European Recovery: the Longer View

Extract

There was a time, not many years in the past, when it was taken for granted that Americans had little interest in problems much beyond their borders. No one seriously argues this to be so today. But while we have mastered our disinclination to think of problems that are distant in space we have still a strong aversion to problems that are distant in time. So far as it is ever permissible to generalize on questions of national temper — and it is not an exercise to my taste — we are still a rather short-sighted people. The Congress of the United States, which in this as in other respects is an only slightly distorted mirror of national character, can and does rise to emergencies. It has rarely shown capacity to foresee and to forestall crises. I should guess that it has not done so because the American people are not inclined to foresee and to forestall trouble.