Wells contrasts so favourably with war,
was not only itself due to a war, but to a war which had one of the most
questionable and even perilous of the results of war. That result was a
change in the balance of power, the predominance of a particular
partner, the exaltation of a particular example, the eclipse of
excellent traditions when the defeated lost their international
influence. In short, it made exactly the same sort of difference of
which we speak when we say that 1870 was a disaster to Europe, or that
it was necessary to fight Prussia lest she should Prussianise the whole
world. America would have been very different if the leadership had
remained with Virginia. The world would have been very different if
America had been very different. It is quite reasonable to rejoice that
the issue went as it did; indeed, as I have explained elsewhere, for
other reasons I do on the whole rejoice in it. But it is certainly not
self-evident that it is a matter for rejoicing. One type of American
state conquered and subjugated another type of American state; and the
virtues and value of the latter were very largely lost to the world. So
if Mr. Wells insists on the parallel of a United States of Europe, he
must accept the parallel of a Civil War of Europe. He must suppose that
the peasant countries crush the industrial countries or vice versa; and
that one or other of them becomes the European tradition to the neglect
of the other. The situation which seems to satisfy him so completely in
America is, after all, the situation which would result in Europe if the
Germanic Empires, let us say, had entirely arrested the special
development of the Slavs; or if the influence of France had really
broken off short under a blow from Britain. The Old South had qualities
of humane civilisation which have not sufficiently survived; or at any
rate have not sufficiently spread. It is true that the decline of the
agricultural South has been considerably balanced by the growth of the
agricultural West. It is true, as I have occasion to emphasise in
another place, that the West does give the New America something that is
nearly a normal peasantry, as a pendant to the industrial towns. But
this is not an answer; it is rather an augmentation of the argument. In
so far as America is saved it is saved by being patchy; and would be
ruined if the Western patch had the same fate as the Southern patch.
When all is said, therefore, the advantages of Ameri