The Mood of America
In America To-day. By Mary Agnes Hamilton. (Hamish Hamil-
ton. 3s. 6d. )
America : World Leader or World Led ? By Ernest Minor
• Patterson. (Sidgwick and Jackson. 3s. 6d.)
MRS. AGNES HAMILTON is an able and experienced journalist and she has succeeded in making a readable book out of one more of those innumerable " impressions of America " which returning European lecturers are accustomed to give us. This is partly, no doubt, because she has been wise enough to limit her subject strictly. " Not America," she writes, " but the mood of America in the spring of 1932 is the circumscribed object of description." And it is noticeable that Mrs. Hamilton is at her best when she sticks closely to the limits which she here lays down for herself. For example, she is definitely mis- leading in her impression of the Republican and Democratic Parties :
" On each visit in the last six years, I have made a serious and conscientious effort to discover what issue of principle divides the Republican from the Democrat. That effort is now at an end. I give it up. No one can tell me. Big business and the bankers to-day are said, by Democrats, to be mostly Republican ; but Republicans point out that half the field of possible Democratic candidates is drawn from the ranks of banking and big business. Democrats assert, of themselves, that they stand for equality of opportunity ; so do Republicans, at Election times. Anyhow, is not equality of opportunity an American institution ? Neither on centralization, the tariff, the control of trusts, labour legislation, prohibition, foreign policy, nor power, does any clear or logical line of division exist between the parties. The Republicans are, and have been, with the brief Wilsonian interval, for generations, the ' ins ' : the Democrats the ` outs.' That is all there is to it."
This passage strikes us, to be frank, as a mere repetition of catch phrases ; it shows little effort at independent study of the American scene. The differences between the Republican and Democratic Party are real and important. This is not to say that the one party is better than the other. But each party is based on different interests and has a profoundly different historical tradition. The Democratic Party is to-day pretty definitely the Liberal Party of America. It is a coalition between two forces—the lower middle class of the North and the ruined white class of the South. The Republican Party is the party of the upper, dominant middle class all over the Union. In the Southern States, however, at any rate until very recently, this class has never taken root. Surely Mrs. Hamilton sees no difference between these two great parties simply because she looks at their paper programmes, which, goodness knows, are meaningless enough, as are those of all parties all over the world, instead of looking at the real interests which these two parties represent.
Mrs. Hamilton is at her best when- she writes about the in- tangible factors. Thus, her chapter entitled " No One is Shocked," besides being a really vivid bit of writing, gives an accurate impression of the worst side of American life. Her passage, for example, on the effect of the Lindbergh baby case is an acute piece of social criticism :
" No single case, however, old or new, has created such a nation- wide stir or such far-reaching disquiet, almost despair, as the Lindbergh affair. None has spread so wide and deep and devastating a sense of helplessness. None has shown up so painfully the power- lessness of the institutions in which the nation believes. That the police has been shown to be bungling, ineffective, and probably corrupt, conveys no shock. But Youth, Wealth and the Press have alike failed, and that is formidable. Colonel Lindbergh was, in 1932, still a hero to millions. He incarnated, as no other, young- American manhood. He was believed to be somehow invincible and immune. Anne Morrow, whom he married rather more than three years ago, was the daughter not only of an eminent but of an immensely wealthy man, with enough money to buy off an army of gangsters. The entire organization of a Press that, at other times, claims it can do anything, was at once thrown into the search for the missing baby. All have proved alike useless. Doubt therefore invades the central fastnesses of tho mind of the reader of the Saturday Evening Post and of the tabloids. All his Gods have fallen in one resounding smash."
Mrs. Hamilton brings out very well the point that the American public has far more reverence for, and belief in, private wealth, prestige and power, than in any strong hand which the Government may possess. This is no doubt partly Because public authority is, in America, widely diffused. There is no such thing as " the Government." There are the City Government, the State Government and Federal Govern- ment : they are all endowed with important powers and functions ; they none of them exercise them effectively or completely.
In her final chapter Mrs. Hamilton expresses the view that the dominant cause for the depression of American spirits is to-day not so much the material losses which all classes have suffered, as the shock which has been imparted to the American sense of self-confidence. Economic success was so universal a criterion of social value that now that all alike are faced by economic loss the American public finds a difficulty in de. termining any values at all.
America : World Leader or World Led ? is a volume in a series entitled " World Problems of To-day." The series seems to have been well planned and the present volume has been written by a well-informed American professor, who is the President of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. It is full of facts and information which any English- man who wishes to study America, and who has not previous knowledge of the subject, should find useful.
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