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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. An American Dilemma - 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem - 9. Making the Peace
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1020 An American Dilemma
that lynchings and race riots are headlines in Bombay j
that Huey Long
and Father Coughlin, the wave of organized crime during and after
Prohibition, the fiscal bankruptcy of Chicago some years ago, the corrupt
political machines in Philadelphia, the Dayton trial of Darwinism, provided
stories for the Sunday papers in Osloj that many men and women in
democratic countries around the entire world have had their first and
decisive impression of American public life from the defense of Sacco and
Vanzetti and the Scottsboro boys. Friends of America abroad have tried
to make the picture of American life more balanced and more accurate by
fixing public attention on the numerous good sides, on American accomplish-
ments, on all the good intentions and on the favorable trends. But they
have been only partly successful, and America Itself has—^until this War
—
never cared to advertise America abroad.
This—like America’s openness to criticism, which Is the positive side of
this unconcernedness—is a sign of great strength, but It was the strength
of a departed isolation. There was also ignorance behind the attitude.
Aware of all the good things in his country and rightly convinced that, on
the whole, they greatly outweigh all the imperfections, the ordinary
American takes it for granted that America is liked and trusted abroad.
The loss of American isolation makes all this most serious. America has
now joined the world and is tremendously dependent upon the support and
good-will of other countries. Its rise to leadership brings this to a climax.
None is watched so suspiciously as the one who is rising. None has so little
license, none needs all his virtue so much as the leader. And America, for
its own security, cannot retreat from leadership.
There is, of course, another possible solution besides good-will, and that
is power. In some quarters in America the observer finds exaggerated
notions about the power which America’s financial strength after the War
will allow her. Americans have not commonly taken to heart what was
conclusively proved by experience in the period between the two World
Wars, namely, that, after the loans are given, the power belongs to the
debtor and not to the creditor.
Military power, however, can be substituted for good-will. But America
does not have the will or stamina for real imperialism. The farmer, the
laborer, the merchant, the intellectual, in one word, the common man who
ultimately makes political decisions is against suppression abroad. In the
international field the Southerner is not unlike his Northern compatriot.
All American adventures in imperialism give abundant proofs of half-
heartedness and show again the power over the Americans of the American
Creed. If America does not go fascist, American militarism will not be an
adequate substitute for good-will.
The treatment of the Negro is America’s greatest and most conspicuous
scandal. It is tremendously publicized, and democratic America will con-
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