IV. The American Scene

“Democracy, I do not conceyve, that God did ever ordeyne as a fitt government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed? As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both of them clearly approoved and directed in Scripture.” — John Cotton.

THE peculiar strength of England, which is due to the fact that an upper class with numerous aristocratic elements actually directs the destinies of the country, was also characteristic of the United States of America. This becomes evident if one visits Jackson Square in Washington. There in the middle of this open space adjoining the White House one can admire Old Hickory parading on a horse, yet the effigy of the paragon of modern American “democratic” ideas is surrounded by four statues each representing a hero of the War of Independence which had taken place two generations before the presidency of Andrew Jackson. There we see Tadeusz Kościuszko the Pole of old, noble Lithuanian lineage, Baron von Steuben, the Comte de Rochambeau, and the Marquis de Lafayette. Count Kasimierz Pulaski, the only General who was killed in the Revolution, has his monument in Savannah, but Baron de Kalb on account of his undistinguished parentage was probably not considered worthy enough to be represented in the exalted society that had come to this country in order to fight and, if necessary, to die for liberty — not for equality.

American Independence, and one should never lose sight of this fact, was not the result of a “bolshevik” conspiracy, but the outcome of the halfhearted and later more determined efforts of a group of whiggish aristocratic squires who had the support of the haute bourgeoisie in the commercial cities.²¹⁰ This support was given in England to the Whigs of the Motherland by a corresponding group in the City. The North Americans loyal to the King, on the other hand, were automatically called “Tories.”

The British King was, for our aristocratic squires (among whom we find George Washington, descendant of King John II), nothing but a stubborn and arrogant primus inter pares, and the republican form of government promised them an aggrandizement of their power as well as more Liberty — the great aristocratic ideal.* They disliked the idea of being a “royal” nobility which radiates only a secondary light like the moon.** Here was now the opportunity to become “suns” again. There were men like Alexander Hamilton, a brilliant bourgeois, who wanted to re-introduce monarchy, but the squirarchy was glad to have escaped the central control. George Washington, who had aspired to the title “Highness,” found his wish frustrated. Neither had the Judges of the Supreme Court the title “Your High Mightiness” granted by the Constitution — as Benjamin Franklin proposed it in later years.

There was also an identitarian, bourgeois undercurrent hostile against liberties, while antimonarchical tendencies springing from herdist motives were not entirely lacking. The liberty-loving middle classes of New England were in a frenzy after the passing of the Quebec Act which gave religious liberty to the French Canadians. Shouts of “No King, no Popery!” became loud and added later to the revolutionary fervor.²¹¹

The aristocratic genius of the Revolution found only a weak and indirect expression in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution because the aristocratic sentiments of all times are seldom expressed in coherent and logistic philosophies. These two basic documents breath a spirit which is neither aristocratic nor “democratic” (the word democracy is not mentioned once), it has elements of Rousseau’s philosophy and yet it is compatible with Catholic teachings, which again does not mean that it is a typical Catholic document. But to state that the Declaration of Independence is based upon the philosophy of St. Robert Bellarmine is a sign of wishful thinking.²¹²

Viewed against the historical background of the eighteenth century, one can risk the statement that the Declaration is a hierarchical document.²¹³ The influence of Rousseau’s philosophy (which could not be short circuited) must be taken into account as well as the inordinate admiration of the classical world. Yet the republics, even the democratic republics of Ancient Greece, were not egalitarian in our modern sense. There was always a class of slaves and metics with diminished rights. Plato and Aristotle, who opposed democracy violently, were well known to all educated men at that time and educational standards were high. If one compares the intellectual crop of three million Americans in the late eighteenth century with the output of the one hundred and thirty-five million nation of today one may arrive at very interesting deductions. Even Jefferson, who cared little for birth, was certainly not an egalitarian in the modern sense; he believed strongly in a hierarchy of intellects. If one takes the attitude of Christopher Hollis,* who wrote very candidly that the Declaration of Independence was signed by a handful of slave owners who declared it to be self-evident that human beings are created equal, then one has no other choice than to consider the Founding Fathers to have been either hypocrites or lunatics. Yet they were neither if we take the circumstances as well as intentions into consideration.**

The Electorate of the United States used to be extremely small; after British pattern, only the gentry, and the well to do were enfranchized. In many states the middle classes were able to share the political life yet the “proletariat” was definitely excluded (with the exception of Vermont). Direct democracy after the Swiss model was conspicuously absent and the democratic elements of the colonial period were only strong in the framework of local administration.²¹⁴ Even the plutocratic influences were not so overpowering as in the second half of the nineteenth century.²¹⁵ The strong aristocratic control survived in the South for a long time. The Constitution of South Carolina in 1788 gave the vote only to men who had at least 50 acres of landed property. A senator had to have real estate worth at least 2000 pounds, an equivalent of about 25,000 dollars in 1942. The Lieutenant Governor had to prove ownership of property worth at least 10,000 pounds — today the equivalent of about 150,000 dollars.²¹⁶ In spite of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, only Protestants had full civil status. Slavery was abolished only two years after the Ukaz liquidating serfdom was issued in Russia, and serfdom was something far milder than slavery. Even today there are in many states defamatory laws against colored people which are as strict and brutal as the Nuremberg laws and surpass them often in rigor. These laws and regulations have furthermore popular support which facilitates their application.

Slavery was naturally nothing to boast of; the frequent patriarchal treatment of slaves does not alter the fact that the idea of selling and buying human beings is the outcome of a thoroughly commercialized mentality worthy of a modern baseball or football club, which so often “trade in” their declining celebrities. Yet it is difficult to decide whether the main reason for the war of secession was to be found in the egoistic economic consideration of Southerners or in the determination to oppose the centralizing efforts of the Federal Government. The fact that most southern generals and political leaders had few or no slaves seems to justify the latter assumption. We have seen it in our days that the Catholic Church in the United States assailed the “humanitarian” Child Labor Amendment for reasons which find their justification in the strongly anticentralistic tradition of the Church, a tradition, unfortunately, not always sufficiently upheld.

The United States were in 1800 or 1810 not more commercialized than France or Germany and certainly no less so than England or Belgium. The “democratic” spirit was to all outward appearances not stronger than in Holland or Norway. The Americans were at that time an ordinary, freedom-loving nation which honored traditions and could boast of a well-stratified society based on the best British and Occidental traditions. This society was hardly “Americanized,” in the sense soapbox orators and tabloid papers use this name, and the romantic spirit was as strong as in Europe. “Democracy” was looked upon as a monstrosity.²¹⁷

The calamity began through Andrew Jackson who was supported by an unstratified society of trappers, frontiers people, and wild-west pioneers.²¹⁸ They were, of course, a fine and valuable type of men who contributed conspicuously to the greatness and growth of the United States and were far from dreaming like some of our “Progressives,” of a Brave New World with human ants, guided by per capita ratios of radios and iceboxes. Thus the democratization* of the United States was begun on the “Swiss” and agrarian, not on the megalopolitan line; the climax of the democratic process was only reached with the inorganic mass immigration from Europe in the forties.

About the quality of this immigration one has to be highly skeptical. Nobody ever leaves his homeland for good if he is not to some extent déraciné. It is an idle illusion to think that the most courageous and enterprising Europeans came to America; the truth is that an overwhelming majority of all immigrants who crossed the Atlantic were either a personal failure in Europe and hoped to make riches quickly in the New World or that they belonged to a political, racial, or religious group which had failed collectively in the struggle for power and survival. It is difficult to imagine somebody leaving his fatherland because he was too happy and too successful. Neither were there such idealists who just yearned for a “harder life.” Competition was far harder in Europe and there was always less elbowroom, but men like Thyssen, Lord Nuffield, Bat’a, Schneider, Krupp, and Juan March have proved that spectacular careers in the industrial, commercial sphere are not an American privilege and it is too well known that “birth” is a mere handicap in the political field of the Continent.**

Success became the great nostalgia for many Americans because they or their forefathers had written on their forehead the words defeat or failure.*** We can see this well in some of the “patriotic” poems of Edgar Guest, reflecting a popular sentiment, which abound in the praise of material success.

Yet immigration proved at one and the same time to be a factor of diversity. It gave a certain variety to the big cities with their various “quarters” in which immigrants of specific races huddled together. (The smaller and medium-sized town dominated by the middle-class, not the midwestern isolated farm, became the strongest factor in the process of Americanization.) And while the poor, penniless, and prideless immigrant started automatically to imitate the established families, which were Anglo Saxon (and Dutch), these retained much of their influence by intermarrying after British pattern with the rising elements of the plutocracy.

The main emphasis was now shifted from “culture” to “civilization.” This change was deplorable but almost necessary. Culture is personal and something rooted; civilization on the other hand is “international,” interchangeable, and ambulant. (See Appendix IV.) There could be no melting pot, no Americanization on the basis of a new synthesis of Slovakian peasant dresses, Sicilian songs and Swedish folk dances. Only the jalopy, the overall, the ice-cream soda and the corner drugstore could serve as common denominators. In order to denationalize and to re-nationalize the “Bohunk,” American society at large had to make its change from the emphasis on culture to the acclamation of depersonalized, collective, and common civilization. It was self-sacrifice for the native and often torture for the newcomer. It is difficult to see how this procedure could have been avoided. We still feel the effects of its aftermath.

The result of this inorganic mass immigration of prospective voters and the survival of historical and semihistorical classes resulted in the most curious cocktail of aristocracy and “democracy.” The old aristocratic thirst for liberty, as opposed to the middle class readiness for total slavery, is still alive and is decidedly the noblest American tradition. Nowhere in the world is the impact of the identitarian and egalitarian forces of modern technicism more keenly felt, yet there are few countries that can boast of a less homogeneous population, less homogeneous in race, language, and religion. There is much lip service paid to Liberty and much lip service to Equality, but the latter has a far smaller magnetic attraction than one is wont to believe. The United States are of a unique complexity, and this complexity together with its vastness and geographical diversity have proved to be the most potent obstacles for the relentless attacks of herdism and identitarianism. There are inroads of “democracy” and inroads of aristocracy in the opposite domains, and the intricacies of the sub-Continent called the United States are such that their full description would be a good antidote for the average European’s imaginary simpleton, the “praktischer Amerikaner.” Americans are neither simple, nor practical.²¹⁹

The average American may correspond to these qualifications but the average American is not the typical American. Averages are alike the world over, but extremes differ widely and it is always the extreme who is truly representative — except in the gray and inhuman world of dead statistics. In order to compare England with America no sensible man would line up a commuter of Welvyn Garden City with a commuter from East Babylon; yet a juxtaposition of Churchill with Roosevelt or Lincoln with Gladstone would give a concrete picture. Not the megalopolitan and suburban mob, which is interchangeable because it has little “face” and personality, is “typical” and representative for a country. The “typical American” is therefore likely to be found on a ranch in Nevada or Wyoming, in the pueblos of New Mexico, in the hills of Kentucky, in an old house in Boston and in the bayous of Louisiana. It would be interesting to find out how much they care for showers, iceboxes, community life, etiquette, and bridge competitions.²²⁰

It is a superstition of many Europeans, and also of some Americans, to believe that the United States has a classless society. The absence of titles does not justify this view and if one mentions the existence of social stratas one is often told to go out West where such social differentiation does not exist. Yet gigantic and socially “democratic” states like Nevada have a population of less than one hundred thousand, and most Americans live in the quadrangle between Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, and Boston, and it is this part of the United States which is further ahead in the scale of material development and therefore has greater significance.

Aristocratic as well as plutocratic elements have helped here in a stratification of Society and the contribution of the plutocratic element has not always been the happiest one. It is an artificial element, but it has to be regarded as a reality.

American society, till the advent of mass immigration, was fairly static. If hypothetical speculations are permitted one may be tempted to say that without the rush after the thirties and forties the States would have developed on social lines parallel to those in England and in other parts of the Occident. It would not have become “America” with an exclamation mark but another “regular” Western country characterized merely by the absence of a Catholic medieval tradition. Yet the mass immigration threw America back to an earlier stage of development, in the chronological sense. America by 1810 had entirely “caught up” with Europe; America in 1890 was partly back in the seventh century A.D., when the unstratified society of barbarians started to settle down. Even today the immigration of 1840-1924 has not been completely “digested,” yet the whole American Scene, the whole American social life today is characterized by the very process of social stratification which is always, under all circumstances, and in every country a painful procedure, as painful as the pangs of birth. The dominant position of women is just another symptom of this situation.²²¹

Every intelligent foreign observer will be struck by the sight of the rapid formation of classes from the shapeless fragments which were dumped on the Atlantic shores of America. There was actually never a moment of stagnation. The formative process of social stratification is one of the strongest factors of American life, and it produced phenomena which are as ridiculous, uncharitable, and weird as those we could observe in European countries in their respective formative periods — in England during the eleventh century, in early Moscovian “Russ,” in the Balkans after the Turkish withdrawal, in France under the Merovingians and Carolingians.

From the forties of the past century on, social ambition was the most potent factor in American social life and the greatest incentive for the American self-immolation in hard work. The American male of the white-collar class does not work himself to death because he wants to buy more commodities or because he wants to spend lavishly his earnings in interesting travels. What he wants is the desired place in the community, the better “background” for his children. Up to the age of forty-five when he gets his nervous breakdown, or to the age of fifty-five when he dies in the Cancer Hospital, or at 60 when he is found dead over the dictaphone, he hardly gets more than a fortnight a year off from his work to enjoy life and freedom (like his wife or his daughter). There is the type of the young lawyer in downtown New York who works daily till eleven p.m. in order to “make good.” And this “making good” is nothing but the flat denial of equality, so much emphasized; it means rising to a “higher station in life,” to a higher class.

The proverbial man from Mars, free from any bias, would be struck in the United States by the aspect of a society trying madly, desperately, and with an almost religious intensity, to get rid of its primeval “democratic” and egalitarian condition. The society pages, read avidly by taxi drivers, charwomen, and waitresses, the social registers, and color distinctions, the emphasis laid on greater or lesser “prominence” of “civic leaders,” the hints at “blue blood” and “restricted neighborhoods,” and the macabre earnestness and ceremonial etiquette with which social events are celebrated would remind him of a stage of Martian society when its members were not yet properly labeled and had therefore no courage to relax its rules and personal exclusiveness. Every bridge drive, every reception arranged in order to “honor” a debutante, the rivalries of glamor girls (all well born and endowed with hard cash), the snobbing of actresses, Jews, and producers (quite in step with eighteenth-century England), the advertisement of “socialites” smoking Camels, drinking wines, or pouring whiskies, as well as the endless inquiries about questions of etiquette in the dailies, plus the rising sale of Emily Post’s manuals — all these phenomena show not only the youngness of a society but also the grim determination to be molded after some hierarchic pattern, to continue the aristocratic tradition of the Anglo-Saxon world, and to put structural liberty above equality. A competitive society knows no other equality than the equality of opportunity. To maintain that American Society is intentionally egalitarian and “democratic” is sheer folly. We can, naturally, pass a judgment over a given society, only if we compare it with others. A misjudgment may therefore be forgiven to an American who never had the occasion to go abroad and is reared in Hollywoodian conceptions about continental European society. But if a traveled man in the possession of the means of comparison repeats the cant about American egalitarianism in society matters, he can justly be accused of idiotic stubbornness or utter blindness, because never in history has a society striven so sincerely to pass quickly through its egalitarian stage of development as the American.

This process is accelerated, thanks to English traditions and English influence, as well as due to the fact that the older aristocracy, largely surviving, can be used as a “yardstick.” This struggle has its tragicomical aspects, like the “social registers” published by small committees who decide who does and does not belong to “good society.” Competing committees, set up by those snubbed and left out, publish other registers and “blue books,” and in the end we have quarrels and antagonisms as bitter as those related by Kotoshikhin, the Russian historian, who described the hatreds and intrigues of the Boyars in connection with their seating at the Czar’s table. Only countries with a fixed caste system like India are ignorant of the vices of snobism.

Yet the “democratic” past and the mammonistic present oscillates in the background, and social life in the United States can thus not be dissociated from publicity which after all, costs money. No press in the world, not even the dailies of England, Hungary, or Afghanistan, devote so much space to social life. The imitative urge of the “lower” classes is almost limitless and the interest for the doings, whims, and entertainments of the Upper Ten are truly “national.” America and England are in this respect so near to each other; the marriage of Princess Marina to the Duke of Kent, the marriage of a princess of a then exiled royal house of the Balkans with the younger son of a symbolic ruler, is probably still in many people’s memories on account of the overwhelming publicity it received. In an “autocracy” of the type of Wilhelminian Germany or Franz Joseph’s Austria, or even in Imperial Russia such a troth would not have interested anybody except a few courtiers and the Dames des Halles. Marriages of imperial princes or archdukes would have been reported with a few lines in the papers. Yet in the “Marina Marriage” (just as in the case of the Simpson affair) the ochlocratic tendency for publicity as well as the romantic and nostalgic curiosity for the doings of the “higher ups” cooperated harmoniously.

The colleges and universities suffer similarly from these diseases of a formative period. Sororities and fraternities are frequently hotbeds of snobism and the educational institutions themselves often vie with each other in the social field. Many young men and women merely go to college for the same reason as young Englishmen go to public school, i.e., for social “connections” and social “improvements.”²²² But while all these tensions and the spirit of competition in America’s formative period are in a way “healthy” and natural, there is another aspect of social life with little elasticity, little compromise, and far greater bitterness — the question of race. The Protestant attitude toward racial matters has created a multiplicity of tensions and prejudices which are only matched by those now rampant in the German superdemocracy.

Racialism as a herdist feeling always went hand in hand with ochlocracy. In Periclean Athens men with a foreign father or mother were not considered to be full citizens. Human beings seem unfortunately to have an inborn urge to look down on somebody. Where social stratification is incomplete the contempt for the foreigner appears as a substitute for a pagan disdain for the lower classes. (No nation has a stronger dislike for foreigners than the French or the Swiss.) To this eager seeking for the “underman” one has to add the dislike for diversity, and to that identitarian sentiment may still be joined semireligious ideas about one’s own superiority or messianic mission. Differences in nationality manifest themselves largely by a characteristic of speech, a “foreign accent”; differences in race are more fatal because they exclude assimilation and add the barrier of “color.” The German or Irish immigrant who did not open his mouth was still a neutral entity, the Negro, the Jew, the “dirty-white” immigrant from southern Europe immediately gave away his “secret.”

The idea of the Chosen People or the Chosen Race is part of America’s cumbersome inheritance from Judaism through Genevan channels. Many of the Calvinist and Puritanical preachers saw in the war of extermination against the Indians a parallel of the struggle of the Israelites against Philistines, Moabites, and Amalekites. The slaying of the Red Man became almost a sacred rite. These wars of extermination were waged at a time when Suarez and Vitoria thundered from the pulpits of the University of Salamanca against the assassination of Indians and when the Spanish kings had already liquidated the regime of the murderous adventurers of the type of a Francisco Pizarro upon the imprecations of the saintly Bishop Las Casas. This is part of the reason why there are millions of Indians and Mestizos south of the Colorado River and very few north of it.²²³

Later Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Jews, and the Mediterranean immigration came to this country. The quota laws of 1924 were already issued in the spirit of true racialism. America never lacked racial ideologists and ideologies. Those of the more popular type influenced the Ku Klux Klan or other racialist Know-Nothings, those of the more intellectual breed were read in certain German circles prior to the rise of National Socialism. Hanfstängl acquainted Hitler with American racialist ideas and usages which made a deep impression upon him. Men like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant are, together with Gobineau, Darwin, Wagner, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (probably against their own intentions) forerunners of National Socialism.²²⁴

It is a well-known fact that the Negro is, in the South, a second class citizen.²²⁵ But even in the rest of the United States, in the land of Whitman, Emerson, Lincoln, and Susan P. Anthony he has not the same recognition as in the City of the Bourbons and the Bastille, or in the benevolent autocracy of Salazar, or anywhere else in Europe except in progressive Germany. It is a fact that colored people are more respected in the Old World with its medieval memories than in the Protestant part of the New World. Paul Robeson has infinitely more trouble to get a hotel room in New York than in Madrid. It would be difficult to imagine an equivalent of a black vice-president of the Chambre des Deputes or the black French undersecretary for colonial affairs (1935) in this country where people are accustomed to think of Negroes in terms of redcaps and bootblacks. But there are aspects of the color question which are far more unpleasant than these. Even in the more hierarchic South, with its Jim Crow car and the ugly Scottsborough case, the results of a materialistic conception of man becomes apparent.²²⁶ Evolutionism gave to the old superstitions a new “scientific” cloak and the view that the Negro stands somewhere between man and ape gains ground rather than loses it.*

Where herdist feelings can finally lead is well demonstrated by an event that happened not so long ago in the deep South. A young Catholic fell in love with a mulatto girl. No social stigma would have been attached to him had he made of this young woman his mistress. But having more respect for the law of God than for the state law he took her to the North and married her secretly. Some time after the return of the couple to the South (where the woman was considered to be the young man’s lover) a child was born to them. Unfortunately it came out at the baptism that the infant was not the fruit of an illegitimate union. “General will” was outraged, the law of the herd was violated and “action” had to be taken. The populace stormed the house, murdered the mother and the baby.** No comment is necessary.

If defenders of the equal civil rights of all Americans voice their grievances, they are usually told that miscegenation is not desirable. This is definitely not the issue. In the knowledge of the erotic tastes and psychological tendencies of the North American it is very doubtful whether miscegenation would never reach greater proportions than right now. Yet social intercourse with Negroes and (what is much more important) equal opportunities given to colored citizens of these United States do not mean automatically or necessarily an increase of intermarriage. Americans suffer somehow from the haunting complex of a high school romance, office romance, college romance, subway romance, resort romance, boat trip romance. Literature and the movies have filled their imagination to that extent with a love-and-marriage complex that they can hardly imagine inviting the Lincoln Whites or the Washington Dukes for a drink without starting a “romance” between the young people of the respective families.

Discrimination on the other hand is a crime. One might make a case for or against segregation* If a Catholic Church in the South has one side reserved for Whites and the other side reserved for Negroes, one might argue about it. But to force the Negroes to sit in the last benches or to insist that they receive communion only after all white communicants had received the Body of our Lord is perhaps good Nazi custom, but it is certainly not Catholic usage. This is obviously discrimination for which we all will have some day to pay the price. May God be lenient to us in that hour of retribution!

The racial differentiation between white and black is not the only one in this great country. We have already made allusion to the “dirty white” immigration.** The Italian in the United States has frequently a definite feeling of inferiority, and it is not only the “wop” who feels the mild contempt of “Nordics,” but the “Polak,” the “Bohunk,” the “Dago,” and the “Speck” are in the same boat — not to mention the “Chinks” and “Japs.” There is a club near Washington which has been established for the patronage of “Gentlemen of North European descent only” and our surprise increases when we see a hotel with the indelicate inscription “For Gentiles only.” This is not due to any Nazi influence. Such hotels existed ages before Streicher and his Stürmer* There are thousands of clubs, beaches, boarding houses, hotels, and gyms where our Lord would not have been accepted — and all that on account of an excess of herdism, the deep-rooted suspicion against people who are different in race and character. Yet “antisemitism” is definitely a middle-class tradition which was extremely weak prior to the Jacksonian period.²²⁷ Jews were socially accepted at the beginning of the past century but “progress” and the Great Inundation have changed the picture. In a primitive society (in statu nascendi) the racial characteristics are taken as a hierarchy-building element because they are “obvious.” A society of archaic structure is far too sophisticated to be influenced by racial prejudices. This is the reason for the lack of racial antisemitism in the social consciousness of the Mediterranean area or of England and the United States in their prime of independence. In order to see racial tolerance in the Western Hemisphere one should rather go to Brazil which preserved its monarchical form of government until fifty-three years ago. If we are aware of the apparent fact that Christopher Columbus was a naturalized Spaniard of Italian birth and Jewish descent** the whole discriminatory attitude looks rather pathetically stupid. But young materialist cultures (and there is no such thing as an old materialist culture) have the strongest and most violent prejudices or admiration for or against certain classes, creeds, financial groups,²²⁸ bodily perfections or imperfections. I would rather be a Negro in Lisbon than in Washington, D. C, a beggar in Madrid than in New York,²²⁹ a Jew in Teheran than in Berlin, a bourgeois in Greece than in the Soviet Union, a Protestant minister in eighteenth-century Austria than a Jesuit in England at the same time. Primitive progressivists will always develop their peculiar herdist attitudes, but old cultures are skeptical and they are inclined not to believe in pigeonholes into which the subtlest of all things, mankind, can easily be subdivided.

(The skepticism of old cultures has naturally also its dangers. It deprives nations of their élan and when it encroaches upon Truths — not mere views — it can be devastating in the religious sphere. The skeptic of an old and mature culture is always a liberal in the pre-Manchester sense, and there is nothing more attractive than a man who can unite in himself both elements: a total faith and a total lack of prejudice: absolute Catholicity and absolute generosity.)

There is less differentiation in the Middle West than in the North- or Southeast. Birth and race are less, while money is more important. The society there is “younger” and the development slower on account of the lack of “yardsticks” in the form of blue-blooded families. Money is power and that is what counts in a primitive society. Sixty or seventy years ago the six-shooter often spoke its mighty word west of the Mississippi. Western society was then in the same stage of development as the Herulians of Odoaker or the Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Today far-Western society is going through an early medieval period.* Tomorrow it may experience a period of Humanism and Renaissance.

The cities in the Middle West look clean and prosperous, the soil is fertile as far as the eastern rim of the Dakotas where the dustbowl and erosion become a problem, the people are more naïve (a medieval virtue), hearty, direct, friendly, and not yet engrossed in the process of building up a hierarchy, and the stigma of a primitive, “democratic” civilization — monotony — is in full bloom. This monotony, deriving from an industrial civilization, is at the same time one of the two great handicaps under which the natural development of society is suffering. The other great identitarian factor between the Alleghenies and the Rockies is the almost complete absence of mountains with the exception of the romantic Black Hills and the Ozarks.

If we unfold a road map of many a midwestern state (for instance, Iowa or Kansas) we see nothing but a uniform mass of quadrangles, the counties and the roads cutting each other in right angles. Wherever the roads meet there is a town or agglomeration of houses which shows no visual difference from the one twenty miles away. The stores, chapels, banks, libraries, filling stations, and town houses are practically all the same and the uniform advertisements of oil companies, “cokes,” automobiles, and cigarettes cancel whatever variety there may have been. There are no peasants but only farmers, living in “fragments of megalopolis” (as Spengler expressed himself), and not in villages. They own the ground, yet there is a curious readiness to part with it whenever it is necessary or profitable.

Farther out West one is struck by the ruins of ghost towns either of an agrarian or industrial nature. Dustbowls, depressions, aridity, dissication, careless exploitation of the soil, and exhaustion of mineral wealth have destroyed once flourishing communities. The inordinate desire to get rich quickly has depleted many a national resource. The planless destruction of timber and forests have caused not only dust but also floods. Agriculture is suffering heavily and has to be aided by the state. The deputies and senators of agrarian districts used to demand ever increasing subventions and a planned economy is something which cannot be avoided any more. Economically America has come of age (every maturity is “tragic”) and the times of an expansive economy, depriving Indians of their hunting grounds and other “limitless possibilities” are definitely over. And the sooner America realizes that, the better. The whole question of the “New Deal,” made more serious by the problem of a war economy, hinges on this problem.

We have spoken about the cultural chronology of America. Economically speaking one may come to the conclusion that America in 1925 was where Europe used to be in 1880, but there is less chronological difference between the United States and the Continent of today. The social reforms of the New Deal remind strongly of Bismarck’s reforms which were intended to take the wind out of the sails of Social Democracy in Germany. These reforms (Roosevelt’s as well as Bismarck’s) were timely, necessary, just, and also politically expedient. One may quarrel about their individual merits and the shortcomings in their application, but they could not be avoided. The decrease of liberties and the increase of centralism they entailed is deplorable, yet they are the price we pay for “progress.” One could certainly — contrary to general views — stop “progress” but the thing one cannot do is to accept “progress” and to refuse to pay its price. This is suicidal and as catastrophic as permitting automobiles and to refuse, in the name of liberty, to set up traffic rules.

In comparison to Europe, the old abundance and the old elbowroom of America seems to continue; automobiles were long rotting away in their lugubrious graveyards, automobiles which would have done service for at least another half decade in countries of the Old World. There are still butlers in America who are paid twice as high as Bulgarian university professors and advertising managers with salaries of European cabinet ministers. Yet the fact that the times of an extensive economy are over cannot be explained away. The country may have larger per capita riches than it had sixty years ago, yet the material wants have increased in a greater proportion and the raw materials have declined considerably. “Democracy” in the political sense is based on experimenting — the sometimes vague experimenting of laymen — and this is far too costly to countries without limitless riches. The expert and the skilled become more and more a necessity and the fantastic complications of modern technique, modern finance, modern economy, modern foreign policy, and modern production methods render unguided lay opinion more and more obsolete and hazardous for practical application.

In previous years we have seen people trying to paint the dangers of a Roosevelt dictatorship and a Roosevelt fascism on the wall, and still today we meet individuals who call themselves “conservatives”* and who are in reality liberalistic capitalists in the tradition of Adam Smith, expecting from the New Deal as well as from the President the end of all liberties. Yet these steps were, as we know, unavoidable and the President is certainly not the type of the democratic-fascist “leader,” but perhaps a typical aristocratic country squire of the old type who is intelligent enough to draw the bitter but inevitable consequences of modern technology. Apart from that he has that genuine aristocratic sense of responsibility for the little man, the worker, the employee who has to “be cared for.”** An eminent columnist with little sympathies for the President remarked once scoldingly: “Mr. Roosevelt has an innate hatred for wealth unless it has been inherited” — which is just another aspect of the aristocratic mind.²³⁰ He has not only prevented a revolution, but through his moderation given a lease of life to exactly the same type of people — the secondary, plutocratic aristocracy — which hated him with a bitterness without parallel in the annals of American history.* We have no idea to what extent Mr. Roosevelt takes mass opinion seriously — there is no doubt that he is “demophil” — but he must be aware of the fact that his administration has definitely strong “bureaucratic” tendencies incompatible with “democracy” or even the ochlocratic trends of our time which stand for the rule of laymen over the experts. It is naturally quite a different question whether the expert advisers of the President are the best ones obtainable in this country and whether his administrators have all characteristics of an ideal officialdom. An ideal bureaucracy is always entirely nonochlocratic, i.e., strictly nonpolitical and free of party ties. And there are two more requirements for a perfect bureaucrat besides the aforementioned status: high intellectual as well as high moral standards and — last not least — generosity.

There is naturally a genuine fear abounding lest the last token of active political right left to the modern slave — his right to vote — may also be abolished. It is a truism that every genuine officialdom is always out to destroy or at least to decrease the control of the nonexperts, of the parliaments or congresses, and to render them powerless if an opportunity arises.**

The problematic nature of lay control becomes apparent if we think about practical questions which have been put before the electorate. The elections of 1936, for instance, decided the future and continuation of the New Deal. A young historian who had majored in economics for his Ph.D. degree was particularly interested in this issue and embarked upon the venture to examine the vast project in earnest. After six weeks of intensive studies he saw that it would take him at least seven or perhaps ten months to be in the position to pass a pertinent judgment on this extremely complicated economic plan. There are probably not more than 3000 American voters (and maybe even less) who are competent critics of the New Deal, and yet we find 50,000,000 voters who have very definite opinions about it. If one would make an effort to find out how they came to their conclusions one would see that almost everybody judges the plan from a purely personal point of view; one man, for instance, will formulate his opinions according to the sales he had during a certain period and another one will use employment in his own community as a measuring rod. But no momentary or local success (or failure) can be taken as a basis for a fair judgment. A financial policy might bring enormous benefits over a period of twelve years (three Presidential terms) and end with total disaster, or it might work out the other way round.*

The man in the street usually knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy, economics, civil law, strategy, naval affairs, political history, and federal administration, while ochlocracy at its best is an enormous machinery of persuasion where those not well informed try to persuade with a confusing vocabulary other less informed voters to elect them.²³¹ (Ochlocracy at its worst can be studied in Central Europe and Russia.) The whole thing is nothing but a lottery of opinions — of opinions based upon slogans, whims, hunches, dislikes, and fragmentary incoherent shreds of information. It is quite true that experts can also make mistakes. Even doctors can make mistakes, but ailing persons who are not mental cases will seek the aid of a doctor and not of a tailor or cabinetmaker — this in spite of the fact that medical men have committed gross and even fatal errors. The ochlocratic spokesmen of our day, on the other hand, have a superstitious belief that the masses are endowed in political questions with an “inner light” or a special gift of the Holy Ghost which enables them to solve difficult expert problems. It seems that the sinister belief in this “Inner Light” gives the ochlocrats of our time the right to call themselves “enlightened persons.”

We already have mentioned the fact that the blind belief in the intelligence of the man in the street, who can solve the most difficult problems, intuitively is fundamentally Lutheran. Luther believed in the utter wretchedness of human beings in their moral sphere, but he thought at the same time that every cobbler can expound the Scriptures, which is full of passages over which learned theologians haggle for decades and even centuries. The Catholic Church, on the other side, taught the opposite doctrine; while not despairing over human nature in its moral sense she always preserved a healthy skepticism about the intellectual faculties of the average man.

This Protestant optimism and egalitarianism in intellectual matters is hostile to any form of authority or hierarchy in the field of reasoning, and thus we see in the earlier forms of popular government not only economic planning becoming impeded but every planning in general. A constructive foreign policy, even in a representative republic, is rather handicapped. One has only to remember the political testaments of kings and emperors who planned things two or three hundred years ahead. Yet in a republic or constitutional monarchy one course is followed by one government and another one by the next. Elective constitutions have an inherent dislike for a continuity of power and they rest on the assumption that four or eight years are a long time to carry out even the most elaborate program. Such views are far from reality unless we think in terms of destruction; the work of decades can naturally be destroyed in a few weeks time. In America we have in addition not only changing politicians but also changing administrations. This lack of equilibrium is particularly disadvantageous in foreign affairs, where “democratically” governed nations frequently lose the confidence of other nations because they cannot be trusted further than the next cabinet or the next president.

Who are today the members of the parliaments, congresses, national assemblies, or popular diets the world over? Are they all still the trustworthy experts, men of intuition, integrity, and knowledge they once used to be in the “heroic period” of parliamentarism?²³² Few people will doubt that the human material even of our Congress could stand some improvement. The ochlocratic tendencies of the past 100 years have wrought havoc everywhere and the present system of franchise was certainly not conducive toward improving popular representation anywhere in the world. Our congressman, not less than his colleagues abroad, has often been elected merely on account of his popularity and the confidence people have in him.²³³ His popularity in turn is only too often due to the fact that he “embodies” his constituency, that he is a personification of the average voter* and the natural “leader” of the district. Frequently he is careful not to give the impression that he is socially or intellectually superior to the people “back home”; the “baby kisser” likes to prove that he is a “fellow like you and me.” And often the confidence put in the candidate is nothing but the conviction that he will faithfully represent the views of his constituency. Yet a congressman who acts merely as a gramophone record betrays the very soul, the very essence of American government as conceived by the Founding Fathers. His passive role was to receive from his constituents a delegated power, and right here ends his relationship to his voters; his task from now on is to reach decisions independently from the opinions of his voters, decisions in conformity to his knowledge and conscience. The Library of Congress, after all, has been erected in order to give the senators and representatives a practical help in forming definite views about the problems their country is faced with. We do not want to discourage voters writing to their congressmen, but they have to bear in mind that it would be more than unfair of them to “menace” their public servant with the refusal not to elect him again if he doesn’t act as a messenger boy of their desires.²³⁴ Such an attitude is contrary to the spirit of the Constitution which wanted the members of the Congress to be aristoi in the best Jeffersonian sense, men of independent judgment, of learning and discretion.

The parliamentary situation in Europe was in this respect even a great deal worse than in America.²³⁵ The ochlocratic tendencies were much more marked and in most European countries it was unthinkable that a deputy (elected on a party list and not as a person) ever differed from the party line. American individualism at least prevented the rise of a strict herd obedience in party matters. The candidates for Congress as well as the congressmen themselves, even if they are capable of understanding the underlying problems and issues of the day, are in a hopeless position to make them understood by the masses of voters. They have usually no other choice than to “boil them down” to a few simple catchphrases. But this process of “boiling down” means to distort the truth.²³⁶ The truth, the world, nature, human affairs are usually by their very nature complicated. Even theological truths (contrary to Protestant conviction) are very difficult to grasp, and the individual is usually too lazy, uninterested, and not sufficiently educated to reason them out himself or to take the help of some learned and expert person.²³⁷ The same indolence, indifferency, and crudity prevails in political matters.²³⁸

Popular representation in the United States (as anywhere else) faces the grave problem of quality; quality of the voters, quality of congressmen and senators. There is unfortunately little doubt that the lack of political education (which has its limits) and that an indiscriminate franchise have contributed a great deal to this deficiency. We have purposely written about the indiscriminate, not general franchise. The latter has the advantage that it gives the individual citizen a feeling of organic relationship to his country (which is effected in a more prosaic way by the income tax). But general franchise should not mean equal franchise, and the two elements of knowledge and merit should definitely be taken into consideration. Here, quite exceptionally, we will disregard the accepted system of the Founding Fathers who had taken from English usage the system of property qualifications. On account of its mammonistic implications we will not consider it any further. (Income, real estate property, taxes, etc., fall into this category.)

The proposal we make here is very tentative and should only serve as an indication as to where the solution of the problem may be. The idea would be to give to certain persons additional votes for each “merit” or “competence.” These votes will be accumulated. There is little doubt that it would take money and trouble to verify in each case the number of votes an individual person is entitled to, but where the question of quality enters no sacrifice should be avoided. There would have to be a permanent commission checking up each voter’s status. As basis for additional voting rights the following qualities could serve:

1. Being 50 years of age or over.

2. The possession of a B.A. or B.S.

3. The M.A. degree, all doctor’s degrees (Ph.D., M.D., etc.).

4. Active military service abroad.

5. Invalidity as a result of such service.

6. Being widowed by a war.

7. Administrative offices held for over 15 years.

8. Heads of families of 4 children or over.

9. Priesthood, ministership, etc.

10. Managing or directing of large enterprises.

11. Managership of large public organizations.

Under these circumstances a physician aged fifty, who served in the war and is providing for four children, would have the power to poll six times. The mechanical, numerical majoritism which holds such evil sway over parliamentarian institutions could thus be broken in order to preserve their existence. It would be an end of the prevalent system of merely “counting noses.”

Yet a reform would also be necessary on the other end of the line. An examination commission under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court should see that certain educational standards among representatives and senators are kept. These examinations should cover subjects like ethics, geography, history, constitutional history, foreign politics, economics, etc. This would similarly help to raise standards and to increase the respect of the citizens for their representatives. The word politician has today unfortunately a rather derogatory connotation, and each time a paper publishes a drawing symbolic of a congressman one will find the picture of a dirty, wicked old man with bagging trousers and a slimy leer. Such popular connotations destroy (in the very long run, it may be admitted) all confidence in representative government.

A meticulous observer could see in the years preceding America’s entry into this war, in certain circles in Washington, a weariness with uninformed lay opinion in general and with Congress in particular. This impatience and anger over the delays caused by fruitless talk and filibustering in Congress are mostly notable in the departments where educational standards are high, admission is dependent upon rigorous examinations, and secrecy must necessarily be strictly observed; this is the case in the State Department as well as in the Army and Navy. An almost identical situation could be found in many European states prior to the suppression of parliamentarian institutions (see pp. 193–194).

Yet if the future belongs to expert rule because “progressive” ideas and inventions have created a permanent state of emergency the world over, then it is better to face the facts and to prevent the establishment of a party dictatorship through the cooperation of a specific political group which may lessen the strain of a furious and dissatisfied officialdom. If the administration needs more power (by no means all), then one should make an honest effort to build up an intellectually and morally “perfect” officialdom with a tradition of integrity, scholarly seriousness, and a sense of great responsibility toward God (and the Nation).²³⁹ This “bureaucracy” may be part of a new aristocracy of thought, faith, and taste of the post plutocratic period in the development of a genuine American hierarchy. Yet these essentials of a superior national existence cannot be built overnight and it may easily take a couple of generations until this effort yields a satisfactory result.*

Such a process is naturally not ochlocratic. Already Charles Maurras has said (De Démos à César, Paris, 1930, p. 35): “Democracy is the rule of numbers; such a government implies equality. But organization implies inequality. Thus democracy and organization are mutually exclusive.”

In the meantime America suffers greatly from the handicap of electing a large part of the nonfederal officialdom by the people; even policemen and judges are often elected by hobos, little businessmen, and migratory soda jerkers.** Under these conditions it is obvious that courts can often not afford to be independent. A few miles behind Richmond or Chattanooga the most ochlocratic of all judiciary systems — lynching — is still in force. In a strictly ochlocratic world the only logical judiciary procedure based on general disapproval is lynching, and the democratic Athenians cooled their anger on unpopular fellow citizens in a bloodless lynching without photo cameras and blowtorches — through ostracism. Yet not less immoral than lynching is the passing of a verdict while listening with one ear to the Vox Populi. The judge who did not want to risk his popularity and his job has been immortalized by the Book of Books — this man, who rather obeyed the Jewish mob than his own conscience and who tried in vain to wash his hands in innocence, is Pontius Pilate.

The great enemy of the “bureaucracy” in every capitalistic country is the plutocratic-capitalistic group. An incorruptible and exclusive administration only increases the ire and hatred of the haute finance, which has always shown disdain and contempt for the European bureaucracy that provided the nobility with new blood.* The stubborn, proud, and puritanical officialdom with “Titles without means” irritated them highly on account of their interference with financial activities.

At least one must leave it to the American plutocracy that they understood very well how to impress the masses. The Little Man acquired, as time went on, a far greater respect and veneration for the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Mellons than his German equivalent for the Radziwills, Hohenlohes, Löwensteins, Schönburgs, Schwarzenbergs — names which were frequently not known to the Man in the Street.

In order to keep his prestige the plutocrat had to instill the idea into the people that his own values are the highest in the world, that material standards are of a primary importance, that nations with little enthusiasm for material progress are retrograde. Once the pioneer with his covered wagon had disappeared he was replaced by the salesman who considered himself to be a “potential millionaire.” The weakness of socialistic movements in America prior to 1929 is largely due to the fact that people preferred the hope for a million to the certainty of thirty dollars a week. Like the soldier of the Napoleonic period with the proverbial baton in the knapsack, so the ambitious young American saw himself prophetically with all the glory of a million-dollar banking account.** Only after the great crash do we see the desire for more security gaining momentum.

In order to stimulate emulation and “healthy ambition” we see the plutocrats finally unfolding their private lives to the public. Success became material success and was called euphemistically “making good.” The level of higher education became constantly lower and the “practical” became the main object of studies. The high cultural level of 1800 was completely abandoned. The mountains of the old American British tradition were with difficulty saved from being submerged in the deluge of mass immigration. The pioneering period was followed by an effort of social stratification and integration through money. The railroads followed the covered wagons. Now money as a crude differentiating power is slowly reaching its end. More lasting values will take its place. Yet the ochlocratic worship of numbers and quantities has caused in the meantime untold damage.²⁴⁰

It is a commonplace that the great values of life cannot be expressed in numbers and statistics, and this is partly the reason why the ideas of quality and permanence have been so neglected in the period of the Great American Impasse. Neither the holiness of a Santa Teresa, nor the heroism of Tone, nor yet the profundity of theological truth can be expressed in numbers. But in the technicized world numbers become involved with human or inhuman activities of every kind, which find their expression in statistical recording. The various denominations vie in their yearly revenues from whist drives and bingo parties; games are expressed in numbers which are broadcasted all over the country; human beings are said to be “worth” so and so many thousand dollars a year; Bridge has been evolved into a system of mathematical probabilities (Culbertson); houses are evaluated by their rooms and floors, and public squares by their equivalent in money. (For instance, the “Ten Million Dollar Plaza” in Washington, D. C, and the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado.) The infantile British joy in general competition, a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes, has created this crazy idea of an endless humming and buzzing competition without repose.*

Everything must be measured and compared; the stop watch and the yardstick celebrate their omnipresence in horseraces, auto races, tree sitting, jumping, hurdle races, and motorboat races. All these victories and defeats can be measured. Yet the desperate desire for new measurable and “comparable” victories engenders such odd competitive efforts as, for instance, the dancing marathons, kissing marathons, speaking marathons. America, England, and even Germany between the two revolutions, were full of people who established new records by hopping on one leg around a city, eating cabbage for ten successive years’ or covering the walls of a house with cigar bands.²⁴¹ The deeper reason for this mania is not only to be found in the worship of numbers but also in the morbid desire for publicity (anthropocentrical neighborly recognition) and, what is even more important, the subconscious wish to see new records established because the breaking of old records seems to justify the fairy tale of “Progress.”

If somebody drives 311 miles an hour (instead of 309) in a one-man car which consumes one gallon for every two miles on an artificial driveway then he or she has furthered the sacred cause of “progress.” Even human sacrifices are made to placate the sinister god of progress. Every year about 40,000 people are squashed to death on the American highways with the help of explosive motors. If somebody would start a sect which would immolate every year about 40,000 innocent people to a god named Progressilopochtli or if a medicine were to be sold which annually cures the headache of about 20,000,000 people but kills off forty thousand men, women, and children, the police would definitely step in and the head of the sect or the manufacturer of the medicine would be confined in a prison or a psychopathic ward. Yet with our present state of mind we rather advocate the psychopathic ward for the man who would plead for the abolition of automobiles.

Things which are “measurable” are popular in a technical civilization because they can be “judged” by the masses who are thankful for the criterion of numbers. The circenses of today are based on “scorings.” One could, if one wanted to, compare universities by taking their scorings at spelling bees or football teams as a basis for comparison. Authors may thus be compared by their literary output, the number of pages they have written or the reprintings of their books. But could one arrange a “match” between two savants? Hardly! It certainly would be amusing to see a race for holiness between two prospective saints. And painters? Pictures may be measured by square inches and even poems by yards.²⁴² All this cannot be proposed in earnest and the fact remains that spiritual and intellectual values cannot be measured as quantities. They cannot be expressed in numerals as, for instance, the sex appeal of the film stars, which is frequently evaluated by its financial effect on the box office.

The worship of numbers, quantity, and size has also wrought havoc wherever it found little opposition. Education is, after all, something thoroughly “aristocratic” in the intellectual sense. Already the Ancients were aware of the fact that there are different degrees of knowledge, but ochlocracy spread the conviction that everybody with the proper educational facilities is able to learn everything. The very idea of genius or inborn talents as disequalizing factors must be repulsive to people who not only believe that we are (theologically speaking) created as equals but that we also remain equals all through our lifetime. There naturally are a fair number of scholars and educators who have protested desperately against the low standards in American higher education as well as against the view that a true education should teach “how to make a living” instead of helping the student to solve his problem “how to live” by giving him the philosophical and cultural elements for a cultured existence.

President Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago, who advocates the study of theology and a preponderance of the liberal arts in the curriculum of colleges and universities, has been promptly branded a “Fascist,” the label which “progressive” educators stick indiscriminately on people they instinctively dislike. As if Fascism would prefer an erudition in metaphysics and the litterae humaniores to military drill and engineering!*

The so-called high schools in the United States have the level of better French elementary schools and the students normally enter college or university with a rudimentary knowledge of spelling but often also with an inordinate desire to play football and to advance their social status (which fact incidentally proves that the general evaluation of equality is still fictional). The intellectual maturity of deserving individuals as well as of the whole nation is thus impeded in the most phantastic way. It is true that a few universities maintain high standards, but these (in imitation of the British system) are not “democratic” institutions, and the number of scholarships in these private enterprises is naturally limited. America, from a social point of view, is decidedly far less of a “democracy” than France, Germany, Spain, or Scandinavia. But intellectually — in order to assure a “higher” education for the greatest number — the ochlocratic ideas have reaped an almost total victory, and most universities have usually not even the level of French lycées or German Gymnasien. The financial position of professors is frequently that of a foreman in an average factory or a policeman in a larger city. Neither is the professor’s social position an enviable one and some may remember that this title had once been given to men with long hair who played the piano in the houses of ill fame of booming frontier towns out West.

Such an atttitude is far from being “American” in a traditional sense; it is rather the result of the immigrant’s contempt for the liberal arts which do not show a handsome profit expressed in dollars and cents. The general prosperity of the nineteenth and early twentieth century have given a certain impetus to this materialistic attitude which was never shared by the best Americans. (A similar money rush could be observed in Russia from 1890 to 1914.)* Today we have to face the possibility — less so than before 1929 — that a man lecturing on window dressing is more respected than a man lecturing on philosophy or theology, which will not aid “progress.”** Things which are apt to be understood only by a minority do not promote sales and therefore would possibly be branded by the mob as “stuffed shirt” articles. Yet on the other side, paradoxically enough, there is a great hunger for knowledge and education which has never been properly channeled.

Others again see in the university professor some sort of Peter Pan who never grows up; he is nothing else but a faithful student who has neither the “guts” nor the energy to leave the Alma Mater and so, instead of selling automobiles or insurance, he remains within the walls of the campus undergoing later a slow metamorphosis into an M.A., a Ph.D., an instructor, and so forth.

The Presidents of American Universities are to all practical purposes absolute monarchs. European Universities on the other hand are republics. An exception is the University of Virginia which has been modeled after a European pattern. The American professor — except for the moral influence of his professional Association, after he has reached a certain rank — can be dismissed on short notice and is far from enjoying the security of a European professor in a nonfascist state, who always had the tenure of an American Judge of the Supreme Court. Needless to say that there is no academic freedom in the classic sense. Thus our professor is often a little respected member of the community and he usually knows it. In many cases the Presidents are not much better off either. He, the lord over the professors, trembles before the board of trustees made up often of smug businessmen who could hardly write a letter without looking up most expressions in a dictionary.* But he may be semi-illiterate himself and his appointment (as in the State Universities) may have been made for political reasons. Rarely is he a scholar himself.**

The ochlocratic statistician with his numeralist views upon vital matters likes to speak about countries in terms of “success” or “failures,” always taking these terms in a material sense. There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers intended the United States to be primarily a human and only secondarily a material success. The Soviet Union may be a material success (though the readers of Manya Gordon’s book*** will doubt it very much), but it certainly is not humanly a success. The American educational system is frequently defended by the statement that it is “successful” because it was instrumental in making of the United States a “success.”

There is one more notion which ought to be dispelled and that is the opinion that only “progressive” countries with popular representations are able to produce great material achievements. The United States is fortunate in being an extremely large country, possessing great mineral wealth and one hundred and thirty-five million customers. Europe without interstate borders and a population of five hundred millions could easily produce automobiles twice as cheap as America. In order to draw a just comparison between the “efficiency” of the two continents one would have to fill a similar space with an identical amount of people and to surround the American equivalent with an unsurmountable custom barrier. One ought to pour, for instance, the Austrian population into Maine, i.e., seven million people into that one North Atlantic state which at present harbors only eight hundred thousand. Even though these seven million were to be sturdy straphangers from New York I doubt whether they would not starve the first winter and die during the second. The odds and handicaps in Europe are almost unbelievable. Unsuccessful experiments have the most dire consequences. It is this very danger of irresponsible experimenting (by the lay masses) which among other reasons finally led to the end of representative government in Europe.

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* Seifert in his Die Weltrevolutionäre declares Liberty to be the ideal of the nobility, equality of the urban classes, and fraternity of the peasantry.

** There are therefore also two different conceptions about “equality.” There is the idea of the Republic where everybody is a proletarian and the Republic where everybody is a king. In Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, we encounter a “Loyalist” who proposes that everybody should be addressed as “Don.”

* Christopher Hollis: The American Heresy, London, 1931.

** The republican tendencies of aristocracies have been dealt with already on pp. 47–49. It is interesting to see how frequently aristocratic groups paid only lip service to monarchical principles. The return of their royal masters would put them in a position where they could only play second fiddle to the monarch’s first. As to the antidemocratic attitude of the Founding Fathers see the explanatory note, “What of Democracy?”

The aristocratic, libertinarian principles of America find expression in such apparently trifling privileges as the freedom of bearing arms of American citizens. The freedom of bearing arms existed only in one European province by 1938 — in the Tyrol, where the National Socialists canceled quickly this last remnant of medieval liberties after the Anschluss.

* A definitely wicked Jacksonian reform was the introduction of the spoil system; Jackson was convinced that governmental affairs were so simple that every adult could cope with them successfully. His “reform” of the Presidential Electorate was similarly of an ochlocratic character.

** See also: H. L. Mencken, Prejudices III. Series. New York, 1922. A. Knopf, pp. 22–24.

*** This should not be construed as a sign of “racial inferiority” or the like.

* Many people will insist that there is something about the Negro face which is reminiscent of the monkey. That may be so but there is another side of the story; the pure blooded African has no visible hair on his body which the white male definitely has. The white race together with the Ainus and the Australian aborigines is the hairiest race in the world. And is that not rather reminiscent of apes?

In pre-Darwinian times we also find biblical explanations given for the diversity of races. The superstitious belief that the Negro descends from Cain who was guilty of “misconduct” with a female gorilla is widely accepted in the South. The Reverend La Peyrère, a Dutch preacher of Huguenot descent, published, in the middle of the seventeenth century, a book in which he affirmed that some human beings had been created on the 5th (!) day of the Creation. This preadamitic theory foreshadowed the concepts of modern racialism.

** Our racial discrimination was frequently mentioned by the more intelligent isolationists as the reason for our “staying out.” They indicated that America had no right of sharing a crusade where equal rights had been made an issue. This argument is less cogent than it seems at the onset and reminds one of the objection of medieval sectarians to pay obedience to anybody who is not in the state of grace. But the man who cannot help himself may well help somebody else, and vice versa. If it is easier to extinguish the neighbor’s burning house than one’s own then it is better to aid where help can show results.

* It must be admitted that all statutes designed for segregation were discriminatory in their effects.

** The National Socialists were at least liberal enough to recognize officially all “Aryans” (people of “German and kindred blood”) as “equals.” The United States in some respects is more particular in its racial legislation. The immigration laws of 1924 gave the North Italians (those living north of the Po River) a higher quota than the South Italians. This is the only case of a European country being dissected by that regulation. The North Italians have, naturally, more “Nordic” blood than the South Italians, their white skin is “cleaner” than those of the “greasy, dirty-white wops.”

An octoroon Negro in the South will similarly be considered to be a Negro, while the National Socialist will accept him as an Aryan. A negro mulatto and a quarteroon could participate in the plebiscitarian comedies of the Third Reich (as half and three-quarter “Aryans”) but men from the same category would be to all practical purposes (tests!) debarred from the poll in Georgia or Mississippi.

* “Democratic” America produced in 1915 a highly successful film — the “Birth of a Nation” — in which the superiority of white people over Negroes was dealt with in a way which would impress any Nazi audience. A girl who was in danger of being raped by a Negro “defended her Aryan birthright.” This film was made 18 years before the Reichstags fire. . . .

In parenthesis: Professor Hooton’s (Harvard) statistics show that the Negro race ranks lowest in rapes. Cf. E. A. Hooton, Crime and the Man, Harvard University Press, 1939, p. 302.

** The circumstantial evidence published by Salvador de Madariaga in his Christopher Columbus proves this almost conclusively.

* There is certainly something medieval about midwestern painting which becomes strongly apparent in some pictures of Grant Wood. (“American Gothic”) Yet Protestant Middle Ages are not the same thing as Catholic Middle Ages; they have an inner severity and seriousness which were not even shared by the most zealous Grand Inquisitors.

* The muddle in the use of political terms in America is complete. While “conservatives” are nothing but manchesterian liberals, the so-called liberals are nothing else but pro-Communists and even the New Deal is considered to be a “liberal” line of action The word federal stands naturally for “centralistic” and so forth.

** See the cooperation of Swedish conservatives with the Socialists against the industrial liberals in social questions. The member of the squirearchy expects the manufacturer to treat his workers as he himself treats his farm hands, mainly if they are old and sick. Social Security is actually a conservative and aristocratic institution.

* There were, of course, a few industrialists and capitalists like Mr. Marshall Field of Chicago who understood the signs of the time.

** The specifically American problem of a transition from lay to expert rule lies in the fact that the primary justification for bureaucratic control is in the economic field. It is unnecessary to emphasize that there is a majority of fields of human endeavor and activity where a control from above would be completely out of place and constitute an unnecessary increase of state powers. Yet in America economics play such an important role, not because there is “more” economic activity (which is about the same proportionately per cent in every country because with the exception of beggars and millionaires’ sons everybody has to earn a livelihood), but because Americans attach such great importance to economic values. A bureaucratic control of economic life in a country where such great sentimental value is attached to the material aspects of life is — in a way — an attack against the central nerve of many an American, and the fear that total control may follow is thus not entirely unfounded. Economic control in the U. S. may be an equivalent to religious control in India, cultural control in Germany (the greatest present despair of Germans), or state control of sports and games in England! A control of private life or a control of the diet such as this free nation tolerated for half a generation in the form of the Volstead Act would be unthinkable in Fascist Italy. The only solution of the coming problem lies therefore in a metanoia, in the methodical relegation of business and economics to a lower sphere of human consciousness.

* It must also be borne In mind that man today is relatively less educated than his forefather 500 years ago; he knows proportionately less of the total existing knowledge and also proportionately less about the essentials of public affairs. Education could by no means keep up with the inventions and the growing “complicativeness” of human existence. Less and less people are therefore able to reason in spite of an increased education, and nothing remains to the masses but to judge, to go “on hunches” and thus to contribute to the “sensate” character of our epoch. The “total result” of our intensified educational efforts and the popularization of the three R’s is merely a weakening of human memory, as modern man has everything “on file.”

“Common Man” is thus in reality entirely helpless and his public apologia by dictators who need his blood, by politicians who need his vote and by manufacturers and editors who need his pennies, lacks the ring of sincerity. Even within the ochlocratic framework he is unable to shape his own destiny. All that will not induce the Christian to have contempt or disdain for the Common Man, who is nonetheless our Fellow Man with an immortal soul. Yet this does not change the fact that there can be no “Century for the Common Man.”

* There are exceptions and somebody rousing the latent “romantic” sentiments may be elected due to the fact that he is totally different in habitus and appearance from the electorate. The lion hunting, bearded Mr. Tinkham from Massachusetts is a typical example illustrating this exception.

* It is naturally only the well-established “bureaucracy” that can “afford” to be generous and unbureaucratic. The political appointee or the provisional official who can be dismissed at any time will always stick slavishly to the rules in order to avoid criticism or dismissal. It is the civil servant of the traditional order, holding his office for life, who (contrary to general assumption) can take the courage to judge cases by their individual merits.

(See the inefficiency of the amateurish British bureaucracy in their dealing with the stranded “enemy aliens,” well described by E. Lafitte in his book, The Internment of Aliens, London, 1941, Penguin.)

** See the sheriff in Erskine Caldwell’s masterful description of a lynching in his short novel Trouble in July, New York, 1940.

* If we believe that it is just to inherit material goods from our parents one has to consider it a crying injustice that there are no hereditary titles in the United States. The millionaire, who made riches unscrupulously, can leave a fortune to his son. Yet none of the honors of great administrators, judges, scientists, artists, or soldiers are bestowed upon their offsprings.

** “To abolish millionaires would have been to dash one’s own hopes.” George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, New York, 1920, p. 198.

* The English public schools are thoroughly imbued with the spirit of competition. They could hardly be visualized without the elements of cooperation and team-spirit.

* Sinclair Lewis described with more insight than Mr. Hutchins’ opponents the anti-humanistic tendency in Fascism in his It Can’t Happen Here, New York, 1935, pp. 250–252.

* It must be kept in mind that no country in the world was so thoroughly permeated with the spirit of the nineteenth century (1814–1914) as the United States — with the possible exception of Australia and New Zealand. Only a geographical fragment of the present U. S. lived a political and cultural existence in the eighteenth century and the imprint the nineteenth century left on the United States was therefore largely made on a blank. The culture of the individual centuries though divided in time has to share a common space in Europe and their marks can only be found in a maze of other phenomena. America on the other hand merely spent her babyhood in the eighteenth century; childhood and adolescence are to be found in the nineteenth century which, for her, is still not terminated.

** Jacques Maritain almost created a riot at the “Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion” in autumn 1940 when he read a paper which pleaded for a hierarchy of knowledge placing theology at the top and the sciences at the bottom, thus leaving to philosophy an intermediary position. (An even greater furor was created by a paper read by Professor Mortimer Adler who charged the materialist professors with being greater enemies of civilization than Hitler.)

* A State University had a football coach who “quite naturally” had a salary far superior to that of an ordinary professor. This coach wanted a higher salary. He was told that the budget would not permit it. He handed in his resignation and the students demonstrated. The board of trustees convened and found that the budget really did not permit such an increase in salary. But they found a solution in firing the president and appointing the football coach in his place and meeting his demands by adding up both salaries.

** The strongest condemnation of the American Universities can be found in Abraham Flexner’s Universities in America, England and Germany, New York, 1930.

***Workers Before and After Lenin, New York, 1940.