The Great Ideas Today 1964

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Angel

Family

Animal

Fate

Aristocracy

Form

Art

God

Astronomy

Good and

Beauty

Government

Being

Habit

Cause

Happiness

Chance

History

Change

Honor

Citizen

Hypothesis

Constitution

Idea

Courage

Immortality

Custom and Convention

Induction

Definition

Infinity

Democracy

Judgment

Desire

Justice

Dialectic

Knowledge

Duty

Labor

Education

Language

Element

Law

Emotion

Liberty

iity

lution

Evil

Life and Death

Logic

Love

Man

rieasoninff

Mathematics

Relation

Matter

Religion

Mechanics

Revolution

Medicine

Rhetoric

Memory and

Imagination

Same and Other

Metaphysics

Science

Mind

Sense

Monarchy

Sign and Symbol

Nature

Sin

Necessity and Contingency

Slavery

Oligarchy

Soul

One and Many

Space

Opinion

State

Opposition

Temperance

Philosophy

Theology

Physics

Time

Pleasure and Pain

Truth

Poetry

Tyranny

Principle

Universal and Particular

Progress

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SPUTNIK HEADLINES IN EUROPE

A

mixture of concern, astonishment, and malicious delight

Latin American republics, and those of the British dominions, were

more

or less

modeled

after

it.

all

In 1790 there was only one 'President' at

the head of a state; today there are a hundred or so.

added to the radiant strength of democracy the ever-growing dynamism of American industry and technical achievement. America was still not the land of learning and cultural refinement, but it was the land of the inventor, of mountain-moving technical feats, and before the end of the century the greatest economic power on earth. In 1913 the German industrialist Walther Rathenau had proposed a Customs Union for economic 'integration' of Europe: thus, Rathenau argued, peace would be established in Europe, and an economic realm whose productivity might "equal, perhaps surpass" that of America. In this sphere, at least, American leaderAfter the Reconstruction there was

American

political

40

Golo ship

was

Mann

clear; only to the extent that

one imitated them could one hope

to overtake them.

Europe in a four-years' war only made the American sun ten times brighter. America's early neutrality gave the country an unprecedented strength, first as arbiter of peace, then as world policeman; her armed intervention decided the outcome of the war; her radical peace program, founded on national rights of self-determination, was accepted by the European powers, and— in contrast to what could later be maintained— to a great extent followed through. As President Wilson made his triumphal tour through Europe, it seemed that the ancient American dream was fulfilled. Also briefly revealed at that time was what was to become the dominant theme of international affairs after mid-century: the contest between America and Russia over the destiny and good will of the peoples. Wilson's peace program was no spontaneous creation; it was in the American tradition, as Wilson affirmed, but the occasion that compelled its hurried formulation was provided by the Russians. In general, this short, rather quickly terminated, American act of world leadership was a prologue to the long drama that began in 1940. In spite of the disillusioned and disillusioning moods of Europe, in spite of the betrayal of its own ideal of the League of Nations and the return to 'normalcy,' the America of the '20's could no longer be, either for itself or for the world, what it had been in McKinley's time. Its new power, however disavowed and unused, its new position of world creditor, its economic development, all had made it impossible. When President Hoover declared in his inaugural address that for the first time in the history of mankind America had defeated poverty, Europe believed him. The "Economic Miracle of America," as a German best seller of the '20's called it, became for political economists and journalists a subject as hopefully fascinating as the miracle of American democracy had been a century earlier. For the first time, the country also exerted a strong cultural influence, involving everything from the advertising arts, through styles of dress, dances, films, and music, to the heights of literature and philosophy. American fiction writers took Europe's book market by storm, American dramatists the European stage. Politically, it is true, the

The

self-destruction of

light of the

"Republican dynasty," in spite of Hoover's great philanthropy, exercised no very attractive influence, and trials like the Sacco-Vanzetti case threw an unflattering light on the American judicial process. But the definitive thing was the entirely straightforward American self-criticism, indeed, occasionally self-hatred, which the

America had long been known trace of that in a Lewis, a

8 See Hemingway's The Killers

Dos

new

literature

as the land of

Passos, or a

(GGB,

Vol.

41

2,

brought to Europe.

If

conformism, there was no

Hemingway. 8

pp. 169-177).

SACCO-VANZETTI SYMPATHIZERS DEMONSTRATE

An

unflattering light on the

American

judicial process

one speaks of American influence, he cannot long neglect the factor The American character is above all knowing, proud, and sensitive; the American, who is so amused by European nationalism, has always been decidedly nationalistic himself. But at the same time the American nation is not so homogeneous as the great European nations; it is, naturally, a nation of nations, a European federation in America. It follows that much has come back to Europe from America, which in the first place was brought to America from Europe; and the question of American influence is much more difficult to keep within bounds than that, let us say, of French influence. This is true of the eighteenth-century philosophy of the Founding Fathers, which was a European philosophy par excellence. It is true of American psychology, which began to be felt in Europe in the '20's, but which in large part had originated in Austria. If

of interaction.

true of Wilson's League of Nations, which was long the dream of European philosophers, 9 and very much so of Hollywood, the illustrated magazine and the atomic bomb. This is not meant to deny an American identity. It means only that this identity is of a dialectical nature and much more difficult to define than the older European national characters. It is an energy which has always renewed itself out of other energies, which has been at once autonomous and compounded. America is at once a part of Western civilization and an extract of it, a digest or resume of the whole. If the great Depression set America back, shamefully gave the lie to the gospel of free enterprise, and left Russia, which was unaffected by It is

.

.

.

9 See, for example, On World Government by Dante Alighieri (GGB, Vol. 7, pp. 383399); Jean Jaeques Rousseau's A Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe (GGB, Vol. 7, pp. 405-436); Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace (GGB, Vol. 7, pp. 441-475).

42

Golo the

crisis,

Mann

its first Five Year Plan, gave Franklin Roosevelt the opportunity to restore leadership. And he did so more strongly than he

enjoying a seeming superiority with

by the same token

it

the nation's claim to

American nationalism and isolationism projecting its own aspirations on the screen of America, democratic Europe saw in Roosevelt, the social democrat, a new union of state and economic interests, without peril to freedom. So, for example, the TVA was interpreted, and admired more covetously than the founding of Washington 140 years earlier. That the innovations of the New Deal actually only imitated what the more progressive European countries had long before achieved in the area of social security was not so important as the spirit of Roosevelt's speeches: philanthropic, clear, pragmatic. After the Chicago "Quarantine Speech" he was seen as himself

first

were not

set out to do, for

alien to him.

Once again

a leader in the fight against Fascism, in spite of his country's neutrality. It

was Roosevelt's art to practice a moral influence, indirect but quietly upon the flow of events in Europe, long before his own country— the whole world situation— allowed him to do it with any material

decisive,

or

means.

From then

on, the leadership of

America

in moral, as well as in eco-

nomic, military, and political matters, was indisputable. However, a leadership opposed to other combinations of powers:

first

it

was

the Axis,

then the Communists. In the case of the former, the opposition was to be taken seriously only as a military threat; Hitler was no competitor for the love of mankind, the favor of future generations.

The Communists could

any event, than America wanted to admit. But this new hostility was not, from the American side, expressed only negatively. The ambition of Roosevelt's successors was— with slight variations— to set

be;

more

so, in

constructive goals, to help, to advise, to point out

problems.

On

humane

solutions to

the one hand, the military doctrines and alliances, the in-

terventions, the wars:

on the other, the Marshall Plan, the energetic

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT

The opportunity

to restore the

VISITS

TVA

nations claim

to

leadership

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

West European

development aid funds, the One can say without exaggeration that never before was there such a leadership, an imperialism that did not take but gave of its own. fostering of

unification, the

generous programs of large private donation.

DOES AMERICA TODAY MAINTAIN HER

HISTORICAL LEADERSHIP? generosity and success of the Marshall Plan can be The incomparable doubted as the political efficacy of the Atlantic Treaty or the

as little

intervention in Korea. Nevertheless,

and early

it is

possible that America undertook

no nation can play any great length of time. Always, the good, generous intentions were mixed with other characteristics: a pride that no longer considered anything impossible and that explained unpleasant developments anywhere in the world— like the 'loss' of China— only on the basis of treachery, or of inexcusable errors on someone else's part; an aggressive selfrighteousness; a tendency to ignore what did not fit into the picture one had constructed for oneself; insufficient, objective acquaintance with complex situations which, it was believed, could be made to conform with one's own wishes and illusions. This was a successor to the old American isolationism, still effective when isolation as such had given way to complete world involvement. Isolationism meant free decisions concerning the future; and America still believed she possessed this freedom, this right. The new effort, hugely energetic but too often ill-advised on the situation with which it attempted to deal, frequently had disappointing results and the old isolationist spirit was allowed to spring up again: as if one were still free; as if one could, according to his caprice, either construct a total world unity or abandon it altogether. If it is true that, under the allegedly strong but actually weak Eisenhower administration, and the contrastingly energetic but unlucky Kennedy regime, America was not able to hold her position of world leadership, it is questionable whether that is a misfortune. What, in general, would a "historically leading nation" be? Can, or should, there be such in the forties

fifties— of necessity— a role that

for

a thing?

We

can suppose a goal uniquely envisioned by men of this century. Then, that state 'leads' which is farthest on the way to this goal. Were it the ideal of the welfare state, then Sweden, for example, is farther ad-

vanced than the United States, and would be considered the 'leader.' But it can be questioned whether there is such a goal, and whether the welfare state is it. It could be maintained that, upon realizing any goal, one is about to cease to regard it as a good, something worth striving for, or, that there is really no such thing as a goal,' but rather only the dynamics of a continually renewed, creative balance between opposed forces or conditions.

44

Golo Man?} If

the latter

forties

and

regret

its

ship last.

is

fifties

true, then the American position of leadership in the was exceptional and necessarily short-lived. One should

passing as

little

as

one does the reduction of Russia's leader-

among the Communist countries. Such things do not and cannot The Americans were glad to be first with their good example, but

they never wanted to shoulder the burden of Atlas. That has been forced

upon them.

If

any part of

it

is

away now, they have

taken

the least

reason to complain.

one opposes the whole notion of 'historical leadership' as correspondif one agrees that the bright and shining American superiority of 1945 depended only on momentary conditions, If

ing in the long run to no reality,

then 'leadership' breaks up into a great number of conceptual fragments.

A

nation can lead in one science, and not in another, or in one branch

or application of a science, aspects,

and not

in others.

and

so on.

An economy can lead in certain we all know that the American

For example,

economy remains by

far the most productive, but that its rate of indusgrowth has lagged behind that of other nations in the last decade; that it has failed to provide work for all those able and willing to work; that though the image of America's industrial and technical, civilizing glory remains predominantly untarnished, here and there one notices oldfashioned usages, signs of exhaustion and decline. In New York, one rides in elevators that would be impossible in Milan; in New England, in trains that would not be tolerated in West Germany; the comfortless downtown areas of many American cities are to be found almost nowhere in Europe. There is nothing tragic, however, nothing incurable, and nothing permanent in such things. One is passed, holds back until there is an opportunity to overtake, after a time is passed again, and then once more pushes into the lead. Other nations today may well pursue more intensively than America certain collective, state undertakings. The state of Israel is incomparably stronger in this respect, governed by community spirit, by a single idea, by the will to work, and a readiness to sacrifice; two million Israeli, held away from the realization of a noble dream by a hostile world, can exhibit a renunciation, and in a position comparable to that of existing African states, exercise a power of attraction that 180 million Americans cannot. This does not mean, however, that Israel 'leads historically'; people in many communities could never live according to the pattern trial

of Israel. Israel performs its own particular duty. The pertinent question would be whether the United States, in her so totally different dimension, is doing the right thing. If she is, then she plays as much of her former is legitimate and good, both through the example and through the power that is inevitably connected with

role of leadership as

that she gives this

example.

45

New A

Europe and the U.S.A.

is seen when one realizes how the colossal American community operates. Law and order prevail, with some exceptions; justice is impartial and prompt, with some exceptions; taxes in astronomical amounts are collected on time, and are, with

great accomplishment

factory of the

comparatively

corruption, distributed systematically; the military

little

establishment maintains

its

striking power, etc., etc. So far, so good.

DO THE AMERICANS MASTER THEIR

OWN PROBLEMS?

federal government operates within narrow bounds. The web of The administrative routine, the complicated machinery of the governmen-

system, the hordes of people in the country to be governed, provide tough opposition to the governing will. There is still a certain truth in

tal

the words that old

Having seen

Henry Adams spoke

to the young Franklin Roosevelt. from the White House, Adams had and move out, but who it was had never made

lived a half century across

many men move

in

any difference. Whether a President entered office with the idea of keeping or restoring harmony, or of making great changes, the reality was never merely the extension of what the new officeholder had projected. There are possibilities for both good and bad in the typical experience of the President. It is good that he cannot do exactly as he pleases, that he, the incarnation of the people's will to progress, must confer on every disputed measure with Congress, which embodies their manifold and mistrustful will to stability. of an ambitious to

each other.

man

If

in the

they are not in the long run reconciled,

in useless, continual strife, it

itself

The country has another wisdom besides that White House, and the two must be reconciled

cannot supply,

if,

if

they engage

Congress paralyzes the leadership which during whole sessions of Congress, the most if

urgent legislation does not come up because an unnatural coalition of representatives opposes

then

it is

of the

it

under the absurd catchword of "socialism,"

not good. Federalism and the division of powers, natural virtues

American system, are both frustrated

does not keep up, as well as

it

in their excesses.

The country

could, the school system, the welfare

and the sick, the health and beauty of its cities, the growth economy. And in thus failing to solve the problems that are specifically her own, she ceases to set a great example and loses

of the old

of

its

now

flaccid

influence.

Ideally formulated, the conflict between the President and Congress, from Wilson to Kennedy, was as a rule a conflict between progressivism and conservatism. Now, it is to be understood of American conservatism that— again with the one exception of the old South— it never had and still does not have the polish and the intellectual depth of European

conservatism. This

is

easily explained.

European conservatism was

asso-

ciated with such at least aesthetically attractive causes as monarchy, aris-

46

Golo tocracy,

and the Church— and with

pessimistic, insights into is

human

Mann at least interesting,

nature.

if

predominantly

American conservatism was and

the exact opposite; hardened optimism, frozen revolution.

"MU

Gott

Konig unci YaterlancF was one thing. For 'free enterprise' (such halfmonopolies as General Motors and Bell Telephone), for a 'balanced budget,' and the 'least possible government,' is quite another. The central question of European conservatism is one of authority: where new authority should come from, after the thoughtless destruction of the old. But direct authority has never interested the American con-

fiir

servatives of our century, just as

it

never interested those of the previous

because in America authority had to come from a strong federal state founded on a democratic national majority— i.e., on precisely what they did not want. They were not interested in authority but rather in freedom for the rich and successful: freedom to century; they were against

it,

and lay waste the land, freedom for communities to have as wretched a school system as they pleased, freedom for radio stations to broadcast whatever miserable programs might be profitable, freedom for exploit

corporations to determine price policies independently of the government,

and so on. A few steps further and conservatism of this kind would become anarchy. Therefore, one may sympathize with the lively English

now made it too easy Communists, and continues to make it too

conservatism, or the paradoxical, clever French, even with the old,

defunct Prussian, and yet not with the American.

It

has

its opponents, even the easy— especially with its public pronouncements, which are usually compounded of concern with utter trivialities, a cold and humorless selfrighteousness, and false oversimplifications. However, in actions, at least in those it has finally permitted, its record has been better. The American economy is not what conservative rhetoric would make it, but just as little is it identifiable with the federal state. If it were either, it would long ago have disintegrated. The enlightened wing of

for

U.S.

GERMAN

AUTO WORKERS "Mit Gott

fiir

Konig

unci Vaterland"

was one thing

TROOPS, 1914

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

American conservatism has at last let itself be drawn toward the middle and opened the way for the inevitable. The unenlightened remain in a minority. And from 1940 until now this has held good even for foreign policy.

There

is,

therefore, reason to

hope that the federal government

will

be

able in the future— though as always after delays and setbacks— to put

through the measures needed for dealing with such new and ever more difficult problems as, for example, those created by automation. The will to live of a great,

profoundly reasonable, generous nation will always be

stronger than the hardened egoism and the decrepit doctrines of special interest groups, banal 'experts,'

Furthermore, too

it

is

and irresponsible demagogues.

a piece of true conservative

much from any regime

in so large a country. It

wisdom not is

to expect

impossible that the

mass of a people like the Americans, a mass of 180 million happinessseekers, would follow any one leader all the way, or be entirely swayed by a single idea. The wonder is that the foreign policy of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy was possible; not that these Presidents failed in

some of the things they proposed. The European observer, therefore, would do well to judge with caution the problem which again today is the center of American concern. Certainly, it is disappointing that the race problem has not been solved according to the guiding ideal of America; that, a hundred years after the Civil War, there is always talk only of progress, and never of progress even the new Civil Rights bill provides only the But while there are problems which a nation must solve if it is to survive and maintain its position in the world, there are others which cannot be solved but only repeatedly made tolerable. Facts are facts. In any case, the Americans could learn from this that not everything in human nature, even their own, is perfect— or can be, quite as easily as they have been taught, made perfect through science and good will. Moreover, the American race problem would not be so much the center of world interest if freedom of speech did not prevail in America; if American Negroes like James Baldwin did not have the opportunity to put their beautifully formulated despair into print. (In Russia he would

toward a definite

same

goal;

sort of progress.

not have the same freedom.)

AMERICANS AND COMMUNISTS leadership by a single problem of world leadership, or of The the mistaken one, becomes nation, which we hold be a historical

to

fact that the

lieve they

Communists

real in

false,

in general,

and the Russians

have seized such leadership

for

themselves, and that the

Americans dispute their claim. The challenge is taken is a contest, even though it is for a phantom prize. 48

in particular, be-

up. Here, then,

Golo

The

battle

Moscow,

Mann

between Americans and Communists, Washington and

often understood as one between two 'economic ideologies':

is

public property versus private property, the rule of the working class

economy versus would have it under-

versus the rule of capitalists or capitalism, a planned

and

free enterprise,

The

stood as such.

so forth. At least the Russians pity

that so often the Americans also understand

is

and defending their were something holy. In this respect the United States assumed somewhat the same role— at least in the Eisenhower-Dulles era— as that played by Metternich's Holy Alliance in the nineteenth century: being completely committed to one principle which, according to many others besides the Communists, does not have a place in the future, the principle of free enterprise, and unalterably opposed to another, that of planned economy, which many impartial observers believe does belong to the future. It is lamentable that such a foolish oversimplification of things, so welcome to the enemy, should be perit

that way. thus falling into their enemy's trap,

Tree enterprise' as though

it

mitted. Expressions like "the people's capitalism" or "the rule of the

working

pure nonsense. Phrases such as "planned economy," wide ground that they have long since become useless without lengthy explanations. If the American class" are

"capitalism," "free enterprise" cover such a

economy was

"capitalistic" in 1864, then

cause capitalism

now and

is

it

no longer so

in 1964, be-

then differ as night and day.

phrases, we might suggest some of the conwhich must be considered in order to understand the differences and similarities between the American and Russian economies. How is the social product actually divided? Here it would turn out. of course, that the top American wages are still far higher than the Russian, but further that both the factory worker and the white-collar worker in America are not only, as might be expected, in absolute but in

To

get

away from empty

crete problems

relative terms better off than their Russian counterparts.

What

is

Russian?

the

power

Much

of the

American labor unions,

as

compared

to the

greater.

Where, in general, is power concentrated? In Russia, political and economic power are closely related. In America, they have different origins, and are in competition, and yet there are close ties between them.

What

is

the goal and

prosperity, an

end

to

nature; in Russia, the

dream

of the society? In America, universal

poverty and suffering, the scientific conquest of

same— with,

torn,

is

and agonized with inner conflicts; this come within grasp and then receding

ing to

How for

a secondary purpose of supposed to be decadent, secondary goal forever seem-

ironically,

overtaking the American economy, which

to the distant horizon.

is theoretically claimed both societies? The differences cannot be great. In both countries

real

is

the equality of opportunity that

49

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

the middle classes recruit for the most part from both, the gifted, ambitious

the opportunity to raise his

vantage of

Who

among

themselves. In

young person from the working class has position, although relatively few take ad-

it.

has the greatest prestige in the society? In America the successful

businessman, the brilliant politician, the champion athlete, the star of the entertainment industries, and lately the important scientist.

It is

not

very different in Russia.

What

is

retically

actuality

the economic function of free competition? In Russia, theo-

none; in America, theoretically an all-important one, and in still

a very noteworthy

one— but everyone knows the

factors,

beginning with the percentage of the social product consumed by national defense, which have tended to reduce this function, and will continue to do so despite

What

all

the fine talk.

influence does the state exercise on the development of the

economy? In

Russia, the tendency

is

toward

total regulation,

although

thwarted somewhat by opposed tendencies of human nature. In America the theoretical situation is confused. Against the gospel of Free Enterprise, there is the effect of such legislation as the Full Employment Act of 1946, according to which the Union assumes responsibility for this

is

work

government does control and practical means for regulating economic growth, to advance it or slow it down. And it is quite impossible that conditions like those of 1932 should be permitted again.

finding

for all citizens. Indeed, the federal

extraordinarily diverse scientific

U.S.

TRADE UNIONISTS American labor

RUSSIAN TRADE UNIONISTS unions, as

compared

to the Russian?

Golo

Which economy

more successful?

the

is

Mann Still

by

American,

far the

notwithstanding certain areas of Russian superiority. Questions of this kind,

if

asked more often, would lead us away from

the battle of 'ideologies' to a grasp and differentiation of realities.

One should never have allowed nomic

issues

according to their

the

Communists

to

formulate the eco-

own concepts— as though

this

wholly

and should be the subject of a kind of theology, holy and changeless doctrines. It may be that the American economy,

practical sphere could of

in spite of the great chistic.

The present

changes

in the last three decades,

writer believes that

it

is,

is

still

hysterical advertising of the bomb-shelter industry, or the

disclosures concerning the "cost of dying," testify to this.

how

too anar-

that the hectic, almost

well-known

The question

anarchy under control in comparison to other, earlier types which were strongly dealt with is a practical problem. Every country would solve such problems differently, and every country of

to get this kind of

could learn from the others. The fact that France has learned so much from America is no ground for supposing that, in the new art of planning, America could not take over a good deal from France. And all of this has nothing to do with theology, with the ultimate duties and values of man. This is not to deny the conflict of ideas. But this does not lie in the realm of economic practices; to look for it there is already to have lost half the battle. It has to do, rather, with the fact that official Russian it believes itself to know the one and only mankind, from which the grim earnestness of their life and work, the structure of their economic hierarchy, and their special form of imperialism actually cuts them off— while American thinking is pluralistic and empirical. The difference between America's political parties, those fantastic agglomerations of interests and ever changing mixtures of ideas, and the Russian single party, which in reality is a governing society, expresses this antithesis more accurately than the difference between American democracy and Russian despotism (which hardly touches most Russians). The American principle is more suitable to the human situation than the Russian doctrine, which contains little truth and much nonsense. But the latter has the practical advantage that under it one can tyrannize cheerfully and with good conscience, something which the Americans neither can nor want to do. A relevant example is the recent difficulty in Panama, which goes back to an ancient injustice. If the Russians had interests comparable to the Canal Zone, they would have set up a Soviet Republic and Communism— in short, the uniform identity which is guaranteed by the doctrine— and there would be no unrest. One cannot, when he speaks of contrasts, leave similarities unnoticed. In his book The Irony of American History (1952), Reinhold Niebuhr, a

thinking

is

monistic, that

historical goal of

51

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

leading exponent of American self-criticism, maintains that the American "faith"

and the Russian, locked in however fierce a battle as they are same roots in the rationalism of the late eighteenth cen-

today, have the

tury (the philosophy of the Enlightenment), that both nations subscribe

man and the all-healing power of no accident that the Americans, after brief hesitation, took up the challenge to compete in the conquest of space. It suited them. Even the blasphemous overtones of the phrase "conquest of to the doctrines of the perfectibility of

science. It

is,

in this sense,

space" suited them. It is best, as far as

possible, to avoid discussion of anything pertaining

between Russian atheism and American religion. The old wine of American Puritanism has been much watered. American earth satellites and atom bombs, however useful they may be, are no more Christian than Russian ones. True religiousness is humility, is wholly positive, and stands in opposition to nothing at all. As soon as it turns to hostile opposition it has already ceased to be true, and of all wars in the history of the world the religious wars have been the worst. to the contrast

KHRUSHCHEV VISITS EAST GERMAN FARMERS The contrast between Russian atheism and .

Golo

Mann

RESUME Like

everything of great

vitality.

America has from the very beginning

j aroused envy, aversion, and hate

much

as well as love.

Much

love,

but also

hate even in the nineteenth century; Charles Dickens, and the

Austrian Kiirnberger in his remarkable novel Dcr

Amerika-Mude (The

America-Weariness), furnish examples of this. Such ambivalence of feeling corresponds to a state of self-consciousness in America itself; a country of the proudest, most charming patriotism, but a country also where self-criticism has often turned to self-disgust. For a European who has lived a long time in America, it is an obligation not only of gratitude but of truthfulness to underscore the good that America has meant to the world. It is well known but all too seldom

mentioned, for the world

ungrateful.

is

How

ironically little has Russia,

the country of 'Communism,' done for other peoples,

how

closed, suspi-

and greedy it has been; how much has America, the land of chained egoism,' done for other peoples, beginning with the fact that

cious,

BILLY

GRAHAM PREACHES TO NORTH CAROLINHXS .

.

.

American

53

religion

'unit is

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

How long it held its gates open to immigrants, them comparatively open today, while the much larger, much emptier Russia, for several centuries, has allowed only a few thou-

made up

of 'other peoples.'

and

holds

still

sand immigrants to enter. No nation has ever been more generous, more prepared to give, than America; never a richer storehouse of good will; never so many good works. This declaration may seem trivial; but a man need not be ashamed of the trivial when it is genuine. I add an impressionistic observation. The Americans, who move around Europe today as tourists, students, diplomats, businessmen, are predominantly not "Ugly Americans." They are open, friendly, courteous, inquiring, refined, and likeable.

Comparthem to European tourists, one is not disposed to dwell on their faults. America is a country about which one has to say first one thing and then another. All countries are so; but it is true of America to a greater ing

IMMIGRANTS AND STATUE OF LIBERTY No nation has been more generous

Golo extent than,

let

us say, of France.

Mann

Even

as

its

face shows the most strik-

ing diversity of features— near-tropical landscapes lovely greens colors,

standing in

crowded slums— so ous. It

and northern

also

its

rocks,

social

and

intellectual reality

is

infinitely vari-

the land of conformity, of sameness in living conditions.

is

also the land of rebels as they will.

fogs,

mountains of indescribably shining serene solitude, the man-made hells of run-down,

and volcanic

They can

and

individualists,

live in a

shack

who can

in the

dress, or

woods,

It

is

wear costume,

in a tent, in a trailer,

Bohemians in an artists' quarter, as hermits on the edge of a cliff, as cowboys on the prairie, as fakirs in the desert. They can be hunter, author, professor and farmer, speculator and prophet all in one, and change their professions as often as they please. They can, in spite of as

all cant,

follow their heart's desire in true as well as false adventures.

There are provincialism and sophistication to be found in America; hypocritical prudishness and the unbelievable foulness of its new literature; the most refined, subtle journalism, and public speeches of the most offensively platitudinous character; a strongly developed sense for law and justice, and the most barbarous criminality; lofty idealism, the most civilized philanthropy, and cynicism, the cult of brutality, wildness, hate. Happiness is at home in America; if one could measure it, one might decide that Americans are happier than Europeans ever were, not merely wealthier but freer, more friendly, with more space to grow up in, under less pressure. But unhappiness is also at home in America, if the statistics on divorce, alcoholism, crime, mental illness, and suicide are instructive— as well as the higher literature.

Among we

the problems with which the Great Republic is confronted ought to distinguish between those which are peculiarly American, those that belong to Western or Atlantic civilization, and those that are the common concern of mankind. The United States can be depended upon to solve, or fail to solve, their own problems in their own way. The race problem is nowhere else quite the same thing that it is in America. The American labor unions are different from the British or German. The American President will always be 'made' differently from the British Prime Minister or the German Chancellor. Under unimaginable tensions, he will always have to square the circle— he must be at the same time a personality and a mixture of contradictory ideas and regional appeals for which the cititoday,

make decisions, and yet, in the short time between and the next campaign, not spoil his chance of re-election; he must win acceptance of vital legislation by a coalition of friends and enemies, and yet seem the most powerful man on earth. American political parties will always be essentially different from European partieseven though the Germans, for example, have adopted the American form very quickly. The country, for all its tensions and contradictions, has zenry voted; he must

his taking office

55

New Europe and

the U.S.A.

exceptionally strong individual characteristics, and will continue to have

them.

It still

stays there

has the greatest powers of assimilation.

If a young European be captivated by the beauty, the space, and, within a few more years, no one will be aware of

beyond a

the hospitality;

year, he will

his origins.

Hut at a

it

has been the fate of this strong national identity to reach maturity

time of incomparable

sary to

list

crisis in

the history of mankind.

It is

unneces-

the basic factors and the external characteristics of this

crisis;

everyone knows them. But, for special emphasis: it is no accident that "One World" and the maturity of the Great Republic have come about

same mankind

at the

time.

America

of

itself

and, as

the transformation of of

its

history, discovery

vention in Europe,

it

it

man

the product of an earlier 'revolution'

itself is

grew and developed, contributed greatly to which we have all shared. In all epochs

in

and settlement, independence,

has done the same thing that

it

civil

war, inter-

accomplishes with

and bring into sharper focus man. Exactly this, we have already observed, was the intention of the declaration of 1776. The Americans dare not complain, now, that instead of the beautiful isolation of old they have exactly the opposite: an encounter with mankind as a whole, which is conclusive, from which there is no escape, in which they must either conquer or be ruined. Between these two poles, of the nation in her characteristic identity, and the problems of mankind in general in which she has become involved, lies the special American-European relationship which we call Western Civilization. In reality, the lines of distinction here begin to its

technical discoveries: that

the specifically

disappear.

It is

modern

is,

to articulate

situation of

characteristic of the transformation of

century that the originally 'Western' sciences deeply, larger and larger groups of people there

is

all

affect,

mankind in our more and more

the while. Nevertheless,

such a thing as the West; every traveler from Africa and Asia

it, and the Atlantic Treaty is no arbitrary creation. Here the differences between Europe and America fade into insignificance. While foolish Europeans still parade their ancient cultures, the same technological features dominate the landscapes of both continents; and they will become still more prominent in Europe, simply because it is smaller and has more people living closer together. The Alps will soon be nothing more than a network of electric power plants, tunnels, highways, and ski lifts— a fate that the Rockies and Sierras can escape for some time yet. Europe still has its 'ruined castles,' but soon they will as little characterize its landscape as the churches of New York characterize the face of that city. Europe is rapidly freeing itself of the past. The old, richly traditional states of Virginia and Massachusetts seek to preserve it. The state of Prussia, so important in the European past, is no more, and will soon be forgotten.

experiences

56

Mann

GoJo If

one could

this 'race'

new race had sprung up in America, German youth of today will teach us that

at times believe that a

then a look at the French or

was the

result of

nothing more than better nourishment and

all be Americans. Americans have always been, even when they refused to recognize it, Europeans. Their great adventure is our great adventure. We Europeans do not need America simply to maintain a balance of power. We need America because we are America itself. America's failure would be our

greater freedom in childhood. Europeans will soon

failure;

America's catastrophe, our catastrophe. With

vulgarity, hatefulness that

it

conceals, with

all

its

all

shrill,

the brutality, crass,

rankly

America is still the greatest product of Europe's genius for state-building, and its fate is inseparable from our own. This, I believe, is why America and Europe, in spite of all superficial antipathies, again and again find themselves thrown together in times

prolific life.

of political crisis.

They know

that without the other, neither can long

survive.

57

GUIDO PIOVENE

Guido Piovene, today one of Italy's writers, was born in

most noteworthy

Vicenza, Italy, in 1907.

He

graduated

philosophy from the University of Milan and an important part of his

in

life

since then has been spent travel-

ing abroad.

The formative

influence of

his philosophical studies is evident in

works as well as his During the early period of his career, he worked both as a journalist for II Corriere della Sera (Milan), and on critical essays for Italian and foreign journals. During this same period he wrote four novels, today translated into many languages: Lettere di una his imaginative essays.

novizia (Letters of

a.

Novice),

La

gaz-

(The Black Gazette), Pieta contro Pieta (Pity Against Pity), and I falsi redentori (The False Redeemers). In order to seek new narrative forms, he published no novels from immediately after the war until 1963, but undertook instead long journeys which resulted in volumes of essays and descriptions, one on the United States, De America, and one on Italy, Viaggio in Italia (Journey Through Italy). In 1963 he published the first of a new series of noveb, Le Furie (The Furies), and a book including political and other essays, La coda di paglia (Chip on the Shoulder). He now intends to zetta nera

dedicate himself almost exclusively to the novel and the essay. His guiding ideal

is

that the novel should

bring to light the changes in society and, above in

human

character.

58

all,

An

Italian

Looks

This

at

Novelist

America

essay presents one European's view of America, and although

limited from the beginning

by that subjectivity which conditions the same to reach conclusions which many may share. The major difficulty in writing on such a topic lies in deciding upon a point of departure. We have a subject— Europe, European man— and an object— America, American man— both difficult to define, perhaps indefinable. In the essays on a similarly broad topic, "the stature of man," in last year's edition of The Great Ideas Today, Aldous Huxley felt it necessary to define the word 'man' before discussing the stature of this man to whom everyone is constantly referring; and Herbert J. Muller warned us that "in general, criticism of American life has itself become pretty mechanical. We may forget that the 'ordinary Amerevery point of view,

it

attempts

.

ican'

is

.

all

.

a pure abstraction, like the sociological monster

'average man.' ...

It

known

as the

conceals the innumerable different kinds of Amer-

icans ..." There are those who would argue that such topics should not be treated, because they inevitably force us into empty generalities, disguised, oftentimes only by intellectual subtleties. But this is an extreme position. Common sense reminds us that the words 'American' and 'European' express more than merely geographical differences. Likewise, a minimum of intellectual honesty prevents us from attempting to enclose these words in neat definitions, thus imposing on this essay an overly logical and rectilinear, hence fictitious, development. Of the two entities, Europe is the more elusive, unless a writer wishes simply to equate European with himself. Actually, what is Europe? Until yesterday, it was a group of nations where men were strongly integrated within diverse national traditions. These national bonds (both intra- and inter-national) had become natural bonds but are now dissolving, and there remains only an emptiness covered by a thin veneer of national vanities. The European man of today no longer has his thought and char-

59

acter

shaped by a

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

common

set of ideas or practices,

of a single nation.

Thus

this dissolution, leaving

of national cultures, has, rather than

even within the scope

only the floating residues

promoting unity, only brought about

Europe consequently is above all a sentimental image— vague, scarcely active, suckled by Europeans themselves; and I have yet to read confusion.

who can explain it adequately. On the other much more than the American, is a man with an

a writer or hear a politician

hand, the European,

and these 'ideologies' collide with the same polemical fury which once characterized the collision of nationalisms. Empty, but still active, these 'ideas' show a useless virulence. Many European views on America, therefore, are almost always a consequence of their 'idea,' which necessarily, in one sense or another, has a polemical character. To a Marxist, for example, America is the stronghold and secular arm of capitalism, currently of neo-capitalism, its even more insidious offspring; and he will not wish to go beyond this view, referring, instead, every observation about American life back to that original evil. The European's image of America is contradictory, inconstant, selfish, and prejudiced. Friendliness and hostility toward America can be found in every country, but their intensity is dependent upon the political make-up, the strength of native traditions, the degree of resistance to the phenomenon often improperly called "Americanization," and the pretension to originality and power. Thus, for example, resistance is stronger in France than in Italy and Germany. Moments of sympathy and admiration alternate with moments of rage, frequently within the same individual—even, for example, in me. A reliable index of these feelings can no longer be found in the popularity of American books. American imaginative literature, which enjoyed wide public distribution, reached its point of maximum influence in Europe during the years just before the war, with Hemingway, Caldwell, Steinbeck, and Saroyan on the one side, and Faulkner among a hard-toplease minority on the other. America was "the land of liberty," and in its literature Europe found, or thought it found, what it needed most: freedom (political and academic freedom from the weight of an excess of culture and history), open air, breathing space— all of which was lacking even in countries not oppressed by dictatorship. (In Italy, literary Americanism developed perhaps more than elsewhere, because it represented a more or less conscious form of opposition during the last years of fascism.) Europe also found, or believed it found, in American writers the spirit of a modern epic, which carried literature beyond the already inconclusive game of intellectualism, of torruousness, and psychological 'ideology,'

subtleties.

The

Europe by the American novel during the prewar though on a more modest scale, to that of the Russian the end of the last century. Now it has come to an end. The idea

invasion oi

years

was

novel

at

similar,

60

Guido Piovene of

freedom has grown complicated; no one

still

hopes to see

it

incarnated

image of America as "the land of liberty" has grown very dim. On one side, European literature tends to return to its old track; on the other, the literary impetus from the old American generation seems to have come to a halt. The imaginative literature of America today is scarcely revolutionary; it has become intellectualized, and considered as a whole it differs little from the European. Europeans do read a writer like J. D. Salinger, but only as one of many authors writing in the world, and not as one with a 'message.' Of the older generation of American authors, living and dead, it is Faulkner, the most European, who has also been the most durable. Along with the diminishing influence of American imaginative literature, however, can be seen another trend, namely the growing popularity of in a single

country or

its

culture. Let us say frankly that the

America's scientific literature (biology, sociology, psychology, etc.), espe-

among cultivated Europeans. But we shall return to this later. At the present time, however, we might state that, in general, the European notion of America is less 'impassioned' than it has been in recent years especially at the highest pitch of the Cold War One reason is that Europe feels less dependent (in both good and bad ways), not only on American power but also on its intelligence and morality. But cially

(

)

the principal reason

is

that the 'senseless' period,

when

.

loving or detest-

ing America constituted an obligation from which no one was exempt, has

ended or

The

waning. For Europe, the years of turbulence are over. phase is being succeeded, irresistibly, by the 'technoFaiths, even political, are falling from internal corrosion, and is

at least

'ideological'

logical.'

their place

is

being taken by a more lukewarm state of intellectual melan-

BRITISH PEACE

MARCH

BERLIN AIRLIFT

For Europe, the years of turbulence are over

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

choly. If beliefs remain, they have become hypothetical guide lines devoid of any certainty whatever. Convictions are no longer strong, even

among

militant

members

of political parties; they are at most only partly

which may be more thought and political action (actually impossible, but aspired to after the war) has foundered, and thought is finding it essential to place a certain distance between itself and political action. Militant believers in an ideology or in one of the antagonistic political systems appear increasingly more like fossil animals. The masses are cooling down; the intellectuals are panting sincere

and carry within themselves a

important than the conviction

in that

itself.

limitation

The attempt

to unify

kind of Sisyphus-like effort to synthesize a

compound

of all the

unstable elements, and to draw up a sound balance sheet by putting to-

gether a series of losses. With clear-cut oppositions waning (between the United States and the Soviet Union, for example )

much more

,

there

is

in

Europe,

than in those countries where the power resides, a sense

of being in a pluralistic world, no longer with only two, but with political systems in fieri— all functioning imperfectly

and

many

in diverse ways,

crisis regarding the relation between the backward in dealing with the results of scientific research and in developing a community conscience, oppressed by rigid ideologies and popular mythologies, and because paralyzed by primitive social and political conditions from which they know not how to free themselves, they seem like certain animals to whom Nature has said: "this far and no further." Even America, or to be precise, the United States, has ceased to be an object of faith for the intelligent European; it is no longer a positive myth worthy of admiration nor a negative one to be execrated. America has been seen for what it is— as a center of power, on the one hand, and on the other, as one of many existing systems which contain both good and evil and which are unable to provide guidance for the future on the basis of what they bear within themselves. Even the Communists of Khrushchev's all

foundering in the world-wide

individual and society,

era, looking at

America, are in a state of doubt; they tend to attack the more than America in itself, but they are

technological world in general

is not being formed in their own domains. European who today admires America admires it much scientific and technological progress (studies in biology,

not certain that a similar world

On

the whole, the

more

for

its

physics, sociology, medicine, etc.

weak

)

than as a moral idea

(

moral ideals are

would not want what I write to be given too extreme an interpretation. Without exception, all the emotions centering around America, all the passionate and selfish judgments, remain; but they are more toned down, with an undercurrent of skepticism that leads now and then to greater objectivity. these days). Naturally

I

62

Guido Piovene

It

is

not inevitable that 'person-to-person' contacts, which play such a

large part in today's rhetoric, automatically

'mutual understanding'; frequently, they division.

Xor

is it

first

and immediately promote reveal

inevitable that going to a place

latent

and seeing

sources of it

in

person

automatically and immediately modifies ideas already established about a people. Established ideas do change, but

movements and experiences, and much time man to abandon his prejudices in the face of

more slowly than physical is

required for the average

reality.

Regarding 'person-to-person' contacts, I can still see the face, red with owner of a grand French restaurant as he watches an American couple confusing his famous chaud-froid with the salad. The same indignation may be experienced by a Milanese when an American on a pleasure trip refuses to see the Duomo, saying that he already has a good idea of European cathedrals because he has seen Notre Dame de Paris. As for established ideas, even though a trip to America has become rather common among Europeans (even those of modest means), their ideas about America, a mixture of both the true and the false, change rage, of the

slowly.

The

true ideas they see verified are the

as they confirm prejudices

and hinder the

more damaging insofar which would

direct experience

modify the false. Thus, despite the efforts of tourist agencies, distorted and hybrid ideas continue quietly to circulate. Let us look at some of these ideas, both the true and the false. For one: the American is "just a kid"— simple, noisy, and cordial. (Not wholly untrue, after all. Some Americans, not the best, have fallen behind in their mental development rather dangerously, often willfully.) Again: the American knows nothing outside of his specialty; a luminary in the study of poliomyelitis may find himself embarrassed if asked the name of Louis XVI's wife. The average European is proud of his own 'general culture,' which serves him admirably in solving crossword puzzles.) American life is convulsive, frenetic; there is no stopping; one runs from morning till night toward the inevitable heart attack. (The European repeats this continually, while shuttling between Europe and America, unaware that life in his own cities is even more frenetic— because less organized, with fewer oases of physical and, above all, mental vacations— and that it is therefore even more neurotic and obsessive.) Because he lacks a sense of history, especially of other nations, the American does not understand other peoples. (It is true that mistakes, and serious ones, of psychological 'isolation' in America's relations with Europeans have occurred.) The American is materialistic, brutal, thinks only of success, and conceives of it only in terms of money, while Europe gives more weight to emotional, intellectual, and spiritual values. Even this criticism, which is valid for the entire capitalistic system if it is valid at all, belongs (

(

to the

realm of preconceived ideas when

while the idea of a spiritual Europe 63

is

it

is

applied only to America,

part of the tenacious European

mmk-

mm

si

TRAFFIC IN GERMANY, FRANCE, Life in his

own

*--F,

cities is

U.S.

even more frenetic

mythomania. Having long dragged behind, Europe now puts on a burst under cover of that mythomania, it risks overtaking America in the race toward aridity.) Hence the battle many fight, usually verbally, against "Americanization," to which everything is imputed: the loneliness of individuals, the decay of family feeling, the commercial vulgarity that destroys streets and monuments, the dissipating cupidity of consumer goods, the fetishism of objects, the rnassification' of people, the growing imbecility produced by the incessant pressure of advertising, and (on the part of those who do not blame atheistic communism) the of speed and,

religious crisis.

There

is,

European mixtures of weak and That Europe is tied to its tradi-

however, a mitigating factor

in these

rashness and partial truth concerning America. Europe feels fears losing tions

is

its

soul, its

European

another rhetorical

soul.

illusion.

In Italy .especially (in

would say) every true affection for traditions speak of civilized and cultivated traditions, not of the well, I

is

Germany

as

disappearing (I

survival of archaic

customs); a cold, self-centered, inclusive 'modernism,' having no precise physiognomy, is occupying this void and is taking on, externally, 'Amer64

Guido Piovene ican' appearances.

But

it

is

a counterfeit, distorted, hypertrophic image

of America, a caricature rather than a portrait (witness the beaches of

the Adriatic, those dens of noise and bad taste). But these observations are still superficial. What is even worse is that some characteristics of American society ( its activism, dynamism, vitalism, pragmatism, etc. are colliding with, becoming confounded with, and apparently becoming identified with the rubble of the most violent, and the most aristocratic, European philosophies. Residues of the philosophy of the superman are appearing under the disguise of American vitalism, which is being exaggerated, rendered radical and extreme, intellectualized, and made into a morality. To destroy our artistic patrimony in the name of 'life' (and of self-interest), to speed at the homicidal rate of two hundred kilometers per hour, to abolish silence— these are becoming in Europe a 'morality' of the modern man. Americanism in Europe is a kind of plasma in which old, destructive doctrines, under different names, revivify themselves; at the same time, it is a new supporting medium through which they can divulge themselves and become adapted for mass consumption. In this way, certain clashes between American 'practice' and European 'thought' frequently produce in Europe the inhuman and the monstrous. Analogous observations can be made by comparing any large, neocapitalistic, European industry to the American industries on which it )

MILAN SQUARE The commercial

ITALIAN AUTOSTRADA vulgarity that destroys streets

65

and monuments

MOTORCYCLE CULT American

vitalism,

which

is

IN U.K.

AND

U.S.

.

.

.

being exaggerated, rendered radical

.

.

.

has been modeled. European industry remains a hybrid. Beneath the heavy bureaucratic and technological envelope persist characteristics derived from habit and from European culture; the 'boss,' for example, has renounced domination through coercion, but now seeks to dominate through concern for souls, from whom he wants complete agreement and for whom he 'demands' happiness. Industry is becoming a church; the 'spirit of industry' a morality and a religious doctrine which tolerates no dissenters. In this way, neo-capitalism in Europe presents itself as a more subtle and elusive form of the will to power. Proof of this can be seen in literature, which represents large neo-capitalistic industries as places of forced happiness, tedium, and dehumanization. Many European irritations stem from the fact that in the mirror of America, Europe sees its own face more unattractive and its own vices in sharper outline. That some European literary critics could find in Hemingway the 'decadence' of the European manner, European irrationalism (fundamentally homicidal), and a resemblance to d'Annunzio and Malraux illustrates this fact rather well. One cannot imagine falser notions. The central themes in Hemingway are adventure, risk, combat, the hunt, and the vitality which finds a supreme exaltation in dying violently. However, the difference between Hemingway and the European 'decadents' (artistic comparisons aside) is like that between open air and the air in a closed room filled with acrid odors. Hemingway was never led by his morality toward disastrous political choices, and his 'vitalism,' even if it has a gloomy undercurrent, remains innocent. Thus, what Europe disavows with horror in America is frequently its own

image.

On

the whole, America being the country that presents the most

'modern' face, criticism of America coincides with that of modern

civilization. It this

is

blamed

breakup, however,

and disharmonies of the

is

for the dissolution of the ancient civilization;

universal.

scientific

To America

are imputed the pains

age and, in a special way, of the welfare 66

Guido Piovene society,

without realization that the same phenomena are reproducing

themselves everywhere, even under different political systems, including the as yet 'backward' peoples. But with

its

historical malignancies, as

has been seen, Europe can reach an even greater degree of exacerbation.

modern

Criticism of the essence of

civilization, of course,

is

always

futile,

academic pastime dear to intellectuals, great and small, who like the role of babes in the woods. However, the principal characteristic of the present state of European opinion concerning America (leaving aside the scarcely sincere rhetoric of political figures) has already been mentioned: the 'demythologizing' of America, coincident with the cooling of politico-moral faiths and passions in Europe. America is no longer a moral idea, nor a venerable, or execrable, myth. It is a large, important, and imperfect society. Thus far I have spoken of opposition and polemical resentment. Naturally there is also much admiration, and perhaps in greater measure, but this is turned toward America as predominant in science and technology (including their social reverberations ) and not to America as teacher of democracy. Europe is becoming technological rather than ideological ( although technology is itself an ideology which leads to a blanket rejection of all others), and today it looks at America from this angle. Moral passions are not in season in Europe. Thus, a decline in American prestige in Europe was felt at the launching of the first Sputnik, and it was not counterbalanced by the traditional moral considerations. In that moment, as never before, Europe put on trial the political, the industrial, and the educational system of the United States. Another consequence of this 'demythologizing' is that criticism of Amereven

if

acute, but

it

constitutes a kind of

,

.

.

.

ITALY AND SWEDEN

intcllectualizcd,

and made

into a morality

New ica

Europe and the U.S.A.

today more concrete, specific, and realistic than in the past. I will some current opinions haphazardly; but it must be said that they

is

cite

do not differ greatly from the opinions of Americans about themselves, and Europeans, in fact, have frequently obtained them from American books.

pushed

If

doubt on the validity of development in America, although

to the limit, these opinions cast

conceiving of democracy in terms of

its

it has been considered the exemplar. It is asked, for example, whether making nearly all offices elective, including those of judge and chief of police, is really advantageous, or if instead it does not promote dangerous connivance. Again, it is asked whether the federal system itself is not becoming an impediment from which it is difficult to break loose, or whether excessive power given to the various states does not strengthen the passive element in American society, as well as increase the influence of its most backward regions. What is most intelligent and moral in America radiates from the central power; and the American experience warns us that at a time when culture is being diffused in a world pressed by the urgency to transform itself, excessive local power leads to narrowness and inertia. Another critical point is that the race for consumer goods, the vicious circle between the demand of the masses and the producer's efforts to excite it, seems to depress intelligence and even destroy the resistance of the thoughtful. Still another: it is asked whether the cult of the average man as the public ideal, at the expense of the superior man, does not represent a degenerate and heretical form of democracy. (Witness the abundant American literature on this point, and the studies of how that ideal is reflected in formal education, the allotment of jobs, and the means of achieving success.) Paradoxically, however, there is too great a distance in the United States between the elite and the great mass of the nation. The advanced American elite is more intelligent, on the whole, than the European elite; but the nation's masses (infatuated with Americanism, incapable of seeing beyond local interests, and devoid of a global sense ) are inferior, on the whole, to their European counterpart. It is good, certainly, that

in the past

more progresand too paralyzing, as is evident, for example, in the painfully slow resolution of the Negro question. Thence derive the difficulties, sometimes fatal, which the publicly active intellectual faces. Not that I am personally in favor of turning society over to the intellectuals; the result would be a feverish society. For a the

more conservative part

sive,

large

but

in

America the

number

of a country should rein in the

reins are too tight

of intellectuals, the excitement of ideas

is

the principal

reason for existence, and ideas of any kind are by nature violent. Intellec-

need the great moderating influence of a mass of people who prize above all else. But in America that mass is too heavy; it is dispropor-

tuals life

tionate to the need.

68

Guido Piovene I have listed, and others which Europeans freAmerica (and intelligent Americans about themquently share about selves), do not question the solidity and organization of American society, which are certainly enviable. However, the only angle from which it seems to me interesting to view the world is the future of man, his in-

The

critical

opinions

ventiveness, his happiness within the limits of the possible, the capacity life, and the harmony of individuals (everywhere compromised today) with the society in which they live. Undeniably, the European systems offer less hope than the American. The

of his systems to adjust to

basic idea of this essay

all

that

is

Europe's view of America

that

is

other countries that have developed a superior civilization, suffers

from the

difficulty of

thoroughly re-examining

historical conditions, of adjusting

ica

today the principal characteristic of it is 'demythologized.' America, like

seems

to us to

be involved

its

own

in the

itself,

of

overcoming

its

'mythology' to experience. Amer-

confused and universal

cerning values, and concerning democracy

itself in

crisis

con-

the diverse forms

it

has thus far attained.

Having reached

would like to take one further step, even if I am compelled to become more personal, perhaps somewhat more speculative. The last part of this essay is essentially the view of a single European concerning America. I would like to explore American society, not for

this point, I

wholly unique elements (impossible to find in today's

world) but for some which are at least sufficiently clear as to indicate a direction.

The more criticized characteristics of American society, or better, of modern society, do not frighten me, and I shall try to examine them with an unsentimental eye. They are part of the development of modern civilization, which, like all dissolutions and radical changes, is painful in the present stage. Witness, for example, the excess of consumer goods. In the end, the widespread frenzy over possessing objects, their produc-

and their overabundance will reduce the and the sense of ownership to mere vanities. The man in a society in which everyone possesses a little of everything, from conveniences to luxuries, is less an owner than the man of former times who was proud to own an expensive hat or a unique copy of a snuffbox. I am not frightened when I am told that Americans lack "a sense of history," that their memory of the history of man is more simple and narrow. The Americans are merely ahead of us. Without wishing to admit it, the more 'historical' European is preoccupied with forgetting. Humanity cannot allow itself to carry on its shoulders indefinitely an increasingly more tightly packed archive; it must now simplify it. Like the concept of beauty, and in part that of morality, the concept of history is also in a crisis. Besides, much of what we understand as history is today being absorbed into tion in a continuous stream,

objects possessed

69

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

much

biology, another history of

longer periods.

Everyone knows (except those whose established ideas are so tightly incrusted as to prevent them from seeing things as they are) that the violent America of the individualist, the era of domineering and overtly ambitious men, each striving to reach the peak of riches and power, and whose struggles many times did not exclude an exchange of blows, has come to an end. Sociologists now find quite the contrary and note, happily or unhappily, a growing conformism and collectivism, with ambitions limited to the desire for average well-being. The image of America as a 'jungle' is no longer valid: the panorama today is more rocky. There one observes, and feels even more— and I, myself, felt it during my last trip— violence of another kind, whose analysis (in the inner world) is the best part of the excellent book, La tone e Vabisso ( The Tower and the Abyss), by Erich Kahler: the violence of indifference, of solitary, closed lives that have little or no sensitivity to others, or even to themselves, that reduce others to 'things' which they can use and even control without being cruel, remorseful, or really wicked. Even selfishness and crime are less impassioned today, a kind of consuming without appetite. The same thing is happening in Europe. (Nazism, Kahler observes, was the most colossal and extreme instance of "petrification"; but in this European philosophies were also involved.) But in Europe, it is less clear-cut, it is not acknowledged, and there is a tendency to accuse others of it. This is all

a part of the oft-mentioned

opposition to which

we can

still

phenomenon

offer

of "depersonalization," in

nothing very convincing.

Man

today

has not only an idea of himself but also an internal feeling about himself,

which grows increasingly more is

abstract, less personal

and emotional. It immense

reflected in art. Plays like those of Shakespeare, for instance,

tempests of the neuro-vegetative, could no longer be written.

must now explain why I said that, on the whole, American thought more intelligent than European. Certain indispensable studies have

I is

reached their highest development there; it therefore provides the best information. At the highest levels of American thought (much more than in Europe), there is a common belief— evolutionism— which is by now a true and proper faith, although a scientific faith without comfort or con-

There is more than this, however. I would not insist too between American 'optimism' and European 'pessimism,' understood as the presence or absence of vast expectations. Pessimistic diagnoses of the modern world ( conformism, 'robotism,' dehumanization, etc. ) are no less numerous in America than in Europe; the Utopias soling promises.

much on an

antithesis

in reverse, that

is,

the fantastic previsions of a horrible future, are

American than European. Even the most

more

scientifically objective writings

are filled with fearful suspicions about the primitive

man

that persistently

dwells within us, and these can often give rise to a sense of nightmare and cold terror.

The American

scientist

may, 70

to a certain extent,

be compared

Guido Piovene

who

to the frightened hero, or to the artist

depicts but depicts acteristics,

it

is

revolted by the world he

nevertheless because he feels

way

in diluted form, find their

it is

true.

These char-

into such popular forms of

literature as science fiction. (I confess a weakness:

I

find science fiction

an instrument of sociological analysis, but, in the best examples, as much more attractive fantasizing than the thousandth novel about the tragic passions of an old man for a young prostitute, or the disappointments of a provincial maid. And it must be noted interesting, primarily as

)

that anguish barely mitigated

ence

by irony

is

a notable part of

American

sci-

fiction.

America and Europe

suffer

equally from the conditions of today's

jC\. world, a suffering derived from a metamorphosis which goes far deeper than simple political and social changes. The European seems

(when he is not more complaining. The loss of religious hopes has had a catastrophic effect in Europe, and few Europeans are sincerely resigned to doing without them. They know

more

pessimistic because, in general, he

is

more

egoistic

the opposite— a fanatic reprover of himself), therefore

that the world of individualism

is

dying, but they refuse to accept

it.

They continue indefinitely to lament its death or to hope that a miracle will save them in extremis. Individualism today, even the purely intellectual, can only be painful. The ultimate refusal to recognize reality is common among European intellectuals. Between the mind and reality they place pathetic impediments, dialectical or sentimental barriers, or

merely loud complaints. On the other hand they may approach reality with certain pitiless but partial analyses which prevent them from getting to the bottom of it. The typical European intellectual usually descends into his own personal crisis (perhaps crudely), confesses it, and then rises

above

it

without pause in order to avoid reaching a conclusion.

cleaves to the last remaining joys

(

European

societies

He

today are merciless

with a few surviving delusions of chimerical joy sometimes he abandons himself to a special form of pessimism— illusory optimism— and when he occasionally decides to be lucid, he becomes entirely denunciatory and falls into total despair. This comparison between the 'typical' intellectuals of Europe and America may be a bit artificial, but that is inevitable in this kind of essay. Let us look on the other side. The merit of high-level American thought lies in its being non-defiant in the face of fundamental facts, and in seeing them clearly, simply, and boldly. For example, because it is more societies

strictly

)

;

associated with biological evolution, the idea of a collectivist

future for humanity

is

more completely accepted

in

America than

countries of Marxist background. Excluding the vague opinions of scientists,

and

it

is

Soviet collectivism

is

in

some

confined to the socio-political realm,

unwilling to admit that a substantial change 71

may

take place in

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY The persistent popularity of

human

nature

remains.

The

itself;

logical evolution is

far I

more

in the

solution

BY SALVADOR DALI abstract painting

realm of political collectivism, ancient man scientists point to, namely, bio-

many American

toward a humanity which

is

collectivistic

by

nature,

radical.

express no preference here for one line of thought or another;

only that the American view

and the

is

wider

I

say

between enormous

in claiming that tension

might result in view could at the same time be connected with the depersonalization of American society which we have already spoken about. That mutation takes place in the course of civilization ( and in humanity itself) must be accepted whether one likes it or not; it constitutes a fact beyond which there is no appeal. Instead of merely lingering over the crisis, beating one's breast and complaining, one should persist in his efforts to objectify it, to see it in perspective, to overcome one's fears of it, and thereby reach the other side and the view of the man who, already transformed, forgets the pains of the transformation. In so describing this critical situation, however, there is a considerable dose of irony— a form of courage almost totally lost in Europe. Perhaps this way of facing the future is only a different form of the traditional American spirit of adventure, since, beneath various discordant appearances, America gives the impression of a country 'launched' toward individuals, 'souls,'

collectivist society

strides in vital evolution. This

72

Guido Piovene destination X.

The

persistent popularity of abstract painting, the Utopian

aspect certain cities usually

ample—are external is all

but impossible in

void,

and a Utopia

is

assume— the center

of

New

York, for ex-

weighed anchor. What Europe, Utopias are born which serve to fill the

signs of a society that has

always a kind of unbelievable prophecy, useful for

and instrumental. To my eyes, America displays a certain whiteness, which is the color of departure. orienting ourselves, but always provisional

73

RITCHIE CALDER

Ritchie

Calder,

Professor of Interna-

Relations at the

tional

Edinburgh,

is

University

of

a specialist in the pre-

sentation of science to the general public

and was one

of the pioneers of sci-

ence writing in Britain.

He

served with

distinction in the British Foreign Office

War II, and was honored wartime services by being made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. After the war he beduring World

for his

came Science Editor of the London News Chronicle and a member of the editorial

board of the

New

Statesman.

In 1946 he served as a delegate to the First

of

and Second General Conferences

UNESCO;

since that time he has

headed several important UN missions to such areas as the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the Arctic, and the Congo. He has written more than twenty-five books, mainly on science and its social implications. Among the most recent are Science in Our Lives (1955), From Magic to Medicine (1957), Men Against the Frozen North (1957), Agony of the Congo (1961), After the Seventh

Day

Common

(1961), Living

With the Atom

(1962),

and

Sense About a Starving World (1962). In

1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, the highest international

award

for the promotion of the

common

understanding of science. Born in 1906, he began his career as a journalist in Glasgow. Mr. Calder is married

and has two daughters and three

74

sons.

A

European View

of American Science

Of

all

the scientists and research workers

who have

existed since the

beginning of time, ninety per cent are alive today.

per cent have their niches in the Gallery of

Time which

men who mastered fire, perhaps another way of saying that the bulk of

to the thinking

This

is

1

The other stretches

ten

back

100,000 years ago.

recognizable and meas-

urable achievements of science belong to the past

fifty

and, preponder-

Atomic moving rapidly into the DNA Age. Man has unlocked the secret of matter and released it as nuclear energy; he has burst the gravitational fences of the Earth and in the study of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and molecular biology is probing the antly, to the past twenty-five years. In a single generation the

Age has merged

Space Age and

into the

is

secrets of life itself with implications as great as, or greater than, either

the atom or space.

By

jet

and rocket he has diminished distance and

miniaturized the planet, and by radio astronomy he

is

reaching out to

the limits of the universe and recording the broadcast signals of cosmic

events of thousands of millions of years ago.

"Today we are privileged shoulders

we

to sit side

by side with the giants on whose

stand." 2 This juggling with the clock of scientific progress

though Harvey

GBWW,

vol. 28 ) had discoursed with Aristotle though Einstein had exchanged reprints with Newton (see GBWW, vol. 34); as though Watt had met Archimedes (see GBWW, vol. 11) at a seminar; or as though Pasteur had consulted Rhases, the Lute Player, who in a.d. 900 hung pieces of fresh meat around Baghdad and, where the meat putrefied least, built the Caliph's hospital. The contemporary acceleration of scientific discovery has been due to the 'feedback' of technology and the final emancipation of science from the thralldom of pure theory. This thralldom was expressed in Plutarch's description of Plato's attitude to Eudoxus and Archytas when, by experiis

as

(see

1

GBWW,

(

see

vols. 8-9); as

Pierre Auger, Current Trends in Scientific Research, Great Ideas Today 1961, p. 292.

UNESCO,

1961. See also

The

2 Gerald Holton, "On the Recent Past in Physics," American Journal of Physics, 29 December, 1961).

75

New ments and recourse

Europe and the U.S.A.

they solved problems which the "Mechanics came to be separated from geometry and repudiated and neglected by philosophers," according to instruments,

to

theorists considered insoluble.

Plutarch,

because of Plato's indignation at it, and his invectives against it as the mere corruption and annihilation of the one good of geometry, which was thus shamefully turning its back upon the unembodied objects of pure intelligence to recur to sensation, and to ask help (not to be obtained without base supervisions and depravation) from matter (Marcellus, GBWW, Vol. 14, p. 252c).

The enthronement of theory over practice continued to tyrannize Western thinking. There were rebels against this intellectual convention like Roger Bacon, William of Occam, Paracelsus, Leonardo, and Galileo (see GBWW, vol. 28), who invoked the eye as well as the inward brain and insisted upon experimental evidence; there was Francis Bacon who, in the early seventeenth century, laid

the

foundations

inquiry

(see

modern

of

GBWW,

vol.

scientific

30); there

were the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy in the 1660's which were concerned, in their original inquiries,

with

manuring

mundane

things, like the

of soil or aids for navigation;

but the breakthrough came with what A. N.

PARACELSUS 3

Whitehead

called "the greatest

invention of the nineteenth century

There were rebels

method

the invention of the

.

.

.

of inven-

tion."

In America theory has joined with practice, and technology, so often

regarded as the stepbrother of science, has provided the affluence which can so richly endow science. It also provides a surfeit of hardware which

who cannot afford it, irreverently call the Big Machines. What mean are the ingenious, if costly, instruments which are accelerating

others,

they

the progress of science

itself.

No

the proceeds and resources of

other country could have afforded from

its

technology such a

'crash'

the Manhattan project, which in six years after Halm's of

uranium

fission released

first

program

as

observations

atomic energy with the cataclysmic force of

the atomic bomb. "I

\

sometimes think that

we

in

America are a

Paracelsus, phvsician and alchemist, died of Life.

76

little

by drinking

inclined to believe,"

alcohol,

his

alleged Elixir

Ritchie

wrote Gordon Dean

'Made

inscription

in

C alder

Report on tJw Atom, "that each atom bears the except those that have been stolen from us,

in U.S.A.'

been scratched out and the letters myth has grown up in this country in the field of atomic energy. I think the myth would go something like this: 'Atomic energy was discovered and first developed in the United States in secret during World War II. Although we are still ahead

and

that in these cases the 'U.S.A.' lias

'U.S.S.R.'

in

the

etched

field,

in.

It"

it

is

fair to

say that a

the Russians, with the help of traitors, successfully stole

enough of our key secrets during the war to develop a program of their own and are now hot on our heels. Our allies, the British, because some of their scientists came over to help us with our wartime program, also

know something

of these matters, but are actually running a very poor

Under no circumstances can it be said that the atom is a third.' native-born American. The most that can be said is that it is an immigrant of mainly European lineage that has taken out its first papers over here." 4 Most of the scientific work on the atom had in fact been done outside .

.

.

4 Gordon Dean, Report on the Atom

(New

York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1953), pp. 242-243.

ROYAL SOCIETY MEETING AT SOMERSET HOUSE LOUIS XIV VISITING THE PARIS ACADEMY Like the manuring of soils or aids for navigation

r

[

(^

>

--!

il£li»

zL\

f*^^

^

F-f2

New

E.

T.

Most

S.

Europe and the U.S.A.

WALTON, LORD RUTHERFORD, J. D. COCKCROFT work had been done outside the U.S.

of the scientific

the United States: by Becquerel, of France,

who

discovered radioactivity

by Pierre and Marie Curie, of France, who discovered the radioelement, radium, in 1898; by Lord Rutherford, of England, who

in 1896;

active

developed the theory of the nature of radioactivity in 1902, discovered the atomic nucleus in 1911, and disintegrated the first atom by artificial means in 1919; by Einstein, of Germany, who developed the theory of the equivalence of mass and energy (meaning that matter can be transformed into energy as in an atomic bomb ) in 1905; by Bohr, of Denmark, who developed the theory of the nature of atoms in 1913; by Cockcroft and Walton, of England, who in 1932 experimentally proved Einstein's theory of the equivalence of mass and energy; by Chadwick, of England, who discovered the neutron in 1932; by Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, of France, who first produced radioisotopes artificially in 1934; by Fermi, of Italy, who first used neutrons to bombard atomic nuclei in 1934. Without disrespect to the native-born Americans in the Manhattan project itself, the role of the European-born participants in the promotion and carrying through of the program was indispensable. The British team,

and with concrete research results already in its possession, was transferred to the United States. So were the French scientists who in its entirety,

78

Ritchie

AXTOIXE

H.

C alder

EXRICO FERMI Used neutrons

BECQUEREL

Discovered radioactivity

had escaped from occupied France with the world supply of heavy water and the preliminary work done in Joliot-Curie's laboratory. Niels Bohr had been smuggled out of Denmark, via Sweden, and flown to New York.

The list of the principals, as Waldemar KaempfFert, then Science Editor of The New York Times, pointed out, "sounded like the roll call of the Notre Dame football team," so varied were their European names. They were eminent refugees or recent immigrants. Some of them, like Nobel Prize winner James Franck, were not even naturalized Americans when they became security-locked in the project. The 'myth' was to be repeated and to recoil in the case of space had advanced Union had acquired some of Germany's leading experts; but so had the United States, and American technology had 'taken over from there.' When, as part of the program of the International Geophysical Year, the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union agreed to send instruments into orbit by rocket it was assumed (and not only in America that the Americans, with their transcendent technology, would be first. The Russians were. Not only that, they put the sputnik into an orbit which the Americans had not proposed to attempt. Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, went into an orbit at 64.3° inclination to the equator which meant that with the rotation of the earth it crossed every inhabited spot on earth. The United States launched its Explorer 1 satellite on research. It

is

true that the Germans, with their V-2's,

farthest with rockets

and

that the Soviet

)

January 31, 1958, into an orbit

at 33.5°

inclination to the equator; in

other words, round the 'cummerbund' of the earth. U.S. assumptions of technical superiority

were badly shaken. As an American friend wrote 79

New to

me:

as to

"I

who

am is

Europe and the U.S.A.

not concerned about the recrimination

to

blame.

What

worries

me

is

among

the services

the effect on the younger gen-

eration, brought up to believe in technical supremacy, when it was discovered that there was no Superman to leap off the top of the Empire State Building and push Sputnik back where it belonged." It had become

accepted that the Russians had produced

efficient engineers, but the proved that they had 'science' as well. Few European scientists would have been thus surprised, remembering that Russian eminence in astronomy, mathematics, and ballistics dated back

first

orbit they achieved

MARIE CURIE //

our discovery has a commercial future

we should

not profit

before the Soviet Revolution and certainly had not been impaired by politics.

The something

emphasis in America on application, and on science as be bought and paid for and put to work, explains the attitude, condescending and at the same time envious, of European academics. The idea that 'pure' scientists should -not commercialize original historical

to

discoveries dies hard. In the aristocracy of

European science there has and a sense that

persisted an inverted snobbery, a pride in poverty,

money for academic research is undignified. Marie Curie labored for four whole years in an unheated, unventilated

getting

80

Ritchie

C alder

shed over boiling caldrons of pitchblende,

stirring

with a rod as big as

gram of radium. When its value in the treatment of cancer became known, she and her husband, Pierre, had to consider whether they would freely disclose their techniques or herself, before she isolated a tenth of a

patent them.

would be impossible," said Marie Curie,

"It

scientific spirit. Physicists

"it

would be against the

should always publish their results completely.

is a circumstance from used in the treatment of be which we should not profit. If radium that." See Eve Curie, disease, it is impossible for us to take advantage of ( "The Discovery of Radium" in GGB, vol. 8, pp. 32-42.

If

our discovery has a commercial future that is

to

Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Nobel Prize winner for his pioneer work on vitamins, was fifty-three years of age before he had a department of his own, in a discarded Cambridge University building, and was sixtythree before the Sir William Dunn Laboratory was provided for him,

with proper endowment for biochemistry.

On

the other hand, there

is

the case of

Henry

Hallett Dale. As an out-

standing Cambridge graduate, he was asked by Henry Wellcome, an

American who had come

to Britain

and had established

a highly profit-

become the Director of the Wellcome PhysioResearch Laboratory. It was a lucrative opportunity for a young

able pharmaceutical firm, to logical

man I

of twenty-nine but he hesitated before accepting. "Friends to

mentioned

this

whom

approach," he later wrote, "were almost unanimous in

have nothing to do with it: I should be selling my scientific birthright, they seemed to think, for a mess of commercial pottage." Dale was to share the Nobel Prize with Dr. Otto Loewi for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve stimuli, original research which began at the Wellcome Laboratory. He was to be knighted, to become the President of the Royal Society, and to be appointed a member of Britain's most exclusive Order of Merit. When Fleming, Florey, and Chain discovered penicillin they followed the 'code,' as Marie Curie had done, and did not patent it. In the British advising

me

to

Patent Office, the governing patents for penicillin stand in the

name

of

Moyer, who was an assistant in the Fermentation Division of J. the North Regional Research Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This circumstance arose from a visit paid by Florey and a colleague to the Division in 1941. They were in the U.S. to recruit support for the large-scale manufacture of penicillin, then impossible in Britain. They found their answer in Peoria, 111., in the Fermentation Division, where it was suggested that corn steep liquor, a waste product of the starch industry, might be used as the nutrient for the mold and that deep culture would be possible in vats. "Penicillin," said Sir Henry Tizard, in his Presidential Address to the British Association in 1948, "the great practical achievement of medical Dr. A.

81

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

research during the war, was a product of British research; but unless

American

skill

in

large-scale

manufacture had been available, many

thousands of men who now enjoy healthy life would have died." Thus American technology made the fulfillment of penicillin possible, but a British grievance,

academic and otherwise, has persisted because "Britain

has to pay royalties for the penicillin

it

discovered." In fact, the researches

Oxford which led to penicillin began with an American grant— a small one of two hundred and fifty pounds— from the Rockefeller Foundation for the purchase of laboratory equipment. Furthermore, Florey's visit to the United States in 1941 which led to the industrial development was also financed by the Foundation. Unlike Waksman, who patented streptomycin, another antibiotic, and vested his rights in Rutgers University, which built him a million dollar Institute of Microbiology, the British discoverers did not even capitalize facilities for their own research. Chain, who wanted an Institute of Microbiology, had to go to Rome where one was provided for him by the Italian government and the World Health Organization. Twenty-six years after his discovery he moved back to Imperial College, London, to laboratories endowed by a commercial magnate, Sir Isaac Wolfson. Commercialism, it seems, is all right— at one remove. John D. Rockefeller's money is acceptable if filtered through a foundation and Sir Isaac Wolfson's if it comes through a trust! The Carlsberg Institute, Copenhagen, of which Niels Bohr was Director, has carried on the purest of pure research, although it derives its finances from a brewery. Gradually it has been recognized that scientists, like artists, do not have to at

JOSEPH HENRY Doubtful whether their

own academic

JOSIAH WILLARD GIRBS colleagues recognized the giants

Ritchie

THOMAS ALVA EDISON Josiah Willard Gibbs

ELI

C alder

WHITNEY

had made a

SAMUEL

F.

B.

far greater contribution

starve in garrets to find expression for their genius.

The two outstanding American

scientists of the nineteenth century,

Joseph Henry and Josiah Willard Gibbs, were barely known in their own country. It is doubtful whether their own academic colleagues recognized the giants in their midst. Henry was dwarfed to insignificance in

Thomas Alva Edison; and Yale, with such famous alumni as Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, machine tools, and

public esteem by

and Samuel F. B. Morse of the electric telegraph and the telegraphic code, was not at the time aware that the Professor of Mathematical Physics, Gibbs, had made a far greater contribution to progress than either. His memoir On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances founded a new department of chemical science in that it made engineering, geology, biology, medicine, and every other phase of science that deals with states of substances a branch of chemistry. Both Henry and Gibbs were puritans of science who thought it improper to make profits out of scientific discovery. Their work laid the firearms,

basis of the technological explosion of the twentieth century, but they

did not market their ideas.

When

the financial backers of the electric

telegraph decried his refusal to profit from his fundamental discoveries,

have sought no remuneration for my labors but have world expecting only in return to enjoy the consciousness of having added by my investigations to the sum of human knowledge." Thomas Alva Edison, on the other hand, who had 1,033 patents to his credit, made only one original scientific discovery. This was the Edison

Henry

replied: "I

freely given their results to the

83

MORSE

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

which he patented but did not follow through. He observed that bamboo filament of his electric lamp was heated by too high voltage, the carbon evaporated and condensed as a black deposit on the inside of the bulb. But there was a clear streak, a transparent shadow, in the blackening, in line with one of the legs of the hairpin loop of the filament. He deduced that somehow the vaporized carbon was being shot off from one leg and was bypassing the other. He placed a metal plate between the two legs of the loop and led a platinum wire to the outside of the evacuated bulb. He found that when he connected this wire and a lead from the input terminal to a sensitive detector (galvanometer), he got a definite flow of current. But if he connected up the output terminal (from the leg which was casting the shadow), he got no current. That meant that the carbon particles and the current which accompanied them were flowing in one direction only. If he had persisted with his scientific investigation, he might have anticipated J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron. Instead, it was left to Ambrose Fleming and Lee De Forest, following the discovery of the electron, to convert the Edison Effect into the electron tube which, technologically, was to revolutionize communications; amplifiers, telecommunications, talkies, and television derived from it. Effect,

when

the

inventor, The the archetype

as distinct

tury. This

needs had

was

itself.

to

be

its

served. Yet

it

became

where

practical

should not be forgotten that the

plethora of discoveries,

is

only as old as the United

In fact, the Steam Revolution coincided with the American

Revolution, and Benjamin Franklin, the

pated

after original truths,

entirely natural in a developing country

first

present era, with States

from the seeker

of the "American scientist" in the nineteenth cen-

in both.

first

American

scientist, partici-

His friend, Matthew Boulton, a Birmingham manufacturer,

him for advice. Boulton had built a new factory, which depended power on a brook, but in times of drought there was not enough water to drive the wheel. He had an idea of pumping the water from the tail of the millrace back into the milldam. He wanted to adapt to his own design the Savery engine, which used steam itself as the piston, by direct pressure on the surface of the water. He sent the model to Franklin who, preoccupied with the Stamp Act, had no modifications to suggest. wrote

for

He

to

its

had, however, already introduced William Small to Boulton. Small

was a Scottish mathematical and medical doctor who had emigrated to America and had become Professor of Natural Philosophy in Williamsburg. He had wanted to return to Britain, and Franklin had given him an earnest recommendation to Boulton, through whom Small was enabled to set up in practice as a physician in Birmingham. Small was a friend of James Watt, then "philosophical instrument maker" ( laboratory technician) to the University of Glasgow, where, in repairing a small

84

Ritchie Colder

Newcomen

engine, he

seemed

engine.

It

answer

to Boulton's

to

had conceived the idea

of the condensing

steam

Small that Watt's engine, as a pump, might be the

problem.

He

introduced the two and the result was

momentous partnership and the evolution a pump to a prime mover to drive the wheels

the

of the

Watt engine from by a recipro-

of industry

cating motion. Small, thus the broker of the Industrial Revolution, also

had an

indirect

influence on the Constitution of the United States. As the Professor of

JAMES WATT Philosophical instrument

maker

Natural Philosophy at Williamsburg, he was the expositor of Newtonian physics.

One

of his students,

Thomas

Jefferson,

raphy: "Small probably fixed the destinies of

my

wrote life."

in his autobiog-

He may have done

more than that when one considers the scientific influence which is plain in the American Constitution. Woodrow Wilson pointed out that the Constitution was based on a theory of political dynamics "which was a sort of unconscious copy of the Newtonian theory of the universe," a system of government in which action and reaction are equal and opposite and all bodies are nicely poised by the balance of forces acting on them. As John Adams explained, first

place,

in 1814, in a letter to

John Taylor: "In the

eighteen States and some territories are balanced against

85

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

the national Government. ... In the second place, the

House of Reprebalanced against the Senate and the Senate against the louse. In the third place, the executive authority is in some degree balanced against the legislative. In the fourth place, the judiciary power is balanced against the House, the Senate, the executive power, and the sentatives

is

I

state

governments. In the fifth place, the Senate is balanced against the all appointments to office and in all treaties." Franklin, the

President in

only scientific

member

of the Convention, did not introduce the

New-

tonian notion of checks and balances and mechanical equilibrium into

He believed that government But the Newtonists prevailed. As G. Crowther says in Famous American Men of Science, "Scientific ideas J. have had an exceptional influence on the history of America, more, perhaps than on the history of any other country, except the U.S.S.R. The structure of the American Constitution has provided one of the chanthe Constitution. Indeed, he disapproved.

should be experimental and

flexible.

nels for the exertion of this influence."

With Matthew Boulton, William Small was It

Lunar member.

a founder of the

became

Society of Birmingham, of which Benjamin Franklin

a

included Watt; Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin;

Josiah

Wedgwood,

the potter; Wilkinson, the cannon-maker,

whose

lathes

guns made possible the precision cylinders for the steam engine; Keir, who gave the Industrial Revolution its synthetic alkalis; Roebuck, who gave it its sulfuric acid; and Joseph Priestley, the for the accurate boring of

discoverer of oxygen,

who became

the

When

first

of the long procession of

mob burned

his house at Birmingham, because the members of the Lunar Society were sympathizers with the French Revolutionists, he emigrated to America and settled in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. The identification of the Lunar Society with the beginnings of the United States and with its subsequent scientific evolution is not merely sentimental or romantic. It provided a meeting of minds, including Franklin's, which represented a point of departure from dilettantic science scientific refugees to

and the invasion scientific

and

his

America.

the

of the learned societies

by the

'makers.'

The great Newton

outburst of the seventeenth century, associated with

contemporaries, had flagged. Science had

become

a leisure-class

and the Royal Society had declined into lassitude. It was revived by the transfusion of artisan blood and urgent ideas, which came in with the Industrial Revolution, when men like Boulton, the manudiversion,

facturer, Watt, the laboratory technician, Priestley, the Unitarian minister,

and indeed most of the members of the Lunar Society became Fellows. For example, Wedgwood, the potter, was elected to the Royal Society on the strength of his paper "The Pyrometer or Heat Measurement Instrument."

86

Ritchie Calder

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY BEING CHASED FROM BIRMINGHAM After the mob burned his house

The

in the eighteenth century, on both sides of the had sunk to a state of intellectual ineptitude and bigotry. Their place was taken by new centers largely identified with industry, like the Philadelphia Academy, founded by Franklin, and similar institutions in Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow, and by the setting up of the Royal Institution in London by Count von Rumford. Rumford was born Benjamin Thompof Woburn, Mass. He had been on

universities

Atlantic,

Json £

J

the side of the colonists in the Revolutionary War, but crossed over, went to

London, and became Under Secretary

He

of State for the Colonies in 1780.

was

interested

in

science

was

and

elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

On

the collapse of Lord North's admin-

he went, with a knighthood, where he became a minister and grand chamberlain to the Elector. He was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire and chose his title from Rumford, Maine, U.S. He returned to London and promoted the idea of setistration

to Bavaria,

.-V*'-?« v.

COUNT VON RUMFORD Domestic comfort and economy

ting up,

by private

"an

subscription,

establishment for feeding the poor and giving

87

them

useful

employment

.

.

.

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

LECTURE WITH EXPERIMENTS IN THE ROYAL INSTITUTION means of procuring the comforts and conveniences

Facilitating the

of life

connected with an institution for bringing forward into general use new inventions and improvements, particularly such as relate to the

management

of heat

and the saving

of fuel

and

meeconomy may

to various other

chanical contrivances, by which domestic comfort and

be promoted." To that end, the Royal Institution was formed with the further object of "teaching by regular courses of philosophical lectures and experiments; the application of the new discoveries in science to the improvement of arts and manufactures; and in facilitating the means of procuring the comforts and conveniences of life." The emphasis changed very quickly— from preoccupation with the problems of the poor to a concern for the kind of discoveries which could promote industrial advantage—but the Institution did provide the laboratory for Sir Humphrey Davy, in the first instance, and later for Faraday and a long succession of famous scientists. Compare this with the story of the Smithsonian Institution. Thompson was a renegade American; James Smithson was a rebel Englishman. He was the illegitimate son of Sir Hugh Smithson who became the first Duke of Northumberland. Sir Hugh had married the heiress of the Percys, the traditional Kails of Northumberland, and added her large estates, and

own coal estates in Yorkshire. His eldest legitimate who became second Duke, fought against the Americans at Lexington.

a great coal field, to his son,

A son had been born

to

him and

a

widow, Mrs. Macie, 88

in 1765.

She was

Ritchie

C alder

Duke of Somerset and descended from Henry VII through the family of Lady Jane Grey; she too was wealthy. The Duke would not publicly recognize his illegitimate son, who adopted the name the niece of the

of Smithson in 1802. Smithson

had the Oedipus complex

to a spectacular

degree; he hated his father and loathed his stepbrothers, the Percys of

Northumberland; and he refused

to

have any share of

his father's great

wealth. However, he inherited a large fortune from his mother. This, by his bequest, in 1837.

passed into the hands of the government of the United States

He had

Americans Revolution.

never been there but had been sympathetic both to the

in the

He

Revolutionary

War and

to the Jacobins in the

willed that his fortune should go to set

up an

French

Institution

be called "Smithsonian" as an establishment for the increase and diffuknowledge among men. "The best blood of England flows in my veins," he wrote. "On my father's side, I am a Northumberland. On my to

sion of

mother's,

I

am

related to Kings, but this avails

me

not. Yet

SMITHSONIAX INSTITUTION*

My name

shall live in the

89

memory

of

man

.

my name

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten." This bizarre example of Lend-Lease and reverse Lend-Lease later produced one of the great coincidences in science. Michael Faraday (see

shall live in the

.

.

DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND JAMES SMITHSON when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are

extinct

GBWW,

vol. 45), the blacksmith's son and bookbinder's apprentice who succeeded Sir Humphrey Davy at the Royal Institution, and Joseph Henry, the first head of the Smithsonian, were contemporaries. Their

interests

in

electricity

and magnetism were

similar.

It

is

clear

from

Faraday's diaries and from Henry's accounts of his experiments with

had both, simultaneously— three thousand miles apart— achieved electromagnetic wave propagation, i.e., radio, and that Faraday's papers on Thoughts on Ray-Vibration and Henry's deduction of the spreading of electrical disturbances were the forerunners of Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light and of Hertz's demonstration that radio waves and light waves differ in wavelength only. That was

parallel wires that they

in the early 1830's

but radio had to wait another

fifty

years for practical

fulfillment.

The importance

of the practical also found expression in educational

institutions, particularly in the land-grant colleges.

The

Morrill Act

(

1862)

was a break away from the traditional European concept of education. Public lands were given to the various states. The proceeds of the sale of this land were to be used by each state as a fund for the support "of at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the 90

Rite J tie

mechanic

arts, in

C alder

such a manner as the legislatures of the states

spectfully describe, in order to

promote the

tion of the industrial classes.

.

.

."

liberal

may

re-

and practical educa-

With these and with the foundation

in 1861 of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the United States set the course which was to lead to technological and industrial pre-

eminence

in the twentieth century.

wm.

.

'

t

'a.

•

ARGOXXE NATIONAL LABORATORY

MARIE CURIES LABORATORY Don't

i

tell

the Americans

have dark suspicions about the efficiency of AmerThe tradition of the man of ideas working them out with a minimum of help (even improvising the equipment in the "string-and-sealing-wax" ways of the Cavendish Laboratory) lingers still. 'Crash' programs with teams of research workers and batteries of

European

scientists

ican scientific methods.

instruments are alien to this tradition.

and get there

first,

and

What

to the scientist,

priority of his discovery, this

is

is

worse, they cut corners

whose main reward

frustrating.

From

is

still

the

firsthand experience

round European laboratories one knows that "Don't tell the Americans" has been added to the reticences of security and industrial of going

secrecy. is all against the unwritten 'scientific code' by which supposed to revere knowledge for its own sake and to welcome it from whatever source and by whatever means it comes. Just as inconsistent, coming from those who, when they foregather, talk about "the Commonwealth of Science" and about "national science" being a contradiction in terms, are the complaints that the United States attracts the best scientists away from their own countries. Thirty years ago, the noble (and not only in the peerage sense) Lord Rutherford suffered a great personal loss. In 1921 a young physicist, Peter Kapitza, had joined the Cavendish Laboratory. Cambridge, from Petrograd, as it then was. Rutherford had been impressed by his scientific

This, of course,

every scientist

is

91

New

Europe and the U.S.A.

qualities. In 1924 he made him assistant director of magnetic research. The following year he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, as distinct from "Foreign Member," the first foreigner to be so accepted for

200 years, and the Royal Society Mond Laboratory was specially built for him with equipment supplied by the government. In 1934 Kapitza went back, as he had done frequently, to Russia for a professional meeting.

He was tions,

not allowed to return to Britain. This caused bitter recrimina-

but Rutherford, personally grieved by the

his stand. "Kapitza,"

the facilities."

On

he

said,

loss of his protege,

"can do his researches anywhere

if

took

he has

Rutherford's responsibility, the Royal Society and the

British Government shipped to Moscow the entire equipment of the magnetic laboratory for installation in the Institute for Physical Problems of which Kapitza was made Director.

Americans might have wryly recalled versality of science

when

this

affirmation

of

the uni-

the British Minister for Science in 1963 said

when some reform American system of school education enables them to produce

the following: "I look forward earnestly to the day of the

scientists of their own so that, in an amiable free trade of talent, may be an adequate interchange between our country and theirs

enough there

and not a one-way traffic." This comment was in response to a report of the Royal Society which showed that the annual rate of permanent emigration of recently qualified Ph.D's had become at least 140 a year, about 12 per cent of the total output. Of these, about 60 a year had gone to the United States, over 20 to Canada, 35 to other Commonwealth countries, and 25 to other countries. The survey further showed that of 224 scientists who had gone to the U.S. from British universities and key research institutes, 45 held senior professorships or were in charge of important scientific laboratories in the U.S. Between 1958 and 1962, nine Fellows of the Royal Society had taken permanent employment in the United States. In the protests which followed the Minister's statement, the case was strongly made that it was not financial inducements but proper research facilities which attracted British scientists to the U.S. With some justification, Britain and other European countries can argue that while, as in the case of Kapitza, a scientist can do his research and contribute to scientific knowledge from any base in the world, the loss of the inspiration and leadership of outstanding scientists affects the oncoming generation of scientists.

The

U.S.,

moreover, does

its

best to encourage 'home-

growing.' In 1962 the American government allocated to scientists in Britain

by grant or contract over $5,000,000, and

search benefited by about $1,000,000 from "Public

British agricultural re-

Law

480," under

which

surplus agricultural commodities are sold in friendly countries and the

proceeds used to finance,

among

other things, scientific research. Ameri-

can government contributions to British research exceed

92

all

the scientific

Ritchie

C alder

aid which Britain gives overseas. As the

1963) commented,

an

"It

New

seems that a great

Scientist

(

No. 328; Feb. 28,

scientific nation

has become

importer of aid for scientific research."

DNA STRUCTURE Take an idea and build an

What

it

all

means

is

institute

around

it

that the United States has acquired the un-

grateful position of being a kind of public trustee for scientific

research.

It

can, in North America, provide facilities such as have never

before been available in science; even in

come It

a rocket Wells

now

Fargo

its

space program

it

has be-

for the research capsules of other nations.

"heads the league table"

among

the Nobel Prize winners.

It

can

com"take an

afford the Big Machines, the synchrotrons, the space rockets, the puters, the radio telescopes, etc. It can, as

idea and build an institute around

new

fields

of inquiry, such as

it"

DNA,

someone has

so that

it

said,

can exploit with elan

molecular biology, and the

life

sciences generally.

In this explosion of scientific activity, technology has been the detonator. Industrial

applications have not only provided the wealth but the

93

New

KARL

G.

Europe and the U.S.A.

JANSKY

A

PARKES RADIO TELESCOPE

persistent hiss in his radio receiver

equipment of science, and, in return, the new discoveries of scientific knowledge have received their application through industry. This is abundantly plain in the case of computers. They have made it possible to tackle scientific problems, which could not have been solved in a mathematician's lifetime, and they themselves have become a great industry.

In one field— that of solid state physics— American

eminent.

The

original discoveries of transistors, masers,

science

and

is

lasers

pre-

were

made in the United States. In another field, it gave birth to a new science— radio astronomy— through the observations of K. G. Jansky in 1931.

He

noticed that there was a persistent hiss in his radio receiver

Way and rightly deduced that there were radio waves coming from the stars. But further development had to await the refined receivers which World War II produced, and the initiative in the new science of radio-plotting the universe passed to the British and the Australians, in nuclear physics, in space research, in geophysics, and in oceanography, the Big Machines have justified themselves in impressive scientific results, but American science is no longer machine-made, boosted by technology as Europeans have condescendingly thought; it has 'taken off' into self-confident maturwhen

ity

the aerial pointed in the direction of the Milky

and, as the economists say, into self-sustaining growth.

94

Ritchie It

C aider

has a surplus of vitality which

the world.

More

and by making times by direct

it

is

infecting science everywhere in

important, by enabling

its

own

scientists

to

travel

possible for scientists of other nations to do so, some-

travel grants but also through the

tional organizations,

it is

helping to

make

"the

anonymity of interna-

Commonwealth

of Science"

a working reality.

This maturity found

National

Academy

its

highest expression in an address before the

of Sciences

by President John

Kennedy

F.

a

month

before his death: "Science

is

already moving to enlarge

its

influence in three general

ways: in the interdisciplinary area; in the international area; and in the intercultural area.

For science

is

the most powerful

means we have for its future must be

the unification of knowledge; and a main obligation of to deal

with problems which cut across boundaries, whether boundaries

between the sciences, boundaries between nations, tween man's scientific and humane concerns."

or boundaries be-