We have to rid ourselves of the intolerable flummery of the diplomats because in the future foreign affairs are going to be connected by a thousand wires to our domestic problems, and we propose to see who pulls the wires. The old tradition of betraying a President at home while supporting any stupidity abroad will have to be scrapped; and we will be a more formidable nation, in external affairs, if we conduct those affairs in our way, not in the way of our enemies.
A "Various" Diplomacy
It will not be enough to destroy the myth of high diplomacy and reduce it to its basic combinations of chicanery and power-pressure, its motives of pride and honor and greed. We have to take the positive step of creating a new diplomacy, based on the needs of America, and those needs have to be consciously understood by the American people. Out of that, we may create a layman's foreign policy executed by professional diplomats; just as we are on the way to create a layman's labor policy, executed by professional statisticians, mediators and agents. We have to recognize diplomacy as a polite war; and, as suggested in connection with actual war, we must not fight in the style or strategy of our enemies. We have always imitated in routine statesmanship; and only in the past twenty years have we begun an American style of diplomacy. The "strategy of variety" may serve us here as on the battlefield; it may not. But the strategy of European diplomacy is their weapon, and their strength; we are always defeated when we attempt it, as Wilson was, as Stimson was over Manchuria. Our only successes have been when we sidestepped diplomacy entirely and talked to people.
The first step toward creating our own, democratic, diplomacy will be to convince the American people that they will not escape the consequences of this war. Many of us believe that we actually escaped the consequences of the first World War by rejecting the League of Nations; a process of re-education is indicated, for background. This education can begin with the future and move backward—for our relation to post-war Europe can be diagrammed almost as accurately as a fever chart. We withdrew from the League for peace and found ourselves in an alliance for war. It can hardly be called a successful retreat. Actually we were in Europe, up to our financial necks, from the moment the war ended to the day when the collapse of an Austrian bank sent us spiralling to destruction in 1929; we stayed in it, trying to recover the benefits of the Davis and Young plans by the Hoover moratorium. We did everything with Europe except recognize its first weak effort to federalize itself on our model.
Decisive our part in this war will be, but if we withdraw as we did the last time, leaving the nations of Europe to work out their own destiny, we will, as a practical matter, destroy ourselves.
The only other certainty we have is that the prosperity of the United States is better served by peace in the world than by war. This is true of all nations; the only difference for us is that the dislocation may be a trace more severe, and that we have no tradition of huge territorial repayments, or indemnities, by which a nation may recoup the losses of war, while its people starve.
Given that basis, we can observe Europe and Asia after the present war.
Phases of the Future
We ought at once to make a calendar. This war will probably not follow the tradition of the last one; it may not gratify us with an exact moment for an armistice; we may defeat our enemies piecemeal and miss the headlines and tickertape and international broadcasts and cities alight again and all the gaiety and solemn emotion of an end to war. This war breaks patterns and sets new ones, so the first date on our calendar is a doubtful one; but let us say that by a certain day we will have smashed Germany and Japan; Italy would have betrayed them long before.
Our next step is the "peace conference" stage. Again this war may disappoint us; we may have a long armistice and a reorganization of the world's powers, without Versailles and premiers in secret conferences; perhaps by that time the peoples of Europe and America will have captured their diplomats. Still, let us say that an interim between armistice and world-order will occur.