In 1919 an attempt was made, by America, to put an end to all European combinations of power. That attempt was unanimously approved by the people of the United States, some of whom voted for the League while the others endorsed a Society of Nations, to which W.G. Harding promised our adhesion. The Society of Nations was never seriously proposed, and Harding betrayed the American people; at the same time it was monumentally clear that France, with England's help, had sabotaged the actual League by making it a facade for a punitive alliance. Between these two betrayals, the idea of world organization was mortally compromised.
We may quarrel over the blame for the impotence of the League; did France invade the Ruhr because, without us in the League, she needed "protection"? or did we stay out of the League because we knew France would go into the Ruhr? That can be argued for ever. We know reasonably well why we kept out of the League; but no one troubles to remember how earnestly we wanted the League and prayed for it and wanted to enter, so that it remained always to trouble us as we tried to sleep through the destruction of Ethiopia or Spain or Czecho-Slovakia.
The League was not a promise of security to the people of the United States. Our Government may have felt the need of a world order; we did not; the war had barely touched us, yet even those whom it had touched least were enthusiasts for a new federation of nations. It was neither fear nor any abstract love of peace. The League, or any other confederation of Europe, corresponded to our American need, which was to escape alliance with any single power or small group; to escape the danger of Europe united against us; and to escape the devil's temptation of imperialism—because the people of the United States do not want to rule the world. There is an instinct which tells us that those who rule are not independent; they are slaves to their slaves; it tells us that we are so constituted that we cannot rule over part of Europe or join with any part to rule the rest; it is our instinct of independence which forbids us in the end to destroy the liberty of any other nation.
This goes back to the thought of union with the British nations. If we unite, and we are dominant, do we not accept the responsibility of domination? The appetite for empire is great and as the old world turned to us in 1941, as the War of the Worlds placed us in the centre of action, as more and more we came to make the decisions, as Australia, Russia, China, Britain called to us for help—the image of America ruling the world grew dazzling bright. It was our duty—our destiny; Mr. Henry Luce recognized the American century, seeing us accepted by the world which already accepts our motor cars, chewing gum and moving pictures. To shrink from ruling the world is abject cowardice. Did England shrink in 1914? Or France under Napoleon? Or Rome under Augustus? Or Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus?
No. No despotism ever shrank from its "destiny" to destroy the freedom of other nations.
But the history of America will still create our destiny—and our destiny is not to rule the world.
Our destiny is to remain independent and the only way we can remain independent is by cooperation with all the other nations of the earth. That is the only way for us to escape exclusive alliances, the pull of grandiose imperial schemes, the danger of alliances against us, and a tragic drift into the European war system which can destroy us. There is an area of action in which nationality plays no part: like labor statistics—and this area is steadily growing; there is another area jealously guarded, the area of honor and tariffs and taxes. We have to mark out the parts of our lives which we can offer up to international supervision and the parts we cannot. It will surprise us to see that we can become more independent if we collaborate more.
"Far as Human Eye Can See"
I have no capacity to describe the world order after the war. If, as I have said, the war is fought by us in accordance with our national character, we will create a democratic relationship between the nations of the world; and our experience added to that of Britain and the USSR will tend toward a Federation of Commonwealths; the three great powers have arrived, by three separate experiences, at the idea of Federation; two of them are working out the problems of sovereign independent states within a union; the third, ourselves, worked the problem out long ago by expunging States Rights in theory and allowing a great deal in practise. As a result of our experience, we dogmatically assert that no Federation can be created without the ultimate extinction of independence; we may be right. But the thought persists that independence was wanted for the sake of liberty; that independence without security was the downfall of Czecho-Slovakia and France; and that we have cherished independence because the rest of the world did not cherish liberty as we did. Profoundly as I believe independence to be the key to American action, I can imagine the translation of the word into other terms; we are allied to Britain and the Netherlands and the Soviets today, we have accepted alien command of our troops and ships; we are supplying arms to the Soviets and building a naval base in Ecuador and have accepted an agreement by which Great Britain will have a word in the creation of the most cherished of our independent creations, the tariff. Independence, so absolute in origin, is like all absolutes, non-existent in fact; we know this in private life, for the man of "independent means" may depend on ten thousand people to pay him dividends; and only the mad are totally independent of human needs and duties.
We will not willingly give up our right to elect a President; we may allow the President to appoint an American member to an international commission to allocate East Indies rubber; in return for which we will allocate our wheat or cotton or motors—on the advice of other nations, but without bowing our neck to their rule. We have always accepted specific international interference in our affairs—the Alabama claims and the Oregon boundary and the successive troubles in Venezuela prove that our "sovereign right" to do what we please was never exercised without some respect for the opinion of mankind—and the strength of the British navy. Indeed recent events indicate that for generations our independence of action, the reality of independence, rested on our faith in the British fleet.