THE war brought out more vividly than ever the contrasts with which the past was pregnant. Contrasts of formation, contrasts of evolution, contrasts of aspiration all stand out clearly now without need of searching analysis. Yesterday it was necessary to explain. Now one needs only to look. The great clash intensified things in the Old World and in the New: the weaknesses of the one and the potentialities of the other. The latent contradictions and paradoxes of history were revealed.

Victors or vanquished, European nations lost of their substance, lost man power, lost material wealth. The peoples were slow to realize their losses, and when the scales fell from their eyes they reacted according to their particular traditions. How did the Europe of 1914 compare with the Great Republic? The Europe of 1920 was a reduction of the Europe of 1914, both in size and in wealth. The Russian Revolution had wrenched from the old continent more than a third of its expanse. The principle of nationality, the very soul of victory, had sundered economic units. Half a dozen states were brought into being, and their laborious beginnings were marked by economic strife. Of the thirty million wounded, the fifteen million maimed, the eight million dead that the drama left in its wake, nearly all belonged to Europe. France gave up to battle the soil on which the fury of destruction was concentrated. On the other side of the ocean, America was intact.

Moral enfeeblement went hand in hand with material loss of substance. To come back, Europe needs time, calm, and brotherly love; much time, much calm, and much brotherly love. But Europe is keyed up to a high pitch, is nervous and divided. Everywhere work is being done in haste. Between the vanquished, who from the depths of their defeat aspire to revenge, and the victors, whose particularisms have been heightened by the Peace, coöperation is chimerical. War, which kills men, kills neither passions, nor interests, nor customs. In the common misery of Europe, the shock of passions, the conflict of interests, the cloying of customs, add to the general exhaustion. America says, 'Forget the war.' But war weighs heavily upon Europe, instils poison into her veins, dominates her destiny. The Old World, bleeding and impoverished, groping after precarious stability, is separated from the New by an abysmal difference of circumstances. Differences of structure, of size, of potentiality, which ten years ago were merely guessed at, now stand out as under a magnifying glass --- so clear that they are self-evident.

Everything that Europe lost, America has gained. The war was an asset to America before she entered it, while she was in it, and after she withdrew. Thanks to the war, America more than doubled her power and laid the foundations of a new empire. Thanks to the war, American prosperity, which in pre-war days was a proud boast, has grown in painful contrast to European distress. Half the gold in existence has found its way into American coffers. In world statistics the index of American wealth soars prodigiously. Potentiality of output, and output itself, follow the same ascending course. The weekly hours of labour lessen as wages increase even more rapidly than the cost of living grows. Low rates of interest, regular crops, the growth of transportation, the ever-increasing bank deposits and savings, the decrease in taxation, move American observers, like Judge Gary, to elation, and foreign observers, like Sir Robert Home, to amazement.

This productive growth has created a credit inflation, but as a whole American opulence is sound. The banks have enormous reserves. Key industries --railroad, automobile, and construction --- are working overtime. The United States exports more automobiles than Europe builds. Real estate transactions never cease. As it were, one half of the people spends its time buying to resell to the other half. The currency depression of 1920 was easily overcome and, in a few months, the record prices of 1917-18 were equalled. America enjoys a calm stability, profitable to all. The Promised Land of Herbert Croly has given more even than it promised, and this too deprives the United States of a common standard with Europe. Between the two continents there is utter disproportion. Ascension here, depression there: two communities the flow of whose life blood, the measure of whose breath, the possibilities of whose growth, are all at opposite poles --- positive and increasing for the one, negative and decreasing for the other.

Naturally temperaments are affected thereby. Europe is anxious because weak; America imperious because strong. It had long been her pride --- a just pride in the eyes of thinkers like James Bryce --- that she had given to man a maximum of well-being. This material progress was one of the forms of her idealism, her aim and mission. More than ever in the triumph of achievement that has followed the war has she made a cult of it. More than one hundred million human beings, fawned upon daily by thousands of newspapers as the Court fawned upon Louis XIV, believe in all good faith that they are better than the men of other lands because they have made themselves happier. All they demand of their leaders is a successful stewardship of that happiness. To elect Harding or Coolidge, a platform of pure materialism suffices. Both parties are agreed on the supremacy of economic factors, so often apparent in American history. In the face of such agreement, even social conflicts are appeased. Millions of workers trust their employers, whose genius has given them well-being. At a time when socialism is making giant strides in Europe, it lags in America, representing a mere three to six per cent of the votes cast in the various elections.

Around this national ideal of productivity there has grown up a world ideal. Mass production, high wages become texts for sermons which Herbert C. Hoover unceasingly preaches. When an American consents to cast his eyes upon what is happening abroad, he retains only what fits in with his own preconceived ideas. The election of Hindenburg to the presidency of the Reich was quickly forgotten. The return of England to the gold standard attracted far more attention. For that touched a point of common concern; it affected prosperity by increasing the purchasing power of a customer and decreasing the exporting power of a competitor, the while contributing to currency stabilization. On the other hand, countries which have delayed putting their finances in order according to the imprescriptible rules of American finance are fit objects of reprobation and even of indictment. When he condemned the Treaty of Versailles as too political and not sufficiently economic, John Maynard Keynes founded a creed. He was the prophet of a faith distinguished by its intolerance.

Hence the lack of comprehension which has continually opposed America to Europe for the enforcement of that treaty. Europe has lived with it on the political plane, either to strengthen its clauses or to weaken them. On the contrary, the United States has affected supreme indifference to its political and military provisions. As far as the financial clauses are concerned, the United States has seen them in terms of 'reconstruction.' This very word has served only to emphasize our differences. When New York, itching to reconstruct, proposed to arrange credits for an intact Germany, France with her six hundred thousand ruined buildings gave a more concrete and more limited meaning to the term 'reconstruction.' When the Dawes Plan was evolved with the assistance of a well-known American, it aroused the hopes of Frenchmen that reparations long overdue and much reduced would at last be forthcoming; while Americans looked upon it as a final settlement, in which they insisted upon their share. At no time and on no point has public opinion in the two countries been in substantial agreement. To the United States this has seemed to afford experimental proof confirming her vocation to isolation.

Isolation was impossible, however --- rendered impossible by the very causes that prompted it. Though desirous to confine herself to the administration of her own interests, the United States has felt herself attracted to Europe by the imperious necessity of defending them. Apart from her agriculture, more dependent than her industry on foreign markets, the United States by her excess of wealth has been subjected to the law of outward attraction. The accumulation of gold, unceasingly increased by the development of her exports, made a counterpart essential. To avoid congestion, three solutions offered themselves: increased purchases abroad, decreased foreign sales, or the granting of foreign credits. Traditional protectionism made the first impossible; the growth of industry prevented the second, the third remained, and has prevailed. American investments abroad, negligible in 1914, have continually grown. In 1925, they were estimated at more than $10,000,000,000. In 1925 alone, international issues floated in New York amounted to $1,346,000,000, an increase of $140,000,000 over the preceding year. Between October, 1924, and May, 1925, Germany alone had sold $200,000,000 of securities in Wall Street. Thus, whether desired or not, the problem of foreign markets imposed itself. A moneylender, instead of the borrower she had been before the war, the United States acquired the right to intervene in that European life, whose motives she ignored, looked at askance, and reproved.

To that right was added another. Creditor of Europeans, the United States was also creditor of European Governments. War debts, which had long been let lie, became a preponderant issue in public life and party strife. The collection of these debts, which it is alleged Europe could easily pay if she were moved by the spirit of Peace, is one of the main issues of American politics. Thinking men point to the resultant paradoxes: the United States will be freed of the burdens of the war thirty years before her associates who suffered more than she did;(77) and ---as expounded by Winston Churchill --- that at least sixty per cent of German reparations will be taken from the devastated and given to the richest and most prosperous of the belligerents. But the views of the minority are powerless against the indifference of the masses and the hostility of official circles. 'We lent them money, didn't we? Then they ought to pay it back.' That is the political contention to which the unenlightened as a whole --- and who can be astonished? --- add the hope of further relief from taxation. So all assistance to this clamorous, wrangling, and unsettled Europe, ignorant of the secret of sound finance, shall be made subject to the payment of her war debts. Who pays his debts, grows rich! That ancient saying, probably invented by the original creditor, is blazoned above the threshold of the United States.

Europe had expected something different, and her deception has widened and deepened the cleavage. The road of effect leads us back to causes. For the error here is of the same ilk as that into which we had fallen concerning the motives of America's entry into the war. We were mistaken in 1920, as we had been mistaken in 1916. Contradictory appeals cross the ocean. But the more Europe begs, the harder America becomes. Of response there is to be none until the cold-blooded calculations of official actuaries have been subscribed to. Does the debtor nation hesitate? Does she plead her difficulties? She is charged with living too high, with being taxed too low, with keeping up too large an army. The press accuses France of unsettling economic conditions by delaying the general return to the gold standard. Official spokesmen freely condemn her, and their pronouncements, wafted across the seas, provoke angry protests on our side. Lack of comprehension has given way to controversial discussion. The question of war debts acts as a coefficient of aggravation upon a situation already sufficiently to be deplored.

Whether the debtor pays or does not pay, the psychological results are pretty nearly the same. The last to negotiate, France is the object of reprobation which strains the oldest bonds of friendship. Great Britain, the first to sign, is not much better treated when she endeavours to alleviate the burden of her payments. Does Great Britain, to defend her exchange and increase her dollar holdings, raise the price of her rubber which the United States has to buy? She is at once branded as an enemy of mankind. In scathing language the selfish nations which would sell 'above a fair price' are denounced. The same Senators, who by prohibitive tariffs protect American industry, wax indignant when England protects her production. For must not the well-being of the American community be ensured? Above all, its economic prosperity? If Europe thwarts it, Europe shall know neither financial assistance nor that moral support of which American orators like to talk. And Ambassador Houghton will pass judgment without appeal upon the blindness of the Old World.

France, more than any other country, has suffered by these strictures, which were not directed against her alone. First, because more than any other she had, in her blood and on her soil, borne the brunt of the war; also, because more than any other she had counted upon American support. France, at odds with Great Britain, is not disturbed; centuries of conflict have led her to expect it. On the contrary, a difficulty with the United States seems to France a violation of the laws of nature, so naïve is her faith in the spontaneity of Franco-American friendship. Earlier incidents had passed unnoticed; the debt discussion has revived them. France lives over again the long series of her deceptions: the futility of the sacrifices she and her allies made in 1919 to American ideals; the refusal of the American Senate to ratify the Treaty of Solidarity; the separate peace entered into with Germany without any attempt at previous adjustment with old war associates; the Washington Conference so adverse to France's navy and her colonies; the insistence on sharing the financial advantages of a treaty while repudiating its obligations; the uncompromising demand for the payment of a debt the counterpart of which had been irretrievably jeopardized by America's withdrawal in 1920; the unjustifiable interpretation of France's capacity of payment; the refusal to grant the French debtor those transfer guarantees accorded to the German debtor. American resentment against France is equalled by French resentment against the United States.

There is where we are in July, 1926; and the conflict presents tragic aspects. Tragic the silent protest of French war-wounded before the statue of George Washington; tragic the cry of Myron T. Herrick a few days previously before the monument of Saint-Nazaire: 'If we were idealists in 1917, are we no longer so now? ... I do not think that history will say that our attitude towards other countries was marked by humility when we were weak and by arrogance when we were strong.' Millions of Frenchmen and women feel the same way about it as our wounded. Millions of Americans think and speak as does Myron T. Herrick. But the poisonous discussion continues in the stifling atmosphere of politics, removed from all breath of feeling. The responsibilities of a few men become American responsibilities. The hundred million Americans in whose name the discussion continues have but little share in the result. But that result is what it is, and it is an undeniable lack of understanding and of good will.

Beneath the weight of this heavy atmosphere, the old slothful formulas, ever noxious, have become intolerable. It is impossible to go on saying that everything is all right, that things are self-evident, or that they will right themselves because they must. People are beginning to see that if things are to be put right, a sustained effort must be made; that if the old paths of friendship are to be retrod, they must be bathed in light. What have been the mistakes of both sides? That is the first and essential enlightenment both France and the United States must seek.

Let us grant that, since the war, France in her dealings with the United States has almost always taken the wrong course. But let us not content ourselves with obvious excuses, which, revealing unessential shortcomings, allow essential errors to escape.

There is nothing more to be said about the faux pas of what is called our propaganda. But if this kind of mistake can aggravate a situation, it cannot create it. For the same reason, in probing our shortcomings, let us leave aside foreign propaganda for what it is worth. In the United States, directed against France in various ways, German propaganda and English propaganda are active. Neither the former nor the latter can be avoided. Germany has the advantage of the influence of her stock; England the advantage of a common tongue. The Germans usually spoil their own game by clumsy errors of judgment. The English, with greater suppleness, have availed themselves of Franco-American coolness to further their naval and financial aims. But the origin of our ills is singularly deeper, and these contingencies have added but little to them. Suppose that we had been spared the first factors of discord; suppose that the United States had ratified the Treaty of Versailles the events that followed would not have been greatly changed. For sooner or later psychological dissociation would have led to political dissociation. First we must get at the roots of dissociation.

And here, at the very outset, Frenchmen face an imperative: if they would deal with America, they must first borrow, not American dollars, but American optimism and American love of achievement. Let us make no mistake about it: the reason why France has forfeited America's respect is that, from the winter of 1919 to the summer of 1926 we never have succeeded in anything, or, to be more accurate, we have hidden our rare successes beneath the volume of our recriminations. Just one instance: the amazing reconstruction of our devastated regions by our own unaided resources might have heightened us in American esteem. We went about it in such a way that the United States remembers only the justified criticism to which reconstruction gave rise. We pass for wasters. So long as we do, we shall neither be listened to nor respected: for America loves success. Before negotiating alliances, said Bernard von Bülow, one must be capable of alliances. Before influencing America, one must be capable of action. In order to deal with her, the prestige of success is essential. We had it in 1918. We no longer have it in 1926. We have our reputation to rebuild.

For that we must reëducate our public mind, so high-spirited at the end of the war, so slackened since. There, rather than in our finances, is our true decadence. Weariness of war, difficulties of the peace, euphoria of inflation---such our excuses. But the ill remains. We suffer from indolence and abandon in everything having to do with the general concern of our country. Frenchmen, so keen, so determined, so persistent when their own interests are involved, are listless when the public weal is at stake. At a time when the influence of collective phenomena is so great upon individual destinies, people imagine that they can safeguard the latter without taking the former into account. People no longer vote. In many elections more than forty per cent of the voters stay away from the polls. What worth is there in democracy when nearly half the electors refuse to avail themselves of the right to vote which their fathers won for them? It is the duty of the Government to break down this state of mind by setting the example. But seeing the Government too often behind the times, the peasants, who know that the earth brooks neither delay nor neglect, have lost confidence. That confidence can only be regained by putting a stop to the daily encroachment by the legislative on the powers of the executive and to the chronic paralysis it engenders. Our crisis is a moral crisis born of a political crisis. It is our business to make an end of it.

Also, in those internal discussions which fashion our likeness to the outer world, let us show that we know our own worth, what we want, and where we are going. In the confused and confusing picture presented by post-war France, there is much of shortcoming, but also much of promise. The promise of womanhood, which during the war played so new and so great a rôle and which, despite seven lost years, is ready to make itself felt. The promise of the veterans, who, although often ill-led, retain graven in their hearts the lesson that others have forgotten. The promise of the rising generation, blamed for taking too little interest in public affairs, when perchance public affairs should be blamed for presenting so little attraction. These are some of the features of a new France of which the United States has no inkling, because nothing has been done to make it known. Even our deceptions, which the press heralds far and wide, are not devoid of promise and of hope. For if the rising generation suffers from our non-achievements, if it is astonished that better opportunities do not open before it, if it complains that its desire to count for something in a country of high resolve is disappointed, it is that the Youth of France has faith in the future of France. This rejuvenation, here barely outlined, who seeks to display it before foreign eyes?

To group our forces even though incomplete, rather than to show our weaknesses even though excusable --- that is the first result we must attain. The second is not to conduct our foreign affairs with sentimental sloth. France cherishes the desire to be loved for herself and the illusion that she is so loved. I am well aware that, in the case of the United States, the warm outpouring of affection has often encouraged us to that belief. But no outpouring of affection ought to have prevented us from observing and from understanding; nor can it justify the sentimental mistakes with which our path is strewn: the mistake of having believed in 1917 that the United States was going to war for us and not for herself, the mistake of having in 1920 listened to self-appointed American orators urging a policy which was to lead to the separate peace with Germany, the mistake, after our unsuccessful attempt to settle the debt question in 1919, of believing that it could be settled by silence, the mistake of having consented to the reduction of reparations without raising the question of a reduction of our debts. Difficulties, in the hard world in which we live, are overcome neither by silence nor by optimistic suppositions. What is needed is mutual understanding, followed by agreement after interests have been accorded. In order to negotiate, let us place ourselves under the ægis of facts rather than of legends.

And it is well to accustom one's self to accepting people and nations as they are. American history, of which we are superbly ignorant, is not our history, and nothing that we can do will change it or alter its effects. American history, from beginning to end, has evolved around great economic issues. Our history, on the contrary, is all of battles and treaties. Of the last war our people remember the slaughter and the territorial changes. They know where the front gave way and where it was restored. They know the frontiers fixed by the Treaty. They are totally ignorant of the financial and economic factors which decided the fate of battles. Likewise, our people to-day are totally ignorant of the origin of our debts. They stubbornly confuse what we borrowed from neutral America and what America as one of the allied and associated powers advanced us. To them the schedule of payments and the Dawes Plan remain mysteries. They look upon such matters as secondary and almost unimportant --- a deplorable preparation for a negotiation with a nation whose great political battles have been waged over the tariff, the gold standard, or the trusts. Doubtless we are right in believing, as against the belief of the United States, that politics are more important than economics; but one values only that which one knows.

In other words, in order to negotiate we must put ourselves on a footing of equality. But equality presupposes frankness, and, for years, our relations with the United States have been putrefied by the abasement we have continually displayed. As early as 1917 our Chambers were so anxious to flatter the supposed views of Woodrow Wilson that their resolutions of June, 1916, on the war aims of France, could, six months after, have served word for word as a model for his Fourteen Points. Then there was in 1918 the damaging obsequiousness of our press to the head of a country with which our Government had to discuss and treat. At the same time Europeans were outbidding one another in a mad race to obtain American credits; and later there was the same rush of debtors, following Great Britain's example, to make abdication agreements. One often hears the United States blamed for its brutal plain speaking. I hold, after many negotiations with Americans, that such plain speaking is healthy, on condition that one speaks plainly, too. Incense is a form of homage which Europe has carried to extremes.

And now as to men. When a country has prepared herself for the defence of her interests, she must --- if she is to defend them successfully --- find a negotiator. Any one, anyhow, anywhere is the French way; and a costly way it has been, especially with the United States. The fundamental differences of surroundings explains why this is so, but it has been abundantly proved by experience. Some of our selections have been viewed as misplaced humour or as provocations. Some human exports are utterly impossible. Any negotiation with Americans demands natural ability and expert knowledge. If the former is lacking, the latter is all the more necessary. It is useless to arrive, as Viviani said, 'like bohemians,' without the documents in the case, without exact grasp of the subject, without means of action on public opinion, without ability to discriminate between arguments that tell and those that are fatal. There have been negotiations wrecked at the first meeting by a name or by a phrase. In such cases, it is useless to blame the negotiators, or to curse fate.

Yet, given proper preparation, our country might well try to bring into play the unexploited capital of friendship of which I have spoken. To do so, it must believe in it. It is just as dangerous in this constantly changing world to take for granted unchanging hostility as it is to rely fondly on presumed affection. American opinion is more mobile than any. France has paid dearly for that knowledge. She may profit by it. The passing slack of understanding proves nothing for the days to come; it merely proves the errors of yesterday. America almost unanimously was against war in November, 1916; for war in the following April. At the worst of the cleavage, the Good-Will Elections of 1922 in a few weeks created one of the warmest popular movements in favour of France ever seen. With Americans nothing is ever final; everything is always in progress. That is what gives us the right to hope, if we are ready to recast our ideas and reform our methods. Such reform may not be sufficient; but it is certainly essential.

And here, in the ledger of error, appears the American account --- no less long nor less weighty than that of France.

The war which intensified the power of the United States also intensified its faults --- foremost among which is that overweening pride, the outgrowth curiously enough of the austere faith of the Puritans and of the joyous triumph of mass production. Pride, to which bygone days bore witness, has swollen inordinately since the war. For now Americans, in the full flush of successful achievement, are filled with the unconquerable assurance that alone in a shaken world they possess the instinct of what is right. If ever Americans had doubts about their principles, that day is past. They move forward, these champions of the gold standard and of moral righteousness, anxious to teach all the world the lessons of their success, impatient of contradiction which would be only a waste of time. Without in any way diminishing the greatness of the United States, it may be said that for Americans to play the rôle for which fate has cast them, they must first become more human.

All the more so as the imperative advice they are so fond of giving to all the universe is very often hopelessly inapplicable to those for whom it is intended. As one of their writers recently remarked,(78) 'when a budget shows more revenue than expenditure, it doesn't take much genius to reduce taxation.' And when nations, in whose faces such prosperity is arrogantly thrust, have been struggling for years with unbalanced budgets and depreciated currencies, such gratuitous reminders imply no lack of self-appreciation or of nerve. These faults are all the more glaring when the woes of such nations are the result of fifty-two months of war, thirty-two of which the self-appointed adviser spent in a state of neutrality and twelve in military inactivity; when the ruins of that war, which the self-appointed adviser escaped entirely, weigh more heavily upon the others because of her sudden dissociation from their community of interest. In the midst of their privileged prosperity, Americans, face to face with a distressful Europe, would honour themselves by some measure of restraint and modesty. Such, however, are not their distinguishing virtues.

It is true that in reply they say that the advent of prosperity depends upon Europe herself and upon France in particular; that it could be attained if a constructive spirit took the place of the fatal habit of always looking to the past, never to the future. Here again Americans, too confident of themselves, do not perceive the chasm created by their constructivity. Look to the future? Well said --- but can the past be effaced merely by forgetting it? Does it suffice to say, 'Forget the war,' forget the most stupendous catastrophe which has ever shaken this world, in order to obliterate its consequences and reaction? That would be acting in blind ignorance, and blind ignorance is not without its perils. In July, 1924, the constructive spirit was to blame for the belief that war was impossible, and it was the refusal to believe war possible that was responsible for its breaking out. Can one be sure in 1926 that the same constructive spirit if applied to other problems would not give equally hazardous results? In a constructive spirit, facts and experience have been spurned, at the cost of being obliged to make repeated corrections of repeated errors.

In making these comments which, at the bottom of my heart, I believe justified, a scruple is upon me. Recently a Western newspaper owner visited me. He said: 'I am amazed. People tell me you complain of us. I can assure you we love you still. In my own State, in 1922, we raised a quarter of a million dollars for the Good-Will campaign.' The man was honest, and what can be more painful than to risk wounding such honesty, common to countless Americans? Also what better proof of boundless incomprehension than such amazement? No fact I record, no word I write, is to be taken as casting even the shadow of a doubt upon the unparalleled generosity of the American people. But, I hold, that they are to blame for not demanding of their leaders a better knowledge of the world, over which events of the past ten years have given them so unexpected and so vast an influence. There the responsibility is theirs entirely. Moreover, facts have certain rights, and because a few dozen politicians speak in the name of a hundred million citizens is no good excuse why they should be ignorant whereof they speak. The American politician, who most abundantly dogmatizes about the duties of Europe, Senator Borah, prides himself upon the fact that he has never taken the trouble to visit it. Those of his fellow citizens who cross the ocean in such numbers usually carry back only the most superficial impressions about French life, gained in places where French people never set their feet. Even American diplomats and newspaper correspondents, with a few rare exceptions, remain foreign to our atmosphere. The size of the American colony and the swarms of American tourists keep them in purely American surroundings. Most of them see us from the outside looking in, and not from the inside looking out. They reason about us as they would reason about themselves. Of all the whole world, the United States, despite her cables and her correspondents, is probably the least well-informed about France.(79)

This is why Americans apply to us rules of thought and conduct which are the outgrowth of their history and the negation of ours. Because in the land in which they have lived for three hundred years they have been spared fifteen centuries of trial, because they have never had a frontier to defend, because in a century and a half they have known only one short invasion which lasted a few weeks, they abusively reject all knowledge of the contrary tendencies and traditions with which a different past has endowed us. Yet is it any fault of ours that for two thousand years we have had to repel invaders by land and sea, that we have had to fight continually to remain masters in our own land, that our political constitution and our social organization are the result, not of a paper found in our cradle, but of centuries of conflict and slow adjustment? That Americans should rejoice because they have been spared these drawbacks --- nothing could be better; provided always their leaders do not blame us for suffering what is not our fault nor pester us with advice to forget our past.

If they were more human, more modest, and better-informed, Americans would be able to refrain from many of the unjust sayings and imprudent doings which have made Europe so hostile to them. I have mentioned the attacks on England in connection with rubber. What can be said of the insults to which France has been subjected, either because of her conventions with Central European countries ---the substitute for those guarantees of security promised but not furnished by the United States --- or because of the inadequacy of her taxation, which, however, is considerably higher than taxation in the United States? What can be said of the pressure brought to bear upon Belgium, the first victim in 1914, to make the reduction of her armed forces a prior condition to a loan? What can be said of the attempt to force manufacturers to open their books to American customs agents under pain of reprisals? These things are the fruits of distorted vision and lack of tact.

What does this mean if not that American foreign policy is lacking in continuity and cohesion? Americans are always astonished by this charge. They honestly believe that no policy is more stable than theirs. They take pleasure in asserting that since George Washington their foreign policy has not changed. As a matter of fact, they forget that an election sufficed to change the whole course of that policy --- that only a few weeks saw popularity transferred from Woodrow Wilson to Warren G. Harding. They forget, too, that their Americanism, which they believe unchanging, has in the course of history assumed successive and contradictory forms, which have now been exactly analysed. First of all Americanism was strictly colonial, then revolutionary, then pan-American, then idealistic, now economic. The actions and reactions are passive, but the aim is ever-changing. There is no country with which international coöperation is more difficult, no diplomacy at once more overbearing and evasive. The United States blames other countries for this difficulty of getting on together. In point of fact every time coöperation with the United States has broken down, the United States herself would seem to have been always most to blame.

And this instability is accounted for by a weakness, well defined by Paul Scott Mowrer. Convinced of their moral superiority as compared with the Old World, Americans are equally conscious of their political inferiority. No one doubts and every one proclaims that American diplomacy is unequal to European diplomacy and is bound to be worsted in any contest. Under the influence of this phobia the United States has constantly underestimated her own strength and has lost countless opportunities. Since the armistice the United States has frittered away the power placed in her hands by economic conditions after the war. New York has become the financial capital of the world. But American finance still takes its cue from English finance. Both the State Department and the Treasury have persistently in presence of almost unlimited possibilities attached themselves to simple solutions and have run away from difficulties. The separate peace with Germany did not increase the prestige of the United States even in Berlin. The American debt policy has restored to Great Britain that European popularity which Lloyd George and Curzon had forfeited. Never with such great resources has so puny a policy been pursued; never have more splendid opportunities been missed.

This conglomeration of errors --- errors of judgment and errors of action --- has cost the United States that whole-hearted confidence which Europe reposed in her in 1918. One may argue about the causes and the responsibilities; the fact is there. Europe in 1926 has not a kind word for the United States. America is feared. America is flattered. But none of the admirable traits which Americans possess is appreciated at its worth in Europe. Financial power is the only means of influence the United States possesses. Once the idol of Europe, she is to-day without a single worshipper. The United States, exactly as France though in a different way, has her reputation to rebuild, her popularity to restore. And, as in the case of France, reformed methods of thought and action are essential if foreign influence is to be regained. There, as well as here, there must be a searching of conscience; there, as well as here, a complete change of method. That is the concern of Governments. But it is also the concern of the peoples.

Also the concern of the peoples? Official action does not suffice for the solution of modern problems. The two efforts, outlined in these pages, show how necessary is the combination of public and private action. Private initiative may precede the initiative of Governments; it may counteract it; it may survive it. But in no case can the latter do without the former, whereby friendship is perpetuated --- as George Washington told the Comte de Grasse --- beyond the tomb. Between an article by William Randolph Hearst and a speech by Senator Borah, we have seen the power of independent groups, organized and resolute. They watch over the hidden treasure which lives forever in the hearts of the people and is always rediscovered by those who once have held it in their hands.

To reweave the ties and make them strong, Michelet has pointed the way to our democracies: first enlightenment, then enlightenment, always enlightenment. The field is vast for mutual ignorance is boundless. When lack of information reaches such a point it is useless to talk of misunderstanding. Misunderstanding implies an exception to a rule of understanding; and here of understanding there is none: for we are too ignorant of each other to understand each other. Ignorance even of the present is unbelievable. Nine Frenchmen out of ten believe that the President of. the United States is elected by the Congress and that the Congress can overthrow the Cabinet. American Senators asked me in 1917 if compulsory military service existed in France. Even worse ignorance, and more far-reaching, exists concerning the past; for it is the past that floods the present with light. And enlightenment is at all times what both peoples most need. Enlightenment is the essential harbinger of all common feeling, all common thought, all common action. If better days are to be hoped for, mutual enlightenment must be organized.

It must be organized, for it does not exist. Of what worth is the teaching in American history that French youth receives? Nothing, less than nothing, for it contains the germs of all the habitual and poisonous errors. A few pages in our textbooks, crowded with generalities which have done us so much harm. Take the Revolution of 1776, so different from ours in its origin and development. It is represented as the work of our philosophers. One would think that d'Alembert and Rousseau sent Franklin over as their ambassador carrying in his baggage a constitution all ready to be planted in American soil, as was planted in our Jardin des Plantes the cedar of Lebanon brought back in the cocked hat of Bernard de Jussieu. Take the Civil War. Without the slightest regard for truth, this great economic crisis so essentially American is represented as a simple application of the abolitionist theories of Victor Schoelcher. Thus the French boy, leaving school, fondly imagines that there exists beyond the ocean a nation of one hundred and twenty million human beings, fashioned in our image, imbued with our ideas --- a sort of vast branch more prosperous than the parent stem and always ready to oblige it. If one sought to create incomprehension, could it be more perfectly done?

Is young America any better informed about France than young France is about America? It does not seem so. In American textbooks are a few dates of outstanding events. But nowhere in the dry-as-dust pages does one find the faintest trace of anything that could throw light upon the mystery of our national life, upon our great moral crises, upon the tragedies of our slow formation, upon the astounding contradiction of our unswerving attachment to the soil and our insatiable need of foreign influence. Besides, this distant France, which the American schoolboy is taught to love, is the only country which means nothing concrete to him. On the benches of American schools there sit the sons of Swedes, of Germans, of Irishmen, of red Indians, whose desire to learn something of the countries from which their forbears came inspires their studies. France is the only country which has given them no schoolmates. For France does not export men. France has contributed nothing to the melting-pot. France has not woven itself into American life by immigration. So it is all the more necessary to explain and to interpret France to young America.

Books may help, but not books alone. During the war, under the direction of John Finley and of the American Committee for Devastated France, efforts were made to establish ties by correspondence between the primary schools of France and of the United States. Contact was rapidly created --- contact and astonishment which is the first form of child interest. Around facts expressed in naive phrases were wound impressions exchanged without guile. New blood was infused into the traditional friendship which for more than a century and a half had withstood the neglect of politicians. Since then we have seen young Americans, chosen by merit, coming to France for brief visits which taught them better than any books could have done something of the real France, something of her life in the cities and in the fields. More recently we have seen a band of little Frenchmen crossing the seas, and, under the guidance of men who knew and loved the past, following the trail of their ancestors towards the Great Lakes and the Mississippi. That is less costly than a propaganda bureau, and of more lasting effect. Who holds the rising generation, holds the future.

In the higher branches of learning, much more could be accomplished. In our universities, one chair and one alone is devoted to things American. It is true that in American universities many chairs are devoted to things French. But most of them are specialized exclusively in medical science and historical or literary criticism. Not one is devoted to a broader explanation of those contrasts, a knowledge of which is essential to future coöperation. Under such conditions what progress can be hoped for? The absurdities an educated Frenchman can voice about the United States are equalled only by the absurdities an educated American can voice about France. To correct this there is neither plan nor system. Certain exchanges of professors have been particularly fortunate. But any attempt at direction and continuity has always been lacking.

When, in 1919, the High Commissariat of Franco-American Affairs threw open our establishments of learning to the officers and non-commissioned officers of the American Expeditionary Forces for a period of six months, there was amazement at the extent of mutual ignorance and an almost childish joy on both sides as it began to be dissipated. But the days were all too short. Demobilization ruled. The boats were waiting to take the Americans back, and soon the old habit of speaking without knowing resumed its hateful sway. Governments, which have found so much time to waste on debts and other discussions have never tried to do anything to counteract them. Benefactors of great wealth, who have been moved to devote some portion of their fortunes to the public good, have rarely thought, when selecting the objects of their munificence, of the necessity of beginning at the beginning; nor have they meditated on the fact that by establishing contacts between peoples who knew nothing of one another, they ran the risk of accumulating future disappointments. And yet this mutual enlightenment is not difficult to provide.

What should it be? The question is answered above. The counterpart of the lessons which have misled our youth: an honest explanation of the obstacles to be overcome if the century-old friendship is to endure, a review of the dangers that friendship runs as contacts become more frequent, a commentary of the thousand and one differences of formation, of circumstances, of tendencies which geography, history, economics, religion and philosophy have raised between the two countries. What an admirable subject and how worthy of condign and enthusiastic treatment! Within its scope the lives of both countries could be presented with all their antinomian contrasts: logic and empiricism; sedentarism and mobility; individualism and solidarity. There one would see, asserting their opposite tendencies of incompatible effects, some of the greatest principles around which mankind evolves, and both countries could be placed upon their guard against those effects. Explanation of differences, elucidation of contrasts, dissociation of prejudices constitute the dough of this bread of enlightenment. The many vain and pompous words, which have rocked our sloth, make such a reaction essential.

Thus, and thus only, discerning or suspecting the consequences of their inverse origins, both countries would become, capable of showing greater consideration in matters that divide them. Who knows, if thus prepared, if they would not themselves have arrived at some compromise on the odious debt question? Who knows if the one would not have remembered that, when enacting the law authorizing the war loans, he had, in the confusion of his unpreparedness, intended to throw his gold into the balance to aid his allies? Who knows if the other would not have remembered that when threatened, for lack of money, with certain defeat, he would have agreed to any terms to obtain the dollars that were to save him? Both might then have asked themselves if the passage of ten short years sufficed to disrupt such a union, to transform the one into an unrelenting creditor, the other into a recalcitrant debtor. And, knowing one another better, it is possible that they would have stopped wrangling and placed their faith in equity. Conflicts are irredeemable only when the opponents are misinformed or ignorant of one another.

Daily life adds many opportunities to those offered by schools and universities. For opportunity to be fruitful, one must know when to seize and how to judge it. Place the two countries face to face over a general question, like the Peace --- the meeting will be laborious, incomplete, and ineffectual. Bring them together within the limits of a well-defined problem --they will begin by being mutually astonished and end by respecting one another. When the Americans landed in 1917, their engineers were full of contempt for the French railways. When they left in 1919, they carried away the highest opinion of our railroad administration. The same was true of American doctors, painters, surgeons, musicians, librarians, architects. Everywhere the final result was complete success, giving promise of the widest coöperation. That is the kind of contact we must develop by bringing together, to the exclusion of hostile interests, those who have something in common, gradually working towards union on a large scale by specialized crystallization.

The same rule applies to action. All the philanthropic and social undertakings which shed lustre on the time of war owed their success to the association of effort for common purposes clearly defined. If among those undertakings the American Committee for Devastated France so perfectly achieved its aims, it was because its action adhered strictly to principles made clear by analysis. It was modest. At a time when great captains of industry, who had dreamed of rebuilding all our ruins, were booking their homeward passages without having done anything, the patient band of noble women, who confined their ambitions to the social reconstitution of a few of our ravaged cantons, succeeded in establishing the closest and most complete coöperation with France. What it built has survived the first workers. The American institutions have passed smoothly and without difficulty into French hands. A service of social hygiene continues to work in a rural district; a modern school of librarians continues to function in Paris, despite all expectations to the contrary, just as, despite all probability, the moral and financial aid necessary to the endowment of these institutions was forthcoming in the midst of the political tension of 1922. As in the case of Government coöperation during the war, experience proves that success is dependent upon preparation. Who submits to this rule succeeds; who disregards it fails. Discussion as to what is feasible is useless when facts have spoken convincingly.

Among many examples of coöperation I have chosen this one, because it was the most complete and because I knew it well. But by narrowing our deductions we should fall into the same error as by exaggerating them. American efforts inspired by public spirit, which war introduced in France, have found an echo there among an élite which will not soon forget. Nothing could have been attempted without American money, nothing could have lasted without French coöperation. Already an active minority of our bourgeoisie, so long repugnant to all social duty, has learned the lessons taught by American example. There has already been some interpenetration, the extent of which may be traced in scientific and literary circles, and which, should it develop, will realize its brilliant promise. The work of the Rockefeller Institute against tuberculosis, the ever more welcome coöperation of our savants, our philosophers, our librarians, our physicians, our surgeons with their American colleagues, has met, if not with that sympathetic understanding which amounts to popularity, at least with studied support which is the warrant of future success. In many spheres practical achievement has taken the place of theoretical speculation. Contacts have led to action.

But the art of action is precisely the definition of the attainable, and that is why dreams of political cooperation will long be dangerous dreams. Twice within one hundred and fifty years such political cooperation has suddenly sprung from exceptional circumstances. It never lasted. War coöperation in 1778; war coöperation in 1917; the former, as the latter, followed by severely strained relations ---such the law in both cases. In all good faith, if it be possible to conceive community of human interest between France and the United States, the basis for their political coöperation is fragile indeed. When Americans defend themselves against European entanglements, they merely are guided by their experience. After Cuba, after the Philippines, we were assured that the United States would henceforth open its mind to the necessities of world politics. Events proved the contrary. More recently we were assured that, after their comradeship of battle, the friendship of France and the United States would forever be unclouded; here again facts have returned their inexorable answer. The great day of political coöperation has not yet dawned. Any attempt to hasten events will be disastrous.

I fear by such reservations to shock noble convictions or respectable hopes. That is usually the case with those who sincerely seek the truth. We must see things as they are. The generation to which I belong has been doubly sacrificed in the history of France. It has left a million and a half of its best sons upon the field of battle. The survivors, after having known the extremes of anguish and the extremes of hope, have borne the burden of war's aftermath which, made heavier by the faults of men, threatens to weigh down our country for many years to come. When that generation has gone, what will remain of it? Wooden crosses in the military cemeteries, and upon the others the brand that they did not know how to put their house, in order, that they handed down to their successors an unfinished task. If it is not vouchsafed to us to finish our task, at least the road must be made clear by us.

This book is a critical essay in search of coming enlightenment. It is also an act of faith. I believe in the possibility of combined efforts by France and the United States. I believe it by reason and by experience. But I also am convinced, and for the same reasons, of the infinite difficulty of success. As others have, I too at times have dreamed of wider possibilities. The risk of achieving nothing, if too much be attempted, stares us in the face. It is time to begin the work at the beginning, and to define our aims. After all, as Maurras once wrote, only our winegrowers have been able, by much patient labour, to mate lastingly the soil of France with American vines. It is our duty to imitate them.

In the hour of extreme peril my eyes saw the great heart and stupendous potentiality of the United States. Would that it turn not aside from France to whom for more than a century we have believed it naturally attracted, albeit we have done but little to promote affinity. If we allow things to go on as they have been going for the past few years, there will be grave danger of a total cleavage. That cleavage must be avoided. Thirty thousand American dead lie in our ravaged soil with our French dead. Our country is the only one to which the United States has entrusted the privilege of guarding her dead. The monuments to the fallen which stand in thirty-eight thousand of our communes, in silent homage to those who fought, remind our citizens of a victory won shoulder to shoulder. When such emotions are shared, they impose duties no less binding than political and financial contracts. They may help us to forget the wrongs whereof we both complain. But to forget avails nothing except as a preface to constructive progress.

In the years of uncertainty and disquiet which fate has dealt to us, the threat of Kipling's line, 'And never the twain shall meet,' has often rung in my ears. The twain must meet. Twice, in a century and a half, they have met in the service of great causes. They will meet again, if, on both sides, the obstacle is acknowledged and measured.(80)