The Pathos of America

THE American people are unconscious of their pathetic situation. Yet to perceive it requires but a moderate knowledge of the laws of life. We are the only prosperous people in the world at present. We alone are not weighed down either by war, by mobilization, or by extreme anxiety. Nor is it clearly our fault that we are fattening while the rest of the world grows lean. It is, nevertheless, portentous.

During our Civil War, some men in the North rapidly grew rich; but sacrifice kept the people chastened. Now throughout the European world an enormous castigation and, it may be hoped, purification, is taking place in which we have no share. We are not exhausting our resources for a cause, or draining our blood. Instead, we are making huge profits.

How can we help it? Are we to blame? We did not bring on the war; nor do we clearly owe to any other country a duty to take part in it. France and England cannot reasonably reproach the United States on this ground. We have no army, and but a questionable navy; there really was no way in which we could attack a foe across the ocean. And the citizens of the United States are a mixture of many peoples, with different traditions. They are, however, what they are, living in a certain organized way, through a complicated social organization, of which they are somehow part, but for which they do not seem altogether responsible. They are equipped and fitted to do the things they do; but neither fitted nor equipped for lofty sacrifice, unless, perhaps, in case they should be obviously driven to it. The machinery of their life enables them to fulfill some generous and unsacrificial instincts, and give, say, a tithe of a tithe of their profits to Belgium and France.

Let the imagination bestir itself: might not the American people have thrown a propitiatory sop to the fatness of their fate, by presenting five hundred million dollars to England and France, instead of loaning it at a good interest? Such a gift was impossible. There exists no machinery for making such a gift, but very ample and efficient machinery for making such a loan. Does not the exchange of commodities depend upon the expectation of profit? There literally exists no machinery for producing and shipping exports in requisite quantities—wheat or leather or munitions — save in the hope of profit. That hope enters into the entire process; it is an essential part of the machinery — part of our institutions, of our society, of our ineradicable motives, and of our fate. Under present conditions, the world is our oyster, and we must eat it. We must grow obese, with belly distended for some thrust of retribution, which will equalize us with humanity at large. That retribution will come in lowering of character, in loosening of sinew, perhaps in giant calamity, or perhaps not. But it will come; for we have lost our share in the strength which arises through denial and sacrifice. An Isaiah might point this out more definitely!

Conceivably some great power of motive might save us; but only a power of motive as much beyond us at present as it is a necessary part of our salvation. Above the stomach this nation scarcely exists as a nation. One must pity the United States in this world-crisis for lacking a vital motive sufficient to lift them into something above a digestive and nutritive organism. Spiritually they are footless and formless. And that there is no visible means at hand for making us other than we are, is one element of the pitifulness and pitilessness of our situation and our fate.

Again, it is not clear that we have been specifically culpable. We are netted in dilemmas of the flesh. They make our fate. And should we turn from 4 fate ’ to God in upward yearning and in prayer, what could we pray, unless a prayer like this: Grant and fulfill, O God, the prayers that we should pray, were it not for our ignorance, and the impotence of our swinish natures. Praying thus, we should add a prayer to be made able and prepared to accept — the granting.