Walter Edward Weyl - American World Policies

In the midst of this almost colonial development, there occurred one startling interlude. About 1840 we developed a new type of sailing vessel, the American clipper ship. Soon we had control of the China trade and by 1861 our shipping (including domestic trade and the fisheries) about equalled that of Great Britain. After the Civil War, however, our chance of competing with Great Britain either in ship-building or carrying disappeared. The iron steamship had arrived, and, in the manufacture of such vessels, we were no match for the English. Even without the Civil War we should have been beaten; the Southern privateers, outfitted in English ports, merely hastened an inevitable decay. We were not yet to enter upon a competition with England for commercial supremacy.

There being thus no economic basis for war our outstanding questions with European nations, and with England especially, were peacefully settled. The Canadian fisheries and the Maine boundary dispute gave rise to much bitter feeling but were not worth a war. Even the Monroe Doctrine did not bring on a clash. Though Great Britain hated its assumptions she was content with its practical workings. What the United States gained was immunity from the settlement of Latin America by powerful military nations; what England gained was a profitable trade (denied her by Spain) together with opportunities for investing capital. The immediate force behind the Monroe Doctrine was the self-interest and naval power of a nation, which did not recognise the doctrine.

Our westward expansion, which obliterated boundaries and overran the possessions of other powers, also failed to bring war with Europe. Doubtless this expansion was not entirely welcome to France, England and Spain. But just as Napoleon, though dreaming of a French Empire on our western border, had been compelled to sell us Louisiana to prevent its falling into British hands, so later England resigned herself to our almost instinctive growth. It was believed in the forties that England not only wished to prevent our acquiring California but desired the territory for herself, and it was known that her interests in Oregon were in the sharpest conflict with American claims. England would also have preferred that Texas remain politically independent of the United States and commercially dependent upon herself. Fortunately for us, however, an aggressive colonial policy, such as that which during the last forty years has partitioned Africa, was not yet popular in Europe. England was thinking in terms of free trade and commercial expansion, of a world rather than a colonial market. At bottom, moreover, this American expansion was to the relative advantage of Europe. When Spain was cajoled and worried into selling Florida; when Texas, and later California, Arizona and New Mexico were taken from a nation too weak almost to feel resentment, the result was a better use of the territory and a greater production of the things which Europe needed. If Europe was not to control these regions, it was at least better for her to have them pass to us rather than remain with Mexico. So long as we held politically aloof, sold Europe cotton and wheat, bought from her manufactured products and gave her the chance to invest in our railroads, so long as we did not compete on the sea or in the world markets, Europe, though she envied us our easy expansion, had no interest in opposing it by war. England would possibly have fought us had we taken Nicaragua and almost certainly had we taken Canada, but she was less concerned about the fate of Mexico, the chief victim of our expansion.

This complementary relation of ours with European nations was as useful to us as to them. Besides furnishing us with necessary capital Europe sent us immigrants, who made our march across the Continent rapid and irresistible. In the end this immigrant population contributed to our peaceful attitude. As the number of our alien stocks increased, the desirability of going to war with any European nation diminished. To get the immigrant's vote, we spoke highly, and in the end almost thought highly, of the nations from which they had come. By admitting the children of Europe we had given hostages to peace.

In the main, however, we paid no attention to Europe. We forgot about her. Lost in contemplation of our own limitless future, we turned our eyes westward towards our ever receding frontier. In foreign, as in home relations, we developed a frontier mind, and even to-day, long after our last frontier has been reached, we are still thinking of Europe, as of so many of our internal problems, in terms of this great colonising adventure. The individualist, who pushed his way across the continent, left on America the impress of a simple philosophy, a belief that there was a chance for all, that it was better to work than to fight, that arbitration and the splitting of the difference were the best policy. To the average American, with his frontier mind, wars seemed unnecessary, and all the class distinctions, inseparable from militarism, a mere frippery. Wars, he held, are for the crowded old peoples of Europe, with their dynastic superstitions, their cheating diplomacy, their ancient rancours, their millions of paupered subjects, condemned to a life of subordination. Wars are not for the free and equal Americans who live in the wide spaces of a continent and, having no neighbours, hate no man and fear no man.

It is out of this frontier mind that we have evolved our present American notion of war and foreign policy. Peace is common sense; war, foolishness, a superstition like the belief in Kings, Emperors and Potentates, a calamity caused by the refusal of the petty European nations to join into one great United States. For it must be remembered that Americans, whatever their sentimental attachments, are really more contemptuous than are Germans of little nations that insist upon surviving. We ridicule the European customs barriers, which the express train strikes every few hours, and associate national greatness with territorial size. Even Great Britain, France, Germany and Austria are ignorantly regarded as "little nations," which would be all the better for a wholesome amalgamation. The frontier mind believes stubbornly that short of such a union, these "little" peoples should develop their own resources in peace. In other words, our attitude towards Europe, which is a result of our elbow room and our economic self-sufficiency, is vaguely missionary, with not the slightest tinge of hypocrisy. We have no concern with Europe and no duty to interfere, beyond expressing our belief in our own superior institutions and the hope that Europe will learn by our example.

The development of our manufacturing industries, until recently at least, did not alter these views concerning our proper attitude to Europe. The new industries, chiefly designed for a home market, made on the whole for peace. Nor did we need a foreign outlet for capital. No one wished to go to war for the dubious privilege of investing in Peru or China when our own iron mills, cotton factories and railroads were clamouring for capital, to say nothing of our farmers in Oklahoma and the Dakotas.

Psychologically, also, this self-poised industrialism, this domestic stay-at-home business of ours, which prevailed until a few decades ago, worked powerfully for peace. We became a highly individualistic manufacturing nation, composed of millions of self-seeking, money-making men. As "business men" we hated wars as we hated strikes and whatever else "interfered with business." Our ideal was a strenuous life of acquisition, in which dollars were added to dollars, and the prosperity of all depended upon the bank account of each. Wars were like earthquakes and other interruptions of the ordained process of accumulation; you could no more win a war than you could win an earthquake. America's manifest destiny was to multiply and increase. We were to mind our own business and live in peace with neighbours, whom we did not know and rather despised. Since everything worth exploiting was in our own country, since Europe left us alone and had nothing that we were willing to fight for, we were free to ignore all foreign relations.