Text Version


 
 
 
         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
 
 
 
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