MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF THE WORK AND THOUGHT
OF ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE
by Teodoro Tagliaferri (University of Naples Federico II)
No. 13 (January 9th, 2023)
WRITINGS ON THE EMPIRES IN WORLD HISTORY, X
Arnold Joseph Toynbee, The Misjudgment of America, in «Maclean’s Magazine», LXXIII, 23
(November 5th, 1960), pp. 25, 64-66.
“Any Westerner who thinks at all about world affairs must be conscious today of what the
West owes to America in our time. Suppose that America had not become a belligerent in
each of the two world wars. If she had not, the whole of the Old World, and perhaps even
the American hemisphere too, might be under Germany’s heel today – and this would have
been a calamity for the Germans as well as the rest of us. Again, if America had withdrawn
into isolation again after World War II, Russia, by this time, would probably have won the
world empire that was not won by Germany because America twice came into the field
against her. So the Western peoples owe it to America that they have not, so far, lost their
political independence.”
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