ONE OF THE LAST MEN

EUROPE AND AMERICA

OVER the heads of the European tribes two mightier peoples regarded each other

with increasing dislike. Well might they; for the one cherished the most ancient and

refined of all surviving cultures, while the other, youngest and most self-confident of

the great nations, proclaimed her novel spirit as the spirit of the future.

In the Far East, China, already half American, though largely Russian and wholly

Eastern, patiently improved her rice lands, pushed forward her railways, organized her

industries, and spoke fair to all the world. Long ago, during her attainment of unity

and independence, China had learnt much from militant Bolshevism. And after the

collapse of the Russian state it was in the East that Russian culture continued to live.

Its mysticism influenced India. Its social ideal influenced China. Not indeed that

China took over the theory, still less the practice, of communism; but she learnt to

entrust herself increasingly to a vigorous, devoted and despotic party, and to feel in

terms of the social whole rather than individualistically. Yet she was honeycombed

with individualism, and in spite of her rulers she had precipitated a submerged and

desperate class of wage slaves.

In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the

whole planet. Universally feared and envied, universally respected for their enterprise,

yet for their complacency very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing

the whole character of man's existence. By this time every human being throughout

the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where American

capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone,

radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American

thought. Year by year the aether reverberated with echoes of New York's pleasures

and the religious fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even

while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This, perhapswould not have mattered, had America been able to give of her very rare best. But

inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only the most vulgar traits of that

potentially great people could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of

these crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people's

baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America herself, were

irrevocably corrupted.

For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed

contributed amply to human thought. They had helped to emancipate philosophy from

ancient fetters. They had served science by lavish and rigorous research. In

astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done

much to reveal the dispositions of the stars and galaxies. In literature, though often

they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and

moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also created a new and

brilliant architecture. And their genius for organization worked upon a scale that was

scarcely conceivable, let alone practicable, to other peoples. In fact their best minds

faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so

that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice Americans were

present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated

self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed

with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but

arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up.

One who looks back across the aeons to this remote people can see their fate already

woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the grim jest

that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate the planet, should have

plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night.

Inevitably. Yet here was a people of unique promise, gifted innately beyond all other

peoples. Here was a race brewed of all the races, and mentally more effervescent than

any. Here were intermingled Anglo-Saxon stubbornness, Teutonic genius for detail

and systematization, Italian gaiety, the intense fire of Spain, and the more mobile

Celtic flame. Here also was the sensitive and stormy Slav, a youth-giving Negroid

infusion, a faint but subtly stimulating trace of the Red Man, and in the West a

sprinkling of the Mongol. Mutual intolerance no doubt isolated these diverse stocks to, some degree; yet the whole was increasingly one people, proud of its individuality, of

its success, of its idealistic mission in the world, proud also of its optimistic and

anthropocentric view of the universe. What might not this energy have achieved, had

it been more critically controlled, had it been forced to attend to life's more forbidding

aspects! Direct tragic experience might perhaps have opened the hearts of this people.

Intercourse with a more mature culture might have refined their intelligence. But the

very success which had intoxicated them rendered them also too complacent to learn

from less prosperous competitors.

Yet there was a moment when this insularity promised to wane. So long as England

was a serious economic rival, America inevitably regarded her with suspicion. But

when England was seen to be definitely in economic decline, yet culturally still at her

zenith, America conceived a more generous interest in the last and severest phase of

English thought. Eminent Americans themselves began to whisper that perhaps their

unrivalled prosperity was not after all good evidence either of their own spiritual

greatness or of the moral rectitude of the universe. A minute but persistent school of

writers began to affirm that America lacked self-criticism, was incapable of seeing the

joke against herself, was in fact wholly devoid of that detachment and resignation

which was the finest, though of course the rarest, mood of latter-day England. This

movement might well have infused throughout the American people that which was

needed to temper their barbarian egotism, and open their ears once more to the silence

beyond man's strident sphere. Once more, for only latterly had they been seriously

deafened by the din of their own material success. And indeed, scattered over the

continent throughout this whole period, many shrinking islands of true culture

contrived to keep their heads above the rising tide of vulgarity and superstition. These

it was that had looked to Europe for help, and were attempting a rally when England

and France blundered into that orgy of emotionalism and murder which exterminated

so many of their best minds and permanently weakened their cultural influence.

Subsequently it was Germany that spoke for Europe. And Germany was too serious

an economic rival for America to be open to her influence. Moreover German

criticism, though often emphatic, was too heavily pedantic, too little ironical, to pierce

the hide of American complacency. Thus it was that America sank further and further

into Americanism. Vast wealth and industry, and also brilliant invention, wereconcentrated upon puerile ends. In particular the whole of American life was

organized around the cult of the powerful individual, that phantom ideal which

Europe herself had only begun to outgrow in her last phase. Those Americans who

wholly failed to realize this ideal, who remained at the bottom of the social ladder,

either consoled themselves with hopes for the future, or stole symbolical satisfaction

by identifying themselves with some popular star, or gloated upon their American

citizenship, and applauded the arrogant foreign policy of their government. Those

who achieved power were satisfied so long as they could merely retain it, and

advertise it uncritically in the conventionally self-assertive manners.

It was almost inevitable that when Europe had recovered from the Russo-German

disaster she should come to blows with America; for she had long chafed under the

saddle of American finance, and the daily life of Europeans had become more and

more cramped by the presence of a widespread and contemptuous foreign

"aristocracy" of American business men. Germany alone was comparatively free from

this domination, for Germany was herself still a great economic power. But in

Germany, no less than elsewhere, there was constant friction with the Americans.

Of course neither Europe nor America desired war. Each was well aware that war

would mean the end of business prosperity, and for Europe very possibly the end of

all things; for it was known that man's power of destruction had recently increased,

and that if war were waged relentlessly, the stronger side might exterminate the other.

But inevitably an "incident" at last occurred which roused blind rage on each side of

the Atlantic. A murder in South Italy, a few ill-considered remarks in the European

Press, offensive retaliation in the American Press accompanied by the lynching of an

Italian in the Middle West, an uncontrollable m******e of American citizens in Rome,

the dispatch of an American air fleet to occupy Italy, interception by the European air

fleet, and war was in existence before ever it had been declared. This aerial action

resulted, perhaps unfortunately for Europe, in a momentary check to the American

advance. The enemy was put on his mettle, and prepared a crushing blow.