory. But his remoteness from the actualities of the conflict will undoubtedly make it more difficult for the average American—and when we speak of the average American, we are speaking not of the American of British descent, or the travelled American, or the American soldier, but of business men from New York and Ohio, of miners from Pennsylvania, of cowboys from Wyoming, and of a polyglot labouring class from everywhere—to awake to the greatness of his cause or the pressing needs of the situation. Heaven knows, it took us long enough, and we were only a hundred miles from the very heart of things! An ounce of experience— a Zeppelin here, a torpedoed liner there—can awake more national spirit in five minutes than a ton of imagination can achieve in five years. So it is only natural that America, removed from all risk of actual invasion, should require a little time to adjust herself to new conditions, and to re-awaken that martial and indomitable spirit which has made her such a formidable fighting power in the past. The landing of General Pershing's troops has already done much. The first casualty list, alas! will do ten times more.

To us, who have known what it is to belong to a nation suddenly plunged into war, it is most interesting to observe and compare the course of events in America. So far that course has been extremely normal. With the declaration of war came a tremendous burst of popular enthusiasm. Flags appeared everywhere, from New York to San Francisco. Conscientious persons proceeded without delay to repair the gaps in their memory, connected with the words of that stirring but appallingly long anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." Every one turned to every one else and said, "What can I do to help?" Some people began to practise a vague and unmethodical, system of food economy. Others, following a natural instinct, began to hoard. Others, of different ideals, began to profiteer. But, as with us, of any general realization of the meaning of war there was none. But realization is coming. A new spirit is abroad in America to-day. Her false gods we were worshipping the same ourselves not long ago are doomed. She can never go back to the old state of things. She may pay—she will pay—a heavy price for her share of victory, but every true American knows—and he hails the knowledge with sober joy—that his country is going to emerge from this supreme test better balanced, bigger hearted, and more united. A country, in fact, and not a Continent.