AN INTERNATIONAL OUTLOOK
By Rear Admiral H. S. Knapp, US Navy
The charge may fairly be laid at the door of the people of the United States as a whole that they know little about, and care less for, affairs outside their own country unless they themselves be directly affected. The reasons for this unfortunate indifference, for it is unfortunate, are not difficult to discover. They derive partly from tradition and partly from the conditions and situation of the country in the world. As a young nation, sparsely settled over a long stretch of coast, weak in the face of strong European nations, beginning the national life at a time when weak peoples were the prey of the strong, when the world was full of war and only beginning to admit the right of national groups to a separate national existence, it was natural and proper that the United States should be wary of foreign entanglements and very much on its guard against the suspected or real designs of foreign nations. Nor was the world in that day so interdependent as it is now. Life was then more simple; human needs were simpler; while commerce existed, home production sufficed for most necessities in the United States; the country was practically self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency is to-day more nearly our good fortune than that of any other nation, due to our great extent of territory and diversity of climate and resources; but even we are not self-sufficient. To mention only one important raw material, we do not produce rubber; and how long could we get on without rubber?
During the war we found other and very vital needs outside of our own resources.
During the years of our separate national existence the conditions of life of civilized peoples have changed more than during any similar period of the world's history. The steam engine has revolutionized communications and transportation. Of equal or even greater importance, the steam engine has made possible the great manufacturing establishments that mark the industrial age in which we live. In the more highly civilized nations the trend is distinctly away from agricultural and rural life toward industrial and urban life, and such a change cannot fail to modify greatly the characteristics of peoples and the aims of governments. Again, in 1776 verbal communication with persons at a distance was by letter, and letters went overseas by sailing vessels or by slow animal transport over land. Now we have the telegraph and the radio, and it is within immediate possibilities that we may have telephone communication as a regular thing over thousands of miles of land and sea. In verbal communication New York is nearer to-day to Shanghai or Constantinople than it was to Philadelphia during our early days. We are on the eve of regular communication through the air. The whole world—certainly the whole civilized world—is more closely knit together now in the exchange of commodities and information than Georgia and Maine were after the Revolution.
The position and influence of the United States in the world have changed no less remarkably than have the conditions of life of civilized peoples. Our population has increased many fold until now there are only two self-governing countries whose population is greater. Our continental territory is settled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, whereas our independence was achieved at a time when only the Atlantic fringe east of the Alleghenies was settled. Our form of government, never before tried upon so great a scale and regarded with any but friendly sentiments by the monarchical governments of Europe existing when it was inaugurated, long ago passed the experimental stage and justified itself; it has withstood the shocks of time from without and within, and now it is firmly established and held in high respect by the rest of the world. Outside of our solid continental territory we have acquired Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Tutuila, Guam, the Philippines, Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and have built the Panama Canal and guaranteed the independence of Panama, while with Cuba we have peculiarly close relations that involve both rights and obligations. These external possessions and interests are liabilities from the viewpoint of national defense, and in any event it is plain that they bring with them additional points of contact with the rest of the world.
These trite facts are instanced to show that a habit of thought that fitted our early conditions is not applicable to the circumstances of our present national life. Young ladies planning for a ball do not plan their costumes on the romper styles of their mud-pie days. Yet I believe that it is a melancholy fact that great numbers of the American people are in the romper stage of thought regarding our place in the world. They live on tradition instead of intelligent appreciation of modern conditions; on catchy phrases adapted to the conditions of our national infancy instead of on the realities of the present day. This was the general national attitude until the Spanish War; that brought to many people the realization that the United States was grown up and had a part to play in the world suitable for an adult nation. More have come to hold a similar belief by the Armageddon through which the world has just passed and the effects of which will be felt by the children's children of the entire world. Many—very many—have not been touched. They believe in isolation as a policy, and believe (or profess to believe) that such a policy is a possibility. They see no responsibility towards other peoples except to sign a check when some "drive" appeals to them. They are apparently afraid that the United States may be "done" if she goes out into the society of the world.
This attitude is no doubt honestly held, even by some who are well informed about conditions outside of the United States and of our points of contact with foreign nations. It is my belief, however, that the great reason for any large mass of opinion in this sense is a lack of information of foreign affairs—or, worse, a lack of any interest in them—and a consequent failure to understand how we are affected. Much too small a proportion of our people have any real, well- founded appreciation of our present-day relationship with foreign nations: one based upon knowledge and not upon phrases uttered by men of great wisdom in our early days but not applicable now. This conviction has been growing with me for many years, add the statement in my opening sentence is one I believe fully justified. Compare the items of foreign news in our press and periodical literature with similar items in the corresponding publications abroad. A writer on the position of foreign securities in the American market in the March (1920) Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science says t
For this (the familiarity of American investors with foreign investments) it will be necessary to have the newspapers and other publications of this country give a great deal more space and attention to foreign conditions than they have heretofore. One of the results of the Great War has been to arouse the interest of the American people in the doings of other lands and to increase their fund of information regarding various foreign governments and the conditions prevailing in other countries.
The March number of the Annals is a symposium on Bonds and the Bond Market, and the quoted words did not fall under my eye until this paper had been drafted in the rough. The observations of the writer from a rather restricted viewpoint are what I would stress here from the general and political viewpoint. It has long been in my mind that, while the nation is grown up in size and power, it has not grown up in its knowledge of the rest of the world, nor in an appreciation of its relation to the rest of the world—the political relation that it ought to occupy.
What has all this to do with naval officers? Everything. The navy is the military instrumentality of the government that is always in touch with foreigners. Not infrequently officers have to act in matters abroad without opportunity to seek instructions from the government at home. If it is too much to say that naval officers are responsible for naval policy, it is not too much to say that they are responsible for expert advice upon naval policy. Naval policy depends upon national policy, and national policy necessarily must take cognizance of external relations. If it is to be formulated as befits our place in the world it must be founded upon broader than parochial considerations. From every point of view it is the duty of naval officers to be well informed about foreign nations, and the broader that information and the opinion founded upon it the better able to serve their country in their chosen profession they will be. It is a source of satisfaction that the officers of the navy saw from the first the practical certainty that the United States would be drawn into the recent war if it proved to be at all prolonged. For a time their voice was as that of one "crying in the wilderness"; their justification came in due course. Had their views been accepted the reproach of unpreparedness might have been spared to the country in large measure.
I have been moved to write this paper, not because I feel that the navy as a class has failed in the past to study and understand our foreign relations, but to urge upon all to go on to a greater proficiency in this particular. As a class naval officers should yield to none in an international outlook that is broad and understanding. No officer can come to high command fully prepared for any contingency of service who does not have an intelligent conception of at least the great questions involving the relations of the United States with foreign nations. Naturally and properly the principal interest of the younger officers is in the material of the navy and the training of the personnel; but no officer is too young or too much occupied with his immediate duties to form the habit of knowing what is going on abroad and how it affects us, and of reaching his own intelligent conclusions about our foreign policy in the past and what it should be under the conditions of to-day.