The U.S.A.— A European Appraisal

For its competition of 1782 The Academy of Lyon posed the question: “Has the discovery of America proved useful or harmful to the human race?”

For its competition of 1782 the Academy of Lyon posed the question: “Has the discovery of America proved useful or harmful to the human race?” I do not know how the contestants dealt with this subject, but I can relate a more recent, non-literary reply murmured from the gallery of the Marigny Theatre where the Jean Louis Barrault-Madeline Renaud Company is presenting Paul Claudel’s Christopher Columbus. The Opponent is mocking Christopher Columbus, of whom he says, “He didn’t know what he had discovered.” At this point a young man at my side, apparently a student, muttered rather audibly, “If he had known…” The audience broke into smiles.

This, of course, is a trifle. I do not mean to label it “anti-Americanism.” Not too long ago, when the Communist writer Claude Roy could declare, “Yes, I delight in the Americans, both for what they are and for what they promise to become,” the above retort would not have brought smiles. Today, however, no one would dream of admiring anything American. Jean Cocteau sets the tone for the esthetes in pleading with America not to deliver herself to “the fatal madness of radio and television.” American civilization is everywhere defined as the civilization of “TV,” of the “sensational,” of “comics” and “digests.”

The European bourgeoisie, to whom the intellectuals are attached in one way or another, lacks the confidence of the American middle class; it feels itself overwhelmed by its own doubts. Conformist in behalf of its interests and leisure, it approves the iconoclastic assault upon America led by certain of its representatives. The formation of Europe accustomed it to diversity, and it cannot therefore long abide with the view that even if one camp embodies all the “evil” the other embodies all the “good.” It would very much like at one and the same time to be protected from Stalinist totalitarianism and to preserve its right to remain a spectator, passing judgment as though its own interests were not in question.

Years have been spent in denouncing Communist crimes, waxing indignant over the wrongs toward others for which Communist regimes were responsible. Then one day we realized that the sole use which the bourgeois intellectuals had made of that freedom of speech and thought which they placed at the center of their resistance to Communism, was to defend the ideas of their leaders. Reduced to mere anti-Communism, the formally free expression of their thought no Ionger bore that mark of freedom which is non-conformity.

Anti-Communism does not offer great possibilities for regeneration. It grows tiresome. The cry of “wolf” is soon unheeded. The Korean War, which so exercised the fears of Americans, has in a certain sense reassured the Europeans: the Cossacks stayed at home. Fear of Communism has bec...