LETTER IV
THE DIET OF GOLD
March 10, 1917.
THE very influences that now tend to disrupt this country will later draw it together. The many will find their meeting-point in the One. That idea of national unity must be fostered, even to the extent of patient tolerance of racial temperaments. Those who are in the process of being separated from their old race and amalgamated with the new race, feel the strain of the change. It irritates them and their blood protests, even when their wills bid them forge new bonds for themselves. Few “hyphenated Americans” would be willing to go bodily back to their old allegiance.
America is the most interesting of all countries, and we who see it from this side of the airy frontier see it in historical perspective. The view that is nearest to our point of view is that of your present Chief Executive. His eyes are far-seeing. He anticipates the clearer sight that will one day be his, when he has finished his work.
Our country is suffering at this moment, in March, of the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen, from an indigestion of gold. You have swallowed more gold than you can assimilate, and your organs are congested. If to restore the equilibrium, some of this gold should be regurgitated, by war or by other means, do not in the weariness that follows fancy that the nation is going to die.
Do not be shocked by my figures of speech. I want to get into your consciousness an understanding of facts and conditions as they exist.
You cannot feed on gold. “Gold is a medium of exchange.” When it is merely hoarded it has lost its relation to life. A miser nation is a sadder subject for contemplation than a miser man, with his long claws and his gloating eyes. He may think, the miser man, to secure himself from the dangers of the future by amassing gold for its own sake. A miser nation may think that by amassing gold for its own sake it can save itself from the financial dangers threatening the world after these years of war.
But the miser, known as such, is in danger of being robbed and murdered. And the miser nation is in danger of being attacked and looted by other nations.
You Americans want to be generous to the homeless and foodless people of Europe; but your generosity has not yet deprived of one square meal the hundred-million-headed being that is America.
I do not care so much what you do with your gold. But I care much what you do with your food. You are not alchemists that you can make gold potable. You are humans with delicate stomachs. Even a hen will not lay eggs for you unless she is well fed. If she protests, you can punish her by eating her; but the luckiest break of her wish-bone will not produce for you another hen. Better conserve her labor power by gifts of grain, and have your eggs for breakfast and for hatching. She has periods of laziness when she wants to sit still; but put a few of her own eggs under her, and watch for results. Later I shall tell you of other but no less practical ways of ensuring a supply of breakfasts.