Modernism and the Rejection of the League of Nations

Kendall Fitzgerald
CompLit 60AC
Professor Masiello
After the conclusion of the Paris Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson returned home to raise support for his prized accomplishment of the Conference: The League of Nations, an ideal international council and court of justice to keep a stable peace in the aftermath of the worst man made destruction the world had witnessed in centuries. He spoke passionately all across the country, generating support for the new forum. For Wilson, the League represented collaboration, inclusiveness, negotiation and stability, but others, specifically Wilson’s political rival Henry Cabot Lodge, saw it as weakness. In March, 1920, the Senate voted 49-35 against joining the League. This rejection brought forth feelings of individualism, isolationism, and superiority with its detachment from such an organized forum, and these sentiments would be addressed and countered by American Modernism for years.

In this rejection, yet another rebirth and rejuvenation was cut down before its development. This seemed to be a theme as the war disastrously ended the lives of so many young men, as best described in Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” (posted by Hannah Li). The seemingly new and endless cycle of ruin was quickly incorporated into modernism literature. The 42nd Parallel, written in 1930 by John Dos Passos, conveys this post war feeling of discombobulation with “Newsreels” made up of songs, headlines, and snippets from many different events that come up quickly and disappear seemingly just as fast, as seen in the appearance, rise, and sudden fall of Luther Burbank the Darwinist farmer. There is no attachment to be found in these works of literature; the focus is on individualism, and, especially in 42nd Parallel, nativism. This shares the focus of the Senate in 1920. Wilson believed there was stability in the future with the League, but the Senate determined that such a council would infringe on the US’s ability to make its own unique decisions. It’s rejection would send ripples of independence, yes, but also instability and flux as the League was far less powerful without American support and peace was left hanging in the balance.

Both the nation and the League was kept unstable by the decision of the Senate.

One of the reasons the Republicans of the Senate denied the League was because they believed in the policy of isolationism; however, Americans would never be free from outside pressure. In The 42nd Parallel Dos Passos brings to light that although the U.S. stayed out of the League of Nations, pressures from both internal and international conflicts weighed heavily on American culture. In the first story of the novel, Mac is pressured by those around him in America, as exemplified in one of his only spoken thoughts which came straight from his uncle “I guess I’ve sold out to the sonsobitches allright, allright” (91).  However, he is also heavily influenced by both the Russian communist movement and the Mexican Revolution. Mac and his friends are inspired by Marx. As Ike tells it, he met a Russian man who “said the social revolution would start in Russia an’ spread all over the world”, Ike said the revolution “Oughter start right here in America” (49). The way these characters think, and the social climates in connection with this thought, is heavily influenced by world events. Additionally Mac later chooses supporting the Mexican Revolution over supporting his family. Dos Passos uses these two international influences to display that isolationism may have been instituted in politics but never in American culture.

The Senate viewed the League as a dangerous weakness  

Another reason for the push back against the League was the idea that if the US joined, it would be tied down as the world police. Though America swooped in and helped win the war for The Allies, this bold stroke by American policy makers claimed essentially that America is not a hero for the world but a hero to its own people. This sentiment also seemed to ripple through the country, as Americans took more interest in themselves and writers in the modernist movement excluded heroism from their characters. Writers like Dos Passos, as well as William Faulkner in The Sound and the Fury, focus instead on the frank inequalities, ills, and secrets of American society. The modernist movement seemed to scream that no, America is no hero, and neither are all Americans. This is where the true sentiment of the cycle of ruin comes forth, but also the focus on the strength in the collective voice of Americans.

Though modernist works expose that America was not isolated, nor heroic, and unstable due to its independence, the concurrent rise of nationalism and socialism allowed the writers of the period, like Dos Passos, focus on how Americans were still fighting for the collective ideas behind the League; whether supporting capitalism or anarchy, voices were banding together in the flux.  

Points for Thought:

1. How do you think the two debates over more international involvement v. less international involvement affected the American public and artists? Do you think the policy of isolationism affected the artists?
2. Do you think Wilson was rejected as an idealist? How would the modernist artists of the time have viewed him? Would you say his ideas revolutionary or conventional?

Works Cited:

Churchwell, Sarah. “Rereading the Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner”. The Guardian. 20 Jul. 2012.

Farley, Audrey. “Elements of Modernism in American Literature”. Synonym. Demand Media.

“The League of Nations, 1920”. Office of the Historian. US Department of State.

Turner, Laura Leddy. “The Postwar American Attitudes of the 1920s”. Synonym. Demand Media.

Photos:

http://ieg-ego.eu/en/mediainfo/the-gap-in-the-bridge-1919

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/27529/