Under dispute

by Agnes Repplier

Few contentions are so innocent of ill-doing. The neighbours whom we counsel most assiduously are the nations of the world and their governments, which might well be doubtful, seeing that they stumble at every step; but which perhaps stand more in need of smooth roads than of direction. It is true that M. Stéphane Lauzanne, editor of “Le Matin,” assured us in the autumn of 1920 that France did not seek American gold, or ships, or guns, or soldiers—“only counsels.” This sounded quite in our line, until the Frenchman, with that fatal tendency to the concrete which is typical of the Gallic mind, proceeded to explain his meaning: “We ask of the country of Edison and of the Wrights that it will present us with a system for a league of nations that will work. If there were nothing needed but eloquence, the statesmen of old Europe would have been sufficient.”

Why did not M. Lauzanne ask for the moon while he was about it? What does he suppose we Americans have been striving for since 1789 but systems that will work? Henry Adams, commenting upon the disastrous failure of Grant’s administration, says just this thing. “The world” (the American world) “cared little for decency. What it wanted, it did not know. Probably a system that would work, and men who could work it. But it found neither.”

And still the search goes on. A system of taxation that will work. A system of wage-adjustment that will work. A system of prohibition that will work. A system of public education that will work. These are the bright phantoms we pursue; and now a Paris editor casually adds a system for a working league of nations. “If France is in the right, let America give us her moral support. If France is in the wrong, let America show us the road to follow.”

To presume agreement where none exists is the most dangerous form of self-deception. When newspapers and orators tell us that to the United States has come “the moral leadership of the world,” we must understand them to imply that foreign nations, with whom we have little in common, are of our way of thinking—provided always that they know what we think, and that we know ourselves. For the wide divergence of national aspirations, they make scant allowance; for misunderstanding and ill-will, they make no allowance at all. Before the election of 1920, the spokesmen of both political parties assured us with equal fervour that our country was destined to be the bulwark of the world’s peace. Their prescriptions for peace differed radically in detail; but all agreed that ours was to be the administering hand, and all implied the readiness of Europe (and, if need be, Asia and Africa) to accept our restoratives. “Want America to teach Turkey,” was the headline of a leading newspaper, which, in October, 1920, deplored the general unteachableness of the Turk.

Perhaps the careless crudeness of headlines deceives a large class of hurried readers who rely too implicitly upon them. When the Conference at Versailles was plodding through its task, a New York paper announced in large type: “Italy dissatisfied with territory assigned her by Colonel House.” It had a mirth-provoking sound; but, after all, the absurdity was in no way attributable to Colonel House; and, in the matter of dissatisfaction, not even a headline could go beyond the facts. What has ever impelled the “Tribuna” and the “Avanti” to express amicable agreement, save their mutual determination to repudiate the intervention of the United States?

When Mr. Wilson risked speaking directly to the Italian people, he paved the way for misunderstanding. To a government, words are words. It deals with them itself, and it makes allowance for the difficulty of translating them into action. But a proletariat is apt, not merely to attach significance to words, but to read an intensive meaning into them. We have not done badly by Italy. We spent a great deal of money upon her cold and hungry children. She is sending us shiploads of immigrants. Her resentment at our counsel has seemed to us unwise and ungrateful, seeing that we must naturally know what is best for her. We cannot accept ill-will with the unconcern of Great Britain, which has been used to it, and has survived it, for centuries. We feel that we deserve well of the world, because we are immaculately free from coveting what we do not want or need.

And yet one wonders now and then whether, if there had been four years of glorious and desolating war on this Western continent, and the United States had emerged triumphant, but spent, broken and bankrupt, we should be so sure of our mission to regenerate. Would we then be so high-handed with England, so critical of France? No people in the world resent strictures more than we do. No people in the world are less keen for admonishment. The sixty-six members of the Yale Faculty who in 1920 sent a remonstrance to Congress, protesting against any interference in the domestic policies of Great Britain, based their protest upon our unalterable determination to preserve our own independence unviolated, and to manage our own affairs. They felt, and said, that we should be scrupulous to observe the propriety we exacted of others.

The ingenious device of appointing an American committee, which in its turn appointed an American commission to sit as a court of appeal, and receive evidence touching the relations of Great Britain and Ireland, was the most original and comprehensive measure for counselling the doubtful that this country has ever seen. The informality of the scheme made it a pure delight. Governors of Wyoming and North Dakota, mayors of Milwaukee and Anaconda, clergymen and college professors, ladies and gentlemen of unimpeachable respectability and unascertainable information, all responded to the “Nation’s” call, and placed their diplomacy at its disposal.

Pains were taken by Mr. Villard to convince the public that the object of the committee was to avert “the greatest calamity which could befall the civilized world”—a war between Great Britain and the United States, than which nothing seemed less likely. Its members disclaimed anything like “improper interference in the concerns of another nation.” They evidently did not consider that summoning Ireland and England to appear as plaintiff and defendant before a self-constituted tribunal three thousand miles away was in the nature of an interference. “I meddle with no man’s conscience,” said Cromwell broad-mindedly, when he closed the Catholic churches, and forbade the celebration of Mass.

The humour of selecting a group of men and women in one corner of the world, and delegating to them the unofficial task of settling public affairs in another, was lost upon Americans, who, having been repeatedly told that they were to “show the way,” conceived themselves to be showing it. When Great Britain and Ireland settled their own affairs without asking our advice or summoning our aid, there were hyphenated citizens in New York and elsewhere who deeply resented such independent action, and who have shown ever since a bitter unfriendliness to their own kith and kin. Even Mr. Cosgrave’s burst of Gaelic eloquence before the League of Nations, which should have melted a heart of flint, was powerless to allay their ill-temper.