Fundamentalist v. Modernist

A FOREIGN POLICY FOR AMERICA--Charles A. Beard--Knopf ($1.50).

ISOLATED AMERICA--Raymond Leslie Buell--Knopf ($3).

That spectacular piece of reporting, American White Paper by Joseph Alsop and Robert Kintner, declared last month that U. S. foreign policy--in conception at least--is neither hare-brained nor haphazard but determined and clean-cut (TIME, April 29). But difficulties in its application and debate on its course still remain. Last week and this, two books by distinguished students of the problem were rushed into print. Each was primarily concerned with the protection of U. S.

interests; each recognized that foreign and domestic policies are inseparable. Otherwise their points of agreement were few.

Fundamentalist. White-headed, eagle-beaked old Charles Beard has developed the most profoundly ironic mind of any U. S. historian. Because irony has value in a period of emotionalism, his new book is a timely astringent. Disavowing "Isolationism" as an impossibility, Beard argues, as he has before, for a "Conti-nentalism" consistent with the ideas of the Founding Fathers. Sonorous and bland, he mocks both the ambitious Imperialism of Theodore Roosevelt and the lofty Internationalism of Woodrow Wilson.

In The Rise of American Civilization, Beard has already jabbed at Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the 19th-Century theorist of naval power. He here repeats the performance at greater length, with more savage relish. The navy man's Moses, it appears, was a thoroughly incompetent historian, his imperialist strategy "the rationalized war passion of a frustrated swivel-chair officer who had no stomach for the hard work of navigation and fighting." As for Roosevelt I, whose election was a "tragedy of politics," and Secretary of State John Hay, who "as Lincoln's secretary had become a treasure of the Republican tradition," they and their friends "built up in the State Department a bureaucracy and a tradition absolutely opposed to historic continen-talism."

Reviewing the history of U. S. efforts at internationalism, Historian Beard does not spare the rod. Neither foreign trade nor foreign lending, he observes, has been a dazzling success for the U. S.; U. S. internationalism has not availed to prevent war. But he insists that whenever the issue has been put to them directly, the U. S.

people have rejected internationalism. His deductions are that: 1) this invariable rejection meant "a recognition of the hard fact that the United States, either alone or in any coalition, did not possess the power to force peace on Europe and Asia, to assure the establishment of democratic and pacific governments there, or to provide the social and economic underwriting necessary . . ."; 2) the President and State Department should therefore be less ambitious in their conduct of foreign relations.

Charles Beard's last two points are his best. His deflationary swipes at internationalism make good reading but remain mostly rhetoric. He does not examine how much "historic continentalism" is now U. S. policy, or what actual commitments are involved in it (e.g., for hemisphere defense). He says practically nothing about the concrete situation in 1940.

Modernist. Raymond Leslie Buell, onetime head of the Foreign Policy Association, does not oversimplify or resort to rhetoric. A seasoned student of World affairs, he has lately acquired, as editor of FORTUNE'S Round Tables, a firm grasp of domestic, economic and social problems. His book is a methodical 457-page study of the U. S. and the whole modern world. Finally he arrives at a detailed program. If Charles Beard's merit is irony, Buell's is intellectual thoroughness.

Against Beard's caution on the "limited nature of American powers," Buell argues that "this country can dominate the situation." He cites figures on U. S. wealth, industry, consumption, and the appealing figure that the U. S. "has 153 inanimate slaves (foot pounds of man energy per eight-hour day) per capita in comparison with 17 for the world average, 41 for Britain, 35 for France, and 27 for Germany. . . ." The U. S. has rapidly become the greatest "power" in the world, he says, and should shoulder responsibility equal to its power.

Against Beard's deprecation of U. S. foreign trade, Buell quotes figures to show that imports (rubber, tungsten, etc.) from Asia and the East Indies are "essential" to U. S. economy, that exports of U. S. mass production industries (e.g., typewriters) account for a high percentage of important U. S. production. With respect to foreign investments, he points out that in 1938 they brought a high average of interest.

These points are merely minor steps in Buell's main thesis, to which he marshals a mass of evidence: that in the modern world U. S. economy cannot be self-sufficient, nor in a totalitarian world can it be anything but totalitarian; that therefore the U. S. can afford neither a long European war nor the defeat of the democracies.

He argues that not even military isolation is still possible. "The extent of the [U. S.] military commitments . . . which the U. S. has almost silently accepted is not yet appreciated by the public." Buell's analysis of these commitments (annual cost now $2,200,000,000) is extraordinarily complete. Sample fact of "hemisphere defense": Washington is no farther from Prague than from Rio de Janeiro. Buell shows that though the Good Neighbor policy and U. S. pledges to Canada may seem simple continentalism in the Beard sense, they are actually world commitments in the modern world at war.

"In the course of the next two years," Buell believes, "America should be able to bring about a just peace in Europe, if it exercises its powers wisely." His program for mediation would avoid the error of Woodrow Wilson by requiring that the Allies agree with the U. S. on a world settlement beforehand. For getting in training for the grand event he suggests: 1) better intramural cooperation between Congress and the State Department, perhaps through a joint Congressional committee or the appearance of the Secretary of State before the Senate for full dress debates; 2) wartime economic measures including lower tariffs, restraint of plant expansion, bonuses instead of wage increases in industry.

If, when the time comes, Germany or other opposing powers refuse to accept U. S. mediation, Buell would have the U. S. resort to "limited intervention": i.e., grants-in-aid to the Allies, naval and air force action.

The world settlement outlined by Buell rests on an acute criticism of Clarence Streit's Union Now (a proposal for a federation of democracies). He argues that practical provision must be made for Latin America and the totalitarian States, in a new Association of Nations with regional departments such as the Pan-American Union, the British Commonwealth of Nations, a European Federation, a Pacific Conference, the U. S. S. R. What distinguishes Mr. Buell's intricate program is a realistic sense of quid pro quo: e.g., a Danubian Union would need guarantees from Britain; to give them Britain would need a guarantee from the U. S. "to protect North and South American commerce with any European state resisting an aggressor."

The Contrast between Beard and Buell is irresistibly like the contrast between the Fundamentalist and the Modernist points of view. The stern, old-fashioned eloquence is on one side; the massing of evidence on the other. Fundamentalist Beard has a simple image of the world. He writes of international relations as a matter of occasional notes between diplomats of remote nations. Modernist Buell writes of international relations in an era when radio propaganda has supplanted polite diplomatic exchanges. He envisions the world as that shrunken globe seen by Howard Hughes as he flew around it in 91 hours, as Pan-American Airways sees it every day.

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