MIGHTY AMERICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27221, 26 October 1949, Page 2

MIGHTY AMERICA

Literature

TWO POINTS OF VIEW The Nightmare of American Foreign Policy. By Edgar Ansel Mowrer. Goilancz. 12s 6d. Fabulous America. By Robert . Payne. Goilancz. 12s 6d. Of the many American foreign correspondents whose names are news in their own country, few have disclosed such ability of analysis—as distinct from competence in reporting—as Edgar Mowrer. He has studied American foreign policy both in the making and the execution, and in this short but critical book he exposes what he considers to be its principal shortcomings. His style is disconcertingly terse, and he assumes, on the reader's part a fairly comprehensive knowledge of international affairs, but in all respects it is a brilliant study of the American political scene. The “ nightmare ” of foreign policy is, of course, that for many years no foreign policy existed. Ambassador Hugh Gibson confessed this in j. 944 when he remarked that “ we have no continuity of foreign policy because we have no recognised foreign policy to continue." America became a factor in the world balance of power not by choice but through the inexorable law of historic progression. Until World War I, its policy was one which can best be described in Mowrer’s own words, "habitual aloofness, tempered by selective intervention," a position which enabled the United, States, for a time, to demand all the rights of a Great Power without accepting -any of the responsibilities. President Wilson’s initial support of the League of Nations promised a new era in international politics, but Republican isolationism made the eagle turn ostrich and the hope of permanent peace in Europe' was lost. World War II revealed the bankruptcy of the American policy of the previous two decades. Fortunately for the Unite'd States, it had as President a man who could see eventual involvement in the conflict, and prepared the people of the United States for participation in it. • Mowrer’s study of the years between the wars and of President Roosevelt’s “ personal ” foreign policy is brilliant Roosevelt, in planning the peace, deliberately gambled on Russian collaboration with the West after the war. He. gambled, and lost. Mowrer admits the difficulty or finding an acceptable alternative to this gamble, but he believes there was one, and that it was the one which would nave been taken by an American President who understood better the nature, of Communist imperialism. The Truman doctrine and the. Marshall Plan marked the recovery of the United States from President Roosevelt’s lost bet. Although, as the author states, most American leaders were unready for world leadership, they realised that the responsibility was theirs, not only to lead the peaceloving nations towards a better world, but to eradicate the nightmare of the past. “ Will they awake and use their country’s power in time,” asks Mowrer in conclusion. He cannot supply the answer, but he can, and has, given the factors which must be understood by everyone who also seeks a solution to that question. To every student of international affairs this book is essential as a guide to the development of America’s relations with the rest of the world. The second of these 'two books, Fabulous America, makes considerably less impact on thfe reader. It is a somewhat rambling synthesis of the theories of De Tocqueville, interlarded with comment by the author on the general American scene. That scene is admittedly calculated to impress, but there is nothing remarkably original in Mr Payne’s expressions of wonderment nor his comment on American industrial and political trends. The book’s saving graces are the great earnestness with which it is written and the author’s passionate conviction that America will achieve the greatness necessary to save the world from catastrophe. E. A. A.