A Letter to America
By Arthur Ransome
Letters.
Every day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word;
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear.
Emerson wrote the poem that I have stolen for headpiece to this letter, and Emerson wrote the best commentary on that poem:—
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
Revolution divides men by character far more sharply than they are divided by war. Those whom the Gods love take the youth of their hearts and throw themselves gladly on that side, even if, clearsighted, they perceive that the fires of revolution will burn up perhaps the very things that, for themselves, they hold most dear. Those others, wise, circumspect, foolish with the folly of wisdom, refrain and are burned up none the less. It is the same with nations, and I send this pamphlet to America, because America supported the French Revolution, when England condemned it, and because now also America seems to me to look towards Russia with better will to understand, with less suspicion, without the easy cynicism that prepares the disaster at which it is afterwards ready to smile. Not that I think all this is due to some special virtue in America. I have no doubt that it is due to geographical and economic conditions. America is further from this bloody cockpit of Europe, for one thing. For
9
