VIEWSnTHE PRESENT AGE AND THE STATEnOF COMMUNITY by Robert NisbetnThe Present Age begins with the First World War, thenGreat War as it is deservedly still known. No war evernbegan more jubilantly, among all classes and generations,nthe last including the young generation that had to fight it. Itnis said that when Viscount Grey, British Foreign Minister,nuttered his epitaph of the war on the evening of August 3,n1914—“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shallnnot see them lit again in our lifetime” — he could scarcelynbe heard by those sitting in his office because of the loudncheers on the street outside the building. From the beginningnit was a cheering and also singing war; only after a yearnof devastating trench warfare did the cheers begin tonsubside.nIn Europe the war ended, in November 1918, in sombernhue. Twelve million European soldiers had been killed, 25nmillion wounded, and vast areas, along with their churches,nhalls, and houses, devastated. Every conceivable horror ofnwar was perpetrated by both sides. “When it was all over,”nwrote Ghurchill just after the war, “Torture and Cannibalismnwere the only two expedients that the civilized, scientificnChristian States had been able to deny themselves, andnthey were of doubtful utility.”nAn unknown German named Oswald Spengler hadnspent the war in his hometown writing The Decline of thenWest. Freshly published copies festooned bookstore windowsnfor the edification of the defeated German soldiersnstraggling home. It was by no means the only grim epitaphnof the Great War. Such works as The Magic Mountain,nDeath in Venice, Desert of Love, Under Fire, The WastenLand, Goodbye to All That, and Brave New World attestednto the impact of what had been fundamentally a civil war,none strongly tinctured by religious moralism that made it anwar of total Good against total Evil for the duration. Possiblynno war in history has ever had more striking consequences:nthe Seventy-Four Years War, perhaps yet to be the West’snsecond Hundred Years War; the novel and persistentnThis is a slightly adapted version of the Jefferson Lecturenfor 1988, which was delivered under the auspices of thenNational Endowment for the Humanities in Washington,nDC, on the evening of May 13th. Parts will appear innThe Present Age (Harper & Row, 1 ^ntotalitarian state; permanent, state-managed terror againstnthe innocent; and the Third World, that part of it, at least,ncomposed of the disjecta membra of the old Europeannempires.nWhen we turn to America, as I now do for the rest of thenlecture, the scene changes vastly. No nation ever had anbetter war than America did with the Great War. We werencombatant for a little over a year. Not a shell or bomb fell onnAmerican soil. We prospered economically, our losses innbattle were small. But that notwithstanding the Americannexperience was at once shocking and joyful. For about twonyears it was as though some powerful demigod had amusednhimself turning America upside down in its government.nPrior to 1917 we were the most decentralized, dispersed,nregionalized, and localized government to be found amongnthe great nations of Western society. What with thosenfeatures of our government plus the rigorous separation ofnpowers in the Constitution and the vast number of rightsnand powers left to the component states, it is no wonder thatnEuropean scholars and statesmen — Lord Bryce, who lovednAmerica, among them — denied that the United States hadna true sovereign or, as Bryce put it, “a Theory of the State.”nWithin weeks of declaration of war on Germany in eariynApril 1917, all this was being changed, transformed. OvernightnAmerica became a highly centralized, collectivizednwar state, virtually a total state. In an extraordinary series ofnacts. Congress turned the government, and also economynand social order of the United States, over to PresidentnWilson and his war government. The railroads, telegraph,nmines, munition factories, shipping lines were all immediatelynnationalized. A War Industries Board was given totalnpower over the production areas of the economy. A WarnLabor Policies Board was established, a Food Administration.nThat was only the beginning. Believing that the heartsnand minds of the people were vital to his great war design,nWilson, working through his personally chosen aide,nGeorge Creel, set up a national corps of Four-Minute Men,n75,000 strong before the war ended. Each was empowerednto enter any public meeting, including church services,nwithout invitation, and to speak for about four minutes onnthe purposes of the American war against the German.nnnJUNE 1988/ 11n