American Unfriendliness
By Maximilian Harden
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
Maximilian Harden, author of the article of which the following is a translation, is the widely known German journalist and publicist who has been termed "the German George Bernard Shaw." The article was published in the second February number of Die Zukunft.
Japan and the United States are being wooed. Ever since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the head of the Governments.
The sentimental wish to see Germany's collapse completed by the activities of the allied European powers now ventures only shyly into the light of day. The ultimate wearing down of the German Army assures us of victory; but a speedy termination of the war under which the whole hemisphere suffers would be preferable. The Trans-Siberian Railway could bring the Japanese to Poland and East Prussia. The greatness of the expenditures therefor cannot frighten him who knows what tremendous sums each week of the war costs the Allies. Where it is a question of our life, of the existence of all free lands, every consideration must vanish. Public opinion desires an agreement with the Government of the Mikado.
These sentences I found in the Temps. England will not apply the brakes. Mr. Winston Churchill, to be sure, lauds the care-free fortune of his fatherland, which even after Trafalgar, he says, did not command the seas as freely as today; but in his inmost heart even this "savior of Calais" does not cheat himself concerning the fact that it is a matter of life and death. In order not to succumb in such a conflict, England will sacrifice its prosperous comfort and the lordly pride of the white man just as willingly as it would, if necessary, Gibraltar and Egypt, (which might be within the reach of German armies in the Spring.)
Will Japan follow the luring cry? Any price will be paid for it. What is Indo-China to the Frenchmen, whose immense colonial empire is exploited by strangers, if thereby they can purchase the bliss of no longer being "the victims of 1870"? And the yellow race that co-operated on Europe's soil in the most momentous decision of all history would live in splendor such as had never before been seen, and could keep China, the confused, reeling republic, for at least a generation in its guardianship.
The land of the Stars and Stripes is only being asked to give its neutrality the color of good-will. It is, for the time being, unlikely that the United States would stand beside our opponents with army and navy, as has been urgently counseled by Mr. Roosevelt, (who received the honorary doctor's title in Berlin and as a private citizen reviewed a brigade drill at the Kaiser's side.) Nevertheless, experience warns us to be prepared for every change of weather, from the distant West, as well as the distant East, (and to guard ourselves alike against abuse and against flattery.)
The sentiment of the Americans is unfriendly to us. In spite of Princes' travels, Fritz monuments, exchanges of professors, Kiel Week, and cable compliments? Yes, in spite of all that. We can't change it. And should avoid impetuous wooing.
The missionaries of the Foreign Office brought along with them in trunks and bundles across the sea the prettiest eagerness; but in many cases they selected useless and in some cases even injurious methods. Lectures, pamphlets, defensive writings—the number of the defenders and the abundance of their implements and talk only nursed suspicion. Whatever could be done for the explanation of the German conduct was done by Germania's active children, who know the country and the people.
The American business man never likes to climb mountains of paper. He has grown up in a different emotional zone, accustomed to a different standard of values than the Middle European. To feel his way into foreign points of view, finally to become, in ordinary daily relations, a psychologist, that will be one of the chief duties of the German of tomorrow. He may no longer demand that the stranger shall be like him; no longer denounce essential differences of temperament as a sin. The North American, among whose ancestors are Britons and Spaniards, Celts and Dutchmen, South Frenchmen and Low Germans, does not easily understand the Englishman, despite the common language; calls him surly, stiff, cold; charges him with selfishness and presumption, and has never, as a glance backward will show, shirked battle with him for great issues. For the most part, to be sure, it remains the scolding of relatives, who wish to tug at and tousel each other, not to murder each other.
Only before the comrade of Japan did the brow of Jonathan wrinkle more deeply. But every Briton swore that his kinsman would bar the yellow man's way to Hawaii, California, and the Philippines, and put him in the fields of Asia only as a terror to the Russians or a scarecrow to the Germans. A doubt remained, nevertheless; and we missed the chance of a strong insurance against Japanese encroachment. Stroked caressingly yesterday and boxed ears today:
Over there the dollar alone rules, and all diplomacy is a pestilential swamp; decency is an infrequent guest, with scorn grinning ever over its shoulder; the entrepreneur is a rogue, the official a purchasable puppet, the lady a cold-cream-covered lady-peacock.
The stubborn idealism, the cheerful ability of the American, his joy in giving, his achievements in and for art, science, culture—all that was scarcely noticed. Such a caricature could not be erased by compliments.
Before Mr. Roosevelt bared his set of stallion's teeth (Hengstgebiss) to the Berliners, he had spoken cheerfully to Admirals Dewey and Beresford concerning the possibilities of a war of the Star-Spangled Banner against Germany. And gentler fellow-countrymen of the billboard man said:
You're amazing. Yourselves devilishly greedy for profits, yet you scoff at us because we go chasing after business. You fetch heaps of money across the sea, and then turn up your sublimely snuffing noses as if it stinks.
To reach an understanding would have been difficult even in times of peace. The American is unwilling to be either stiff or subservient. He does not wish to be accounted of less value as a merchant than the officer or official; wishes to do what he likes and to call the President an ox outright if he pleases. Leave him as he is; and do not continually hurt the empire and its swarms of emigrant children by the attempt to force strangers into the shell of your will and your opinion.
Is it not possible that the American is analyzing the origin of the war in his own way? That he looks upon Belgium's fate with other eyes than the German? That he groans over "the army as an end in itself" and over "militarism"? That he does not understand us any quicker than the German Michel understands him? And that he puffs furiously when, after a long period of drought, the war, a European one, now spoils his trade?
Only for months at the worst, Sam; then it will spring up again in splendor such as has never been seen before. No matter how the dice fall for us, the chief winnings are going to you. The cost of the war (expense without increment, devastation, loss of business) amounts to a hundred thousand million marks or more for old Europa; she will be loaded down with loans and taxes. Even to the gaze of the victor, customers will sink away that were yesterday capable of buying and paying. Extraordinary risks cannot be undertaken for many a year on our soil. But everybody will drift over to you—Ministers of Finance, artists, inventors, and those who scent profits. You will merely have to free yourselves from dross (and from the trust thought that cannot be stifled) and to weed out the tares of demagogy; then you will be the effective lords of the world and will travel to Europe like a great Nürnberg that teaches people subsequently to feel how once upon a time it felt to operate in the Narrows.
The scope of your planning and of your accomplishment, the very rank luxuriance of your life, will be marveled at as a fairy wonder. We, victors and conquered and neutrals, will alike be confined by duty to austere simplicity of living. Your complaint is unfounded; only gird yourselves for a wee short time in patience. Whether the business deals which you grab in the wartime smell good or bad, we shall not now publicly investigate. If law and custom permit them, what do you care for alien heartache? If the statutes of international law prohibit them, the Governments must insure the effectiveness thereof. Scolding does not help. Until the battle has been fought out to the finish, until the book of its genesis has been exalted above every doubt, your opinion weighs as heavy as a little chicken's feather to us. Let writer and talker rave till they are exhausted—not a syllable yet in defense.
We do not feel hurt, (haven't spare time for it;) indeed, we are glad that you gave ten millions each month for Belgium, that you intend to help care for Poland, that you are opening the savings banks of your children. But, seriously, we beg you not to howl if American ships are damaged by the attack of German submarines. England wishes to shut off our imports of foodstuffs and raw materials, and we wish to shut off England's. You do not attempt to land on our coast; keep away also from that of Britain. You were warned early. What is now to take place is commanded by merciless necessity; must be.
And let no woeful cries, no threats, crowd into Germany's ears.