Like the ingenuous Mr. Pepys, the “Nation” does “just naturally hate the French,” and takes it hard that the world should persistently regard them as a valuable asset to civilization. The concentrated nationalism which held Verdun now expresses itself in a steely resolution to hold France, and to recover for her out of the wreckage of Europe the material aid of which she stands in need. Coöperation is a good word and a good thing. To a Frenchman it means primarily the interest of his own country. What else does it mean to any of us? Britain’s policy of conciliation, our policy of aloofness, Germany’s bargaining, and Russia’s giant bluff, all have the same significance. “Be not deceived! Nothing is so dear to any creature as his profit,” said Epictetus, who, having stript his own soul bare of desires, was correspondingly ready to forgive the acquisitive instincts of others.
Mr. Edward Martin, writing very lucidly and very sympathetically of the French, admits that their conception of their duty to the world “is to defend France, keep her functioning, and make her powerful and prosperous.” It sounds narrow, and practical, and arrogant. It also sounds familiar. France feels herself to be intellectually and artistically a thing of value. The best service she can render to the world is her own preservation. How does America feel? The very week that Mr. Martin offered his interpretation of Gallic nationalism, a writer in the “Review of Reviews” (New York), after asserting with indescribable smugness that Americans “have been trained to an attitude of philanthropy hardly known in other countries,” proceeded to illustrate this attitude by defending high tariffs, restricted immigration, and other comforting pieces of legislation. “Our best service to the world,” he explained, “lies in maintaining our national life and character.”
This is just what France thinks, only her most zealous sons forbear to define prudence as philanthropy. They believe that the world is the better for what they have to give; but they know that it is not for the world’s sake that they so keenly desire to be in a position to give it. They are profoundly sentimental, but their sentiment is all for la patrie. Internationally they are practical to the point of hardness, and they see no reason why they should be otherwise. There is for them no pressing necessity to assume that they love their neighbours as themselves.
It is different with Americans in whom idealism and materialism dispute every inch of the ground. A Texan professor, sent by the American Peace Commission to investigate conditions in Germany, published in “The North American Review,” May, 1922, a paper on “American Ideals and Traditions,” which was widely quoted as embodying a clear and fervid spirit of hopefulness, much needed in these disillusioned days. The writer took the high ground that Americans were the first people in the world “to make the spirit of disinterested human service the measure of a nation as well as of a man. What is now termed American humanitarianism is but the American spirit of philanthropy at home, translated into international relations.” This “simple historical fact” is the key to all our actions. “The entrance of America into the Great War was not a species of interruption in the normal flow of its idealism; but was the irresistible on-pressing of the great current of our ‘will to human service.’”
One wonders if this particular idealist remembers what happened in Europe, in the United States, and on the high seas, between July, 1914, and April, 1917? Does he recall those thirty-two months, close-packed with incidents of such an order that their cumulative weight broke down our hardy resistance to “service,” and drove us slowly but splendidly into action? Great deeds are based on great emotions; but the conflicting emotions of that period are not accurately described as “irresistible.” The best of them were too long and too successfully resisted. We gain no clear impression of events by thinking in ornamental terms. Headlines are one thing, and history is another. “In judging others,” says Thomas à Kempis, “a man usually toileth in vain. For the most part he is mistaken, and he easily sinneth. But in judging and scrutinizing himself, he always laboureth with profit.”
The continued use of the word “entangling” is to be regretted. It arouses an excess of uneasiness in cautious souls. All alliances from marriage up—or down—must necessarily entangle. The anchorites of Thebais are the only examples we have of complete emancipation from human bonds. That simple and beautiful thing, minding our own affairs and leaving our neighbours to mind theirs, is unhappily not possible for allies. Neither is a keen and common desire for peace a sufficient basis for agreement. Peace must have terms, and terms require a basis of their own—justice, reason, and the limited gains which are based on mutual concessions. “Whether we are peaceful depends upon whether others are provocative.” Mr. W. H. Mallock tells us a pleasant story of an old Devonshire woman who was bidden by the parson to be “conciliating” to her husband. “I labour for peace, sir,” was the spirited reply. “But when I speak to he thereof, he directly makes hisself ready for battle.”
There are students of history who would have us believe that certain nations are natural allies, fitted by character and temperament to agree, and to add to one another’s pleasure and profit. Germany and Russia have been cited more than once as countries instinctively well disposed towards each other, because each supplements the other’s talents. Bismarck ranked the Germans as among the male, and the Slavs as among the female nations of the world. The driving power he rightfully assigned to Germany. “The soft Slav nature,” says a writer in “The New Republic,” “emotional, sensitive, but undisciplined, has derived most of such progress as it has made in material civilization from German sources.”
Both countries have proved unsound allies, and Russia has the feminine quality of changeableness. “Dangerous to her foes, disastrous to her friends.” Both make the same kind of currency, and stand in need of business partners who make a different sort. America, with the gold of Europe locked up in her treasury, is the most desirable, but least accessible, partner in Christendom. As the great creditor of the civilized world, she has been impelled to assert that no participation on her part in any international conference implies a surrender of her claims to payment. France, as the great sufferer by a world’s war, has made it equally clear that no participation on her part implies a surrender of her claims to reparation. The anger and shame with which the Allies first saw the injuries inflicted on her have been softened by time; and that strange twist in human nature which makes men more concerned for the welfare of a criminal than for the welfare of his victim has disposed us to think kindly of an unrepentant Germany. But France cannot well forget the wounds from which she bleeds. Less proud than Britain, which prefers beggary to debt, she is infinitely more logical; and it is the unassailable strength of her position which has irritated the sentimentalists of the world, whose hearts are in the right place, but whose heads are commonly elsewhere.
The French press has waxed sorrowful and bitter over France’s sense of isolation. Her cherished belief in the “unshakable American friendship” has been cruelly shattered, and she has asked of Heaven and earth where is the (proverbially absent) gratitude of republics. That there is no such thing as an unshakable national friendship is as well known to the clear-headed and well-informed French as to the rest of us. They were our very good friends in 1777, and our love for them flamed high. They were our very bad friends in 1797, and by the time they had taken or sunk three hundred and forty American ships, our affection had grown cool. It revived in 1914 under the impetus of their great wrongs and greater valour. Some good feeling remains, and bids fair to remain, if the press and the politicians of both lands will kindly let it alone; but popular enthusiasm, a fire of straw, burned itself quickly out. After all, we ourselves are no longer the idol of our whilom friends. A fairy god-mother is popular only when she is changing pumpkins into coaches, and mice into prancing bays. When she gives nothing but good advice, her words are no more golden than her neighbour’s. In the realm of the practical, a friendship which does not help, and an enmity which does not hurt, can never be controlling factors.
Great Britain sets scant store by any ally save the sea. She has journeyed far, changing friends on the road as a traveller by post changed horses. She has fought her way, and is singularly devoid of rancour towards her enemies. The time has indeed gone by when, after battle, the English and French knights—or what was left of them—would thank each other for a good fight. Those were days of lamentable darkness, when the last thing a gentleman craved was the privilege of dying in his bed by some slow and agonizing process, the gift of nature, and gratefully designated as “natural.” The headsman for the noble, the hangman for the churl, and the fortunes of war for everybody, made death so easy to come by, and so inexpensive, that there was a great deal of money left for the pleasures of living. That stout-hearted Earl of Northumberland who thanked God that for two hundred years no head of his house had died in bed, knew what his progenitors had been spared. Even in the soberly civilized eighteenth century there lingered a doubt as to the relative value of battle-field, gallows and sick-chamber.