According to the legend, America is a nation devoted to pure action—a muscular, highly organized country, as little given to brooding introspection and as dedicated to physical activity as a professional football team. The simile may be a good one; we see to it, by elaborate mechanisms, that our colleges and universities provide an adequate, unfailing supply of skilled athletes and worry very little if the output of thinkers—physicists, let us say, or other eggheads—runs a trifle short of the potential demand. It may be that we live up to the legend a little too ardently.
Yet the legend itself is somewhat out of date. We are an introspective people, and we are becoming more so every day. The current revival of interest in American history is an indication of the fact.
There are a great many reasons for that revival, but one of the strongest, certainly, is an instinctive desire to make a correct appraisal of our present status. That status grows out of all of the yesterdays which are history’s especial concern, and it is obviously something we want to examine as closely as we can. What are we like, as a people? What sort of civilization have we finally built up here? What has become of us, at last, after all of these historic alarms and excursions? What does our society mean today, and where have we finally got to?
This, perhaps, is what we are really looking for, as we at last elevate history into something tolerably popular and familiar. The only trouble is that none of these plaintive questions can have a really satisfactory answer, because the simple truth is that we have not, so far, actually got anywhere yet—not anywhere that can serve as a place to pause and take a deep breath. History is a continuous process of change, and the change is still going on. We have not yet become something; we are still becoming. This bounteous year 1958 is no more the end of the journey than was 1861, or 1907, or any other year plucked at random from the calendar. New appraisals are all very well, but we Americans are still making our civilization, and what it will eventually look like is a secret.
So our introspection must be concerned chiefly with the attempt to get a line on that secret. We could hardly be better engaged, because even though we do not know just where we are going we are plainly going somewhere at a prodigious rate of speed, and unless we nourish a strong faith we are apt to wonder if the end of the journey may not be that steep place that leads down to the sea. To the examination of this secret Max Lerner applies himself diligently in a brooding, thoughtful new book aptly titled America as a Civilization.
America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today, by Max Lerner. Simon and Schuster. 1,036 pp. $10.00
We believe that we have a national tradition, says Mr. Lerner, but it is impossible to generalize about it very successfully because it is compounded of many subtraditions. We are the product of four separate waves of migration—the original movement of the Indians from Asia, the later movement of people from England and western Europe, the forced movement of the Negroes from Africa, and finally—what Mr. Lerner calls “the polyglot ethnic strain”—the great wave of all peoples from the Mediterranean, from central and eastern Europe, from Asia and from Latin America, and from everywhere else. Perhaps the one factor in common with the greatest of these waves was the pervading notion of America as a land of promise, a place where men could find well-being and freedom. America, in short, was built on a promise, and although we have been bothered ever since about the degree to which that promise has been fulfilled, the significant thing as Mr. Lerner sees it is the fact that the promise itself has always persisted. This is our great “social myth”; it has always pulled us on, and it always will, bringing abundant disillusionment but bringing also recurring triumphs of advance and achievement.
Along with this dominant myth there is another fact which Mr. Lerner considers unique to America. Alone among nations, he remarks, America has a history which “is also the history of the three shaping forces of the modern Western world”—industrialism as a technology, capitalism as a way of organizing it, and democracy as a way of running both. From these comes an immense dynamic force which moves hand in hand with the great motif of promise. Whatever we are becoming, then, it seems to Mr. Lerner highly likely that future historians will look back on our American life and see in it “one of the memorable civilizations of history.”
All very well: and, specifically, how does this civilization seem to be taking shape? Mr. Lerner does not try to give any final, detailed answers; he simply looks about him, jots down some of the memorable images that are fastening themselves in our collective memories, and tries to arrive at a few very broad conclusions. Significantly, he finds that, even though we may be a less fluid people than we once were, we have not yet developed a single, well-defined “ruling class.” We have an upper class, to be sure, a wealthy class, perhaps even a dominant class, but we do retain social mobility and the base of economic power is continually shifting. Rigidity has not yet set in.
Are we, with all of this, losing the drive and the sense of adventure that once (as we believe, anyway) characterized America? We are still a dynamic society, but we are becoming very security-conscious. Are we torn by a clash between these two emotional states, with the old urge to make new beginnings conflicting with the urge to reach a safe spot where risks need not be taken? Possibly; for along with everything else Mr. Lerner concludes that “America is a happiness society even more than it is a freedom society or a power society.” In our Declaration of Independence we asserted that one of man’s inalienable rights is his right to pursue happiness, and we have been hard at the pursuit ever since, with varying degrees of success. Yet what else could come, in a land where the infinite promise of life is one of the traditional concepts? The pursuit of happiness is not a bad thing, once we understand just what happiness is and how it may best be attained.
We are no longer an isolated country, cut off from the rest of the world by broad oceans. Whether we like it or not, we are now one of the world’s two great powers, and what we are and do—whether we are at our best or our worst—touches the imagination of the rest of mankind in a way (as Mr. Lerner suggests) that only one other society, the Roman Empire, ever touched it. The parallel is disquieting, perhaps; for the Romans themselves lost their own imagination, they came to value things more than they valued ideas, and the end was darkness. Will that be our destiny as a civilization? This grim question lies at the end of all our introspection.
To this question Mr. Lerner does not pretend to have a final answer. Any thoughtful student of American life can see many reasons for bleak pessimism, and as a highly perceptive man Mr. Lerner sees them as clearly as anyone needs to. But he retains his optimism—largely, it would seem, because our society is still in this process of becoming. The great enemy of any civilization, he suggests, is “the enemy within,” which is simply rigidity. That has not yet come to us. We are still developing; our sources of creativeness have not gone dry. At the end of his long survey, Mr. Lerner is able to say, with Emerson: “We think our civilization is near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock crowing and the morning star.”
Go It Alone
By BRUCE CATTON
This exercise in considering our society as a world JL civilization is a useful one, but it does run counter to a powerful, deeply embedded impulse in American life—the impulse to look on America as a land set apart from all others, able to go its own way without reference to what the rest of the world may be doing. The man who is ruled by this impulse we call an isolationist, and when we try to appraise what we are and where we are going he is one of the people we need to examine. Who is he, and just how did he get that way?
An excellent study is now available in a book called The Isolationist Impulse, written by Selig Adler, professor of history at the University of Buffalo. Mr. Adler begins his inquiry by pointing out that it is necessary first of all to define isolationism correctly. American isolationism, he remarks, “has never meant total social, cultural and economic self-sufficiency.” Few Americans have ever believed in that, and the whole course of American history is against it. We have always exchanged both goods and ideas with the rest of the world, and we have never even dreamed of the ironwalled retreat into a hermit’s life similar to that of the Japan of the shoguns. American isolationism is simply a determination to stay out of foreign wars, coupled with an unwavering refusal to enter into alliances; a belief that we must always go it alone. Isolationists, says Mr. Adler, “cling tenaciously to faith in the unchangeability of our changing world.”
This, to be sure, is where the shoe pinches, because the world is changing very radically, and some of the change comes from what we ourselves do. Yet the drive to go it alone is strong and it has deep roots in the American past, and Mr. Adler is concerned with getting these roots out and seeing what they amount to.
This inquiry leads him into a study of American history since, roughly, the time of the First World War. We got into a war which we had supposed we could stay out of, we oversold ourselves (once we got in) on what was going to be accomplished, and at the end it seemed that all of our fine hopes had been blighted. It was precisely then that the isolationist impulse came to full flower, and it proved an extremely hardy growth; bruised and trodden on though it has been of late, it is a long way from being dead. Where did it get its strength?
The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth-Century Reaction, by Selig Adler. Abelard-Schuman, Ltd. 538 pp. $6.75.
Step by step, Mr. Adler traces it. Woodrow Wilson ran into many difficulties, some of them self-created, when he came back from Paris with the draft Treaty of Versailles and the concept of a League of Nations. The liberals, previously among his strong supporters, fell away from him. The pro-league arguments were cast in an unreal, idealistic form, instead of being based on the obvious point that it was to our material interest to set up machinery that would curb aggression and war; and in 1919 America had grown very disillusioned about idealism. The election of 1920 was tragically misinterpreted; everyone assumed that it was a referendum on the treaty and on the league, when in fact (as Mr. Adler insists) it was the result of the interaction of many very complex forces, including simple war-weariness. Not for years thereafter would any political party be willing to go to the people with an internationalist program.
Then came the Harding Administration, in which, as Mr. Adler says, we tried to retain the benefits of isolationism and still reap the benefits of a privileged position in the world’s market places. Washington washed its hands of responsibility for world economic conditions just when big business was getting into world economic affairs up to both elbows. Our statesmen and industrialists, imagining themselves perfectly in tune with each other, went in diametrically opposite directions.
The world economic depression—which, at least in part, grew out of this—greatly intensified the desire for isolation; and, as Mr. Adler says, “the isolationism of the 1930’s was much more profound than the rather superficial detachment of the preceding decade.” Dabbling in European affairs, apparently, had not only cost us our ideals but a great deal of money as well. We withdrew further into ourselves; at which moment came a new wave of aggressions, overseas, which tended to confirm our deep suspicions that international politics was no game for us. The New Deal did not stem the tide. On the contrary, the high-water mark of isolationism came in the neutrality legislation which bloomed between 1935 and 1937. Ironically, this legislation, Mr. Adler believes, made war all the more likely, for it helped persuade the megalomaniac Axis leaders that “the United States would stand by as they tore up the maps of Europe and Asia.”
Out of all this came, at last, the Second World War, which reversed the trend. It was not followed by a general retreat of the liberals, as had been the case in 1919, and it clearly destroyed the isolationist argument that if we fought against Fascism we would destroy the very values we were trying to save. Also, on a purely material plane, it restored the pulsing prosperity which had been missing for more than a decade. We no longer wanted to get back to a happier prewar age, because the prewar age, this time, did not look worth regaining. There was an aftermath, to be sure, and the postwar witch hunts can be seen as a final flare-up of the isolationist mood, but the great drive was over.
Over—for keeps? Mr. Adler is not entirely certain. We have not yet found, he sagely remarks, an adequate substitute for isolationism. The collective security ideal is still in the blueprint stage, the international situation is (to say the least) unpromising, and there could still be a revival of the insular tradition. We have always been torn between a desire to use our power to stabilize the world and an urge to remain aloof. At the moment the internationalists seem to have won; but their victory, Mr. Adler warns, was “a decision rather than a knockout.” The isolationists may yet demand a rematch; meanwhile, “the only certain thing about the future is its uncertainty.”
What We Are Like
By BRUCE CATTON
Civilization, in the nature of things, is an experiment, and the test of its excellence (failing a better one) is probably its capacity for survival. The chief difference between our civilization and others may be that from the beginning ours has been a conscious experiment; at every step we have been pragmatists, shooting the works on the chance that what we were up to would somehow bring in the blue chips.
This, in any case, is the suggestion advanced by Bradford Smith in a light, entertaining, and frequently very perceptive book entitled Why We Behave Like Americans. In a way Mr. Smith (who was assisted in this book by Marion Collins Smith) is covering the same field Mr. Lerner plowed so assiduously; he is doing it with less gravity and in less space, and his book makes an excellent companion volume.
We have been trying new things in this country, says Mr. Smith, ever since the Pilgrim fathers were told by the Indians that it would be a good idea to drop a rather dead fish in every corn hill to fertilize it, after which it would be every man for himself. The fathers tried it, it worked, and since then we have been receptive to new ideas, some of which panned out properly.
But although we know a great deal about ourselves, we do not necessarily understand too much; and Mr. Smith’s book is an essay directed toward a broader understanding. Understanding, he believes, grows out of a knowledge of all of the things that go to shape a culture—physical environment, human influences, institutions, artistic expressions, and the way in which the people involved go about making a living, reproducing their kind, and expressing their inner yearnings. His book, accordingly, is directed (without too much solemnity) toward an examination of all of these aspects of American society, and it is highly readable.
There are, as Kipling once remarked, many different ways of constructing tribal lays, and all of them are right. Mr. Lerner’s way is solemn and thorough; Mr. Smith’s is light and occasionally irreverent. As a sample, in his discussion of the American character, he expresses himself thus:
“Americans are a peculiar people. They work like mad, then give away much of what they earn. They play until they are exhausted, and call this a vacation. They love to think of themselves as tough-minded business men, yet they are push-overs for any hard luck story. They have the biggest of nearly everything including government, motor cars and debts, yet they are afraid of bigness. They are always trying to chip away at big government, big business, big unions, big influence. They like to think of themselves as little people, average men, and they would like to cut everything down to their own size. Yet they boast of their tall buildings, high mountains, long rivers, big meals. Theirs is the best family, the best neighborhood, the best state, the best country, the best world, the best heaven. They also have the most traffic deaths, the most waste, the most racketeering.”
Well, so far, so good; and it is fairly easy to go on in this vein, so long as you are not required to touch base anywhere. Mr. Smith does touch base; that is, Ke can think hard while writing easily (not too simple a trick), and he does a really good job of describing the way in which the American spirit expresses itself. It does so, he seems to feel, on a largely informal basis. Every crisis in American history finds people doing some of their biggest jobs through wholly voluntary associations—as via the Sons of Liberty, in the days when a great ferment of libertarian ideas was leading up to the American Revolution; as in the case of the Underground Railroad, which did so much to put the skids under slavery. The point is that Americans always want to remain free private citizens and individuals, but they do realize that they are bound to the community and must exert their influence upon it. They advance democracy not so much through politics as through an ad hoc system of working together on their own hook. We are rugged individualists, but we always recognize that we belong to the group.
Why We Behave Like Americans, by Bradford Smith, assisted by Marion Collins Smith. The J. B. Lippincott Co. 322 pp. $4.95.
So Mr. Smith goes on, sketching in briefly all manner of facets of American life, from public schools to newspapers and from political caucuses to trade associations and the conventions of fraternal organizations. He comes to no more positive final conclusions than Mr. Lerner reaches; like him, he does manage to complete his survey with a feeling of hope—the result of an appraisal of a society which draws vitality and op timism from its youth and its abundance. And like him, too, he has the sense of a nation which has not yet “arrived” but which is still working its way—blindly, and often with great waste and error, but always with energy—through its perplexing but promising formative stages.
