Address delivered by Ambassador William E. Dodd at American Club Dinner, Hotel Espla- nade, Berlin, October 5, 1933. -------- THE DILEMMA IN THE UNITED STATES There has hardly been a parallel in modern history to the dilemma which all industrial nations are now seeking to remedy, and this fact, as well as the absorbing interest of us all may justify a brief diagnosis this evening. The United States had some advantages which other peoples have not; it labors under some difficulties which hardly exist elsewhere. I. There is no thousand-year feud between the United States and any powerful rival; and there are vast stretches of cheap lands for the unemployed who have the energy to go to them. And for more than a hundred years our popula- tion has been more mobile than that of any other country. Yet it may be doubted whether economic recovery there will be easier than in Germany, for the circumstances are pecu- liar. To understand these, I venture a brief survey of European-American relations: The real significance of the discovery of America for Europe was free access to vast, new areas and the exploitation of enormous mineral deposits. In all the war-produced crises of the past, the more ambi- tious of the starving Europeans migrated at great risk in hundred-ton boats to the new land. The breakdown of agrating feudalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries re- leased even greater numbers of "underdogs" for American development. The North American part of the new world thus became |