Five points of illusion

WALTER LIPPMANN

In the midst of trouble it is the memorial habit of men to look for a scapegoat. They feel that if things go wrong the reason must lie in some specific blameworthiness of particular men and not in a general failure of the mass of men to appreciate, and then to adjust their affairs to, a radical change in their environment. The scapegoats are, of course, easy to find. The American nation is passing through one of the greatest changes in its whole history. Within this generation its basic position in the world has been transformed and the consequences are affecting the life and labor of all its inhabitants. The change is not generally understood. It is not reflected in the nation's policy. It is not realized by the mass of the people. Therefore, events do not conform with expectations. Therefore, the promises of leaders turn out to be ludicrously wrong. Therefore, the mood of the people is not to say "E Pluribus Unum" but "Oh, Yeah?"

It is, of course, easy to compile an encyclopedia of errors committed by diplomats, politicians, bankers, employers, and everyone else who has had a hand in guiding our destiny in recent years. It is a healthy thing to have the errors pointed out. But as the process of pointing out errors goes on, as committees pile up the testimony, as the books of criticism are written and published, it must, I think, gradually come home to a reasonable person that so much error and so much miscalculation must have some deeper and more general explanation than the greed, the wickedness, or the stupidity of particular individuals. Something must have been going on beneath the surface which caused nearly everyone to miscalculate, something which created unusual opportunities for folly. For let us not be over-righteous and suppose that things could have gone so much askew without implicating pretty nearly every adult person in the process.

I am no admirer of President Hoover's policies or of the Republican Party's conduct in the last ten years. It is possible, I think, for individual Democrats to say honestly that they criticized specific acts and have been justified by events. But I do not believe the Democratic Party can truly say that it foresaw the outcome or that in any clear and resolute way it warned the country about the inflation and its results. The truth is that practically everyone participated in the illusions which have now collapsed.

If we are to assume, as I think we must, that Congress fairly reflects public opinion, then we must conclude that as a people we are still at the stage of recrimination rather than of understanding. If Congress had its way, it would, I believe, stand on this platform :

1. Non-intercourse with foreign nations.

2. The uncompromising protection of American rights abroad.

3. The collection of the last red cent of all foreign debts.

4. Prohibition of imports.

5. Prohibition of loans to foreigners.

This is, I believe, an accurate summary of what Congress genuinely believes that the American people now desire. It would be admitted that each item in the program cannot he pursued to the bitter end, that there has to he a little intercourse with foreign nations, that all imports cannot be stopped, that some credit has to be granted abroad. Nevertheless, the Five-Point Program I have outlined faithfully conveys the present intentions of the prevailing majority.

On all hut one point the program expresses the real direction of American foreign policy during the whole post-war era. The exception is in regard to foreign lending. During the decade of the Twenties we abstained from diplomatic cooperation with the outer world. We insisted upon our vested rights. We obtained agreements designed to collect the utmost it was believed our debtors could pay. We revised our tariff twice for the purpose of excluding from our markets goods which could compete with our own. But at the same time we made gigantic loans to foreigners. That was the one breach in the wall of the defenses we erected to attain isolation and self-sufficiency. Now Congress would, if it could, close that breach. In spirit, at least, it is in the mood to condemn, not merely certain imprudent or corrupt practices in the making of some of the loans, but all foreign lending as such.

Broadly speaking, it may be said that the degree and the permanence of our recovery from the existing crisis depend upon a popular understanding of the contradictions and the impracticability of the FivePoint Program. We may, and probably shall, recover somewhat hv purely domestic readjustment. But it is inconceivable that we can recover and hold steadily to a high level of well-being as long as our national action is confined within the contradictory limits of the isolationist's creed.

No nation can he secure in an unstable world. Vested interests cannot be protected by any one nation's power alone. Great debts cannot be paid unless the debtors can earn the means of payment. It is impossible for a nation to sell more than in the long run it buys. These are axiomatic truths, as fundamental and as certain as anything that can he declared about human relations. They are not yet understood by the majority of American voters and those who stand upon them are regarded not only as mistaken but as subtly dangerous and not wholly patriotic. The fashionable way to abuse those who dissent from the Five-Point Program is to call them "internationalists" and to suggest by that odious term that the national interest is not safe in their hands.

When you examine the isolationist's creed you will find at the bottom of the whole argument, beneath all he has to say about not cooperating with foreigners, not buying from, and not lending to them, the simple fallacy that it is possible to get something for nothing. To get security without giving it, to sell without buying, to export without importing, to receive gold dollars without giving up gold dollars: these are the impossible fantasies which control the minds of the irreconcilable isolationists. It is precisely as difficult for them to grasp the fact that international relations are an exchange of goods and services as it was for our forefathers to believe that the flat earth they saw about them was actually a globe. It took centuries to convince the mass of men that the earth is round; after two centuries of international capitalism they are still unconvinced that trade is an exchange. There is nothing far-fetched in this analogy. If a man has not grasped the fact that relations are exchanges, he is as helpless to understand what is going on about him as a mariner who tries to navigate a flat ocean.

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There is a very good reason why this adult generation of Americans has had such difficulty in grasping these axiomatic truths. In the formative years of this adult generation the United States was still a debtor nation. It paid its debts by the export of its surplus raw materials. Thus it seemed that there could be no trouble about selling more than was bought. The United States had to sell more than it bought in order to pay its debts. In the war this position was reversed. The United States became the creditor of the rest of the world. But it still wished to sell more than it bought. For ten dizzy years it succeeded in doing this by the process of lending the world the gold dollars to pay the world's bills and the world's debts. That epoch has come to an end, and the day is at hand when the American people have to adjust their minds, their laws, their policies and their daily actions to the wholly new fact that henceforth they must buy and lend if they are to sell and be paid.

In its historic significance this change of position is one of the great moments of history: it marks a change in the relationships of two continents. That the process of adjustment is marked by confusion and punctuated with outcries is not to be wondered at. The great transitions of history are never smooth. When they have to be effected as suddenly as the one in which we are involved, they are full of pain and trouble, and. except in the long view, they are excessively bewildering.