First World War Centennial

CHAPTER IX

AMERICA AFTER THE WAR

After the present war the conditions of the world will be greatly changed, and America can never again be quite the same. The isolation of America will have ended; its relations to foreign pow­ers will be reversed. But the value of its alliance with France, England, Italy, and Japan and "preparedness" will for a long period be worth to America all they have cost, and the cost has been al­ready prodigious. The internal prob­lems of America after the war will not be diminished. Only a few of the prob­lems, foreign and domestic, have been noticed in the preceding pages. There are many others. By means of the war it will have become evident to Americans that a very prosperous nation, with an extended and exposed territory, cannot safely be left longer undefended, and that the future measures for the defense of the country must be more commensu­rate with its dangers and the national potentiality. Americans will not here­after rely on the isolated position of America, nor will they easily resume their former policy of trusting the de­fense of the country wholly to chance. If they do, they will in the end suffer un­told miseries, and the prosperity of America will vanish as quickly as it ap­peared.

Not only must the American be made a more efficient government from every point of view, but it must be kept effi­cient. America can never again, after this war, safely return to its indiffer­ence to the military situation of the country. It has chosen to assert itself as a great power in the world, and it must recognize the responsibilities and the risks which the assertion involved, or it will fall as other weak countries have always fallen. There is now no inter­mediate choice for Americans. They must be up and onward or fall to pieces. In the future America must be made able to stand by itself; it can safely trust to the permanency of no alliance; it must be prepared at all cost to resist aggres­sion from any and every quarter. To do this it must be kept a strong as well as a rich nation. The enmities and the jealousies created by the present war will not subside for a century. If they should, a rich nation, helpless and unpre­pared to defend itself, is certain, when a good opportunity offers, to be attacked. A nation with the sharp enmities cre­ated by American policies is in a par­ticularly dangerous situation. Only by remaining prepared can America hope to escape unscathed.

The methods thus far characteristic of American democracy are not condu­cive to the permanent peace of America. The constant rotation in office, which is a principle of democracy, often brings into power men not trained in either state-craft or diplomacy. Many of the suc­cessful lawyers and the prominent poli­ticians promoted to high office at Wash­ington are not profoundly trained in the art of government. Some of them have little familiarity with even the foreign relations of America, while only a few of them are deeply versed in the finer art of diplomacy. Such things are not easily acquired by men not in public life; they require a lifelong training.

The rest of the world asserts that the foreign policy of America has been char­acterized by a certain abrupt directness which is inconsistent with the usages of diplomacy and is unnecessarily disturb­ing to the peace of the world. The di­rectness of American diplomacy is too often mistaken by foreign states for either menace or a sign of unfriendli­ness. When it is mistaken for menace, America is left in a very unsafe position unless prepared for sudden attack. It does not diminish the danger to plead that the "directness" of America in dip­lomatic negotiations is not intended to be minatory or unfriendly, or that American diplomacy is only one phase of a government in which the people rule. The necessity that American diplomats shall not disregard "popular opinion" doubtless too often obligates them to a sort of spectacular diplomacy which is certainly not consistent with diplomatic usage as hitherto understood. The ex­igencies of politics in America often re­quire an administration to submit its foreign policies at every stage to the people, although the electors themselves have no settled foreign policy upon which the administration and its diplo­matic corps can rely. Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of democracy as a principle of government is observable in the history of American foreign rela­tions. There is in America no such thing as a settled foreign policy binding on successive administrations. This is not so in France or England. The de­fect can be corrected only by greater loy­alty of Americans to constituted au­thority and by a deeper popular convic­tion, gleaned from hard experience, that matters of foreign policy should proceed on a settled and permanent principle which must be determined by competent governmental agents trained in the art of diplomacy.

The accusation of the world that American diplomacy too frequently ex­hibits an unfriendly attitude which is not sufficiently conciliatory is in part due to the unusual frankness characteristic of American diplomacy. To be effectual, diplomacy must be reticent. Much of the information imputed to diplomats should, if repeated, be confined to the archives of the State Department. The English foreign minister, Mr. Balfour, in August, 1917, lucidly and satisfac­torily explained to Parliament the real reasons for diplomatic reticence. His explanation must have been very dis­quieting to some diplomats in America. Not only should diplomacy be reticent, but it should be stately. European di­plomacy has been built up on a policy of compromise, facilitated by a distin­guished conciliation and marked official politeness. The diction of diplomatic intercourse should at all times be one of extreme civility. The use of the term "demand" in international negotiations is, for example, equivalent in European diplomacy to hostilities. In American diplomacy the term "demand" has not had the same significance. It has been used on several occasions with very awk­ward results. Doubtless America has occasionally had diplomats of excep­tional ability, but it has had more of in­adequate attainment. If America is to continue to pursue its past diplomatic methods, it should have a greater force always behind it. The Japanese states­man Count Okuma is reported to have said in 1915, "Diplomacy, to be really effective and successful, must be backed up by sufficient national strength." The directness and the exigencies of American diplomacy make it particu­larly necessary that America should be prepared for hostile eventualities.

The proper conservation of all the ele­ments of a nation's strength is a prime duty of a great government. When a nation's territory is so situated that it has an extensive coast bordering on the open seas and a large population dwell­ing on the seaboard, and yet the nation has no commercial marine and no seafar­ing men, there is evidently something awry in the governmental policies or some omission on the part of the govern­ment. After the present war America will in all probability be reinstated in the leading position which it once held on the high seas. It is now becoming apparent in America that it is not good policy to abandon transportation of American commerce to foreigners. Americans at last begin to see, also, that a commercial marine is an important auxiliary in waging successful warfare, defensive or offensive. Had America in 1914 possessed a great mercantile ma­rine and an adequate armed force, the entire course of the general war in Eu­rope would have been different. That America should in the future maintain a mercantile marine has already become a common conviction in the American coast towns. It is to be hoped that this conviction will become general.

The building up of a commercial ma­rine will be one of the after-war prob­lems; but the greatest of all such prob­lems will be "preparedness." In a de­mocracy preparedness meets with an opposition not tolerated in states exist­ing under more centralized forms of gov­ernment. Before discussing the prob­lems of the American commercial marine and " preparedness," it will be best to consider the characteristics of American democracy, for they affect both prepar­edness and the commercial marine of America.