CHAPTER IX[ToC]
Definition of America
We have two prodigious victories to gain—the war and the world after the war. The chatter about not "defining war aims" because specific aims are bound to disturb us, is dangerously beside the point, because the kind of world we will create depends largely on the kind of war we wage. If we nazify ourselves to win, we will win a nazified world; if we communize ourselves, we will probably share a modified Marxian world with the Soviets; and if we win by intensification of our democracy, we will create the only kind of world in which we can live. And, as noted in discussing the strategy of the war, the chances are that we can only win if we divine the essential nature of our people and create a corresponding strategy.
In addition to the direct military need for knowing what kind of people we are, there is the propaganda need, so that we can create a national unity and put aside the constant irritation of partisanship, the fear of "incidents", the wastage of emotional energy in quarrels among ourselves. And there is a third reason for an exact and candid review of what we are: it is our future.
When this war ends we will make, in one form or another, solemn agreements with the nations of the world, our allies and what is left of our enemies. We know almost nothing about any of them—we, the American people. Our State Department knows little enough; what it knows, it has not communicated to us; and we have never been interested enough to make discoveries of our own. We are about to commit a huge international polygamy, with forty picture brides, each one in a different national costume.
Some conditions of this mass marriage are the subject of the next section of this book. Here I am concerned with the one thing we can do to make the preliminary steps intelligent. We cannot learn all we need to know about all the other nations of the world; but we can reflect on some things within ourselves, we can know ourselves better; and on this knowledge we can erect the framework into which the other nations will fit; or out of which they will remain if they choose not to fit. We can, by knowing a few vital things about ourselves, learn a lot about South America and Europe and Asia and Australia; what we are will determine whom we will marry, whom reject, and whom we will set up, if agreeable, in an unsanctified situation. The laws of man, in many states, require certificates of eligibility to marry, the services of the church inquire if an obstacle exists. Before we enter into compacts full of tragic and noble possibilities, we might also make inquiries. Something in us shies away from the pomp of the old diplomacy—what is that something? We used to like revolutionaries and never understood colonial exploitation—how do these things affect us now? Are we prepared to deal with a government in one country and a people in another? Is it possible for us to ally ourselves to Communists, reformed fascists, variously incomplete democracies, cooperative democratic monarchies, and centralized empires, all at the same time? Is there anything in us which requires us to make terms with Britain about India, with Russia about propaganda, with Sweden about exports, before we make a new world with all of them? Can we, honorably, enter any agreement, with any state or with all states, while they are ignorant of our character—as ignorant, possibly, as we are of theirs?
The difficulty we are in is nicely doubled, because introspection is no happy habit and we say that we know all about America, or we say that America cannot be known—it is too big, too varied, too complicated. And these two opposite statements are in themselves a beginning of a definition. America, by this testimony, is a country, large, varied, complex, inhabited by people who either understand their country perfectly or will not make an effort to understand it. I would not care to rest on this definition—but it shows the need of definition.
Mathematics of Character