ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY
ANGLO-SAXON
SOLIDARITY
BY
Herbert Adams Gibbons
THE CENTURY CO.
MDCCCCXXI
COPYRIGHT 1920 BY
THE CENTURY CO
REPRINTED FROM
THE CHRISTMAS Century 1920
ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY
By Herbert Adams Gibbons
None denies that the world is askew. Ships of state are pilotless andrudderless, riding God knows where. In every country internal economicand social conditions are so upset that forecasts of the morrow seemfutile. And yet international political relationships depend uponthese internal conditions more intimately and more wholly than everbefore in history. Statesmen may still be sitting at the diplomaticchessboard, making moves in accordance with the old rules of the game.But each realizes that shaping the foreign policy of his nation is nolonger independent of or divorced from home policies and problems.Things have changed. The old order upon which one could count indirecting foreign affairs has given place to new and uncertain values.Just what the changes are, whether for good or bad, whether permanentor temporary, and how we are to adjust ourselves to them and takeadvantage of them or combat them, as the case may be, on all this weread little that is constructive. Prophets are alarmists, and criticskeep telling us what we know, that our statesmen are making a mess ofthings internationally and that we are badly off internally becauselegislators and executives are passive in the face of high prices andsocial unrest.
Dear me! do we need to be taught that our house is not in orderby having it, figuratively at least, pulled down around our ears?Politicians and professors and publicists must call a halt on theirflood of complaint and denunciation and warning. The rôle of Cassandramay have been necessary to get people to pay attention, but when thepublic begins to say, "Well, what of it?" tirades must be changed toprograms, if the piercing through the armor-plate of indifference isto accomplish any good result. "You writers on political and economicaffairs give me the willies," said a bluff business man to me the otherday. "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 fromfault-finding to rose-hued platitudes. We have seen this in the recentpolitical campaign. When managers and orators felt that public opinionwas growing restive under constant criticism and impatient of overdosesof "the world is going to the bow-wows," the strident notes gave wayto a grand diapason of "All's well!" Everything had been and wouldagain be lovely in these United States, once the disturbing elementof the opposing political party was snowed under by the avalanche ofvoters saving the republic.
In a political campaign demagogic methods may be excusable. Afterall, the public has the votes, and must be handled with due regardfor the laws of mob psychology. But when we see the same methodsapplied to the presentation of a question of permanent interest andimportance, and applied by men who both know better and have not thedefense of electoral anxiety and expediency, it is time to prot