American society—the high caste of millionaires and semi-millionaires, and demi-semi-millionaires—is perhaps rather careless in its display of wealth and in its open manifestations of luxury. The long, unending line of automobiles that go crawling down Fifth Avenue and rushing down Riverside Drive, on any evening of the year, revealing women all aglitter with diamonds, with priceless furs round their white shoulders, in gowns that have cost the year's income of a working family, has no parallel in any capital of Europe. There is no such pageant of wealth in London or Paris. In no capital is there such luxury as one finds in New York hotels, mansions, and ballrooms. The evidence of money is overwhelming and oppressive. The generosity of many of these wealthy people, their own simplicity, good humor, and charm, are not safeguards against the envy and the hatred of those who struggle hard for a living wage and for a security in life which is harder still to get.
When I was in America I found a consciousness of this among the rich people, with some of whom I came in touch. They were afraid of the future. They saw trouble ahead, and they seemed anxious to build bridges between the ranks of labor and their own class. The wisest among them did not adopt the stiff-necked attitude of complete hostility to the demands of labor for a more equal share of profit and of governance. One or two men I met remembered the days when they were at the bottom of the ladder, and said, "Those fellows are right.... I'm going half-way to meet them."
If capital goes anything like half-way, there will be no bloody conflict in the United States. But there will be revolution, not less radical because not violent. That meeting half-way between capital and labor in the United States would be the greatest revolution the modern world has seen.
That, then, is one of the ways in which English observers see the future of the United States. The other way they suggest would be a great calamity for the world. It is the way of militarism—a most grisly thought!
It is argued by those who take this line of prophecy that democracy is no enemy of war. On the contrary, they say, a democracy like that of the United States, virile, easily moved to emotion, passionate, sure of its strength, jealous of its honor, and quick to resent any fancied insult, is more liable to catch the war fever than nations controlled by cautious diplomats and by hereditary rulers. It is generally believed now that the Great War in Europe which ravaged so many countries was not made by the peoples on either side, and that it did not happen until the rival powers on top desired it to happen and pressed the buttons and spoke the spell-words which called the armies to the colors. It is probable, and almost certain, that it would not have happened at all if the peoples had been left to themselves, if the decision of war and peace had been in their hands, and if their passions had not been artificially roused and educated. But that is no argument, some think, against the warlike character of strong democracies. The ancient Greeks were a great democracy, but they were the most ardent warriors of their world, and fought for markets, sea supremacy, and racial prestige.
So some people believe that the United States may adopt a philosophy of militarism challenging the sea-power of the British Empire, by adding Mexico to her dominions, and by capturing the strategic points of the world's trade routes. They see in the ease with which the United States adopted military service in the late war and the rapid, efficient way in which an immense army was raised and trained a menace to the future of the world, because what was done once to crush the enemy of France and England may be done again if France or England arouse the hostility of the American people. The intense self-confidence of the Americans, their latent contempt of European peoples, their quickness to take affront at fancied slights worked up by an unscrupulous press, their consciousness of the military power that was organized but only partially used in the recent war, and their growing belief that they are a people destined to take and hold the leadership of the world, constitute, in the opinion of some nervous onlookers, a psychology which may lead the United States into tremendous and terrible adventures. I have heard it stated by many people not wholly insane that the next world war will be mainly a duel between the United States and the British Empire.
They are not wholly insane, the people who say these things over the dinner-table or in the club smoking-room, yet to my mind such opinions verge on insanity. It is of course always possible that any nation may lose all sense of reason and play the wild beast, as Germany did. It is always possible that by some overwhelming popular passion any nation may be stricken with war fever. But of all nations in the world I think the people of the United States are least likely to behave in that way, especially after their experience in the European war.
The men who went back were under no illusions as to the character of modern warfare. They hated it. They had seen its devilishness. They were convinced of its idiocy, and in every American home to which they returned were propagandists against war as an argument or as a romance. Apart from that, it is almost certain that militarism of an aggressive kind is repugnant to the tradition and instinct of the American people. They have no use for "shining armor" and all the old shibboleths of war's pomp and pageantry which put a spell on European peoples. The military tradition based on the falsity of war's "glory" is not in their spirit or in their blood. They will fight for the safety of civilization, as it was threatened in 1914, for the rescue of free peoples menaced by brutal destruction, and they will fight, as all brave people will fight, to safeguard their own women and children and liberty.