A Day At The Races

Some 200 intellectuals gathered in New York last November to worry the problem: Why is Anti-Americanism so prevalent in Europe?

Some 200 intellectuals gathered in New York last November to worry the problem: Why is Anti-Americanism so prevalent in Europe? Meeting in the Starlight Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, they discussed this question in an atmosphere of gleaming microphones, tape-recorders, mink coats and plaster statuary. The very setting revealed more about “the problem” posed by the sponsoring American Committee for Cultural Freedom than anything that was or could have been said; but of this almost everyone, except, no doubt, the Europeans, was unaware.

Between the Europeans and Americans one sensed a subtle but undeniable breach which neither politeness nor diplomacy could effect. The Europeans talked about the problem, the Americans about themselves.

The Europeans—who included V. S. Pritchett, the literary critic, the Hon. Austen Albu, Labor MP, the Hon. William Deedes, Tory MP, Henri Peyre, Professor of French at Yale, and Arvid Brodersen, Professor of Sociology at the New School—focused, with whatever hesitation, on the stated problem. They mentioned such familiar yet indisputable and essential themes as: the coexistence of growing U. S. wealth and European impoverishment; the changing social and cultural relations between the continents, with Europe suffering the strain of moving into a clearly dependent status; America’s insistence on hand-outs and economic protectionism instead of trade; the trauma of a “liberation” brought about by mass destruction; the big-stick, talk-tough methods of the State Department; the invasion of mass culture which they identified, somewhat too easily, with the United States; the insistence of so many American leaders upon seeing the ideological struggle of our time as a problem in the mechanics of advertising. As Albu tartly remarked, too many Americans believe that “ideas can be sold like buttons and that selling ideas is the best business there is.”

Whatever their other differences of opinion, all the Europeans agreed on several basic points:

1) The terrible fear in Europe of atom and hydrogen bombs. Not only has Europe become dependent, as Deedes put it, on “a new driver in the front seat,” but it does not know where the driver is going; and it fears a collision that will destroy it while the driver enjoys the comparative security of his separate continent. A favorite slogan in Europe today, remarked Albu, is “No annihilation without representation.” He seemed appalled at the gay laughter, or perhaps embarrassed laughter, his remark evoked; but there was hardly a pressing sense, among either the American speakers or audience, that a vast accumulation of frustration and bitterness lies beneath this mot.

2) The feeling that the social problems of Europe are not even understood in the U. S. Henri Peyre expressed this idea best when he pointed out that the French Communist Party, while cynically...