Anglo-Saxon Solidarity
9781465639158
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
None denies that the world is askew. Ships of state are pilotless and rudderless, riding God knows where. In every country internal economic and social conditions are so upset that forecasts of the morrow seem futile. And yet international political relationships depend upon these internal conditions more intimately and more wholly than ever before in history. Statesmen may still be sitting at the diplomatic chessboard, making moves in accordance with the old rules of the game. But each realizes that shaping the foreign policy of his nation is no longer independent of or divorced from home policies and problems. Things have changed. The old order upon which one could count in directing foreign affairs has given place to new and uncertain values. Just what the changes are, whether for good or bad, whether permanent or temporary, and how we are to adjust ourselves to them and take advantage of them or combat them, as the case may be, on all this we read little that is constructive. Prophets are alarmists, and critics keep telling us what we know, that our statesmen are making a mess of things internationally and that we are badly off internally because legislators and executives are passive in the face of high prices and social unrest. Dear me! do we need to be taught that our house is not in order by having it, figuratively at least, pulled down around our ears? Politicians and professors and publicists must call a halt on their flood of complaint and denunciation and warning. The rôle of Cassandra may have been necessary to get people to pay attention, but when the public begins to say, "Well, what of it?" tirades must be changed to programs, if the piercing through the armor-plate of indifference is to accomplish any good result. "You writers on political and economic affairs give me the willies," said a bluff business man to me the other day. "If I do not stop reading you, I'll get to thinking in circles." Many who see the danger-signal try to heed it by shifting from fault-finding to rose-hued platitudes. We have seen this in the recent political campaign. When managers and orators felt that public opinion was growing restive under constant criticism and impatient of overdoses of "the world is going to the bow-wows," the strident notes gave way to a grand diapason of "All's well!" Everything had been and would again be lovely in these United States, once the disturbing element of the opposing political party was snowed under by the avalanche of voters saving the republic. In a political campaign demagogic methods may be excusable. After all, the public has the votes, and must be handled with due regard for the laws of mob psychology. But when we see the same methods applied to the presentation of a question of permanent interest and importance, and applied by men who both know better and have not the defense of electoral anxiety and expediency, it is time to protest. As an Anglo-Saxon American, whose deepest interest is in the solidarity of the English-speaking world, I want to raise my voice against the tactless and platitudinous type of article and speech one reads and hears everywhere in connection with the Pilgrim tercentenary. In my childhood, when the kitchen happened to run out of cereals or milk, the cook used to give us a dish of bread or flour and water with a liberal sprinkling of sugar to disguise its origin. To make children take "pap," everything depends upon the sugar. The ingredients and their cooking do not enter in.
