Ex Ltbris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS BY FREDERICK C. DE SUMICHRAST LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. 3 HENBIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1914, BT D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America INTRODUCTORY If any apology be required for the appearance of yet another book on the United States, which the writer does not admit, it can readily be found in the fact that a country, and the people inhabiting that country, present ever varying points of view to the student ; that what strikes one observer as the most significant characteristic, appears to another of slight importance. And impressions and observations differ likewise according to the temperament, the education and the opportunities enjoyed by those on whom or by whom they are made. The traveler, especially the man or woman of high social standing who comes to the United States furnished with letters of introduc- tion into the best society, and who hurries from city to city, from East to West, from South to North, carries away images and recollections, and receives and gives a very different notion of the country and the people from that which will be conveyed by one who has long lived in the land, who has mingled familiarly and intimately with the people, who has seen them not in functions and hospitable entertain- ments only, but has shared their life in every detail. Both these views of the country are useful and both may aid in forming a just conception of what vii INTRODUCTORY the United States and its inhabitants really are. The impressions of the swiftly hurrying traveler not unfairly represent the way in which the outward differences in manners and customs strike the ob- server who has been brought up in another and older civilization. Even when these impressions are un- favorable and it cannot be denied that at times this is the case they at least show the inhabitant of the country the points that prove offensive or displeas- ing to the stranger ; when they are. and that is more frequent, pleasant as well as vivid they equally indi- cate what, in the national character or in the habits of the people, appears engaging to the outsider. On the other hand, they are impressions only, and do not, or ought not to, pretend to be more, for while it will be granted that a trained observer will rapidly and accurately note the most important points, yet trained observers are not numerous. The dweller in the land loses, unquestionably, the sense of vivid contrast which imparts charm to the work of the impressionist writer. The strangeness of many things has become dulled by habit, and he views them in a totally different light. He has passed the stage of outward observation only and has reached that of inward questioning. He has learned that many things which, on the surface, are utterly unlike, are in reality not far apart; he has recognized that others whose purely external simi- larity has caused them to pass unnoticed, are in their very essence antagonistic. He seeks rather to ascertain the causes at work in the evolution of a society which presents evident differences and occult viii INTRODUCTORY ones ; to discover the laws which govern the develop- ment of beliefs generally held, the purport of certain tendencies. This makes his work different in every particular : it is no longer a series of impressions, brilliant, vivid, but impressions merely ; it becomes an attempt to study an interesting race, a country which al- ternately excites enthusiasm and provokes exaspera- tion; which offers unequaled opportunities for per- sonal action and success, and which at the same time not infrequently discourages by its very fierceness of effort; which proclaims the existence of liberty on every occasion and sets up simultaneously some of the most tyrannical forms of repression and in- justice; a country where speech is of the freest and the wildest ambition may be gratified, yet where men are often afraid to speak their minds and might is frequently right ; where democracy triumphs in out- ward seeming, and autocracy oft rules more truly than in more than one of the Old World empires; where politics is the pursuit of the many and true public spirit the appanage of the relatively few; where gold is the one god of many; where poverty stalks rampant by the side of extreme luxury, and where noblest ideals are the sure stay of countless thousands, and generosity intelligent as well as lav- ish a country, in short, of contrasts the most striking, the most interesting, and where may be studied the steady growth of all that makes for the best and the highest in public and in private life, albeit veiled to the ordinary spectator by the multi- tudinous details of every-day life, the fuss and ex- ix INTRODUCTORY citement of a part of the daily press and the brazen manifestation of evil and corruption and repudiation of duty and responsibility. Another motive had its share in the writing of this book; the present year, 1914, completes the Century of Peace between the United States and Great Britain. On December 24, 1814, was signed the Treaty of Ghent, which put an end to the War of 1812. Since that time, though war has been more than once imminent, hostilities between the two great countries have never broken out. This is not because differences did not arise, be- cause no jealousies smouldered, to blaze up sud- denly. On the contrary, disputes were not infre- quent and at times very bitter. Yet peace was preserved. And if, even now, antagonism to and suspicion of Great Britain are exhibited in certain circles, the manifestation is sporadic, the feeling in- herited and traditional rather than inspired by knowledge and cause. Nor does the antipathy, under present conditions, become very active. It is conceivable that, as at the time of the Venezuela episode, a wave of anti- British feeling may cause an outburst of angry threatenings and very abusive language, but the sane part of the nation and it is by far the largest speedily recovers its self-mastery, and it becomes plain that the solid sense the horse sense, as Amer- icans call it of the people as a whole is averse from conflict with Great Britain, or, for the matter of that, with any other power. This does not mean that Americans believe in that INTRODUCTORY false peace called peace at any price, or that they are less jealous of the honor of their flag and the rights of their citizens. The power that should be foolish enough to assume that and to act provo- catively upon that mistaken belief, would forthwith be startled by the stern and uncompromising man- ner in which Americans would vindicate themselves. But their large common-sense does not believe in needless war, nor does it believe that war can always be avoided, and if it should at any time become plain that war is the only issue out of a difficulty, it would be accepted without hesitation and waged without faltering. The United States does not hanker after naval or military glory. Its people have not the enthusiasm which the French had for military supremacy and which we still have for naval achievements. The soul of the American nation is set neither on the making of many dollars exclusively nor on militarism, but on honorable peace, on the development of civilization, on the purifying of national life, on the education of its multitudinous foreign components in the ways of righteousness and good government. It is con- struction, not destruction, that appeals to the American. And the same is true of the great mass of the British nation throughout the Empire. There is no desire for conflict unless inevitable, no hankering after victories in the field or conquest of further lands. The very idea of Empire, so often and wil- fully misrepresented, is an idea of peace and civili- zation; of the establishment of law and order; of xi INTRODUCTORY the training of races for self-government; of benefit to humanity at large and not of advantage to the British race in particular. Superadded to this, in the case of the United States, is the deep feeling that that great and wonderful country was in the main settled and first developed by Britons; that notwith- standing the enormous immigration into it of men from all parts of the world, the root stock of the powerful and intelligent nation is still Anglo-Saxon ; that the same glorious traditions are shared by them, the same noble literature common to both, the same speech spoken. And the admiration felt for the marvelous progress made by the people of the United States, for their resolute grappling with problems complex and at times dangerous, their de- termination to vindicate the superiority of popular constitutional government, strengthens the tie be- tween the two countries from the British side at least, and certainly in a large measure from the American also. Herein, doubtless, lies the essential reason of the maintenance of peace during the past hundred years, although within that period the United States has fought one of the most tremendous wars of modern times, and Great Britain has had on her hands more than one conflict. Both Americans and Britons have recognized the superiority of peaceful intercourse to the habit of provocation and fighting ; both, as democracies, have gained freedom from the personal ambitions which, in Europe, have too often animated sovereigns ruling autocratically; for there is a vast difference between declaring war without xii INTRODUCTORY consulting the people who are to furnish the food for powder, and declaring it with the consent of the same people. Further, both nations have similar great ideals doubtless not clearly perceived, or not perceived at all, by the bulk of the people which none the less sway both nations and have determined their wise resolution to avoid causes of quarrel, and if, and when, these nevertheless arise, to remove them by peaceful and common-sense methods. It is, in short, the high idealism, the sane outlook on their relations with each other, their mutual recognition of the fact that the duty of such mighty powers as they are is not to destroy, not to retard civilization, harmony and peace, but to establish and foster them. Finally the consideration that a sympathetic study of the working of democracy the fruit of years of life among Americans of all sorts and con- ditions could but advantage those among us Britons who are concerned to educate our own democracy and to direct it along the right and safe path, or rather to enable it to direct itself wisely and for the greater good of humanity at large. In the past, and perhaps even in the present, to a limited extent, Britons have occasionally laid them- selves open to the charge of viewing certain aspects of political, commercial, industrial or social life in America with a tinge, if not of contempt, at least of superiority on our part. Such things, we are convinced, could not occur within the compass of our own Blessed Isles. The smug satisfaction this evidences has of late received rude shocks: high xiii INTRODUCTORY political standards have been greatly lowered; dem- agogism has reigned almost uncontrolled and the voice of the class-divider has rung throughout the land as brazenly as ever it has sounded in the United States; the personal honesty of men in places of great trust and of vast political power has been properly called in question; "whitewash" has been applied as freely as ever it has been in America by any Investigation Committee of the Senate or the House of Representatives, and with as little success in the end with the public at large and without restoring the respect forfeited by the subjects of the process. The observance of law and the due maintenance of order, on which we have prided our- selves while we scornfully pointed to the disregard of them in the Great Republic, is no longer a theme on which we can dwell with prideful gratulation. But no more than we despair of the Old Land and the people within it, no more than we admit that the evils which have grown up among us are irremedi- able, is the American democracy to be despaired of or the people assumed to be incapable of cutting out the rotten parts and conserving the whole. The democratic form of government, of the constitution of society, is unquestionably responsible in part for these evils and ugly manifestations, but not because these are inherent in democracy but simply because democracy, giving larger freedom to man and allow- ing a wider scope for his activities, has not yet fully grasped the fact that a sound and thorough civic education is an absolute necessity. The more edu- cation is developed, the more the duty of the citizen xiv INTRODUCTORY to the State is well taught, and made part and par- cel of the mind of the dweller in democratic lands, the greater will be the progress and the fewer the evils. And that is what Americans do understand; that is the end to which they are tending, nor slowly. F. C. DE S. MOUNT EATON MANOR, EALING, ENGLAND. CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY ....... vii CHAPTEB I. THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE . .1 II. SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES ... 12 III. INDIVIDUALISM ..... 28 IV. MANNERS ...... 41 V. PATRIOTISM . ..... 66 VI. NATURALIZATION ..... 80 VII. DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM . . 90 VIII. GOVERNMENT ..... 106 IX. LAW ....... 129 X. MARRIAGE . ..... 151 XI. WOMAN ...... 174 XII. THE GOLDEN CALF . . . .196 XIII. ART . . . . . . .219 XIV. EDUCATION ...... 240 XV. THE PRESS ...... 261 XVI. FOREIGN RELATIONS .... 277 XVII. ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS . . 808 XVIII. THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY . . . 828 XIX. CONCLUSION ..... 846 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE To the greater number of visitors to the United States of visitors, that is, whose means enable them to travel in comfort and whose object is not to settle in the country the striking feature, the one that at once forces itself upon them, is the astonishing material prosperity of the land. Along with this, there is the sense of unfinishedness, of crudeness, rawness which likewise is pressed upon the attention, even when traversing those parts of the country which have been longest settled and which are closest to the Old World. The first is a point to which their attention will be immediately drawn by whomsoever of the in- habitants they may meet. The towering sky- scrapers, the vast factories, the luxurious hotels, the costly public buildings, the "stores," filled with richest fabrics, the theaters and other places of amusement, the newspaper offices, the insurance buildings, rivaling each other in splendor, the great museums, the frequent public libraries ; these are the things which the passing observer, the vagrant tour- ist notes and is made to note. 1 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS There is little of art, less of history, although there is plenty of history to be learned and enjoyed in every part of the United States ; a history at once picturesque and instructive, with a fascination equaling that which the annals of the Old World exercise. Little of art, not that the average American will grant this, true as it is ; but the average American has not the real esthetic feeling and does not appre- ciate what art is in its essence, consequently he is more than satisfied, he is proud, of the specimens of sculpture, of architecture, of painting which he exhibits complacently to the foreign visitor as evi- dence of the superiority in this, as in every other respect, of his nation to the effete populations of Europe. But the signs of material prosperity are, after all, those of which he may be proudest, for they present an aspect of American life which is full of signifi- cance. They constitute the outward and visible symbol of the marvelous development of the land and its resources, and of the intense energy of its peo- ple. Yet it is, after all, of a far more interesting, far more significant, vital force unceasingly at work in the country and among the people. The United States America, as it is commonly called is a democratic country, and it is in the study of the working and consequences of the demo- cratic principle that the chief peculiarities of the in- habitants, native and foreign-born, can best be understood. There are lessons to be drawn from the democratic feelings and habits of the people I THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE which escape the casual visitor, apt to observe merely certain external results, without perceiving or seeking, in the great majority of cases, to search out and grasp the causes which have brought about these results, themselves indications of deeper effects which affect the whole mental attitude of the race. Every European notices, for instance, the re- grettable lack of manners. He is fairly certain to be exasperated by the rudeness of the majority of people with whom he comes in contact; to be mad- dened by the total absence of politeness on the part of persons whose position would, in a European country, insure civility if not cordiality. He can- not stomach the indifference to rank, such as it is, and especially to rank as he is accustomed to re- gard it, that is, as entitling the holder to a certain amount of deference, to a stated degree of regard. The off-handedness of the servant, the rudeness and shortness of the shop-girl, the boorishness of the casual employee, the unconcern of the official, the familiarity of the colored porter on the railways all these things strike him as an offense against the very foundations of social life. Unquestionably rudeness and lack of civility are much in evidence in the ordinary intercourse of life in the United States; respect and attention are not frequently to be met with, and roughness and in- difference are characteristic of many of the people with whom one comes into touch. It is not pleasant to note the nai've selfishness which prevails as the rule of conduct of so many in the community; it is painful to mark the disregard of those simple AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS amenities which tend to soften the daily round of duty, but these conditions are merely the conse- quences of the failure of democracy in certain di- rections which manifest themselves more than any- where else in the United States, though not unknown in parts of the Old World. Further, this failure is mainly in unimportant, or comparatively un- important matters, while the success of democracy is very evident in deeper and more vital ones. Unhappily the European does not usually en- deavor to discover the reason of this condition, and is satisfied with condemning the people and their democracy in the lump, instead of seeking the cause and thereby being enlightened and interested. For there is a cause, a reason, for every manifestation, and simply to be disgusted and to give up is a poor way of attaining knowledge. It is not neces- sary to look far for the origin of the mannerlessness of the bulk of the population, and the process is entertaining in itself. And once the cause has been discovered, the European, if a person of sense, will readily forgive for the sake of the information he has acquired. But it must be added that it is not easy for the passing traveler to carry out such an investigation, and that even if he attempts it, the knowledge he gains may fail to reconcile him to habits so different from those he is accustomed to. Life in the country for a period of time, the longer the better, is requi- site to understand any people. Impressions have their value, and from the comparison of the impres- sions of numbers of intelligent travelers, even 4 THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE though they be purely superficial, the native will obtain a distinct notion of the way in which he appears to the outsider who has watched him for a brief period in his own surroundings. And these impressions should not, as is generally the case, be dismissed with contempt as unworthy of attention, because, as is alleged, they represent imperfect views and crude conceptions. They are no more than impressions, it is true, but impressions count for much in daily life. Doubtless they do not rep- resent the people as they really are, but they do represent them as the people show themselves to the passing observer. After making all due allowance for national and temperamental prejudices and pre- possessions, these impressions do convey a partially correct view of a people's character and certainly of a people's ways. Now the impression of incivility which is about the very first one receives in the United States, far from disappearing after a time, is, on the contrary, intensified, and when one has penetrated the secret cause of this attribute of the American character, regret is felt that democracy should thus act upon the intelligence and lead to a disagreeable view of itself at the very outset. What this cause is and how it affects nearly all classes shall be seen later. As for the material prosperity, it is impossible to avoid noticing it, even if the inhabitants could con- sent to avoid drawing attention to it. It stares one in the face everywhere, it is insistent, omni- present. Business is not done quietly or unobtru- sively, but with a determination that all men shall 5 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS know that business on a vast scale is being carried on under their very eyes. So the office buildings soar into the air; the loftier they are the happier the occupants. Loftiness involves huge cost, and huge cost must spell unexampled prosperity. The American is singularly concerned to have the tan- gible and visible proofs of his success continually before his eyes ; the mere possession of success does not suffice ; the manifestation of it, the loud, at times blatant, manifestation must translate the fact for the benefit of his compatriots, the confounding of the foreigner and the due exaltation of himself. A man who is simply and modestly rich has not fulfilled his duty to the world of which he forms a part; his wealth must be spread out, as it were, for all to be- hold. Whatever shape it may assume, it must be exhibited and attention must be drawn to it, the eyes of the great world turned upon it. That this is really quite unnecessary, that the signs of wealth are naturally abundant enough and eloquent does not strike the dweller in the Land of Millions. Yet no intelligent person can traverse any large part of the land without perceiving the wealth of it: hosts of factories, the fleets of vessels, the endless trains of cars, the armies of workmen, the far-stretching cities, the innumerable towns ; all these things speak most eloquently of the prosperity of the United States. But they are not enough for the average American, whose great standard of success at present is precisely Money, in some shape or other, but Money first and last. Thus the impression one receives, and which deep- 6 THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE ens the longer one lives in the country and enters into the life and beliefs of the inhabitants, is that of the extraordinary and disproportionate importance of Money. It has become the True God of millions of Americans : the deity they worship with a fervor and devotion the Christian may well envy. The God of Gold is in truth the Lord of the Land, and democratic as the people are, they are almost a unit in bowing the head and bending the knee before this potent sovereign. Almost, but not quite. For here manifests itself a trait of the American character which must not be lost sight of, which is singularly strong and con- stant, and which justifies the attraction and admira- tion which the nation compels from fair-minded ob- servers. That feature is the solid, deep common sense happily united with a high ideal. There is, among Americans, an unconscious tend- ing toward higher ideals, which is the fruit of teach- ing, of tradition, of the authority of great thinkers and writers, of a perception, vague it may be but none the less existent, that there is something higher than Money in the world, something nobler than mere material success. All Americans do not exhibit this trait, but it is so general that it influences the masses even while they are unaware of it. It is not readily perceived by the casual observer; it becomes very plain to the dweller in the land, provided he is not blinded by prejudice or warped by prepossession. It acts in a subtle but very efficient way; it tinges the thoughts of many a writer in the daily press ; makes 7 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS itself felt in the speeches of more than one public man ; it is active in the teaching of the great uni- versities, themselves so powerful an influence in the molding of character and consequently of public opinion later, when their graduates go forth into the world to take their share in the government. It is particularly vigorous among that part of the population which is not herded in the great cities, where the incessant rush and bustle diminish the opportunities for quiet thought and sane reflection. And it affects the nation, the race, whenever a crisis occurs, whether it be political, social or in- dustrial. It is at the very times when it would ap- pear that the democracy would get out of hand most surely and hopelessly that it suddenly proves itself amenable to wise counsel and prudent direction. Time and again such crises have arisen; time and again they have been peacefully and sensibly solved, thanks to the common sense of the great bulk of the people, to the occult working of the great ideals which are after all what the people of the United States most cherish. Undoubtedly they worship money ; unquestionably material success has for them charms which too often blind them to the methods which have been pursued in securing it, but when the test comes, when the moment for choosing be- tween the merely material and the truly ideal ar- rives, the democracy of the country may be relied on to choose rightly. Then neither enormous for- tunes nor skill in intrigue avail: the true public opinion once roused becomes irresistible. To any- one acquainted with the political and industrial his- 8 THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE tory of the United States within the last twenty years, more than one instance, more than one irre- fragable proof of this fact will readily recur. Nor is it difficult to account for this. Truly, money has ever and in all countries ob- tained recognition as a source of power, and riches have conferred upon their temporary holders both influence and prestige, though it is at least question- able whether it ever had the astounding hold upon minds and souls that it has in the United States at the present day. But it has not always been so: before the War of Secession other ideals held sway, and while fortunes were sought eagerly and passion- ately enough, while wealth exercised its well-nigh unfailing power, none the less it was not the domi- nating factor in public and private life which it became in the course of the marvelous development of the country once the war was over and the minds of men turned once more to the business of pro- ducing instead of destroying. Railways, gold and silver and copper mines, industries of every kind, oil springing from the bowels of the earth, the ex- ploitation of the vast forests ; these were so many sources of wealth, rapid and immense, which caused men to rise to affluence in the course of brief years, which gave impulse to manufacturing, to commerce, and opened up such vistas of swift-gotten wealth that all heads were turned and the millionaire be- came the hero of society. That position he cer- tainly holds more securely than ever before: for- tunes, the more colossal the better, are the one great ideal of the larger number of the people, but 9 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS these, happily, do not constitute the sole ideal. Great fortunes are not, indeed, at all the ideal of very many good men and women. This class, and it is extremely numerous in the United States, has high aims and noble purposes, a clear understanding of the morals of life and a resolute way of abiding by them which makes for all that is best in the life of a nation. The deceit- fulness of vast wealth, the error of believing that it is the one supreme aim to the attainment of which all else should be sacrificed, is a doctrine to which they do not subscribe, cannot subscribe, for it is essentially opposed to their convictions. They have hitched their wagon to a star, and move forward to the consummation of ideals far beyond those of the mere money-getters. This class is the very salva- tion of the morality of the country, for, while little heard of, unpretentious, quiet, it makes its influ- ence felt and compels acquiescence in its views. Yet another impression which residence in the land confirms, is that made by the singular mingling of races in the population of all the large cities in the country, but more especially, perhaps, in those upon the Atlantic coast. The types met with in the streets, the tongues heard, the names seen on the fronts of the business establishments, surprise the newcomer and strike the old stager by their remarkable contrasts. What has become of the American stock, so-called, soon constitutes a prob- lem. Doubtless that American stock still exists, but it is not over-much in evidence. It is the Ger- man, the Spaniard, the Italian, the Russian, the 10 THE OUTWARD AND VISIBLE Hun, the Slav, the Greek, the Armenian, the Syrian, the Chinese and above all the Hebrew who appear to dominate in point of numbers. But with the peculiarly foreign appearance of much of the popu- lation, with the unquestionably foreign origin of so many of the names blazoned along the f a9ades, one notes that the foreign flag is conspicuous by its absence. It is the Stars and Stripes which everywhere wave in the breeze. Nowhere is the Union Jack visible as Old Glory is in London. The American, one quickly perceives, is intolerant of any ensign but his own within his wide domains, and courtesy has not yet so far progressed as to permit of a display of national flags irrespective of political intention. SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES No one of the impressions noted in the preceding chapter is incorrect or faulty, and if all the impres- sions reported by visitors to the United States were as well founded as these, the value of the books pub- lished, on the country and the people, would be considerable indeed. The first three impressions are manifestations of causes which have been long at work molding American character and which are still working. They have acted and are acting not on the genuine American stock alone, the fineness of which grows more and more upon the observer the longer he is in contact with it, but also, and in a yet greater degree, upon the alien races which immigration has poured in countless hordes into the country. Upon the better element in these foreign importations the action of the democratic principle has been bene- ficial; upon the greater mass it has been unfavor- able, the reason being that the democratic principle requires, in order to be fruitful of the best results, infinitely more preparation of the individual and of the mass than is readily perceived. Thus it is that the native American stock best illustrates the 18 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES advantages of democracy, as, side by side with it, the multitude of aliens too frequently exhibits its worst faults. But what is the native American stock? Here, the expression includes the descendants of the British settlers who founded the great colonies and the descendants of those admirable Dutch families which created New Amsterdam. This stock, hap- pily far from being exhausted, forms to-day the backbone of the nation and exerts an influence far exceeding that which its comparatively small num- bers would seem to justify. It is this small body of men and women, yet imbued with the sound prin- ciples of the forefathers, which maintains the best traditions of political life and most wisely selects from among the multitude of new proposals for progress and development, those which most nearly fulfill the conditions which make for peace, order and real progress. This small body it is which in- spires and directs the tendency to reform, where reform is plainly required; a course regrettably hindered, on the other hand, by the operation of the masses of foreigners of a low social class and yet lower intelligence, who, soon obtaining the suffrage, form an army of corruptible and corrupted voters, the easy prey of demagogues and unscrupulous poli- ticians. And to the native American stock must be added the better elements of the foreign races, more particularly the British, the Germans, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and a not inconsiderable number of the Irish, the Northern immigrants, as a rule, being of better quality than those of the Latin races 13 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS or of the populations of Central and Eastern Europe. All dwellers in the United States, whether descendants of the original settlers, newly ar- rived immigrants, or sons of foreign parents since naturalized, all equally hold certain beliefs and are swayed by certain convictions, the outcome of which is the formation of a type of character which may be termed American and which exhibits the peculiarities already dwelt upon. These beliefs and convictions are rarely the result of knowledge, so far as the bulk of the popu- lation is concerned, still more rarely of study and reflection; they are traditional now, handed down from one generation to another, passed on from one batch of immigrants to the next, but always ac- cepted with simple faith and artless credulity. This in nowise diminishes their power over the masses ; on the contrary, there is no faith so firm and un- shakable as that which cannot give a reason for its existence but simply w. In this respect the Americans are not unlike Europeans, for a moment's reflection will recall that Europeans likewise cherish certain beliefs which many of them would find it hard to explain or justify. And it is in the conflict between these dif- ferent convictions that the peculiarities of each race or set of races become conspicuous. The European believes in the distinction between classes and translates his belief into practice. Theoretically he may consent to the dictum that all men are born free ; scarcely will he accept that other 14 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES part of it which declares that they are all born equal. Equality in the abstract he may grant; so long as it remains an abstraction and does not in- trude upon the organization of society, he tolerates the notion of equality, but no farther. In practice, the European is the opponent of social equality, and undoubtedly he is largely justified in his position. He clings determinedly to the division of mankind into classes, orders, sets. The patrician, the sol- dier, the naval man, the merchant, the tradesman, the literary man, the artisan, the farmer, the la- borer, the miner, the navvy are, he will concede, members of the great human family: in one sense, carefully restricted, they are all equal, but in fact they are widely apart. The class above is certain of its superiority to every class below itself, and every individual in the upper class takes care that in some way his superiority shall be felt and acknowledged. The American has the rudiments of class distinc- tion, but he strives unceasingly against the estab- lishment of the principle and the practice, and the whole constitution of the society of which he forms a part, the whole manner of recruiting that society are against the naturalization of the European sys- tem. The latter is the outgrowth of centuries of slow changes in civilization, in the formation of the social body. It has not been transplanted to the American continent and if it were so transplanted would not find a favoring soil. The individual, not the class, is the cardinal point in the United States. The family, in Europe, is more important, even in this twentieth century, 15 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS than the individual. In the United States it is pre- cisely the reverse. In Europe, the individual must, and does, think of the collective interests of the family, and when necessary his own must yield to them; in the United States the interests of the in- dividual are apt to dominate. The child, in the Old World, is subordinate; in the New, it reigns. "The Philippines will never be fit for self-govern- ment," said one who had taught among them for some years, "until they have learnt that the child rules the home." This is a conception of family relations wholly foreign to the European character, but it is not a theory in the United States: it is a fact. The child does rule and the seniors give way to him. Thus one of the first consequences of the applica- tion of the democratic principle is the development of individualism, of a strong sense of the superior value of the individual, of a profound belief in the unlimited rights he enjoys by virtue of birth, and which, in the language of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, that earliest textbook of the American child, are "unalienable." But "birth," in the meaning attached to the word in Europe, is a thing unknown in the United States. That is, no special advantage is derivable from the fact of belonging to a certain family. The name of Washington or Lincoln, of Hamilton or Jeffer- son, is not in any way in itself an aid to a man or a woman engaged in carving out a position. There is a certain very restricted advantage, no doubt, to be derived from connection with an old family, 16 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES Puritan, Pilgrim, Cavalier, or Dutch, but the mere fact of that connection does not confer on the pos- sessor, save in a singularly narrow circle, any pres- tige or aid him to attain to any particular position. The family as such cannot and does not wield influ- ence. It may admit or reject a candidate for admis- sion to its own social circle, but beyond that it is practically powerless to affect the career of the individual. It is good to belong to an old family, unquestionably, and to do so is not a handicap, for mankind recognizes instinctively that a line of hon- orable men and women confers on the descendants a certain measure of respectability while involving at the same time a certain measure of responsibility. But the connection, while it may be of some slight service to the beginner in life, will not carry him through life if he prove useless or unworthy. A man must "make good," as the phrase is ; must give proof that he is in himself worth something, can make his own way, and does not depend on the for- tuitous accident of birth for the position he occu- pies or seeks. This, indeed, is an essential difference between the Old World and the New. All men are "born," in the United States, for all men are born equal. This is the cardinal principle which is instilled into the minds of all American children from the moment their intelligence is able to grasp it. "All men are born free and equal." The phrase is part and parcel of the intellectual and moral make-up of the American; it permeates his whole life; colors his every view of his relations toward his fellowmen; reacts upon his treatment 17 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of foreign nations. It is the shibboleth of the people, the one truth to which they hold fast, what- ever uncertainty they may feel concerning other matters. These two ideas of liberty and equality go far to explain the attitude of the Americans and their conduct in the daily intercourse of life. It is not that they all realize it or consciously act upon them, for the act is as a rule wholly unconscious and almost instinctive. They know themselves to be free men; they believe themselves freer than any other men on the face of the earth; they are well aware, individually, that they have no superiors : all are equal. This is utterly different from the state of mind of the European. The patrician there is assured of his superiority; respect is due him; he does not look for it, does not ask for it : it comes of itself. It is as much a part of the life of his in- feriors to respect him and to exhibit that respect as is breathing. The inferior does not dream of looking on the noble as his equal. He does not, generally speaking, conceive the idea that he may be just as good as the great man who wears a title. Such thoughts may enter the mind of a Radical, of a Socialist, of an Anarchist, but not the mind of a reasonable man "properly brought up." To that man the world is made up of classes and the aris- tocrat belongs to the highest, the most select, the most stand-off. The aristocrat may, without fear, show himself friendly to those socially beneath him: his condescension can never be mistaken for an ad- mission of equality; it remains condescension, 18 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES gracious, courteous, as becomes a' being who dwells in a higher sphere. Now this is utterly opposed to American ideas. Mere birth can never, in that country, confer such marked privileges or so completely differentiate a man or a woman from his or her fellow-Americans. Money will ; wealth does ; for Money is the supreme power in the land, and is worshiped accordingly. All the honor, all the respect, all the awe which are the portion of rank in the Old World are the por- tion of Money in the New, and, next to Money, personal power, personal ability, talent, genius. It is literally true, in the United States, that "the rank is but the guinea's stamp, the man's the man for a' that." Hence the vast difference in the conduct of life, the vanishing of those amenities which had their foundation in the realization of superiority on the one hand, of inferiority on the other. Hence the lack of manners, the unpleasant frequency of sheer rudeness. All the manifestations which constitute civility, politeness, are unconsciously usually, con- sciously not infrequently, looked upon as badges, expressions of a condition which does not exist and must not be permitted to exist in a democratic country. Comparatively few Americans have read Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but too many of them behave as if they had laid to heart the pre- cepts of the Genevese philosopher. The teachings of the Contrat social found fertile ground in Amer- ican minds and in the minds of the innumerable im- migrants, and they have resulted in a large crop of 19 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS self-satisfaction and also, it must be added, of self- deception. The American is continually taught, from the mo- ment when he is capable of understanding the mean- ing of words and ideas, that he is one of a race of free men. It would be more accurate to say of the only race of free men, and although, when he grows up and becomes capable of observing for himself which he does not always do he may con- clude that the freedom so loudly boasted of is in many respects entirely illusory and fictitious, he nevertheless clings to his fetish; he insists on mak- ing himself believe, in the face of abundant proof to the contrary, that equality is in very sooth the foundation of his form of government. He learns very early from those around him, from their atti- tude toward their fellows, to act independently of others, to think of himself first, last and all the time. He is Sovereign; others may be sovereigns also, and they claim to be, but their sovereignty lacks something of the completeness which marks his possession. The truest democrat is he who is most convinced of his innate, inborn, natural su- periority to everyone else. And this species flour- ishes in luxurious and most unpleasant abundance in the United States. This mode of thought, translated into action, rubs the European on the raw, for the latter, ac- customed to the traditions of class distinction, of courtesy, of respect from "inferiors," of amenity in the daily intercourse of life, cannot understand a condition of things so completely at variance with 20 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES his own ingrained notions. Unaccustomed to meet with cool indifference he meets with it not occa- sionally, but continually, and therefore resents it and exclaims against it. It goes without saying that while all this is true of the vast majority of the people, there are charming, if rare, exceptions. Not all Americans are absolutely mannerless; there are degrees, and the well-bred American, man or woman, is the peer of any high-bred European. But it is too pain- fully the fact that this sort of exception is not much met with in daily life, and the other type, the char- acteristic type is also the commonest. Then words have a different meaning, very often, in the United States from that they bear in the Old World, and this constitutes a further obstacle to the ready apprehension of the real character of Americans. The European has, for instance, been accustomed his life long to attach a certain definite sense to the name "gentleman" or "lady." He in- stinctively restricts these appellations to well-born, well-educated, well-mannered people. They are not by him applied indiscriminately to Tom, Dick and Harry and their female congeners. But because class distinctions do not exist in the United States, or exist merely in an atrophied form and on slight sufferance, these words have changed in applicabil- ity and are used without thought by everyone, by the masses as well as the better educated. The European accepts the existence of a distinc- tion between himself and others, and this without, in most cases, parting with any shade of self- 21 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS respect. If he be, say, a laborer, he understands that there is a great gulf between him and the "gentry." That abyss he little dreams of bridging probably he believes that it has always existed, and if the teachings of the Socialists lead him to entertain other opinions, these are rather in the di- rection of compelling improvement in his wages than in that of elevating himself socially. The scheme of which he is a part is part and parcel of the order of creation. He has been taught quite early and with much repetition that he belongs to one class and the "gentry" to another, while higher still shines the nobility, the persons composing those en- viable classes being a superior race of beings, hu- man, no doubt, but of a race of which naught can ever make him a member. His duty, as he has been taught in his catechism, is delightfully simple in this regard; it is to order himself lowly and rever- ently to all his betters. The American is quite incapable of seeing this: for him there is no hard and fast barrier separating him forever from the heights, however dizzy, he may be ambitious to climb; there is no rank to which he may not aspire, to which he may not at- tain; there is no position which may not be his if only he exerts himself and possesses the ability to "get there." The day laborer will not always re- main in that condition; the proof is that hundreds and thousands of others who began life in an hum- ble station are now in the full enjoyment of all the privileges and delightful attentions which the pos- session of money, of much money, of very much 22 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES money entails. There is no valid reason, given that he is himself endowed with ability and strenuous perseverance, why he himself should not, within a measurable number of years, reach exactly the same position. Fortune will smile on him as on others. They are in nowise different from him, these happy ones of the world, save that they "have made their pile" and he still has his to make. But make it he can and will, stand where they stand, enjoy what they enjoy. It all lies in his own hands. He can succeed; he can get there. Thus no thought of gazing upon the successful beings, who are bask- ing in the limelight of the daily press and inhaling the incense offered up by the fashion reporter, as being superior or cast in a different mold from himself, ever enters his brain. It cannot enter it. All men are born free and equal. He is as good as any of them, at bottom; just at present they have more of the riches the country holds in store for the strong and the able, but he is able and strong too, and part of these riches will assuredly come to him. Wherefore then should he experience or betray the faintest symptom of inferiority? He does not and never will. He has no "betters" to- ward whom he must order himself "lowly and rev- erently." The European cannot share that point of view at once; at least it is not often the case that he does so. Doubtless a little observation and a little reflection would modify his unfavorable opinion, diminish his loathing, but a man who is annoyed, angry, outraged for he feels outraged, the Euro- AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS pean, under such circumstances does not reflect. What he feels he expresses ; what makes him indig- nant, he blames, and as he hears continual talk of equality, he damns equality, as understood and prac- ticed in the United States, in the most whole-hearted way. Yet he is wrong. The manifestation undoubtedly is unpleasant, but the sense of equality in itself is one of the most potent factors and most beneficial forces at work among the people. This much may be granted to the irate European: that the fact, undeniable as it is, is not at first readily apparent. It is at the root, none the less, of the success of unnumbered thousands who, in the European coun- tries yet bound by age-long traditions, could never have risen from the lowly estate wherein they were born. It is the secret of the fortune of many emi- nent men who have found it possible to attain that eminence because of the knowledge, early acquired, that in their country talents and merit are sure to receive their reward without regard to considera- tions of position or birth. It is the spur which starts many a man and many a woman on a career which eventually proves of great public benefit. It is the belief which upholds many a lad in a struggle which one of his condition would scarce even dream of entering upon in one of the older European lands. Like all excellent things it has its weak side, its defects, its disadvantages, but after allowing for all these and the sum of them is far from being insignificant the truth stands out clear and im- pressive that this rooted conviction of equality is SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES one of the mainsprings of the development of the country and of the amazing progress of the nation. Not even in France, now so democratic and has- tening to test practically the still more advanced theories of Socialism, not even in France, where first was proclaimed that all careers were open to talent, and where now the Presidency is within every man's reach as was the marshal's baton within the reach of every soldier, not even there has the democratic principle of equality produced as noteworthy re- sults as in the United States. France, republican, democratic, almost socialistic, retains in spite of all the changes and violent upheavals through which the body politic has passed, in spite of the convul- sions which have radically modified social conditions and conferred upon the middle and lower classes op- portunities undreamed of under the ancien regime, France is even yet bound by habits centuries old, by traditions the grasp of which has been loosened but not wholly cast off, by beliefs and ideas which even the progress of liberty has been unable to alter greatly or to destroy utterly. Our own England herself, unquestionably a democratic country and tending at times to in- cline toward socialism, does not afford to the ordi- nary man a tithe of the opportunities he enjoys in the United States. Assuredly talent makes its way with us, and that to a far greater extent than is commonly supposed by Americans, who are so prone to be and remain ignorant of conditions in our land; undoubtedly merit has its reward, the masses enjoy political liberty, and the lad of parts may 25 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS hope to make his mark in time. But in England class distinction is still an established fact, a strongly established habit, which the demagogue has been essaying, with far too much success, to root yet deeper and to turn into a cause of hatred. And class distinction is based, after all, on a difference assumed to exist, or actually existing, between in- dividuals of the same people, and it is thus antagon- istic to the principle of perfect equality which in- volves the element of the particular success achieved in the United States. Liberty may be, as many affirm, more real in Great Britain than in America, but it is true also that mauger the partial abridg- ment of liberty in the United States, the opportuni- ties for men of all conditions, of all degrees, are larger and more numerous than they are even in the right little, tight little island itself. In England social distinctions are most power- ful; in the United States it has been attempted to make them so. The attempt is regularly renewed and as regularly fails; is bound to fail, for the up- ward pressure from below is incessant, and the crop- ping-up of the "inferior" class continuous. It is useless and hopeless to decree that such and such requirements must be complied with ere a man and his family may be recognized by a select class; the man simply pushes his way in and the class yields. At need he creates a new class. The class, indeed, is continually changing: the exclusives of a genera- tion ago are on the shelf at the present time, and the topmost swells of to-day will find themselves, in the course of a few years, relegated to compara- 26 SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES tive obscurity. The rich man of twenty years since, upon whom society looked as the embodiment of the graces of American civilization, has been wholly sup- planted by the multimillionaire of the day, and the latter is doomed to disappear in his turn as a special order. There is no permanence to social distinctions in the United States so far as these are based on birth as in the Old World, on position ac- quired, on riches gained. There is perpetual change going on, and the success of those who have sprung from nothing and made their way in the world, destroys the prestige of birth, just as the triumph of those who have won world-wide fame by intel- lectual achievements or deeds of merit eclipses the merely dazzling splendor of the newly-rich. Ill INDIVIDUALISM The most marked characteristic of democracy as it has developed in the United States is, therefore, individualism, that is, the sense in each man or woman of his or her own importance, an importance derived from the fact that all are equal. It is un- necessary for the purpose of this demonstration to enter at present upon the weakness of the theory revealed in the further fact that women and negroes are not treated as being the equals of men in every respect. That individualism, which is frequently carried to the extreme of simple egotism, affects not social relations and business and professional opportuni- ties and relations only, but manifests itself as a force in education, in legislation, in the administra- tion of the laws, in their application in the courts of justice. It tells upon the army and the navy; it is felt in the religious life, and universally in a totally wrong conception of the true relation of the individual to the State. Indeed it may be said without exaggeration that much of the evil tendency evident in the intercourse between labor and capital, much of the corruption 28 INDIVIDUALISM in public life, much of the sickening sentimentalisra which condones crime and makes a hero of the crim- inal, thereby lowering the public standard of morals, is due to the action of this element in democracy. It is not oligarchy or autocracy that is needed to correct it, but the simple recognition of the fact, so completely lost sight of too often, that democratic government involves on the part of those who live under it and benefit by it, the discharge of duties toward the State as well as the enjoyment of per- sonal rights by the individual. The irresponsible individualist abounds in the United States; he is one of a large class, out of which arise the grumblers, adepts at finding fault, shirkers when it is a question of putting their shoulder to the wheel; the indefatigable, but very fatiguing talkers, who spout platitudes on every oc- casion but never do a hand's turn to improve con- ditions ; the indifferent, who consider it beneath them to take an active interest in the affairs of the society to which they belong; the purely ignorant, who have never been made aware that they, jointly and severally, are directly concerned in the progress and success, first, of their own community, next, of that of humanity. As the individual is so is the nation. If the bulk of the citizens cannot and do not regularly dis- charge their duties to the community, the nation will not, for it cannot, fulfill its purpose in the ad- vancement of humanity. And a democracy that loses sight of humanity and its needs is no longer a democracy, for it fails in the most essential of its 29 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS obligations, since, in the present condition of the world, no nation can isolate itself and declare that it will confine itself solely to its own development, regardless of what is going on elsewhere. It is out of the question for it to do so, no mat- ter how resolute its decision. And the United States least of all perhaps, even though at the pres- ent time there are numbers of intelligent people, educated, patriotic, who lament the fact that the country has become a world-power, who express the liveliest wish to see the Philippines, Porto Rico, Hawaii abandoned, exactly as so many in our own land have in years gone by heartily sought to dis- member and restrict the Empire and are apparently still bent on doing so. These Little Englanders have their like among Americans to-day, in men who look upon outlying possessions as being merely dan- gerous factors in international embroilments. The anti-imperialists of America are evidently blind to the fact that even were their views' adopted and carried out, were the Panama Canal abandoned and the Zone restored to Colombia, their country, through its enormous trade, its varied and produc- tive industries, its immense immigration, its impor- tant share in the financial affairs of the world, its concern in the maintenance of universal peace, must inevitably be drawn into the domain of world- politics. They do not appear to see, in their eagerness for the restoration of a condition of things long since outgrown, that even granting their country could, by some miraculous process, be thus kept apart from 30 INDIVIDUALISM the rest of the world, it would be prevented from being so by its very nature and constitution. For it is not the prodigious material development of the land which attracts the attention of thinkers so much as the overwhelming importance of the politi- cal, economic and social problems which it is con- tending with and which it is driven, whether it will or no, to endeavor to solve. Never has the experi- ment of democratic government been essayed on a scale so vast as in the United States, and on the outcome largely depends the ultimate fate of this form of government in other and older lands. Democratic government has not yet been conclu- sively proved the best, that is as understood and applied in America. Too many defects, some of them fraught with almost disastrous consequences to the masses, have been brought to light; but, on the other hand, such numerous and patent benefits have resulted from it that the attention of all thinking people is forcibly drawn to that land and to the efforts, happily more and more successful, made day by day to strengthen, purify and develop the government of the people by the people. All nations, all great nations particularly, owe a duty to humanity and are bound to fulfill it. But not the richest, the most powerful nation can dis- charge adequately that stupendous task if the units which together make up the nation are indifferent to or ignorant of their own duties to the nation it- self. A community of indifferent individuals will prove, in the hour of need, a broken reed. It may give birth to a strong man, to a heaven-sent leader, SI AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS but the greatest leader is helpless if he has no one to lead, or if those who should follow and support him have never learned the lesson that in a demo- cratic state it is one for all and all for one, and not every man for himself and the devil take the hind- most. Democracies are apt to plume themselves on their superiority to despotisms, nay, to monarchies, even to democratic constitutional monarchies, which is quite right if every member of the democracy does his work and fulfills his obligations to the State ; but if any large number, though still a minor- ity, avoid it, the despotic government will surpass, in effective performance, the democratic. Under a despotic government, given an able ruler, a nation may accomplish much. The individuals have no rights, that is true; their will does not count; they know one thing only: to obey, but they know that right well. Consequently the ruler can carry out his purpose with certainly. Under Louis XIV France rose to be the leading nation in the world ; under Napoleon the Great it became the first military power in the universe. The purpose of Louis and of Napoleon was not, in point of fact, the highest and noblest, but it is unquestionable that in the efficacy of its carrying out the despotism of the one and of the other was the main factor of success. In a democracy the certainty turns to uncer- tainty. Every man has a will, more or less strong; every man has a voice, directly or through his elected representative, in the conduct of affairs, but not every man is equally able to judge sanely and 32 INDIVIDUALISM wisely or to act in the best interests of the com- munity. Every will, or at least the great majority of wills, must be brought into comparative har- mony. And here lies the difficulty which faces a democracy which attempts to do great things. Its efforts may be irretrievably ruined at any moment, unless the individual members have been so trained that the head of the democracy, the delegate en- trusted with the execution of the purpose, feels that he is absolutely and surely backed by the popular will. In a democracy, and this is very true of the United States, the State, or Commonwealth, as it is often and very wisely termed, is, theoretically, the one object dear to each and every member of the community; practically, it is mostly the individual who is dear to himself. Unquestionably there is some concern for, some interest in, the community, but on examination that will be very generally found to occupy a subordinate position with most men in the country. It is not, with the great majority, a question of how far they may be of use to the na- tion and through the nation to humanity, but on the contrary how far the community can be of ser- vice to them individually. At the time of the assembling of the convention which drew up the Declaration of Independence, as a little later when the French Assembly produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the need really was for an unmistakable affirmation of the rights of the individual as against the power of the autocrat in the one case; of a legislative as- AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS semblj across the ocean in the other. This notion of individual liberty was necessarily exaggerated, because in itself so singularly attractive. Men in France, the colonies in America, were attracted by the notion of revolt against rule, for man is natur- ally indisposed to obedience and rebellious to rule. The innate tendency is to complete independence, to the assertion of unlimited right. The individual is willing, as a general rule, to have law and order, provided these are applied to compel others while not interfering with himself. The reform propaganda of the eighteenth cen- tury, which so speedily became a revolutionary propaganda on both sides of the Atlantic, was summed up in two famous instruments : the Declara- tion of Independence in 1776, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1791, the latter condensing the principles and doctrines which, in 1789, had precipi- tated the Revolution. In both of these manifestos the importance of the individual is strongly brought out, and the very weight given to individual right led to an exaggerated and consequently erroneous interpretation of it erroneous and incomplete, for while the greatest stress is laid upon the rights of man, of the individual, no mention is made of his duties, although there can exist no rights without corresponding duties. In the Declaration of In- dependence as in the Declaration of the Rights of Man it is quite plain that one side only of the ques- tion was considered by the framers of these cele- brated documents. That side is the side of the in- dividual and his rights; these are admirably and 34 INDIVIDUALISM lucidly set forth in both documents. No one wants to part with one shred or tittle of these rights, but in this age, and especially in a democratic country such as Great Britain and yet more such as the United States, it is time some thought were bestowed upon the duties of the individual toward the state in which he dwells and under whose fostering care and protection he makes his living. It is just because in the eighteenth century the rights of the individual were scorned or denied that so much importance was attached to them. But what was appropriate then is no longer so. It is time, both in the United States and in our own land, to check the evils of democracy by recalling to men's minds that duties are inseparable from rights and must be fully discharged if the rights are to be fully enjoyed. The pernicious doctrine that the State must do everything for the individual, while the latter need only benefit and need not contribute, has been sedu- lously spread by demagogues and partisans of an- archy, of whom there is an ever abundant supply in America, until the doctrine has so permeated the great body of the masses that it has become a char- acteristic of advanced democracy. That the individual should have an excellent opinion of himself is quite natural; very often he is his only admirer. So long as this personal wor- ship does not blind him to his duties and responsi- bilities to those around him, it is comparatively harmless, though always in danger of being ridicu- lous. Unfortunately for the individual, yet more 35 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS unfortunately for the community, this tendency al- most invariably degenerates into narrowness and sel- fishness and leads to deliberate neglect of public duty. For in a democracy, everyone, from the highest to the lowest, shares whether he understands it or not in a common responsibility to the State. And nothing can relieve him of that responsibility save absolute lunacy. Every member of the State is bound, by the very fact that he is a member of it, to devote part of his thoughts, part of his talent, part of his power, part of his time to interests other than his own personal preoccupations and purposes. He is false to the trust reposed in him by his fel- lows, fails to fulfill his share of the contract he has entered into, if he neglects his public duty. For every member of the commonwealth, whether born in it or entering into it as an immigrant naturalized in the country, binds himself to become interested in the working of the community, to share in its administration, to aid in carrying out its aims and plans. The State protects him in his life, his liberty, his pursuit of happiness and worldly pros- perity. It guarantees to him the free exercise of his abilities ; offers him possibilities of advancement ; af- fords him advantages which are important factors in his success ; adds to his personal value the worth of the community; fulfills its duties toward him not perfunctorily or spasmodically but regularly and thoroughly. Therefore, the individual is bound to carry out with equal fidelity, with equal complete- ness, his part of the contract. 36 INDIVIDUALISM It is this that is now beginning to be taught more generally in the United States. The schools now devote some effort to teaching the duties of citizenship to the children who a few years later will be called upon to discharge these duties; the universities have enlarged their study and teaching of the topics of government and political and social economics. The press more and more preachies sound sense on these important questions and re- calls citizens to their duty as citizens. Which is not to say that the work of the schools, the universities and the press has borne or can bear fruit very quickly. Time is needed to make the system of civic education, which is of the highest importance to a democracy, as strong and as widespread as it needs to be, but the progress is already considerable, and the revival of a true public spirit, of a genuine public opinion which is not simply swayed by the professional politician but directed by sane think- ers, is at once remarkable and gratifying. Individualism is yet rampant, and in the next chapters it will be shown how greatly it yet affects law, religion and other aspects of the national life; but it is slowly being balanced and checked by the recognition of the need for an understanding and a due performance of the duties of the citizen. Individualism and materialism, carried to excess in the former case, have done much to harm prog- ress, but if the evils are plainly seen and felt, they are no longer permitted to rule at their pleasure. The country which has experienced the results of a startlingly rapid material development must neces- 37 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS sarily exhibit marks of the deleterious influences at work, of the loss of high ideals and the substitution in their place of aims infinitely lower, but it is also true that a profound change in public opinion is coming about. Impatience, irritation, are visible and these are healthful signs of the awakening of the national conscience. To suppose that so great a people as that of the United States can sink ir- retrievably in the slough of materialism is wilfully to shut one's eyes to facts. Not only is it not sink- ing farther ; it is resolutely bent on emerging. Daily the admiration for strong men of high principle grows and spreads, and that admiration is not con- fined to hysterical outbursts of cheering at banquets and meetings. It is manifested in acts as well as in words, and the people have made it plain that they do desire to be informed and led by men who are sincere and courageous, truthful and public- spirited. There will yet be undesirable, improper candidates for any and every office, from the highest to the lowest, but more righteous men are coming forward, more men able and willing to direct the fortunes of their State, of their country into the right channels. Men, in America, are perceiving, yet dimly it may be, but none the less perceiving the intimate con- nection between the individual and the nation ; learn- ing to rely less upon laws hastily drafted and passed to meet some emergency and more upon develop- ment of character and thorough grounding in the eternal principles of right and justice. They are learning to recognize that whatever makes the in- 38 INDIVIDUALISM div'dual better tends at the same time to aid the race to which he belongs. It may be but a small in- fluence taken by itself, but in the aggregation of such influences they become a mighty force that is telling upon and uplifting the national life. And it is time that individualism should be sternly checked in its tendency to excess in every direction, and confined within those limits it ought never to have passed. For democracy can never produce all the good of which it is capable and which mankind has the right to expect from it, unless it proves bet- ter able to maintain the just equilibrium between the contending influences within it. In that equi- librium, not absolutely stable, doubtless, nor ever uninterfered with it were hopeless to ask that but nearly stable, rarely upset, society will find the solution of many of the problems which distress it at the present day, and the Old World will then learn from the New how government of the people by the people may be made to bring peace and or- der without interfering with the just rights of the individual or allowing these to infringe upon the equally just rights of society represented by the State. Precisely because the United States offers to every man such remarkable variety and freedom of opportunity, is it inexorably necessary that these opportunities should not be abused, that the power of the law should ever be maintained, that justice should not be thwarted by the influence of wealth or of political "pull," that the rivalry between labor and capital should be changed into a healthful co- 39 AMERICANS AND THE BKITONS partnery, that the employer should not look upon the employed as a subject for exploitation to the verge of revolt, or the employed consider the em- ployer a being to be hated and attacked at every opportunity. There is too much of this state of feeling in the country; too much division where union should exist ; too much, therefore, of damaging of democracy for the effective working of a principle instinct with vitality and charged with good if rightly applied. IV MANNERS There is sordid dross mingled with the rich metal of democracy. The practical results of the appli- cation of democratic principles are not always pleas- ure; not seldom they are offensive, and, what is worse, needlessly offensive. All men are not capable of estimating correctly the rights and privileges they enjoy or of recogniz- ing the responsibilities which rights and privileges entail. Many of them are inclined to lay undue stress on the former and to refuse to assume the latter. That is because they are imperfectly edu- cated; because their perception is narrow, their range of reflection limited. They are intellectually below par; undeveloped; able to grasp a portion of a truth merely, and dwelling upon that to the ex- clusion of the greater part. This is visible in many ways in the democratic society of the United States. The fact is forced most unpleasantly upon the ob- server, even if he be but a casual traveler passing rapidly through the land. It is one of the chief reasons of the intense dislike which Americans have roused against their nationality. In this respect they have largely taken the place the English for- 41 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS mcrly occupied. The cold indifference of the Eng- lishman, his well-nigh imperturbable coolness and self-possession, his rigid adherence to his habits and customs in whatever country and in whatever clime he found himself, his mode of transporting his lares et penates with him wherever he wandered or settled, his confident conviction of his indisputable superior- ity to the rest of mankind the more offensive be- cause not expressed in so many words but plainly marked by a certain aloofness and coldness of man- ner his resolute opposition to making himself ac- quainted with the language or manners or prejudices of the people whose lands he visited these combined to cause him to be heartily disliked and even cor- dially hated by foreigners. He represented in mod- ern Europe the intensest form of that racial pe- culiarity which caused the Jews of old to be con- trary to all men. But since the Americans have taken to invading the continent of Europe in ever-increasing numbers, and to displaying certain national peculiarities with the fervid facility they possess in all things, they have rapidly supplanted the Englishman in this re- gard, and have inherited the greater share of the dislike and detestation which the inhabitants of "perfidious Albion" had won for themselves. The latter will no doubt not mourn over the change, but for those among them who bear sincere affection to- ward their cousins beyond the sea, the result is re- grettable. The American has so many good quali- ties that it is a pity he should make himself mis- understood and win abhorrence where he might so ift MANNERS easily secure cordiality. It is one of the conse- quences of his application of the democratic prin- ciple, and of his adaptation of the weaknesses of human nature to his own use and profit but in this case, to his own disadvantage. Taken all round, the average American is man- nerless a harsh saying, but a true one. The ameni- ties of life suffer rude shocks at his hands, and politeness is a rare and little practiced virtue. This is acknowledged and lamented by Americans them- selves, and is ascribed to various causes, one of which, frequently cited, is that they have not time to be civil, which is possibly the case, although civility does not really absorb so much time that it may not be indulged in at least as an occasional luxury. But the real reason is different; lack of time is but an explanation put forward in lieu of a better, as most Americans do not trouble to reason out the why and wherefore of their actions in this respect. It is to be sought for in the working of a mistaken view of the principle of democracy, and in its ex- tension or development into intense selfishness, and consequent indifference to others. It is not true that Americans have not time for manners; they think they have not time because most of them are so intently occupied in pursuing their individual ends, yet there are great numbers of remarkably well-bred and well-mannered Americans, who, none the less, manage to succeed in the struggle for life and fortune. It is difficult to surpass a thoroughly well-bred American in charm of manner and address, in thoughtfulness for others, in purity of language. 43 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS It is not, therefore, a racial defect properly speak- ing, but rather an indifference to the requirements of civilization and of rightly understood equality. The feeling, already dwelt upon, entertained by the average American, that he is as good as his neighbor, is at the root of the lack of manners. He desires to impress this upon everyone he comes in contact with. Then he is desperately anxious to maintain before the world at large the fact that he is a free man, in a sense and to an extent which is and must be unknown and unapproachable in any other country on the surface of the globe. Thirdly, he is individualistic, which tends rapidly to mean selfish and self-centered, and consequently he is apt to think of himself first, and has no leisure to think of others. Fourthly, as nearly everyone around him acts in precisely the same fashion, he does not see why he should change, and make an oddity of him- self. Add to this, that the democratic mingling of the classes brings to the front many an untutored man or woman, naturally ignorant of the elements of courtesy, and it is not difficult to understand how it comes that manners are conspicuous by their ab- sence in the daily intercourse of life. Not so many years ago it would have been un- necessary to comment on a similar deterioration in the manners of men in Great Britain. To-day one sees with regret that manners are fast disappearing. There is still abundant civility met with in the shops, in public establishments of all sorts, but the old courtesy toward the weaker sex has suffered seri- ous diminution. There is not the same attention paid 44 MANNERS to it, and the young are the worst offenders in this respect. The schoolboy will sit placidly in a crowded car while gray-haired women stand. The workman will yield his seat : the middle-class man will keep his. He is frank about it: he does not even pretend to be reading the paper or sleeping. He has shoved in ahead of the women and his greater physical strength is rewarded by comfort. Some there are who maintain the old and excellent code of conduct, but they are becoming fewer and fewer every day. The young generation scarcely ever dreams of exhibiting courtesy or ordinary civility. It is sometimes alleged that this changed attitude on the part of British men is due to the feminist movement, and especially to the excesses and out- rages of the militant section of the suffragettes. Unfortunately for the validity of this excuse, or ex- planation, the change in manners antedates the pub- lic disapproval of the militants. And it is plain that selfishness and a disregard of the amenities of life is the true motive. Henceforth we can scarcely be justified in reproaching Americans with lack of good manners. We are ourselves on the downward path. There is still another reason, which should be mentioned: the enormous influx of immigrants of all races and chiefly of the lower and more ignorant classes. The invasion of the Irish, the Spaniard, the Slav, the Scandinavian, the Teuton, counts for much in modifying conditions in this land. These people, most of them, come from countries where liberty is but a shadow and a name, and find themselves sud- denly transplanted into an atmosphere of freedom 45 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS such as in their wildest imaginings they had no conception of. Accustomed in the land they have left to subserviency and servility, they begin by practicing the one and the other, but that does not last long. They observe with wonder and amaze- ment that it is only to the rich, to the very rich that such respect is paid, while to all others, well dressed or poorly habited, the same treatment is accorded, and that treatment is neglect of the forms of civil- ity. Amazement is succeeded by emulation, and the spirit of "liberty" moves them to assert their new- found freedom and equality by an exaggeration of rudeness. And as one meets every sort and condi- tion of man, woman and child in the daily affairs of life, one meets with these people who help to make worse the already bad condition of affairs. Excellent as is the democratic principle in its ap- plication to the general relations between citizens of the same state, it is indescribably disagreeable when it takes the form of a familiarity offensive in itself and yet more offensive in the assumption it entails that the person addressed is on the same level of indifference to decent amenities as the per- son who addresses. One can put up with a coarse or rude individual, but one does object to being, by him, put into the class to which he belongs. And this is exactly the effect produced by the average American, where mannerless in his intercourse with people who know and practice the rules of ordinary civility. This familiarity it is which leads Tom, Dick and Harry to insist on shaking hands with whomsoever 46 MANNERS they approach, to talk in a tone of perfect intellec- tual and social equality, to air their own opinions whether asked for or not, to assume the welcome which is rarely theirs ; which makes the Irish servant girl dress as nearly as may be like her employer the term "mistress" being an insult which causes the negro porter to sprawl on the armchair you have vacated for a moment. This familiarity is in part the consequence of the misinterpretation of the democratic principle that the sovereignty resides in the people collec- tively. That is quite right; what is quite wrong is the way in which the fact is distorted in daily democracy, in which the individual believes, quite sincerely, that he is in his own person a sovereign, instead of an infinitesimal fraction of a sovereign body. Mr. Owen Wister, in that charming study of a rapidly passing phase of American civilization, "Lady Baltimore," makes one of his characters ex- press himself thus : "I observed that for myself I supposed I should rest content with the thought that in our enlightened Republic every American was himself a sovereign." And that the sarcasm is not uncalled for the epi- sode of the unionists in Chicago abundantly proves. It was at the time of the Jameson Raid, when a certain potentate sent a congratulatory message to President Kruger. As this message was calculated to exasperate Britons it naturally delighted the average Anglophobe in the United States, and among other expressions of satisfaction and joy was that 47 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of a Chicago trade-union. The members deter- mined to congratulate the European potentate, and accordingly sent him a cable beginning thus : "To His Majesty "We, your fellow-sovereigns, members of Union, of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of America etc., etc." It would surely have soothed any angry English- man to watch the reception of that message by the Illustrious Personage to whom it was addressed. Familiarity breeds contempt, but these exemplars of applied democracy are incapable of feeling con- tempt, and it would be wasted on them. Their mode of address denotes that they do not consider them- selves in any respect the inferiors of the greatest and most honored of the land. Since they are on the same footing as the most eminent and they certainly are, in their own estimation they are also on the same footing as the ordinary mortal, for whom, in consequence, they entertain no respect, and, as a further consequence, to whom they pay no civility. It is rare indeed to meet with even the outward appearance of manners in the stores. Purchasers relate to each other with awe how in one place they have been politely treated. The case is noteworthy and goes on record at once. But the ordinary "saleslady" or salesman does not concern himself or herself with formulae of politeness or marks of at- tention. You are simply a buyer, that is, in the average, a nuisance, to be disposed of as rapidly as possible. But, it should be said, the management, 48 MANNERS in many cases, is not satisfied with deploring this condition of affairs ; it endeavors to rectify it, bene- fiting both customer and seller. In public offices, in public conveyances, rare is it to meet with the outward forms of civility. This does not mean that they are invariably wanting, but that they are not common. There are people who are naturally inclined to courtesy, and they are to be found in the United States as elsewhere, just as in every country, even in those where politeness has become a habit, there are to be met with rude and surly individuals. But the difference is that where- as in most other countries civility is the rule, in the United States it is the exception. Enter a building: someone else is just coming out. Naturally you expect he will prevent the door from slamming in your face, but you are in error; it is just what he does not do, and if you happen to be going out behind him the same thing will hap- pen. If, on the other hand, you hold the door open for man or woman, they will pass out and seldom, if ever, utter a word of thanks or make a gesture of acknowledgment. A man will pass in front of a woman, a youth in front of an older person, and neither will think for a second that they are doing anything out of the way. Politeness, in its most elementary form, appears to be considered servility, to which no free-born citizen can submit, or an ex- pression of inferiority, which can in no wise be tolerated. It is needless to enlarge on this unfortunate fea- ture of the habits and customs of Americans. Much 49 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS might be written about it, yet in the end no good purpose would be served. Mannerless the great number of them are, and mannerless they will re- main, until successive generations shall have lost the habit of manifesting an independence no one contests by methods which have nothing to com- mend them. The boasted chivalry of American men toward women in general may then become visible in the particular; at present it is too often con- cealed. For chivalry consists not in simply work- ing in offices at the earning of money which the women may spend, but in treating them with due courtesy at all times, and this is not the case. Women are occasionally accorded ordinary civility; more frequently they are made to feel that they have got to take the world as it comes. Of this also innumerable instances might be given, but one, related by Lowell, assuredly a credible witness, may suffice as a reference. And similar cases have come to the notice of everyone, American or foreigner, who has traveled in the cars, whether horse, trolley or steam. Again, applied democracy manifests itself dis- agreeably in the revolt against discipline on the part of children, both boys and girls, but especially boys. It is difficult, in many schools, to maintain the standard of discipline required for efficient teaching, because the spirit of independence is so strongly developed in the young, and at the earliest age, that they rebel against any application of au- thority. It is the tactful and masterful teacher who succeeds best, of course; the one who knows 50 MANNERS how to wear the velvet glove on the hand of iron; but even he is bound to come to grief at some time or other, when faced by a determined individualist who is aware of the limitless natural rights of man, and who is convinced that his way is the right one and the teacher's the wrong. Obedience, for its own sake, and because of its value in developing the power to command, does not commend itself to the average American youth. And as he develops at the same time the lack of respect for position, as such, the task of the master or mistress is greatly aggravated. Resistance to authority not infre- quently takes the form of revolt, or strike. The young are quick to learn the methods employed by their elders, and a class or a school will imitate a union and refuse to study or even attend until the obnoxious teacher has been removed. The charging of teachers, in the courts, with assault, because they have been compelled to resort to corporal punish- ment, is also too frequent an occurrence. The teacher has to defend himself, and he is not always successful in convincing the tribunal that the course pursued by him was necessary. The triumph of the rebel in court naturally complicates the already great difficulty of managing the school. The army, at least the militia, finds the same re- sults cropping up now and then. Neither the land nor the sea service is really popular; men do not flock to it and inducements of various sorts have to be held out to them. They bring into the army or the navy ideas utterly opposed to that blind and prompt obedience which are essential to the proper 51 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS carrying out of the duty of a ship or a regiment. They become good soldiers and good sailors but it is not without trouble. And there is always the chance that they will "break out in a new spot," as did the private who refused to attend divine service. It is not possible to conciliate true democracy, and especially democratic principles carried to their logical conclusion, with the requirements of military or naval service. The soldier and the sailor must be content, once they enlist, to abandon a portion of their cherished rights. And it would be a for- tunate thing for many schools and smaller colleges were the pupils in these institutions to conceive of the period of training and teaching as one in which it is for their truest advantage to learn to obey. But that is the hardest and most difficult thing the average American can be set to do. He entertains an apparently invincible repugnance to the observ- ance of anything that savors of authority, hence his disregard of law, and if law be disregarded, albeit intended for the protection of the community, it is not to be expected that any greater consideration will be vouchsafed to that unwritten code which regulates the private intercourse of well-bred per- sons. Nor, so long as in their own country they neglect, deliberately neglect, the simplest require- ments of courtesy, should surprise be felt at their ignoring the habits and customs of lands where politeness is part and parcel of the habits of the people. There is a class of Americans apt to become a stone of offense to those it comes in contact with 52 MANNERS in the course of foreign travel. Careless of the sanctity of privacy in their own surroundings, they are not prepared or willing to allow the Englishman or the Frenchman to enjoy it in peace in England or in France. They seem to consider that they have an indefeasible and inborn right to penetrate whithersoever their fancy dictates ; to ask the most leading questions ; to interfere with recommendation or direction ; to intrude their opinion, and to support it at times offensively. Unaccustomed to having their feelings consulted, they never dream of consult- ing the feelings of the inhabitants of the land they are visiting. At home they drive their automobiles with reckless and murderous speed through streets and avenues, amid crowded traffic and in narrow places, trusting to the power of their money to get them off in the event of their being arrested or sum- moned to court, and they cannot understand why they should not do exactly the same in one of the countries of effete Europe. At home they run down pedestrians and go on their way smelling to high heaven ; but they are indignant when, abroad, they are arrested and fined or imprisoned for an act that would not always cause them inconvenience at home. That type of American, when traveling abroad, is, too frequently, aggressive, self-assertive, convinced that he has a perfect right to do what he pleases, how he pleases and when he pleases. If he breaks rules and regulations, he considers that these may be needed for the slaves of the foreign power, but cannot possibly apply to a free-born citizen of the greatest country on earth, and if the authorities fail 53 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS to take that view, he pesters his consul or ambas- sador with plaints and threats, until that unhappy official would, one may believe, willingly consent never again to behold in the flesh a single one of his fellow-countrymen. That type of vulgar American flaunts the wealth of his nation; talks continually of the vast extent of the country, of its illimitable resources, of its wondrous progress, of the amazing energy and start- ling qualities of its inhabitants. He sees little or nothing to admire in the ways of the Old World, but much to criticize sharply and roughly, although he himself is the most supersensitive creature when criticism is directed against him. In a word, he makes that numerous class of his countrymen and countrywomen, who worthily represent the culture and intelligence and charm of his race, blush with mortification as they view him making himself a spectacle for gods and men ; slandering his land and calling down upon himself the hearty, though per- haps unspoken, curses of all who, knowing the United States and their people, are exasperated at the dis- play of all the faults and the concealing of all the virtues and attractive qualities. If he be rich, he boasts and brags of his wealth ; squanders money to prove the superiority of his fortune to the wretched pittances of the miscalled millionaires of the Old World ; if he be in moderate circumstances, he none the less affects the airs of the plutocrat, and dis- dains the modesty and thrift of the Englishman or the Frenchman. As for the customs of the country wherein he 64 MANNERS disports himself, as for the manners of its inhabi- tants, these are merely pegs on which to hang com- parisons entirely unpleasant to the natives and satis- fying to his national pride. The institutions of the land, especially if that land be a monarchy, afford him a theme for endless disquisitions upon the per- fection of the Federal, State and municipal govern- ments in America, and the utter rottenness of mon- archies in general and modern sovereigns in par- ticular. Here is a verbatim report of a conversation which actually took place some years ago and which is a fair example of the sort of talk which the traveling American of the ordinary class loves to indulge in. The scene was the dining-room of a boarding-house, patronized largely by Americans. The characters, a "lady" from Philadelphia (that city of sweet homes and sweeter women) and an Englishman, long a resident in the United States and well acquainted with the country. A young couple, American also, on their honey- moon trip, had been spending the day in sight-seeing, and to their great delight had caught a glimpse of the then Prince and Princess of Wales. To their great delight, for mauger republicanism and democ- racy, the average American is as fond of looking upon the face of royalty or of gazing open-mouthed at a lord as is our veriest Englishman. They were expressing their gratification and their intense wish to see also the well-beloved Queen Victoria. "Huh!" uttered in a sufficiently loud tone the "lady" from Philadelphia. "I would not turn round to look at her." 55 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS "Why not?" exclaimed the bride. "Kings and queens are relics of barbarous tyranny." "But," ventured the Englishman, "you do not surely mean to imply that our Queen "I despise queens," snorted the proud dame; "I belong to a land where we have no tyrants." "You interest me," returned the Englishman. "May I ask a question or two about your coun- try?" "You may." "Your ruler " "We have no ruler." "Beg pardon. Your President, by whom is he chosen?" "By the free and independent voters of Amer- ica." "Then what is the 'machine' I have heard spoken of in connection with presidential nominations?" There was no answer, save a sniff and a snort. The Englishman went on: "Your cities are also governed by the people, act- ing as voters, are they not?" "They are," was the proud response, "by the free and intelligent manhood of America." "And that is what is meant when your papers re- fer to Tammany in New York?" A glare alone replied. "Your states? Have you not a Matthew S. Quay and an Odell and a Hill as you have a Croker?" "Sir, I decline to hold further conversation with you." 56 MANNERS And, as Corneille makes Rodrlgue say, le combat cessa faute de combattants. It is almost impossible to convey to the foreigner, of education, that is, a true conception of the power of the democratic spirit in its action upon the minds of the masses. It goes without saying that the manifestations referred to, and of which an instance has just been given, are not met with among the educated and refined, but none the less, even among them the fervor of chauvinism, which is an enormous exaggeration of patriotism, is strikingly noticeable. "My country, right or wrong," is the inspiring mo- tive of the actions and words of many of them, and an inability to appreciate differences of condi- tions in other lands is frequent. Imbued profoundly with the conviction that an American citizen is not merely equal, but infinitely superior to the citizen of any other country, they act on that belief, and the result is not pleasant to the stranger they whelm with that declaration of supremacy. There is this difference between the Briton an individual singularly filled with a similar sense of superiority over all other nationalities, and the American, that the former is so absolutely sure of his ground, of his position, so convinced of the com- plete primacy of his nation, that he does not con- sider it worth while to express it, or assert it. It is a thing which is plainer than the nose on a man's face, than the light of day or the darkness of night. One does not go about affirming that light is light; no more does the Briton, therefore, proclaim to all and sundry that he is the salt of the earth. He is; 57 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS that is self-evident. But the American, conscious of the greatness of his country, of its vast extent, of its prodigiously rapid development, aware, very well aware that the Republic of the United States offers a phenomenon undreamed of by writers upon govern- ment : an immense country successful under a purely democratic system the American is impelled to shout aloud the fact, patent to him if to no one else, that he, and none else, is the greatest, most marvelous, most exalted product of humanity throughout the ages, and that his country is the most wonderful land in every respect that God's sun has ever shone upon or ever let light up. The knowledge he enjoys, the conviction with which he is possessed is not sufficient for him ; he must vocifer- ate it to all and sundry, he must affirm his superior- ity, else it might perchance pass unnoticed. But at bottom the motive is the same : the Briton, silent and reserved, and the American, pugnacious, aggressive and clamorous, are actuated by the same faith. And it is just this artlessness of the American character which, rightly understood, adds such a charm to intercourse with the inhabitants. After all it is wholly praiseworthy in them to be proud of their land, of their institutions, of their progress, of their wealth ; they err only in exaggerating that pride and its expression, and in doing so they are thoroughly human, which makes them thoroughly kin to all other nations. They are still in the stage of boastfulness, justifiable boastfulness, and they have not yet fully perceived the glorious insolence of the British method. They are doing what other 58 MANNERS nations have done before them: the British, the French, to name two only. The Germans are act- ing as the Americans act, yet little is heard in re- proach of their brag, since brag that sort of thing is called. "Me und Gott" sums up the attitude of the whole German nation ; it called forth a brief out- burst of ridicule, and is almost forgotten now. But more forgotten still is the abundant proof that a precisely similar state of national vanity, expressing itself in just as extraordinary manner as among the Americans, has been characteristic of the British and the French alike. Take the latter. Their great poet, Victor Hugo, has sung the glories of France and the French in a dithyrambic style unsurpassed by the loftiest high- falutin' of the Americans. Here are some lines of his, written in 1823, ere even he had entered the Romanticist camp and given full sway to his lyri- cism: O Fran9ais ! des combats la palme vous decore : Quel aigle ne vaincrait, arme de votre foudre? Et qui ne serait grand, du haut de vos pavois? L'etoile de Brennus luit encore sur vos tetes; La victoire cut tou jours des Francais a ses fetes. La paix du monde entier depend de leur repos. In another poem of the same period, he exclaims, with that assurance so delightful in him as it is in everyone enthusiastically patriotic: Son genie, eclairant les trames, Luit comme la lampe aux sept flammes, Cachee aux temples du Jourdain; 59 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS Gardien des trones qu'il releve, Son glaive est le celeste glaive Qui flamboie aux portes d'Eden! Which is not bad, when one comes to think of it. And while Hugo was at that time a good Roman Catholic and a thoroughgoing Royalist, he main- tained his attitude as the singer of the glories of France when he became a Bonapartist and later a Republican. Oh! Paris est la cite mere! Paris est le lieu solennel Oii le tourbillon ephemere Tourne sur un centre eternel! Nul ne sait, question profonde, Ce que perdrait le bruit du monde Le jour ou Paris se tairait! And the French generally, the Parisians abso- lutely, believed it. Francisque Sarcey, in his fas- cinating account of the siege of Paris, speaking of the investment and its consequences to the inhabi- tants, says: "The absolute lack of news. Paris, whither tended all the rumors of the world and which re- turned them increased and multiplied as by some prodigious echo, suddenly found itself cut off from the rest of the universe. . . . We were much sur- prised and greatly disconcerted. The result sought and obtained by our foes went beyond anything we had foreseen. Our self-love was the first to suffer. We had so often said and repeated, in every possible 60 MANNERS way, that Paris was the great mainspring of human thought, that if it ceased to emit ideas and senti- ments the whole machinery of the universe would come to a standstill and that there would occur a prolonged collapse of civilization. We were com- pelled to acknowledge that, though we did occupy an important place in the world, we were not quite so much the very heart and soul of it as we had fancied, and that though Paris was severed from the nations, the earth none the less kept on revolv- ing round the sun, humanity continued none the less to think and act, to move on with equal step toward eternal progress. Most sad discovery! Bitter dis- illusion ! At need Europe and America could do without us, while we, on our part, missed the whole universe." And the following could scarcely be surpassed by the most excitable American orator on a Fourth of July: cette France feconde Qui fait, quand il lui plait, pour 1'exemple du monde, Tenir un siecle dans un jour. By way, also, of testimony that self-praise is not inconsistent with depreciation of others, may be quoted the same poet's lines on America: gardez-vous, jeunes gens, Et de ce que 1'Aruerique en vos coeurs secoue, Peuple a peine essaye, nation de hasard, Sans tige, sans passe, sans histoire et sans art. The rhythm is admirable, the rhyme excellent, but the knowledge of America and the appreciation of 61 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the land and its people leave everything to be de- sired. Naturally the Briton is not given to boastfulness ; at least not to the sort of boastfulness which one finds in Victor Hugo and so many other French writers, and which filled the proclamations of the First Republic and the bulletins of Napoleon. Yet it is not difficult to find in, say, Shakespeare, cer- tain passages which, while superbly poetical and stirring, are perhaps not models of reserve and bash- fulness, as for instance this one, which sends the blood of the Englishman coursing faster through his veins : This royal throne of kings, this sceptr'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise ; This fortress builded by nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of kings, Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home, For Christian service and chivalry, As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's son. Or this estimate of the comparative worth valor of the English and the French, which the g Nelson repeated and believed in: 62 MANNERS I thought upon one pair of English legs Did march three Frenchmen. And coming down to more modern times, is there not something exquisitely naiVe in the stanza from Eliza Cook's "The Englishman"? There's a land that bears a world-known name, Though it is but a little spot; I say 'tis first on the scroll of Fame, And who shall say it is not? Of the deathless ones who shine and live In Arms, in Arts, or Song; The brightest the whole wide world can give, To that little land belong. 'Tis the star of the earth, deny it who can, The island home of an Englishman. Even in that strong and deep "Recessional" of Kipling's, the note of conscious power and unchal- lengeable superiority rings out clear and loud. The truth is that all lands which have brought forth nations of strength have given birth at the same time to ebullitions of patriotic fervor, and that the sense of power and success elicits dithyrambics. In France and in England these have usually taken the poetic form; in the United States, where poesy flourishes but scantily, sonorous prose is used for the same purpose, but the inspiration, the motive are alike in the Old World and the New: pride in the deeds done, in the obstacles overcome, in the con- quests accomplished. The American, because, first, he has not the true military spirit, and secondly, be- cause he has the true commercial spirit, celebrates 63 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS preferably the achievements of industry and busi- ness, while the Frenchman and the Briton dwell with natural complacency upon their glorious records of triumphs at sea and on land. But if the American had as long a military and naval tradition as the Briton or the Gaul, he would sing exultantly of his prowess just as men of both these nations have done in the past and are entirely likely to do in the future. The isolation of the United States, its distance from the scene of the many conflicts which still rage in the Old World, combine to blind that portion of the people which does not reflect and does not ob- serve, to the importance of the sense of proportion and to the singular and valuable privileges enjoyed by the land. It is one thing to be divided, as the Britons of old, by the whole earth from the possible enemy; it is quite another thing to be in touch with a nation that at any moment may be an open foe. It is easy to become enthusiastic over a possible armed conflict, when it is quite certain that the quarrel will be fought out hundreds and maybe thousands of miles away. And when a country has not, within recent times, and since the advent of the most modern methods of warfare, fought a great war, it is not surprising that it should believe itself invincible. It probably is invincible, and that is sufficient for the self-glorificator, who flourishes so richly in the United States. Then the very growth of democracy encourages boastfulness. It must be borne in mind that the essence of democracy is the sharing in the govern- ment, in some way or other, by all the members of 64. MANNERS the State; there is no division between them in this respect ; there is no class from which in particular or exclusively the governing body will be chosen. All men have the opportunity of rising, and directing affairs after they have risen. The youngster who howls the latest edition of a sensational sheet on the streets may, in the course of a few years, enter the aldermanic chamber, rise to the mayoralty, at- tain to Congress, be a Governor, or a candidate for the Presidential nomination. Or he may, in another field, become one of the leading financiers of the country, and from his office in Wall Street feel the pulse not of the markets of his country alone but of the world. Again, he may emerge from the ranks and appear as a captain of industry; he may direct thousands and thousands of workmen, an army of employees, a host of subordinates ; all that is within his grasp. He may prove to be an inventor, and a happy invention, well exploited, will bring him fame and wealth. All careers are open to him; all posi- tions, the most distinguished, the most attractive. The American lad has, of all lads on earth, the greatest chances of making his mark if there be in him the power of marking. And he speedily learns this, and once he has acquired the knowledge, once he has been trained, as he is early trained, to dwell upon the greatness of his birthright, he develops fatally the habit of talking about it, and in that strain of exaggeration which appears to come nat- urally to a certain type of American once he starts speaking about his country and the performances of himself and his fellow-countrymen. 65 V PATRIOTISM There is a day dreaded by thousands, welcomed by hundreds of thousands in the United States: the Glorious Fourth. It is dedicated to the addition to the already innumerable noises which daily assault the ear, of yet more noises. The total effort, in- variably successful, is graced with the pompous term of Patriotism. The American is fervidly patriotic. The fieriest chauvm in France, the most energetic jingo in Britain is nothing in comparison with him. His patriotism is exuberant, aggressive, oppressive, overwhelming. He never hides its light under a bushel; he thrusts the flaming torch in the face of his fellow-countrymen and of the stranger within his gates. The entire world is required to know two things: that the United States is the greatest coun- try on God's earth, and that the American is the most patriotic of men. He is certainly the noisiest patriot in the world, although in the last few years he has greatly modified his exuberance. Here again the simile holds good: the people of the United States have still something of the boyish in them, else they could not delight, as they unques- tionably do, in the production of so much terrific 66 PATRIOTISM noise as characterizes the celebration of the national festival. It would seem that by this time, when the Union is firmly established, when it has weathered storms that assailed it from without and from with- in, when it ha's definitely taken its place as one of the greatest > of the world-powers, the exuberance natural in a very young and comparatively small na- tion would be replaced by a form of celebration more in accordance with the dignity, strength and might of the Union. But if there are few traditions in the United States, such as exist have a firm hold upon the popular mind, and the dreadful cracker, the ear- piercing fish-horn, the loaded and continually ex- ploding pistol are the emblems, the sacred marks of demonstrative patriotism. There is, 'it is true, an oration usually delivered upon that great day, but that is as a rule a rhetori- cal performance which attracts but little attention. The real celebration consists in the making of the utmost racket and in reveling in freedom from the inconvenient ordinances which, in ordinary times, seek to restrain the high spirits of an excitable population. That accidents are rife, that limbs are lost, lives sacrificed, men, women and children wounded and maimed, does not appear to strike the multitude as a regrettable feature, but rather as an additional joy. That the mode of celebration is, when looked at dispassionately, barbaric rather than appropriate, does not seem to enter into many minds. It is the tradition to make a noise, much noise, to drive a large part of the population of the cities into such wildernesses as are accessible, to reduce another 67 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS part to nervous prostration, and to acclaim the whole business as patriotism. In this respect the Americans are not much worse than some of the Europeans are and more were not so long ago. Man is naturally a creature fond of noise: it is only the development of civilization, of refinement, which leads numbers of individuals to prefer quiet and peace to discord and clamor. Man in the state of boyhood finds peculiar joy in the production of the most horrible noises, and even when he emerges from that state into the next, he yet retains the fondness in an altered form. The firing of salutes, which thrills the old as it does the young, the ringing of church bells, the clangor of the brass band are but modified manifestations of that eager delight in din which is the special appan- age of the witless young and of the Americans on the Fourth of July. If only one remembers this, and takes care to escape to some lonely spot where the small boy is not, and the grown fool ceases from troubling, the Fourth of July in the United States can be spent in holy calm and pure meditation. But it is not well for the average man to remain within sound of the cities on that day. The meaning given to the word, the much abused word "patriotism," is rarely its real significance. The Americans have a great deal of real patriotism and along with it they have a great deal of the spurious article spurious, or preferably inexact. They, and they are far from being alone in this, misapply the term, and call that patriotic which is merely exuberance or at times boastfulness or else 68 PATRIOTISM hysteria. There is nothing patriotic in setting off fireworks from four in the morning until midnight, in blowing on fish-horns, in sending up toy balloons, even in listening to an oration in which the speaker launches out into fulsome praise of the "peepul" and their high deeds. To call this patriotism is to indicate that the real sense of the word has not been grasped. Patriotism is quite another thing, and it does not manifest itself noisily, any more than heroism. But it is a peculiarity of the Americans that they extend the meaning of words until these lose their original meaning. Heroes abound in the country ; it is becoming a distinction not to be a hero, just as in France, some years ago, it was a distinction not to be adorned with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Patriots are thick as blackberries, and the men and the women who, under normal conditions, would deserve the title are lost in the crowd, in the .multitude of "patriots" who have won the cheap title. It is with them as with the French, with whom they have so many points of resemblance: words possess an elasticity of meaning which is surprising, and appellations of honor are not for the select few but for everyone. It is one of the "Rights of Man" to be a hero, if heroes there be; a patriot, if patriots are to gain recognition. Why not the first comer as well as his neighbor? Such is the reasoning, unconscious, it is true, of the ordinary individual, who would, none the less, insist that it is not his reasoning. Everyone has the same right to everything as everyone else, and if heroism and 69 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS patriotism are being eulogized, everyone claims to be praised. The fact is that the word patriotism so noble and so much abused means, in the vast majority of cases, the right to do whatever one pleases, under color of celebrating. The terrifying of horses and dogs, the torturing of sick and whole, the destruc- tion of property, the wanton disregard of life, all this is described as patriotism, while in reality it is nothing more than the .gratify ing of certain tenden- cies of the human race. Yet no one would be more surprised to have the true view of this so-called "patriotism" placed before them than the leaders in celebrations: the mayors of cities, for instance, and their boards of aldermen and their common councils. They would express, less grimly, of course, their in- dignation and amazement as did that septembriseur who, being reproached with the massacre of some women, replied : "But I am a patriot !" It does not enter into the heads of the masses that patriotism means love of the fatherland, and a love which manifests itself by self-sacrifice and not at all by self-gratification. That it is not in the United States only that the meaning of the word is mis- apprehended does not help matters in the least: in a democracy it is important, it is essential, that the meaning of words and things should be clearly and thoroughly understood. A man is not in the least degree patriotic because he attends a banquet, eats a good dinner and shouts himself hoarse when the toast of his country is proposed. That is no more than a proof that he is enjoying himself and feeling 70 ' PATRIOTISM enthusiastic. He does nothing for his country by drinking a bumper of champagne and roaring his country's national anthem. His nation and his na- tion's ideals are not in the smallest degree helped on by his burning quantities of fireworks upon a certain day in the year : he produces a pretty or a disturbing effect, but he is not therefore patriotic, and it is quite possible that were he invited to contribute to a fund for the relief of men who have fallen by the way in the service of the State, and make no fuss about it, that he would refuse. He would none the less be a patriot in his opinion: he celebrates; he cheers at the right time; he hangs a banner on his outward wall: these, to him, are the tokens and testimonies of patriotism. But then it would be desirable to invent a new word to describe the real thing, and as that word would itself soon be misapplied, it is best to teach the multitudes what true patriotism is and the press the advantage of not bestowing the title of patriot and hero promiscuously. A man may love his coun- try, and at the same time be quite unprepared to sacrifice himself for it. There are thousands like that in every land. They are not braggarts, they are not boasters, they are not hypocrites ; they are ordinary men, decent, honorable, sincere; but they are not of genuine patriotic metal. They are not of the sort that walks quietly to the work to be done, at their own expense either of money or life or anything else that is valued. They find many rea- sons for not subscribing to funds, or subscribing in- finitely less than they can well afford to do. They 71 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS want to manifest their national enthusiasm and love of country only when it is not costly to do so. Sacrifice they neither desire nor understand. And therefore they neither understand nor will ever un- derstand true patriotism. They will read the life of George Washington and miss no matter how often they peruse the story the significance of that high patriotism which he exhibited. They will read the life of Lincoln, and never suspect what it was that made him a great patriot. They will read of Paul Jones and never perceive that it was not his fighting the Serapis and taking her that made him a patriot, but something else which it is needless to speak of since it is bound to remain concealed from them, even if explained. Just as there are num- berless beings on this earth who never did and never will understand poetry, music or art in any form, so there are thousands upon thousands who never will understand that the root and principle of patriotism is personal sacrifice, and not at all the mere doing of brave deeds. These are fine things, but they do not of themselves constitute a patriot. It would be a very interesting question to study: the effect of democracy, on the one hand, and of autocracy on the other, upon the fostering of the virtue of patriotism. When the devotion to Mikado and country exhibited by the Japanese is remem- bered, the inclination to ascribe superior power to autocracy is strong. But when one studies Amer- ican life closely, it does seem that the democratic spirit is, after all, the more inspired and the more fruitful. There is, in the United States, a great deal 72 PATRIOTISM of the most genuine and the most beautiful patriot- ism; precisely of that kind which the noisy devotee of celebration does not and cannot apprehend. He is the sort of man who shouts truculently: "My country right or wrong," and remains convinced that he is thereby proving the superiority of that country to all others. The real patriots repeat the cry, but with an important modification: "My country when right; and when wrong, to set her right." And to this purpose they bend their ef- forts, not spasmodically, but steadily, regularly, un- tiringly. They are the men and women who hesitate not to criticize and to condemn, in no carping spirit, but with the desire to improve. They are made to bear the brunt of frequent ridicule; to suffer odium as un-American; to stand gibes and jeers from those whose ideas of patriotism are of the Chinese-cracker variety and jingo sort, but they maintain through good report and evil report their stand for truth, purity, honesty in the administration of the home and foreign affairs of the Great Republic. They are real patriots, because they sacrifice many a chance to win popularity at the expense of their con- victions, many an opportunity to make or conserve money; because they are content to lose friends, even, if the loss to themselves is compensated by gain to the Union. They have the interests of their country at heart, and they place these interests far and away above their own private desires. They make no great stir, excite no popular applause, win no plaudits from the press, but their work tells and their labor is beneficial. They are those who pre- 73 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS serve the monuments of the past and strive energeti- cally against the overwhelming commercialism which would sweep away the very vestiges of the history of the land for the sake of a benefit to the more practical side of daily life. For commercialism, the love of money, so wide- spread in the United States, is in rooted antagonism to patriotism. Commercialism understands sacrifice at the expense of others only and for its own benefit. It cares nothing for the teaching of history, for the memorials of bygone days, for the tale of hero- ism in past generations. All it sees, all it cares for is present advantage. It will destroy a time-hon- ored relic, absolutely priceless from the point of view of the lover of his country, because it stands in the way of an improvement: improvement being the satisfying of temporary convenience. It is the unswerving foe and the ever present enemy of the ideal, and patriotism is idealism. It is practical, and there is nothing practical in the sacrifice of self for the sake of others, for the sake of one's fatherland, one's city. It is on the watch and active, and it commends itself to the majority of the public. It is difficult to make the major portion of the public understand that the historical monuments of any country do not belong exclusively to that coun- try, but are a part of the heritage of the world at large, of humanity. For in so far as the history of a land is the record of the struggle for light, justice and freedom, in so far is it the common heritage of all nations which have struggled or will, in the fu- ture, struggle for these ideals. There speedily comes 74 PATRIOTISM a time when the historical monuments of a land cease to be purely national and become universal; when they no longer recall bitterness and strife and hos- tility and anger, but the great motives which ac- tuated, albeit unconsciously, the opponents who fought each other. It is not quite a hundred years since Waterloo was fought, it is only a little over a hundred years since Nelson fell on the Victory's deck at Trafalgar, shattering the plans of Napoleon and preparing the final disaster on the plateau of Mont Saint- Jean; yet neither Frenchman nor Englishman now looks back upon those two tremendous con- flicts as, on the one hand, defeats to be remembered with hatred of the victor, nor, on the other hand, as victories to be recalled with contempt for and detestation of the vanquished. Both nations remem- ber them rather as events in which the destinies of the world were changed, and in which they themselves were as pawns in the hands of a Higher Power. The battles in the Crimea have not prevented Frenchmen and Russians from being friends and allies, and while these fights brought out the bravery of the former and the steadfastness of the latter, it is this memory, and not that of triumph or defeat, which survives at the present time. In other words, the conception of historical records and of patriotism differs in Europe and in the United States, where it is still too commonly the habit to use the memorials of long-past conflicts as a spur and a stimulus to international hatred. It is hopeless to expect the British, for instance, to maintain toward their kin in the United States an 75 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS attitude of aloofness and dislike simply because George Washington, seconded by the people of the Thirteen Colonies, succeeded in separating those colonies from the Mother Country. But it is not difficult to maintain traditional abhorrence of Great Britain and her people among the dwellers in the United States, by continually presenting them as the inveterate foes of the nation and its liberties. There never was anything very inveterate in the feelings of the British toward the Americans and the vic- tories of the latter have left no soreness in English memories. Yet it is a fact that part of the patriotic idea, as manifested on nearly all occasions, consists, in the United States, in considering Britain as still the foe of the Union, and in taking it for granted that the sentiments of the end of the eighteenth cen- tury are the sentiments of the beginning of the twentieth. Nothing more erroneous can well be imag- ined, and nothing is more absurd than to suppose that the monuments which commemorate the great struggle for freedom are disagreeable to the English- man. Far from this, they possess a profound in- terest for him, and the fear of seeing them interfered with by the action of commercialism is as strong possibly stronger as in the breast of the most en- thusiastic American. He understands that these memories and the buildings and monuments which contain them are as sacred to him as to the people in whose land they exist; that the scenes of the con- flicts which ended in separation of the Motherland and the Colonies are as fraught with interest to him as to the most thorough descendant of the embattled 76 PATRIOTISM farmers. These things cease to be local and national and become universal. The struggle which ended in the establishment of the United States is one of the great events of world-history, and all that is con- nected with it is consequently of world interest. The Americans, however, are exhibiting in recent years a truer and higher perception of the impor- tance of real patriotic teaching than is to be found in England, for instance. Scarcely is there a school- room where the portrait of Washington is not to be seen. This trait is fine. It is right that the mem- ory of such a man, so wise, so prudent, so steadfast, so forgetful of self and so entirely devoted to his country's cause should be continually kept before the young. His example is inspiring; his life is fruitful of good. And when one reflects that what he strove for and accomplished was to benefit not his own beloved land alone but the wide world, the wisdom of the practice becomes yet more apparent. The plan of hoisting the national colors over every school, although not yet universal, is another excel- lent method of cultivating the patriotic sense in the young. The ceremonies which, in many cases, at- tend the hoisting of the colors, and which recall the beautiful order on board men-of-war at morn and eve, are such as to impress the youthful mind with the deep meaning of the flag, symbol of the nation in the United States as it is throughout the British Empire. Canada, progressive, alert, has also adopted a similar practice, but in Old England it- self it is the rare exception and not the rule. And this, spite of the fact that to every Briton the world 77 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS over it is the Union Jack which is to him the emblem and visible representation of the country of which he is a citizen, and not, as Americans, even highly in- telligent Americans are apt to believe and say, the Sovereign. It is not attachment to an hereditary house which is the bond that holds together the Em- pire; that is an aid, but not an indispensable one. The real tie is the flag, that embodiment of mem- ories, glorious and immortal memories, which are the common heritage of all Britons. And it is the peculiar cult of the Stars and Stripes which is to be admired in America; the reverence, which it is sought, and on the whole very success- fully, to inspire in the breast of every resident in the land, for the national colors. It is this which may be copied with advantage by the Briton in his home- land, and the sooner the better. Most praiseworthy also are the continuous efforts of the many historical societies which devote them- selves to the preservation of the monuments that recall the past of the Republic. The spirit of these societies is daily becoming broader and more toler- ant. No longer is it with them a prerequisite that everything shall be made to tell against the country from which sprang the United States. They seek rather to bring to the light the truths of that strug- gle, truths obscured, as they inevitably are, by the fierce passions of the moment. And so with the tremendous Civil War, which desolated the land for years and left behind it so heavy a cloud of sadness and bitterness, now happily waning and vanishing, as the younger generation, untouched by the feelings 78 PATRIOTISM of that day, see on either side devotion and sacrifice and nobility of character and generosity and cour- age, and perceive that the brotherhood of the race has been strengthened rather than weakened by the bloody contest, and that the principle fought for was indeed worth all that was given for it. It is in all these things that the conception of patriotism mani- fests itself and that the democracy shows itself able to develop the right understanding of it. VI NATURALIZATION It is not intended to discuss here the arguments for and against change of allegiance. The fact it- self, that men find it desirable, convenient or neces- sary to adopt a nationality different from that to which they were born, is indisputable. The question is one which, in the United States, has taken its place among regular subjects of conver- sation. In Great Britain and in the Britains beyond the Seas, naturalization is not a topic of absorbing interest. Foreigners change their nationality and be- come British subjects without exciting the least com- ment. Nobody troubles to ask them the reasons for the step they take; nobody has troubled to urge them to take it. There is for this a subtle reason, a cause which acts in other ways also with us British: the feeling that the grant of naturalization is a very high privilege, which it is. And being a privilege, a favor, it is to be sought, not proffered, and still less pressed upon the stranger within our gates. While it is true that American citizenship is prized, that the possession of it carries with it many advantages a point speedily perceived by Turks and other infidels who 80 have made trouble for the American Government none the less it has not yet attained to the imposing dignity now, and for so long, attached to the "I am a British citizen." It will do so, undoubtedly ; it is every day approaching that level, but it has not yet attained it and cannot quite reach it while the ac- quisition of it is made so easy, the desire to obtain it so sedulously cultivated and what ought to be a rare and coveted privilege is made a matter of no particular worth, and, not infrequently, an obliga- tion and a burden. "I have been naturalized in this country," a rich Canadian said not long since. "That was because I found that if I would succeed in affairs I must be- come so, but once I have made my pile and return home, I shall throw off my Americanism like an old glove." There are very many Britons naturalized in the United States, and very many who have adopted their new nationality in all sincerity, but there are likewise very many on whom it sits but indifferently well, for it is the consequence, not of a hearty desire to be Americans, but of the supposed impossibility of succeeding in their business or their profession unless they change their allegiance. And a proof of the hollowness, if one may use so harsh a term, of their change of heart, is that it is among these forci- bly naturalized Britons that are to be found the most timid, the ones who most dread offending the extraor- dinarily acute sensibilities of the rampant Amer- ican. Aware that they are not to the manner born, they, like most perverts the word being used in its 81 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS strictly etymological sense, out of deference to the aforesaid rampant American exaggerate the need of being intensely patriotic, as patriotism is under- stood in this land, that is, intensely intolerant and, not infrequently, offensive. With regard to no other nationality is the urging to renounce allegiance to the Motherland so persist- ent and so frequent as it is with Britons. The Mayor of one of the great cities regularly attended, during his term of office, the banquets and annual reunions of the various British societies in his bailiwick, and the unchanging theme of his remarks was the im- portance, as he viewed it, of every Briton who had not yet forsaken his allegiance to the British Sover- eign to do so at once and without any loss of time whatever. Nor was this entreaty the result of hos- tility to Great Britain. The particular Mayor in question, an upright and honorable merchant, was no fanatical hater of the Anglo-Saxon race, to which, indeed, he himself belonged. He merely shared the prevailing belief, the deep-seated conviction that there is no higher honor on God's earth than that of being an American, and this while he failed to per- ceive that his very urging, his very intensity of eagerness that his hearers should all pass over to his side, contributed largely to prevent the effect he was striving for. The American clubman and the American club-woman also understands human na- ture admirably, and takes care to have a long wait- ing list to stir up the envy of the candidates for admission. But that same clubman will unhesitat- ingly beg a foreigner, a Briton especially, to become 82 NATURALIZATION naturalized, while he would never dream of adopting the same line of conduct in respect to the member- ship of his club. In the one case he understands and acts upon the value of a privilege; in the other, he destroys the efficacy of that bait. The power of assimilation is astonishingly marked in the United States ; the second generation of im- migrants, the sons and daughters of parents who landed in New York, or Boston, is fervently Amer- ican. The parents themselves, while often retaining a fondness for the land of their birth, a fondness due to pure sentimentality in most cases, are almost invariably enthusiastic citizens of their new coun- try. The German, the Dutch, the Frisian, the Dane, the Swede, the Norwegian, the Pole, the Lith- uanian, the Russian, the Jew, from whatever part of the universe he has come, the Slav, the Italian, the Spaniard, one and all turn American in ideals, instincts, manners and modes of thought, though necessarily retaining some of the traits of their own land. But they are Americans : they may celebrate some festival, the anniversary of the birth of their former ruler, the day held in honor in their far-off home place, but the Fourth of July is to them the greatest day in the whole calendar, and, if they happen to reside in New England, they add to it Patriots' Day and sing the heroic deeds of the men of Lexington and Concord. The Britons do not. Those of them who have re- nounced all fealty to their Sovereign and who are most resolute in fulfilling all that the spirit and the letter of the law demand of them, do not, AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS for all that, become so thoroughly American as the immigrants from other lands. They fly the Stars and Stripes on national holidays ; they set off the universal fire-cracker, in deference to that Law of Noise which rules in the country; they watch and cheer the march of the procession, the tramp of the soldiery, but they are not, do what they will, quite the Simon Pure article. There is something of the old leaven left in them; the assimilation of the Briton is less complete, less thorough. Nor is the reason for this condition of things far to seek. The Briton has nothing to gain, save ma- terially, from changing his allegiance. Materially, of course, he may and he does benefit. If he have political ability and some ambition, he may attain more readily to influence and power in this land than in the old country. He can rise to any position in the political world save that of President. He does not need, as an indispensable preliminary, family in- fluence or great wealth. He may, by his own exer- tions and by his own tact, obtain the suffrages of his fellow-voters. This means a good deal to men who, in the land of their birth, would strive in vain to enter the House of Commons. The multiplicity of governments states without end, almost, gives every man a chance. The Governors of States are of all nationalities; holders of high judicial offices so many of which are elective belong to a dozen different nationalities. Heads of great enterprises in the commercial and the industrial worlds are often men who have come from other lands. There is, 84 NATURALIZATION there can be no question of the great material ad- vantages of naturalization in this respect. But in other respects, these advantages do not exist for the Briton, while they are a main factor in the determination of immigrants of other races to become American citizens. The Spaniard, the Italian, the German, the Russian derive unquestion- able benefit from American citizenship, which gives them what they have not at all, or have not to any- thing like the same extent in their own land: free- dom, equality before the law, justice, often rough and uneven, yet justice on the whole, and, most prized by them, immunity from forced military ser- vice. They attain freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, of worship, of thought, of publicity. These are things which they appreciate. The Briton possesses them all, and some of them in a greater and more perfect degree than his American kinsman. He has naught to gain in this respect. Hence he is less amenable to the presentment of the advantage to be derived from changing from the Union Jack to the Stars and Stripes than is the newcomer from other lands, and unless some real material benefit is to be obtained, he is not inclined to renounce his Sovereign. Indeed, very often where such material advantage is within his reach, or where the simple process of naturalization would save him loss or damage, the Briton holds fast to his native land and prefers to forego what might profit him to parting with that sacred birthright. Nor is there any reason why he should. The ideals of the two races, the principles of their gov- 85 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ernments, the purposes they seek to accomplish, the aims they endeavor to realize, are so similar that the Briton can further them equally well, while in the United States, without changing his nationality as by changing it. He does not become more public spirited, for public spirit is not as greatly developed in this land ; he does not acquire greater respect for law, for, by common consent, respect for law is still the exception rather than the rule in the United States. He does not exchange his ideals for higher ones, for in practice the fulfilling of ideals is less persistently sought here. Thus he cannot improve himself morally by becoming an American citizen. What he is he has become through the home training and the home traditions. He is more likely, at pres- ent, at least, to lose instead of gaining. Why should he do so? If he is to be of further use to the people among whom his lot is cast, it can be only by strict adherence to the high principles which are avowedly at the base of British conceptions of public life. And the fact that a man can resist temptation of material improvement in his circumstances is in itself an object lesson worth giving. There is virtue in steadfastness, and when that steadfastness in- volves the voluntary sacrifice of opportunities to acquire wealth or power, it is worth imitating and it is always respectable. Leaving aside the Briton, what of the other nationalities which pour into the country in scores of thousands? It may be said without much fear of contradiction that for them the reasons in favor of naturalization are simply innumerable and over- 86 NATURALIZATION powering. There is scarcely one country which sends emigrants to the United States which can claim to offer to its subjects the large share of per- sonal liberty, the guarantee of freedom of thought and expression, the security against the burdens of compulsory military service, or the opportunities of advancement in every walk of life, which this land presents to great and small. It is a fact that in America, taking the name as applicable at present to the United States, Napoleon's famous remark, "La carrier e ouverte aux talents," is a real and solid truth. A man, if energetic, sober, trustworthy, per- severing, can surely succeed and rise in life with a rapidity and a certainty that are nowhere else to be obtained. And that this is no exaggeration, there are examples and to spare in proof. From every point of view, then, naturalization is, to the ordinary foreigner, a signal gain. It gives him a status such as he has never before enjoyed; it provides him with chances of success which have never been his ; it secures him in a way he has never enjoyed, and if he values highly being an American citizen, he is only estimating at its right worth what is a high and beneficial privilege. The power of assimilation of the United States is dwelt upon frequently by Americans themselves as an additional proof of the superiority of democracy. But there are plain limitations to the assimilation of certain of the races that furnish large contingents of immigrants. Even the passing visitor, if he reads the papers, will note the existence of what is called the British- 87 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS American vote, the Irish- American vote, the German- American vote. It is difficult to conceive of anything more harmful, politically, than this. For in the event of some difficulty arising with Great Britain, with Germany, it is at once assumed that the British- American or the German-American will array him- self with the country of his birth against the land of his adoption. That is not in the least likely to be the case, for the man who has parted with his allegiance for the sake of some personal motive a very excellent or a merely commercial one, as the case may be is not the one to incur any risk for the sake of his former compatriots. But the existence of these bodies throughout the land shows two things : that assimilation is not nearly as thorough as it is claimed and that this class of citizens have an altogether wrong idea of the responsibility of naturalization. The Irish-Americans may be left out of considera- tion, for with them it is an article of faith that no matter how many generations there are between them and their ancestors who emigrated to the United States, Irish they are first and foremost and Amer- icans only afterward. But among the British who have become natural- ized, many, if not most, have changed their alle- giance from very sincere motives and have become true citizens of their new country. They differ from those piebald hybrids who one day prance through the streets under the Union Jack, in all the glory of uniforms of their own designing, and of rank of their own bestowal, but who on another oc- 88 NATURALIZATION casion are vociferating their devotion to Old Glory. Now it is certain that if anyone changes his na- tionality, he owes himself unrestrictedly to his new land, he ceases wholly to be aught but an American. For such an one to call himself a British- American is a misnomer: he has deliberately rejected Britain, and has no right to assume the name of British any more. When he talks of the British vote, he talks of what does not exist and cannot exist, for no Briton, not naturalized in America, can have a vote : he is an alien. And the parading of the so-called British vote is one of the surest modes of fostering the anti-British feeling which too readily comes to the surface in times of difference between the two countries. It is an offense alike to the country the man has renounced and to that he has adopted. VII DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM The people of the United States are not a military nation ; they have no military spirit and no military ambition; the bloody glories of war do not appeal to them; its pomp and circumstance have but slight effect upon them. This does not imply that Amer- icans are incapable of fighting, for the world knows very well that they can fight sturdily and success- fully. It does not mean that they lack military courage or endurance, for they possess both, and have proved it in the Indian wars, in the wars with England, in the terrible conflicts of the Civil War. It means simply that they have not the desire for military glory that has so long ruled in Europe, and still inspires more than one nation of the Old World. This is due to several causes. The first is that they have no tradition of war as a normal condition of society, as is the case with every European na- tion. As these slowly emerged out of the chaos pro- duced by the invasion of the Northern peoples, who overran the Roman Empire, the warrior became necessarily the central figure. It was not a case of individual prowess, but of combination, which pro- duced the feudal system, linking all men one to en- 90 DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM other. Men did not live in isolated families; they forgathered round the medieval fortresses and the abbeys which gave them protection. War was an everyday occurrence, and warlike qualities were con- sequently highly prized. The knight was the splen- did hero of the time. Round him clustered the tales of the fireside and the songs of the poets and wan- dering bards. And while slowly the state of contin- ual war was replaced by a happier condition of normal peace, the spirit which has so long inspired European nations lived and influenced the thoughts of men. Conquest still had its charms : peoples and nations were still viewed as the just booty of the stronger, and the rights of men were trampled under foot heedlessly, for they were not understood. The very French Revolution which changed the face of society was itself speedily mastered and tamed by a great warrior, the greatest captain of modern times, and the military spirit received a new lease of life thanks to the victories of Bonaparte. Even the na- tions which had already learned to value the advan- tages of peace, Great Britain first and foremost, found themselves compelled by the inordinate ambi- tion and restless energy of the great conqueror, to turn to their arms again, and to add to their al- ready brilliant record of deeds of valor new tri- umphs, and new glories. The seas were swept by the British fleets and the British cruisers, and the Em- pire of the Waves passed into the keeping of Albion. The later jealousies and rivalry of sovereigns, the new-born feeling of liberty, which the French had scattered wherever they stormed through the lands, 91 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS brought about renewed conflicts and Europe re- mained one vast battleground on which contended rivals for supremacy. Very different was it in the new country across the wide Atlantic. There men had taken up arms only when, in the pursuit of that liberty the found- ers of the Union had learned in Old England, they found full self-government denied them. They did not fight for the mere pleasure of combat; they fought for a principle, and, having vindicated it, laid down the weapons with which they had won their cause. To them the first and chief purpose was not extension of territory by military measures, but the development of the land they possessed and the im- provement of the conditions under which they lived. Farmers had other things to think about than to earn glory on the tented field; fishermen, better oc- cupation than sinking each other's craft ; merchants, more profitable pursuits than destruction of the ne- cessities of life. War did not appeal to them in the abstract or the concrete. They were primarily and at bottom men of peace, who had recourse to their arms only for the protection of their homes. As the Union grew, as new territories were added and the ambitions of the young Republic increased, there were wars of extension, of conquest, but even these failed to rouse permanent enthusiasm or to awaken in the people that earnest military spirit so characteristic of most of the European nations. Nor did the War of 1812 rouse it permanently. The successes then scored gratified the nation, but did not induce it to abandon its policy of peaceful 92 DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM development for a career of strife. And the tre- mendous war for the preservation of the Union was not of a character to inspire men to become enthusi- astic over the slaying of their brethren. The steady immigration that aided to increase the population, the opening up of new territories, the discovery of illimitable sources of wealth ready to the hand, turned men's thoughts away from ideas of war and toward purposes of commerce, mining and manufacture. The making of fortunes was more tempting than the destroying of property and hu- man lives, no matter how glorious these perform- ances might be made to appear. Even the victories won at sea failed to make a deep and lasting im- pression upon the popular mind. The navy had dis- tinguished itself, but it did not appeal to the people as it did and yet does in England. The army and the navy were not privileged services, and the mem- bers of either were not looked upon as exalted above the ordinary civilian. Indeed, as time went on, the tendency was rather to belittle these branches of the national service, and to look down upon those who devoted themselves to them. Nowadays, as has been said, the fact that a man holds a commission in the one or the other does by no means confer distinction upon him. Far otherwise is it in Europe. But that is because the tradition of the imperious need of the services of the soldier and the sailor, and his conse- quent supposed superiority to the civilian, especially to the civilian engaged in trade or commerce, swayed and sways the minds of Europeans, while it has never existed in the United States. 93 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS Another cause is the feeling, very widespread, that war is, on the whole, a ruinous business, even if one comes out victorious. There is far more common sense, in this respect, among Americans than the ordinary visitor would suppose. There is talk of war now and then; there are papers, of the yellow variety in particular, which endeavor to inflame popular passions and to create a longing for a fight with some nation or other. But the spirit of the people is antagonistic to war in itself, not, it must be repeated, through any lack of courage or capacity to fight hard and well, but simply because fighting for fighting's sake does not appeal to the sound sense of the nation. This was well seen at the time of the Venezuela incident. At first, the extraordinary and inflammatory proclamation of President Cleveland excited a burst of enthusiasm. The cry throughout the country was for immediate hostilities with Britain, and already men saw in fancy the enemy of 1776 and 1812 humbled to the dust. But with a speed that must have amazed those who were not acquainted with American "horse sense," things changed, and where there had been wild and hysterical clamor for instant death- grapple were heard protests against the needless shedding of blood, and declarations that better methods than war were extant for the settlement of international differences. And to this view the entire population rallied, with even greater spontaneity than it had responded to the presidential trumpet blast. This disposition of the American nation to prefer peace to war, to prefer arbitration to fighting, so 94 DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM often unjustified, is one of the great causes of its strength and influence in the councils of the world. It is also one of the greatest tributes to the value of democratic government, for the will of the people prevailed over the wish of the ruler. A third cause is the absence, from the cities and towns of the United States, of the uniform. It is a rare sight, comparatively. The regular army is small in numbers, and so long as danger was to be apprehended from the Redskins, the few troops, horse and foot, were stationed in far distant posts as are now the men of the Canadian Mounted Police. The navy, until recent years, was insignificant, and even after it had been increased and the most modern types of ships added to it, it failed to evoke any very warm enthusiasm. Along the shores of the Atlantic seaboard, men might behold these mighty engines of war and inspect them when anchored in their ports, but it does not appear that the naval service has become wildly popular in consequence. Indeed, it is in the main not the inhabitants of the seacoasts who furnish the greater number of naval recruits, but rather the inland states, where no bat- tleship or cruiser has ever been seen. This absence of the uniform in the daily life of the people, and the consequent absence of military or naval pageants whose very frequency, in the Old World, contributes to maintain the military spirit and to inflame the military ardor of youth, is a potent cause of the lack of the war spirit. The atmosphere in the cities and towns is commercial, in- dustrial, literary, political; it is not military at all. 95 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS Young men do not dream of a career in the army or navy as the finest they can embrace; business or the professions appeal to them far more strongly. They see everywhere around them testimony of suc- cess won along these lines ; they scarcely see any proof of success in fighting. So little, indeed, is the uniform a fetish, as it is in the Old World, that it fails to produce in the mind of the beholder that admiration or that awe which in Europe it almost invariably excites. If anything the wearing of uni- form is apt to stir ridicule and to call forth ungener- ous remarks about "fuss and feathers," or else it is a bar to admission to places of public amusement, a condition of things that would vastly astonish cer- tain military men in Europe. But the most important cause of all is, perhaps, the working of that consequence of the democratic principle: individualism. This is entirely opposed to discipline and unreasoning obedience, two essen- tials in matters military and naval. The average American neither understands nor cares to under- stand discipline and blind obedience. Every man tends to be a law unto himself, and whenever he comes into conflict with an established law, his imme- diate instinct is to avoid compliance with it. It has been said that the legal profession has largely adopted the practice of studying how best law can be turned and nullified. It is the outcome of the spirit here referred to, and which manifests itself among Americans as a disinclination to bind them- selves to absolute obedience. There are curious proofs of this to be constantly 96 DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM met with. The cadets on a training ship object to the food served out to them, and desert in a body. The action does not call out immediate condemna- tion, as a breach of discipline; on the contrary, all manner of explanations and excuses and reasons are put forward to justify an action utterly subversive of true discipline. A soldier refuses to attend church parade, and men are inclined to look favorably upon his objection, because the Constitution says some- thing about men not being compelled to follow any particular religion. At the time of the Spanish war the colonel of a regiment of volunteers, at Tampa, was compelled to address his men on the subject of looting the negroes' stalls and too free indulgence in drink. He ended by stating that the first of- fender thereafter would be severely punished, as it was his determination to enforce discipline in his command. "The hell you will!" was the audible comment made by one of the men, and he went un- rebuked. The public schools have, many of them, organized cadet battalions or companies, and there are private schools in which the wearing of the uniform is part of the regulations, but those sporadic attempts at militarizing the youth of the land fail of their pur- pose. They remain civilians after all, and turn their attention to civilian and not to military pur- suits. It is not too much to say that the captain of an athletic team is a far greater man, in the eyes of the American youth of his generation, than the most famous soldier or the most illustrious sailor who may be offered to his admiration. He would rather 97 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS attain distinction on the football field or on the diamond than win epaulets. The one appeals to him directly ; the other very remotely. The American loves the spectacular; and he de- sires to have the spectacle in which he is a prominent figure beheld by a large concourse. The fighting in the Philippines was doubtless of a nature to train soldiers and to make officers reliable and steady, but it had to be carried on far away from all the sur- roundings and the cheering that the American youth adores. He does not crave to go thither, and if, in the course of his duty, he is sent to those remote colonial possessions, so little endeared yet to the national heart, he most naturally longs to return to his native land. He is brave, he is intelligent, he is independent in thought and in action; he makes a good soldier when he feels the wish to be a good soldier; and he makes a first-class sailor when the love of the sea has gripped him and makes him for- get much of his democracy, but he is not naturally borne toward the subjection of self which is a first indispensable step in the formation of the true mili- tary man, who must perforce learn to obey ere he can learn to command. Nor does the American at any age admire war in itself. Yellow papers may shriek themselves hoarse, as they did before the war with Spain, but they do not win over the solid part of the nation, the genuine Americans. War is not a pastime or a means of earning glory ; Sherman's famous dictum is too often quoted to permit of any illusion on the score of the beauties of war. War is destructive, and the Amer- 98 DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM lean is the opposite of a destroyer ; he loves to build up, to develop and in this he shows his profound common sense; he is the truer and the greater civil- izer because of that fact. He seeks rather ways of attaining his ends which do not necessitate the em- ployment of brute force, and all war means that in the end. He strives to expand, not to diminish, and war diminishes the resources and the welfare of the nation. He will not shrink from or shirk it, if it be- comes inevitable, but he will not call for it with a light heart. There be, necessarily, some Americans who rejoice in any chance of a row with foreign countries, big or small, but these do not represent the true national spirit, which is distinctly peaceful. America has made her amazing progress not through fighting but through industry and education; it is not inclined to try other methods when the old ones have answered and still answer so well. The plow- share and the anvil come more readily to the hand of the inhabitant of the New World, and the Minute Man of 1776 is a true type of his descendants as he was of his contemporaries. Were the need to arise, thousands on thousands of young Americans would respond swiftly to the call to arms ; they did so at the time of the Spanish War, as they had done so before when the Union was threatened. But once the job finished, once the object attained, the soldier of days, or weeks, or months or years, returns to his civil occupations and lays aside unregretfully rifle and sword. He is not a soldier first and a citizen afterward, but a citizen always ; prepared to serve his_ country, but opposed to forming part of a stand- 99 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ing army and little inclined to man the fleet in time of peace. That preparation in piping times is the best guaranty of their continuance he hardly under- stands, and on the whole it is he that is right. His country, thanks to its position, thanks to the policy it has consistently pursued, can afford to keep out of the major number of rows, which continually threaten the peace of other parts of the world. Of late, it is true, the chances of being involved in diffi- culties abroad have grown with the growth of the land as a world-power, but the American is a firm be- liever in the virtues of arbitration and in the avoid- ance of unnecessary strife. Peace, if sought with steadfastness of purpose, can be had, on the whole, as readily as war, and peace is distinctly more favor- able to a country than turmoil and fighting. The spirit of the American is the spirit of peace, as be- comes the country which is one of the greatest on earth. The tone of the higher press, the tone of the men of influence when they speak, is not a war- like one, but the opposite. The yellow press delights in stirring up animosity, not so much because its directors desire quarreling and destruction, as be- cause they are keen business men who exploit the lower and lowest passions of their readers for their own personal advantage. They shout that the coun- try has been insulted, that the national honor has been smirched, that patriotism and a true under- standing of the greatness of the United States de- mand that such and such a country be instantly wiped off the face of the earth, but they do this, not be- cause they are naturally bloodthirsty, but simply 100 because they will sell more copies of their abominable sheets. Again, the spirit of personal independence and the deep-rooted objection to restraint in any form militates against the development of the spirit which, in Europe, maintains the tradition of the superiority of the soldier and sailor, and inspires the youth at school with the longing to be a hero. Discipline is one of the most difficult things to attain with the average American: he is rebellious to it; he insists on having his own way just as much as he can; he has no innate, inbred respect for authority as such. The policeman on his beat, the teacher at his desk, the Governor in his Executive Chamber, the Presi- dent in the White House do not fill him with awe. These are mortals like unto himself, and, in a sense, under obligations to him since it is his vote, which, in some way, has given them the positions they hold. He made them and he can unmake them; he does unmake them, and throw them down from time to time. He does not entertain toward them the feeling of the European for the majesty of the institutions of his land, incarnate in the persons of leaders. He is himself the Sovereign, and he proposes on all occa- sions to maintain that sovereignty and all its attri- butes of irresistible power. He has his own ideas as to the way in which he should be treated, even if he has engaged to serve. The habits of criticism, of free expression of opinion do not fall from him like a cloak when he enters the service; he carefully retains them, and uses them on occasion. The sea lawyer who made trouble on 101 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ships of old is a frequent figure at the present time, and the land lawyer is found quite as often in the ranks of the army. Add to this the disinclination of the people to any form of coercion, especially to military coercion, and the lack of military spirit ceases to astonish. During the troubles in the South of France a few years ago, the Government found it could not rely on certain regiments because the men in them were drawn from the population of the angered depart- ments. The soldiers fraternized with Albert's fol- lowers, and the officers were helpless. The same thing happened in the case of the Church troubles, and the same thing will happen when- ever soldiers of the army of the Republic are to be employed against their own countrymen. When the Empire flourished in France, Louis Napoleon was careful to remove the soldiers conscripted from a certain territory into another far away, so that the difficulty, palpable even then, might not arise. But all over the United States the feeling is the same, and it makes no difference where the men come from: they are all Americans and all are imbued with the same objection to military rule. Invite them to join a standing army, and the preju- dice against it breaks out ; call upon them to volun- teer for a foreign war, and the ranks are filled in a trice, for the love of adventure is still strong. But the love of service is absent. Finally, there is the difficulty which arises out of the mingling of races. Germans and Irish, good fighters both, are and remain primarily Germans and DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM Irish, and are Americans only afterward. They al- ways speak of themselves as Irish-Americans and German- Americans. Their own nationality subsists untouched, practically, and they must be satisfied as Germans or Irish ere they will enter upon any enterprise. They regard themselves as a power in the land and with a certain amount of reason. Their vote is usually a solid vote, cast for the candidates of their choice. They, especially the Irish, are more disposed to require subserviency on the part of the whole nation than to exhibit it themselves. This complicates matters very much, when it comes to developing a strong military spirit that cannot brook interference in any form. An officer of rank, whose position enabled him to analyze the causes of the difficulties continually met with in the proper de- velopment of the army, speaking before the Military Service Institute, used these remarkable words : "Democracies, as a rule, represent peace. .They do not respond to the personal ambitions of an in- dividual, nor are they readily drawn into schemes for territorial aggrandizement involving war. . . . We are of sanguine temperament; we believe in our star ; we regard the law lightly ; we place thousands of laws on the statute books, but are lax in enforcing them. These qualities in the military service make rigid discipline impossible. Deserters, sentinels asleep on post, and guerrillas should be shot, but with us the penalty is rarely exacted. Our patriot- ism is largely of the lip. That true patriotism which regards the country as the home to be cherished and protected within and from without, even at personal 103 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS sacrifice, is not as common as it should be. It is constantly being diluted by the accession of for- eigners who are pleased to style themselves German- or Irish- Americans, as though they desired to serve two masters. These national characteristics, which become governmental ones in a democracy like ours, make it impossible to organize and discipline an effective army from the point of view of military ex- perts." This is perfectly true, and the somewhat pessimis- tic tone of the speaker is justified by the facts. But what do the facts prove? Simply that the ideas and traditions of the Old World are incompatible with the exacting democratic principle. The Old World has lived with the military spirit for centuries, un- til it has become part and parcel of the life of the nations ; until even lovers of peace are ready to sub- scribe to the doctrine that one must always be ready for war, as in the days when no stay was to be had to the internecine carnage save when the Church in- tervened and proclaimed the truce of God; until statesmen hesitate to make a serious move toward diminution of armaments because of the outcry that at once arises, spite of the genuine desire of the taxpayer to be relieved of his crushing burden. In America, this is not the case ; men are accustomed to the ways of peace, and not to the habits of war ; they are trained from earliest childhood in the belief of their own sovereignty, and refuse to abdicate it on behalf of any man or set of men; they do not feel the pressing necessity of a huge navy or a multi- tudinous army, and throw all manner of obstacles in DEMOCRACY AND MILITARISM the path of the military and naval enthusiasts. They are for peace, not for war ; for independence, not for discipline; they care not a fig for the ideas of Europe, and they are very keen on their own. They are a democratic community, democratic from its very birth, and not a democracy evolved from an au- tocracy in the course of centuries, and therefore retaining in many respects traditions and habits and beliefs which conflict with the fullest application of the principle of democracy itself. The rigid dis- cipline of Europe can never, so long as the United States follows out its appointed lines, become ac- climatized among the inhabitants of the Union. It is repugnant to them, contrary to all their inmost feelings, and destined not to lay hold of the popula- tion. The Americans may fight great wars yet, but they will not fight them as would European nations. They will have a way of their own, as they had at the time of the Civil War, and that way will be found satisfactory on the whole. And the war over, they will, in the future as in the past, return to their civil occupations and preoccupations, and work for industrial and commercial superiority. That is where they excel ; that is where their supremacy will most speedily assert itself, and who shall say, bearing goodwill toward men, that that is not after all the best course to pursue. vm GOVERNMENT Has democracy proved itself a sound principle of government or is it a failure? That is the question which interests many minds in the United States to-day, and to which different answers are given, according to the tendency of the inquirer. The pes- simist, and he exists in considerable numbers, is cer- tain that all the evils which force themselves upon public attention are due to the attempt to govern an immense territory and an ever-growing popula- tion by methods which are suitable in a confederacy like Switzerland, but which are totally inadequate in a republic as vast as the United States. The optimist, who is yet more numerous, and also more clamorous, is convinced that there is but little real evil, and that what there is will prove temporary. Yet some of the strongest advocates of democracy, who are optimistic enough to see in some of its dis- advantages incomparable benefits, are fain to confess that it has failed in some parts of the government; municipal government, to wit, which is bad as bad can be. Lincoln's celebrated definition, "a government of the people, by the people, for the people," may 106 GOVERNMENT soothe some troubled minds and lull the occasional disquietude of the man in the street, but it does not quite represent the existing conditions of democratic government, either in the Federal, the State or the municipal branch. It can scarcely be alleged, even by the optimist, that the government is "by the people," although, no doubt, the will of the people is supposed to prevail ultimately. And in some questions public opinion does at times assert itself. But the present tendency appears to be rather in the direction of the creation and maintenance of per- sonal rule ; of the setting-up of a man here and a man there whose will becomes law and is obeyed, not without murmuring and opposition, but obeyed in the end. Politics has become a regular profession, a business to which some devote themselves exactly as others devote themselves to manufacturing or other occupation. It has turned into a trade with many, a lucrative trade in which plums abound for the man whose scruples form the lightest part of his moral burden. The great majority of the voters, in this country of universal suffrage, do not take the pains to inform themselves, to study the questions of the hour, to solve the problems which present diffi- culties. They are content, and this is true of many a well-educated man as of the more ignorant, to leave the direction and management of affairs to those who make it their business to settle these things "for what there is in it for them," as the phrase goes. In principle democratic, the government of the country is largely autocratic by, the consent of the governed. 107 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS It is a curious commentary the sarcasm of which seems to be hidden from the people it is a curious commentary upon the democratic character of the Federal Government that for many years it allowed itself to be presided over by an official whose per- sonal power exceeded that of any constitutional sovereign; that the Congress was directed and administered by one man in the Senate and one man in the House of Representatives. A cer- tain senator was long known as "General Manager of the United States," and an autocratic Speaker of the House commonly referred to as "The Czar." Members of the House who refused to obey the dic- tates of that potentate were termed "insurgents," although an essential principle of democratic rep- resentation is that a man shall have the right to ex- press his opinions and to act in accordance with his convictions. "When men who oppose a law favored by the Speaker of the House and the President," declared a leading newspaper, "are classed as 'insurgents' it is plain that there is back of this characterization something unexpressed. There is a major premise implied which is not formulated. That premise can be nothing else than a declaration that the President and the Speaker of the House, separately or to- gether, have a right to dictate what laws shall be passed and what shall not. As a matter of fact, we know that for years the Committee on Rules has controlled legislation in the House. The majority of that committee is made up of the Speaker and two members selected by him, so that its decision is 108 GOVERNMENT really that of the Speaker himself. Thus the Speaker has controlled legislation so long that it has come to be thought, or at least pretended, that he has a right to embody in himself the whole law- making power of the House. It is admitted still that no decree of the Speaker has the force of law until it has received a majority of a quorum of the House. But the theory of the insurrection is that the Speaker has a right to command the votes of the members, at least the votes of such members as belong to his party. The party is supposed to make the Speaker not only the leader of his party, the mouthpiece of the majority, but the master, the dictator, who has a right to say how each individual member shall vote. The right of the President to dictate legislation, so long as he is in accord with the Speaker, need not come prominently into con- sideration. Should the Speaker differ from the President, which he is likely to do at times, there would be danger that the faithful would be troubled with a divided allegiance, and would be compelled to become insurgents against one or the other para- mount authority, thus illustrating the old scholastic puzzle of an irresistible force encountering an immov- able obstacle. In point of fact, there is no room in a republic for two paramount authorities, and it is worthy of attention whether there is room for one anywhere except in the concurrence of all the law- making powers under the requirements of the Federal Constitution." This comment suggests that the danger, almost inevitable in a democracy, of tyrannical rule has to be 109 " AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS faced by the people of the United States, and, next, that the people themselves have yet to be educated to take an intelligent interest in the administration of their own affairs, if their government is to remain what Lincoln declared it to be. But it may be per- mitted to doubt whether aside from the best minds in the country, the best educated men in the various communities, the people generally understand that a democratic government is no more free from the pos- sibilities of autocracy, tyranny and corruption than any monarchial government that ever existed. It is with very many Americans of the present day as it was with the French at the time of the Revolution: they are apt to be blinded and deceived by words, not perceiving that names are but names, after all, and often conceal the absence of the thing they are sup- posed to represent. A republic may be and often is a pure tyranny; it may have and in the United States certainly has, the elements of autocracy and despotism in large measure, and this was clearly per- ceived by that patriot who said "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." But it is precisely that eternal vigilance which is lacking in the Americans. The illusion that because they are Americans, be- cause they possess a Constitution of which they are immeasurably proud, because they are wealthy, prosperous, because they are the greatest nation on earth, therefore they are safe from the dangers and evils which threaten other countries, that illusion leads very many of them to neglect their plain duty as citizens, and, joined to the universal desire for the possession and enjoyment of money and yet more 110 GOVERNMENT money, draws them away from that part of their functions which, as citizens of a democratic republic, is the most important and ought to have their chief consideration. They are not unintelligent ; very far from it. It is not to be supposed for a moment that some fail to see that there are dangers, do not note the steady tendency toward autocracy, but they have faith in their fetish, democracy, exactly as we British have faith in our ability to "muddle through" the com- plications in which our lack of foresight and our neglect of experience land us continually. What is wanting in the United States is a more vigorous pub- lic spirit: that spirit which makes men interest themselves in the government, not simply by mildly or virulently criticizing it ; not by bewailing the fact that unworthy persons are too often enabled to cap- ture the popular vote ; not by casting reproaches at the recalcitrant or lazy members of their party who have failed to come to the polls and have thus al- lowed the enemy to win the victory; not by reading the papers and languidly acquiescing in articles con- demnatory of corruption or misgovernment, but by taking hold themselves, by having a mind, a clear mind of their own on the subjects that come up, and the moral courage to stand up and fight for the right, no matter what others may say or do. The curse of the democracy is that the best men have often not the force of character needed to make them stand up against the degrading element, the corrupting faction. They hate the thought of soil- ing themselves with the pitch of politics, especially 111 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of municipal politics. They prefer to suffer in their purses, in their sense of right, to putting their hand to the work and determinedly purifying and main- taining pure the administration of the city, the State or the Union. Too much preoccupied with the conduct of their private business they allow public business to fall frequently, far too frequently, into the hands of those who have not even the remotest conception of public spirit and public duty, but look upon the treasury, whether of the city, the State or the Na- tion, as a mine to be worked for their own personal profit. They suffer, and they know they suffer, in their purse, because the legislators seek ever more and more "pork," as it is elegantly termed, but it is less trouble to pay out money in this way than to take the time from the making of money to secure purity of government and uprightness in legisla- tion. It is not the people who rule in the United States ; at least the people rule but occasionally, spasmodi- cally; it is the bosses. These men, able and un- scrupulous the latter they must be and the former they need to be are the real governing body. They select the persons whom they choose to have put in office; they assign to each of them the position to which they are to be elected by the free and "inde- pendent"; they gather the funds required for the providing of the "free and independent" votes that are to secure success ; they direct the election ; they take care that no method, however ingenious, of depositing ballots shall prevent their learning 112 GOVERNMENT whether the voters have obeyed the orders given them; they have a hold on the elect, who owe their places to them, and they use that hold to further their own schemes. It happens, in some cases, that there is a revolt against their authority. Such small matters never worry them; they know the apathy of the voter in general ; they know how short- lived, as a rule, is the enthusiasm for reform, and how strong are the tendencies and inclinations not to bother with politics on the part of those who alone, by their education and their standing in the com- munity, can insure the permanent triumph of reform. They are not discouraged, for they are well aware that the wave of indignation is soon spent, and that once it has ebbed back they will come into their own again. For it is their own ; they look upon govern- ment, in any of its forms, and with its numerous de- partments, as their property. It is their own, for they have carefully, and with much thought, con- structed the "machine" which grinds out candidates and elects them, and declares with pomp that once more has the Sovereign People spoken in its might. They thoroughly understand their business ; they are not amateurs, but professionals ; they have studied the ins and outs of it; they have proved its possi- bilities ; they understand the secret ways of the craft, and they are past masters in the art of fooling or overawing the people, as may be required. They are the natural, the logical result of democracy; the weed that attacks it; the poison that runs in it. They are the outcome of the system of universal suffrage, which is admirable in principle, and pretty 113 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS bad in practice. Men need leaders ; that they know, as they know so much else. When leaders are offered them ready to hand, the people are apt to take them, without inquiring too particularly into their quali- fications. The moment the leaders are found to be unworthy they are not at once, as might be sup- posed, dismissed with contumely; some are, and suffer for the sins of others as well as for their own ; but generally they continue to hold their posi- tions, and the laxity of public opinion is such that the chances are that at the very next election the very same men will once more be intrusted with power. The machine is not to be trifled with. All Amer- icans they are never weary of proclaiming that are free men, yet all Americans obey the orders of the machine with a docility that is amazing. At times they "revolt" and refuse to obey the behests of the bosses, but that phenomenon is never to be taken as a guaranty of future independence. As a rule, what the leaders of the party, of the State, of the city, of the ward or district say "goes" and the voter meekly deposits his ballot in accordance with the command he has received. Were the suffrage confined to the really educated class the greatest power of the machine would vanish. It is because suffrage is universal, because the ig- norant and the venal far outnumber the intelligent and the honorable that politics has fallen to so low an ebb in the United States. Education, of course, is the remedy; not only the common school educa- tion but that which the press, or part of it, is giving GOVERNMENT incessantly : education in the principles of true demo- cratic government; the education which admirable societies, organized for the purpose, are daily press- ing upon the constituencies, with some measure of success even now, and with promise of far larger re- sults in the course of a generation or two. Thanks to this propaganda there are very excellent men pre- senting themselves for Congress, and their influence tells, especially upon a people interested in public affairs to the extent, at least, of criticizing, if not of acting steadily and perseveringly. With the growth of genuine public spirit, which shall lead men of position and responsibility to assume the duties which naturally fall upon them, yet greater improve- ment will be manifest. The objection to politics at present is that scarcely will a decent man enter into it. But if decent men avoid practical politics, the inevitable result is that the undesirable class gets hold of it, and turns it into the slough of corruption which at this moment it largely is. Had Hercules felt the same repugnance at entering on the task of cleaning the Augean stables, he would not have been the legendary hero so often sung. The best Amer- icans are none too good for the task of administer- ing the municipal, State and Federal affairs ; on the contrary, it is they who are bound by every consid- eration of duty, honor and patriotism to undertake the work, for it is they who best understand the magnitude and difficulty of making the great experi- ment of democracy successful when it is on the scale it exhibits in the United States. It is they who have the training and the education necessary to success, 115 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and because they have these, they have a responsibil- ity far greater than that which falls upon millions of their fellow-citizens, incapable, by reason of imper- fect political education and undeveloped or non- existent loftiness of thoughts and ideals, of guiding properly and safely the destinies of cities, States or the Nation. The Federal Government attracts some of the master men of the land, and happy is it for the country that it does so. More than one holding Cabinet office has willingly sacrificed private pros- pects to public duty. The spirit which animates these men is the spirit which makes democracy tri- umphant, and which gives the land good govern- ment. It is the spirit which should, but as a rule does not, inspire those who in State or city, ought to take upon themselves the burden of affairs. There are among those Cabinet officers men whom all the storm of abuse, invariably to be expected by those in high places, cannot swerve from their duty; whom the revilings of the ignorant and the insults of the corrupt cannot move from their righteous pur- pose. And in the business world, in the literary world, in the professional circles, are very many more men of the same high order, but not yet ready, and certainly unwilling, to recognize the fact that every man in a democratic community owes himself to the community, is bound to discharge the duties of his station toward his fellows, and may not re- serve for his own private benefit and advantage those powers and qualities and talents he is endowed with, and which the community has in some measure, and 116 in some way or other, enabled him to develop and profit by. Public spirit, the highest and greatest form of public spirit, is the great need of men in the United States. They may shirk, as so many of them do, the work that lies before them, but they must learn the bitter lesson that the citizens of a democratic state who flinch from the fulfillment of their obliga- tions as citizens are themselves directly responsible for the corruption and the wrong-doing they bewail, for the deterioration of the sound principles which guided the founders of the Union, for the evil repu- tation which democratic government, in some of its manifestations, has earned for itself. They are their brothers' keepers in very sooth, and they can- not avoid the blame for the failure of a system ex- cellent in itself, based on justice and common sense, but which cannot work satisfactorily unless all who form part of it do their duty toward the common- wealth. It is idle to urge that politics takes too much valuable time; that it is unpleasant and repulsive in many of its aspects ; that men are better engaged in developing the material resources of the com- munity. These things are true, in a measure. Poli- tics undoubtedly is often filthy business, but it is so only because the best men refrain from entering upon it, else it would be clean as is the conduct of their own affairs ; it is true that it takes much time, but that is particularly the case under present con- ditions, when men do in politics what they would never dream of allowing to be done in their homes or in their offices: permit corruption and evil to 117 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS grow and accumulate until they become absolutely unbearable even to the easy-going people they are. Then they make a mighty, but brief effort, and having effected a partial cleansing, relapse into their former indifference. The "practical" politician, the professional boss, the systematic corruptionist, on the other hand, never relaxes his efforts, never wearies of the details to which he knows he must faithfully attend if he is to maintain his hold. He is continually at work, constantly on the watch, and it is this eternal vigilance which secures him the command. Something of this same effective method, applied to maintaining the interest of the better men in the affairs of the city or the State, would go far to redeem democratic government from the stigma which has too justly been put upon it, but, at present, the evil-doers, politically, are energetic, and the well-doers apathetic. Universal suffrage, granted as it is to thousands of men who have no proper conception of the duties of the citizen toward the State, has another fatal consequence: it makes the employee the master of the employer. This is self-evident in municipalities, where the servants of the city hold in their hands the fate of the administrators, and use that power, not for the advantage of the community, but for their own betterment. They are paid more highly, and they do less work than similar men in similar occupations not municipally controlled. And the fact that it is profitable to the laboring man, pos- sessed of a vote, to work for a municipality rather than for a firm, a company or a private individual, 118 GOVERNMENT has led to ever-increasing demands for the establish- ment of municipal ownership of many of the cor- porations engaged in supplying towns and cities with light, transportation, or other conveniences. It is certain that municipal ownership in the democratic United States would mean waste of money and labor, and the greater spread of that deep corruption which is even now being fought by part of the press and part of the public. It would be difficult to point out a municipality administered entirely on sound economic principles ; there are a few like that, brilliant exceptions ; but they are very few indeed. In most cities and towns corruption is rife and per- sonal interests govern. The citizens know this, mourn over it, complain of it, and fold their arms in apathetic discontent. It is astonishing to see a community endure the mismanagement, prodigality and dishonesty which are termed municipal govern- ment, and make no effort worth the name to purify and reform the system. It is not an occasional up- rising that can effect permanent good, yet the in- telligence of the intelligent American seems inade- quate to grasp this patent fact. Men at the head of large industries, of a vast business, acknowledge frankly that the condition of things is as bad as it can be. But it is rare to find these men taking up the task of reform and sticking to it year after year. Philadelphia went in vigorously for reform, Boston became tremendously excited over it, New York "went for" Tammany with a whoop, and then, after a time, the same old business reappeared and men sighed and vowed it was useless to try to do more. 119 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS It is the energetic perseverance, and the unceasing civic education which alone can be relied upon to produce lasting results. Citizens of worth and how many citizens of high worth there are in these munici- palities men who are an honor to their land and their abiding place, must determine that among the duties of the position they occupy, one of the fore- most and most important is to maintain municipal government on a high plane of honesty and efficiency. For the municipality is a school from which poli- ticians, ambitious of entering a higher sphere, graduate. If the municipality is corrupt, what shall be expected of the State or the Nation? If the men who pass from the Council chamber to the halls of Congress have studied the art and science of "graft" and learned to practice it with success ; if such men become the representatives of the Republic, what shall be the character of that great Republic? And what will be, what is the effect upon the minds of the younger generation, ardent in its turn to attain to positions of trust and power? Will it enter on its career with a lofty sense of duty to city, State or Nation? Or will it not rather adopt the base conception of politics, so widely prevalent at pres- ent, that it is a fat business for the wily and un- scrupulous man to take up? Will it not rather substitute for the discharge of public duty, the ideal, a low one assuredly, of personal advantage? No man ever lives unto himself alone, and in no case is that truer than in that of the citizen of a republic. Every citizen has a duty to his fellows, to the commonwealth, and that duty has to be per- 120 GOVERNMENT formed in every part of the administration. The more onerous the work, the more prepared for it must be the candidate who seeks the place. The more difficult the position, the more honorable must he be who is to fill it. This truth is one that needs to be driven home into the mind of every youth in America; drilled into him, burned into him. He must be taught from his earliest years that equality of opportunities, which is the slogan of the demo- cratic orator, involves inseparably equality of re- sponsibilities ; that he cannot shift to the shoulders of another the task which is his to fulfill; that he cannot stand aside from the strife and say he prefers to make money for himself and to secure a position in which he shall have neither care nor anxiety. The citizen of a democratic state cannot choose what he would and what he would not do with regard to public affairs. It is part and parcel of the birth- right of which he is proud that duty accompanies him from birth to the grave ; public duty, as well as private duty. He is bound by all he enjoys, by the freedom given him, by the justice meted out to him, by the opportunities of rising and proving his abili- ties, by the chances set before him of enriching him- self honorably; he is bound by all these things to give the best part of himself to his land and to its pure and just administration. That is why he is a member of a democratic commonwealth ; not mere- ly for selfish purposes, not merely for personal ad- vantage, but to contribute, to the utmost of his power, to the welfare, moral and material, political and social, of his fellow-citizens. The sovereignty 121 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of which he is apt to boast is illusory and degen- erates into tyranny if its responsibilities are evaded ; the liberty he claims to enjoy is vain if it be confined to himself. Selfishness and greed never made a na- tion great, and a great nation will become a small one, morally, if its people neglect to do that to which they are called. The fatal inclination to neglect the personal duty of the citizen leads infallibly to the destruction of the democracy. Even at this hour the tendency to extend the powers of the Federal Government, the already immense powers of the President, means naught else than the weakening of the democratic principle. It is in large measure a desire to shirk the responsibility of meeting difficulties and over- coming them; of avoiding problems the solution of which demands patience, application and intelligence ; the wish to be rid of what is uncomfortable and troublesome, all of which would be perfectly legiti- mate under an autocracy, where men are not per- mitted to share in the administration of public af- fairs, but which is singularly wrong in a common- wealth. It springs from a tendency to enjoy the advantages of democracy without bearing its bur- dens and responsibilities ; it is a selfish way of avoid- ing the unpleasant ; and selfishness and disregard of responsibilities are two of the most dangerous ele- ments in the gradual destruction of a real democracy. The growth of the tendency means nothing else than the concurrent growth of autocratic government; and while it may seem to many that this is an exag- geration, but a little reflection, a little recollection, GOVERNMENT will speedily show that it is no more than the simple truth. Leaders are vastly useful persons, so long as they are not permitted to become self-appointed dictators, and the people of the United States have already had experience enough of the facility with which such a result is brought about, and of the painful consequences to themselves of the domination of an individual, to be on their guard against pos- sible extension of the habit to the Federal Govern- ment. Having been ruled by a General Manager and a Czar, they ought to have learned that however excellent a man may be in the position he fills, how- ever able- and disinterested, it is almost inevitable that with the growth of power the desire for more power should arise in him. And if it does not do so in one, it will very certainly in another. The French Republic, almost insanely democratic, was enslaved by Bonaparte. It is certain that the comparison between the France of the beginning of the past cen- tury and the United States of the present, is at least imperfect, yet there is an analogy in the two cases. France was and is a military nation, pro- foundly imbued with the spirit of discipline and of obedience to the chief. The United States is not a military nation, and the people are by no means im- bued with the spirit of obedience to military leaders, but, on the other hand, they readily yield to political bosses ; they are quick to abandon much of their power if only thereby they may be discharged of a part of their responsibilities, and in this lies the danger. It does not make much difference, in the long run, by what methods a nation loses its fulness 123 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of independence and its self-reliance, and these methods may be political quite as well as military. Further, the growth of the tendency to paternal- ism in government, which quickly turns to tyranny, is dangerous because the government, in the end, is dependent, for the election of its head, upon the mass of the voters, and these being controlled by bosses, by corporations, by trusts, will give control to them over larger domains of public activity. Rife already are the complaints of the cruel oppression of the trusts, of the overbearing or insolent attitude of the heads of the great combinations, who direct affairs pretty much as they please, who condemn the people, despise the laws, and set at naught the processes of the courts. Worse would these be were the inclination indulged in to concentrate yet larger powers in one man's hands. The condition to which the House of Representatives was not long since reduced is itself an object lesson. That House, which, in theory should be representative, should examine carefully all legislation and guard the in- terests of the nation at large, degenerated, by com- mon consent, into an assembly which merely regis- tered such edicts as its Czar chose to permit. It grew to play the formal and impotent part of the old French parlements, which simply engrossed the laws ordered by the autocrat. This is neither demo- cratic nor healthful politically. Let it not be supposed that the peculiar dangers of such a situation are unperceived. They are not; only they are not sufficiently perceived by the masses, and the insidious character of the change which has 124 GOVERNMENT taken place is not sufficiently appreciated. There is nothing like trusting to words and phrases to blind oneself; and great reliance on words and phrases is rather characteristic of the Americans. The fact that their country bears the name of a Re- public seems to the vast majority an entirely suf- ficient safeguard against all possible political dan- gers which it is not. We British once possessed far more of the reality of democracy, in matters political, in spite of appearances and names. The monarchy is far less powerful than the Presidency, and the House of Commons far more truly ruled the Empire than the House of Representatives the Re- public. That is because the people of Great Britain, high and low, rich and poor, have always taken a direct and personal interest in the conduct of affairs ; because they have always jealously guarded against an increase of power in any one branch of the Gov- ernment, and have successfully maintained that equilibrium between them which may chafe eager minds among statesmen and leaders, but which is a guaranty of safety for the body politic. It is more difficult perchance to accomplish this in a land like the United States, but who, believing in the adaptability and the value of the democratic prin- ciple, would consent to a confession of inability on the part of a democratic commonwealth to establish and maintain a pure government which should at the same time be a popular one? It may seem that the view here taken is overpessi- mistic, and that the ideals set up are unattainable in everyday practice, but neither of these propositions 125 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS is right. A cursory review of the conditions in the United States, of the legislation in Congress, of the fights between honest governors and corrupt legis- latures, of the subserviency of the electorate, of the boldness and effrontery of the controllers of the mighty trusts and railroad combinations, of the sus- ceptibility of so-called representatives to influences of the worst nature, is sufficient to justify the posi- tion here taken. On the other hand, a fairly inti- mate knowledge of the qualities of the average Amer- ican, of his capacity for intelligent management, of his clear-sightedness and his tenacity when he thinks it worth while to use these qualities, of his generally good education, of his pride in his country and its noblest institutions, equally justify the belief in him which, in its turn, justifies the conviction that the improvement already visible in public opinion, that the hope of reform are not the baseless fabric of a vision, but a right estimate of the future; of the immediate future, let it be. For throughout the land, in large cities and in small towns, in the great industrial states and in the smaller agricultural ones, there is everywhere a ris- ing tide of public opinion, inspired by able leaders, of purpose high and unselfish, patriots in the very best sense of the term, guided and enlightened by a press much of which is daily apprehending more fully the importance of its task in a great democracy. That public opinion will grow stronger day by day: the colleges, the universities are aiding to develop it; the American youth, than whom none better at bottom can be found anywhere on earth, is being GOVERNMENT taught truer democratic doctrine and studying more and more to fit himself for the discharge of those im- portant duties which fall to the lot of the citizen. Societies and associations are formed in many cen- ters, with the avowed purpose of keeping watch upon the municipal governments and informing the con- stituencies of the character of the men who seek their votes. All these are not only signs of a better fu- ture for the democracy, but pledges that the care- lessness and neglect, the easy-going indifference and supineness which have marked, and still to a large extent mark, the attitude of the average American toward the questions of government, are not to be permitted to continue if honest effort can destroy them and replace them by intelligent and active in- terest in all matters pertaining to the welfare of the body politic. It is in the youth of the country that the hope for the future resides ; it is to the youth of the country that the land must look for redemption from the corrupt practices that have in- vaded all forms of the government, and the country will surely not look in vain. If the great military nations of Europe can even now inflame their peoples to war by recalling the glorious traditions of un- numbered victories, if the British lad craves the sea and its strife as his memory recalls the deeds of the Hawkes and the Drakes and the Ansons and the Nel- sons and the Collingwoods and the Rodneys and the Duncans, if the French youth is thrilled by recollec- tions of "all the glories of France" and the Napol- eonic epic, assuredly the American youth will not less warm to the task before him when he remembers 127 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the Fathers of the Nation, and when the names of Washington and Hamilton and Lincoln and so many more call to him out of the past to perfect the work so well begun by them ; by them, who set their coun- try above and before all, and who recked not of per- sonal advantage so long as they could secure national honor and national prosperity. Democracy is not on its trial, though it is cus- tomary to say so. Democracy is proved capable of promoting the happiness and welfare of the race. It is only when the principle is departed from, when it is set aside, that evil enters in. The essence of democracy is not now to be called in question. Men cannot deny its usefulness and its power; they may misapply it, but the moment they return to it democ- racy will again show its ability to secure all that is asked of it. It is not a passing form, an ephem- eral idea; it is the basis of the civilization of the future; it will take many generations to develop all the blessings it contains, but none may limit its beneficent action, none may say it will do this and no more, for as yet it has not essentially failed. It has been diverted, it has been swayed in part from its purpose; let only that purpose be adhered to steadfastly, let its virtue be brought out and not poisoned by corruption, greed and selfishness, and democracy will emerge triumphant. It has in itself the happiness of many races yet unborn, and al- though it is foolishly applied to peoples unfitted for it at once, it is the true principle which must remain the abiding guide of the Anglo-Saxon in the Old World, of the Americans in the New. 128 IX LAW One of the most striking features of modern American society is the general disregard of law, when the law conflicts with the wishes or the per- sonal advantages of the individual. American writers in the press and elsewhere have more than once drawn attention to this singular fact, although few, if any, have attempted to analyze it and to seek out its cause. Lawlessness, in the sense of violation, neglect, contempt or evasion of the law, is universal in the country, and is to be met with not alone among the criminal classes, which by their nature are in antagonism to law, but among the most educated and the most respectable classes of the community. It may be affirmed, without exaggeration, that the plutocrats accept the existence of the law only in so far as they can turn it to account in the execu- tion of their schemes. In such a case they are vigorous upholders of every part of it, and they exhibit an amazing capacity for discovering its pow- ers. But in the event of their becoming themselves amenable to the punishments the laws decree, they give proof of equal perspicacity in devising means 129 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of escaping the consequences of their actions and in twisting the law into a defense and a justification for themselves. A Scripture text, it has often been said, may be found to support any proposition; similarly, the law, in the United States, can always be made to justify any violation of itself, provided a sufficient amount of money is at hand to defray the fees of counsel. The fact that not only the Federal Congress, but also each State legislature is empowered to make laws, that the procedure in one State is different from that in another, that crimes and misdemeanors are not treated everywhere in the same fashion, adds to the facilities for evading punishment, and these facilities are taken the fullest advantage of by the lawyers engaged to defend a case. Criminal cases exemplify this truth in a remark- able manner. The mere selection of a jury gives rise to protracted disputes and discussions, to chal- lenges of all sorts, peremptory and non-peremptory, to squabbles between counsel, to exceptions on points of law for this is the main battleground of the contending parties to objections on the score of intelligence, which is enlarged in its meaning to comprise the faintest approach to an opinion of one sort or other on the merits of the case to be tried. When at last, after days and frequently weeks of haggling and protesting, of challenging and cross- questioning, a jury is finally empaneled, the chances are a thousand to one that the simplest issue will be so deliberately befogged by the one side or the other, and perhaps by both, that even the most intelligent 130 LAW and most conscientious jury would find it impossible to have a clear mind on the question at issue. In- deed, the usual manner of conducting a criminal trial appears to be rather a test and a public ex- hibition of forensic skill and ability to raise techni- calities than a straightforward attempt to get at the truth or falsity of the charge. The prosecution and the defense equally strive to bewilder the minds of the jury with innumerable objections, discussed in the most heated manner; both seek to discredit the witnesses called by the other side, and manifest an ability in the way of moral torturing in comparison with which the old judicial torture of the body sinks into relative insignificance. Experts are called in numbers on behalf of the State or of the defense, and they contradict each other flatly with a calmness and an assurance that disgust the ordinary person, who has till then believed that an expert was one thor- oughly acquainted with the subject he professes to know. This is especially the case with experts in lunacy and in handwriting. Their contradictions and opposite assertions have, it may be said, been so frequent and so gross, that the public, at least, has lost all faith in the statements made by these gentry under oath. They are looked upon as men paid very large fees for the purpose of giving an opinion in favor of the side which pays them. It is doubtless an error to assume that all experts are thus minded, but the inference is inevitable when one follows the course of a criminal trial in which a rich man is the defendant or where there is "money to burn." 131 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS The attitude of the counsel on either side is not more laudable. That the counsel for the defense should seek to break down the testimony of the wit- nesses for the prosecution is natural ; that the prose- cution should endeavor to destroy the value of the evidence given by the defense is intelligible. But that the main reliance should be placed on what, in the essence, is nothing more or less than hair-split- ting or pettifogging, is what fills the spectator, the lay spectator, with regret and sorrow. The purpose of the lawyer appears to be not the elucidation of the truth, but the obscuring of it and the appealing to all the intricacies of the law with the object of confusing the issue and preventing the jury from gaining or retaining a clear idea of the nature of the crime charged against the accused. Or else it is a deliberate endeavor to fasten the crime upon a person supposed to be innocent, by resort to every method permissible in court. And out of this conflict arise the innumerable "exceptions" without which any criminal trial in this country would, to the average legal mind, be a farce and an incomplete and shapeless performance. It is the lawyer who is on trial, not the defendant: he it is who figures before the public ; he who seeks to bring himself forward, to become notorious, to advertise himself and his extraordinary ability. The trial means much to him : it may, if he is successful, bring such rich reward in the shape of practice that he cannot afford to lose a single opportunity of exhib- iting his skill. Even if the verdict goes against him, he has gained what is so dear to his heart: 132 LAW notoriety, advertising free his picture in the pa- pers, his title of Napoleon or Alexander or Demos- thenes, and Heaven knows what else. He has posed before millions of readers as a remarkable jurist for the millions of readers do not trouble to look into the real meaning of the words used in the sen- sational scare-heads and they have their reward. Justice itself has not been served; the law has not been vindicated, rather has it been brought into yet greater contempt, but what is that in comparison with the personal gain to the "able and talented lawyer"? Law and justice exist merely as a means to an end, and that end is the personal advantage of the man who makes his living by pleading. Nor are the juries advantaged. The system of trial by jury has degenerated almost into a farce. It is pretty surely a foregone conclusion that, in a case involving crime punishable by death, the jury will disagree, and it is also certain that the jury will tell, as soon as discharged, the reasons for its dis- agreement the apparent reasons, for there are, it is said, in many a case, occult reasons which could not conveniently be stated to the representatives of the press. The best men, the most intelligent, the most capable of weighing evidence and returning a just verdict are seldom or never to be found in the membership of a jury: first, because the best men are averse to the notoriety and unpleasantness of jury service, to the pillorying which is sure to fol- low, whether they condemn or acquit, to the certain or nearly certain long imprisonment they will have to endure while the opposing lawyers contend and 133 rage and vituperate, to the journalistic inquisition which invariably precedes and follows the trial and the selection of the jury, and secondly, because it is not the desire of the defense, in most cases, that the jury should be intelligent and able to form a just opinion of the truth of the evidence placed before it. The principle of protection to the prisoner has been applied in such strange fashion that it has be- come well-nigh impossible for an ordinarily intelli- gent person to be accepted. Objections the most fantastic are raised to this man or that, until finally a collection is got together which is least likely to render a sound judgment. Procrastination is the watchword of the lawyer. Every method by which he can postpone and delay the administration of the law it is his business to be acquainted with and to apply. Appeal follows ap- peal, exception is piled on exception, objection added to objection, ancient and forgotten statutes brought to light, novel interpretations insisted upon virulently, all with the one object of prolonging the fight which, of course is highly profitable to the lawyer and of winning the case eventually. The Greene and Gaynor suit is at once recalled as in point. The famous "Jarndyce versus Jarndyce'* bade fair to be outclassed by this performance, in which the Federal Government was checked at every point by the skill and resourcefulness of the defend- ing counsel. And the Trust cases are further proof of the system in vogue in this country. The practice, growing more widespread and more pernicious every day, of the yellow press trying 134 LAW the case independently, adds to the contempt for law so generally and unconsciously entertained by the great bulk of the population. It is no longer left even to the "Napoleons of the bar" to win the laurels of subtlety: the journalist seeks to anticipate them and to seize the prize ere it be fairly set up for competition. The newspaper, with its corps of re- porters and space writers, enters boldly into the field and brings forward its own evidence, which meets with ready acceptance from the millions of readers, who are pleased to be thus enabled to form their judgment of the guilt or innocence of the accused long ere the law of the land has started on its devious course of unraveling the truth. This un- questionably adds to the difficulty of discovering a sufficient number of unprejudiced men to try the case, once it reaches that stage. It is impossible for most people to avoid forming a fairly clear idea of the guilt or innocence of the accused, when for days the newspaper has been placing evidence for and against in the columns which are headed with sensational statements certain to attract attention. And the fact of having formed an opinion, one way or the other, is of course fatal to the selection of a juror. But that is not of the least importance to the publisher of the yellow journal: what he cares for is to sell his paper, and if in doing so he runs contrary to all the principles of justice and equity, why, so much the worse for justice and equity. But this is not the only proof of the contempt for law which juries and lawyers exhibit, with such regularity and such calmness that not many can be 135 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS met with who are shocked by it. Juries are notori- ously disinclined to convict. The clearest evidence, the most unchallenged testimony, does not appear to affect them. They will acquit where crime has been plainly proved. They will bring in a verdict glar- ingly in disaccord with the facts brought out. They are all powerful in this respect, and the court is helpless, even where the court is determined to have justice done. A case in point, among very many which will recur to anyone even cursorily perusing the accounts of the doings in the law courts, will suffice. A game warden came upon a man breaking the law by being out shooting on a Sunday. The offender resisted arrest and deliberately shot down the warden, the charge entering the man's chest. After a long period of illness the warden recovered. Meanwhile the offender had been arrested and a true bill found against him by the grand jury. The case came to trial; the- evidence was so clear that not even the subtleties of the lawyer for the defense could cloud it. The man had shot to kill. The jury, after hearing the testimony, deliberated for a couple of hours and then returned a verdict of "Guilty of simple assault!" And this occurred not in the "wild and woolly West," but in a city of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts, less than an hour from Boston. The judge was irritated, naturally enough, at this perversion of the jury system, and de- clared the man ought to consider himself for- tunate that he was not charged with murder. It is entirely possible, however, that even had he been so charged, the jury would have acquitted him, on 136 LAW the ground, perchance, that game laws ought to have no place in the land of the free and the home of the brave. When the courts present such instances of the futility of appealing to justice, and enable the law to be set aside with impunity, it is not to be won- dered at that the general public takes no account of the law. And it does not, in any form whatever. Traffic regulations are notoriously disregarded: complaints to that effect are rife each year, but they produce no results, none that are visible to the im- partial observer, at all events. Each man does as he pleases, being a law unto himself. It is sufficient that a warning notice should be put up by authority, for- bidding the doing of such or such a thing, for that thing to be done at once. In the grounds of one of the great universities there are signs forbidding the riding on bicycles on the paths and walks. The signs are of no use in restraining bicyclists, who rush by them with the supreme contempt for authority which is so characteristic of the American. A building law is passed and is forthwith violated, and it takes years of disputations in the courts to en- force it. Orders are issued by the municipal or the police authorities intended to secure the cleanliness of the streets, and they are unheeded : nobody thinks it worth his or her while to pay attention to such matters. Ordinances, regulations, are merely safety valves for the exuberant energy of some clerk or other busybody and are not intended to be taken seriously. Then the Legislature is called upon to frame a further law compelling the enforcement of 137 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the existing law, and the enforcer of the non- enforced becomes a non-enforced in its turn. Laws of all sorts abound, but observance of law does not grow in like proportion; rather does non- observance flourish. And many of the laws and regulations are apparently never intended to be ob- served at all; certainly they are ridiculous in them- selves and merit the disdain with which they are treated. A most respectable and intelligent body of men, the Park Commission of Boston, have had posted in every part of the wide and beautiful domain over which they have control, rules and regulations which are incredibly amusing in parts, as for instance the prohibition to speak in a loud voice, to whistle or to sing. It is entirely safe to say that not one person in ten thousand has ever looked at the pretty boards with their green posters, else the regulation would long since have been modi- fied. It is forbidden, in many cities and towns, to offer for sale spirituous liquors of any kind, and the temperance people are usually keen to note infrac- tions of the law of local option. But the law, in municipalities of a high standing, is calmly broken day after day in the very sight of the authorities themselves. In more than one Country Club, situated in a no-license municipality, there was no conceal- ment of the fact that all manner of liquors were sold openly to members and their guests. It is true that the face of the municipality was saved by omitting the word "Wines" on the bill and substituting for it the innocuous "Soda," but the hypocrisy of the 138 LAW change of wording in no wise diminishes the fact. And it was even more amazing to see, on certain occa- sions when the general public was admitted to the club grounds, the entrance to the bar, plainly visible to anyone, protected by a police constable, in the em- ploy of the very municipality which was appointed to administer the no-license law. Wherever the automobile has appeared and where has it not appeared? in the United States, death and wounds have accompanied it. This, how- ever, is by no means a necessary outcome of auto- mobilism: it is simply another manifestation of dis- regard of law, for there is law, and plenty of it, to regulate the driving of these powerful machines. But there is a class of owners and chauffeurs, a large class it is to be feared, who apply in the pursuit of their sport the same indifference to the law and to the rights of the public which certain plutocrats apply to the conduct of their business. To them neither human life nor human rights are sacred or of the least consequence. They "own the earth" ; they are masters ; they are rich ; they are above the law, as were the kings of France in pre- revolutionary days. Fines are of no importance to them; regulations of no account. Fines they pay, when they are caught, and they do not feel them; regulations they rejoice to break, as they rejoice to break the bones of unfortunate pedestrians. And the courts too often, when cases are brought before them, deal leniently with these rich offenders, par- alyzing the efforts of the police to restrain them from further mischief. These things, which are 139 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS done openly, bring law into greater and greater con- tempt. They are the outcome of that strong demo- cratic spirit, of that perverted idea of independence, of that false conception of sovereignty which per- vade the minds of most Americans. The teaching of Rousseau, albeit he is unknown by name to the great multitude, has sunk deep into the minds of the people on this continent. Yet Rousseau himself, could he observe the application of his principles, exaggerated as they are, would recoil with surprise, and perhaps regret the vehemence of his propaganda. The unlimited rights of the individual are nowhere so ruthlessly enforced and at the same time nowhere so ruthlessly trampled upon, as in the United States. The tyranny of one man, against which the Thirteen Colonies revolted so justifiably, has been replaced by the tyranny of many men and many institutions. The Plutocrat, the Trust President, the Railway Magnate, the Coal Baron, the Ice Dealer, the Auto- mobile Fiend are a few of the despots who have re- placed the autocrats of the Old World in this coun- try of boasted liberty. The people feel the tyranny and cry out against it, but they appear powerless to check it, unable to prevent it, helpless to destroy it. In another chapter the question of the reckless disregard of human life is touched upon. In con- nection with this study of the disregard of law, of the use made of the technicalities of the law to pro- tect the wrong-doer, so long as he has money that is the one great instrument of power in the land it is not out of place to recall two or three instances particularly informing. 140 LAW On June 15, 1904, a New York excursion steamer, the General Slocum, licensed to carry twenty-five hundred passengers, started on a trip with thirteen hundred and fifty-eight persons on board, the greater number of them women and children, mem- bers of Saint Mark's Lutheran Church, bound on their annual picnic down Long Island Sound. The day was a lovely one, and the steamer sailed on with its band playing, past the wharves on the New York side. Fire broke out, and one thousand and twenty people lost their lives the captain, however, and every member of the crew but one saving theirs. Five years later, not one had been punished for the slaughter of innocent beings ; president, secretary, directors, captain were equally safe from successful prosecution. It was proved that the law regarding the inspection of steamers had been systematically violated, that the regulations requiring certain pre- cautions to be taken had been ignored, yet no con- sequences followed so far as the responsible men were concerned. The law, which should have sum- marily dealt with them, was successfully employed to shield them. A writer in a magazine, a largely read one, said, in December of the same year: "Although the law requires a fire drill at least once a week, with a test of the hose and the lifeboats on every occasion, the Slocum had been sailing since the season began without putting water through her hose, without lowering a lifeboat, and without having a fire drill of any kind. . . . The law declares that no hay shall be carried on an excursion steamer, yet there were 141 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS seven barrels in the Slocum's storeroom, all of which contained more or less hay, used as a packing for glassware. Side by side with these stood three barrels of oil, and scattered about the floor were paint-pots, scraps of canvas, and other bonfire ma- terials. The door of the room was never locked. . . . The law requires that in every compartment in a steamer's hold there shall be a steam-valve, so that it can be flooded with steam in case of fire; but there was no steam-valve in this dangerous store- room. ... A bill obtained by the coroner from the New York Belting and Packing Company showed that 'the new hose' of which the steamship company had boasted, had been bought for sixteen cents a foot. The cheapest garden hose costs more. For the hose now in use by the New York Fire Depart- ment a dollar and ten cents a foot is paid." The Iroquois Theater disaster, in Chicago, cost the lives of nearly seven hundred of the spectators in that fire-trap, but no one has been punished for the crime, and the law again was successfully turned to account to shield the responsible. But let not the hearts of those who love America be discouraged, and let them not be afraid. There is a very strong growth of sound public opinion on this subject as on many others which affect the very life of the people. The feeling that law is not to be used continually to shield the rich and the powerful is gaining greater vigor every day, and ere long it is certain to assert itself and to bring about a radical change in the attitude of the people themselves. Law will yet be vindicated, will yet be applied to its 142 LAW proper purpose: the protection of the innocent, the punishment of the wrong-doer. It will not come to pass in a day: there are too many traditions and habits and false views to be corrected, and, besides, a sweeping, violent reform effects no lasting good. The Americans, in their municipal and their national politics, have time and again indulged in spasms of reform. Tammany has been swept to ruin in New York, and Tammany has risen stronger for its tem- porary defeat. It is not the outburst, fierce and sharp, which determines an improvement in moral conditions ; it is the steady education of the people, of all classes of the people, and that is going on, quietly, surely, in all parts of the land. The courts are helping: judges are raising their voices and speaking with all the authority which their position gives them; the better part of the press and there is a large "better part" is awakening to the serious- ness of its educational mission and uttering words of warning that fall on no unheeding ears ; the pul- pit, although a comparatively weak power, is aiming to stir the minds of citizens to sober reflection; the great educational institutions are aiding in the good work, and more than all the sterling sound sense of the American race is being roused to action, to firm and inflexible action. Men are waking to their re- sponsibilities and duties, are realizing that they are not merely in the places they occupy to enrich them- selves, but are trustees for the fair name of their country and are charged to assist in bringing or- der out of the chaos of "graft" and corruption, which breeds the evils that are so patent and glaring. He 143 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS who believes that the situation is a hopeless one, and that the democratic principle is incapable of coping with the mighty forces of evil at work, is short-sighted and himself unable to perceive the working of the national mind. There is absolutely no doubt of the capacity of the American people to vindicate the excellence of democracy; no doubt, if one studies closely the movement of thought, and its expression through channels that are becoming more numerous every day. The very fact that press and bench unite in urg- ing improvement and reform, that the demagogue himself, rising to a higher conception of his duty, proclaims the existence of evil and calls it evil in plain and unmistakable language, assures the much to be desired change in the attitude of the public. "One cause for this deplorable condition," the in- crease of lawlessness declares a leading newspaper of the West, "is the dull indifference of the people. They do not insist that the laws be enforced. . . . Another cause is to be found in our extremely low conception of the nature of the State. We look on it as an agency which, if not closely limited, will be used for preventing us from doing what we wish to do, and not as the embodiment of the law made by all and for all. So, when it intervenes to enforce the law, we hold the intervention to be against us, and not in behalf of the law. Is not this the mental attitude of most of us? . . . We try to use it, not for all of us, but for some of us." "We have grown," says a Southern paper, "so accustomed to the failure of justice in cases where human life is 144 LAW taken by violence that we excuse one failure and an- other until it will become a habit, and the strong shall prevail over the weak, and the man who slays his brother shall be regarded as the incarnation of power." The judges are equally insistent and outspoken: "Justice delayed," has said Justice Brewer, "is often justice denied," and developing that text he shows that appeals on technicalities and the resultant de- lays tend to pervert justice, not to assure it, and that in consequence criminals become bolder and crime more frequent. A Chief Justice of the Su- preme Court of Delaware is just as explicit: "Law- lessness pervades the land. . . . Gigantic frauds are palmed upon the people as successful business enter- prises. Our greatest financiers are racking their brains to circumvent the law and the people, and by lawlessness achieve wealth, being careful only to keep outside of actual violence and the common jail. When their cunning evasions of the law are crowned with success all men are tempted to lawlessness." And Mr. Bryan, speaking to an assembly of law- yers in Chicago, at once gave expression to hope and to sorrow: "I believe that the day will come in this country when we will not have so many men who sell their souls to make grand larceny possible. Perhaps sometime it will not be less disgraceful for a lawyer to assist in a gigantic robbery than for a highwayman to hold up and shoot the wayfarer. I know of a case recently in which they had to go to New York to get lawyers to represent the people be- 145 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS cause all the lawyers available nearer at hand had been bought up." The first requisite for healing a disease and law- lessness is a mortal one is recognition of its exist- ence. Naturally people are indisposed to confess the failure, whether temporary or permanent, of a sys- tem in which they believe and unceasingly proclaim superior to all other forms hitherto known; but un- less they are willing to face the situation as it really exists, unless they are ready to probe mercilessly the plague spots in their administration and in their national life, that life cannot be healthy, that disease cannot be stayed and cured. The remedy lies close to the hand; it requires only to be applied, but first and foremost the mind of the nation must be edu- cated to perceive and to hate the evil ; the false ideas of personal independence, carried to the worst ex- tremes, must be shown to be utterly and glaringly wrong; the truth that men are united together in a commonwealth, not for individual purposes of self- aggrandisement or self-interest, but for mutual aid and protection, must first be instilled deep in the hearts of all the citizens, or at least of so large and influential a number of them that they shall swing the opinions of the remainder. This is being done; the process of education is going on steadily day by day and in every part of the land ; public opinion, weak as yet in most respects, is beginning to make itself heard, and it will be listened to ere many years be past. Men are learning what would seem to be a truism, that the law is not for the rich alone but for all, no matter what their worldly circumstances ; that 146 LAW it is in its essence a protection and not an instru- ment of coercion on the one hand or of evasion of duty on the other. In a democracy it is education which is the prime requisite, and education means not alone that mental training and that exercise of the memory which form the main purpose of the elemen- tary schools, but that clear understanding of the duty of the citizen toward the State, of the individual toward the community, of one man toward his neigh- bor. The United States started on its national life with advantages that no other nation on earth ever possessed; it was founded by men practiced in the knowledge and love of liberty, trained in the principles of common weal; it was established by a race which possessed the highest form of civiliza- tion then known on earth, a civilization which has developed greatly since; it was free from the trammels of long-established institutions and deep- rooted traditions ; it was in a position to face the problems of community and national life without the complications introduced into them by the slow evo- lution Europe had to pass through in emerging from the condition of the Middle Ages into the freer at- mosphere of modern times. And to suppose, even for the briefest instant, that a nation thus favored at its very outset, that a nation which has already given repeated proofs of its singular capacity for self-government and self-improvement ; that a people which has produced so many men of the highest type of moral elevation and strength, can possibly fail to throw off utterly and forever the evils which afflict 147 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS it as an immediate result of the startling and rapid growth of its wealth, individual and national; to as- sert, to believe such a proposition, is to mark oneself incapable of apprehending plain truth, of seizing facts and of understanding that the grievous faults are but transitory and that the nation is sound at heart. No; there can be no question of the ultimate out- come. The American is not corrupt in himself; he is not in favor of evil in national or private life. The splurge of the nouveau riche, the insolence of the magnate, the cruelty and indifference to suffer- ing of the plutocrat, the brazen twisting of the tech- nicalities of the law to serve private purposes, are not essential elements of the American character. No one who has had the good fortune to live among this people not merely to rush through the land no one who has had the opportunity of mingling with the business and the professional men, of talking with the better class of politicians, of meeting states- men, of conversing with thinkers and makers of opinion, no one who has seen and studied the Amer- ican at close quarters unaware that he was being observed, can by any stretch of possibility form any other conclusion than that the voices now heard so often and so loudly in their call for reform and improvement will not die away unheeded. The na- tion is a mighty one now; it will be mightier yet. "Great hast Thou made us; make us greater yet," may as truly be said by the American as by the Briton. The same profound love of the pure in national and private life is characteristic of the one 148 LAW as of the other ; the same resolution to abide by high ideals ; the same determination not to lose all that the forefathers have won, but to add to it ; the same sense of honor ; the same fearless courage in the discharge of duty. These noble qualities have been obscured for a time, are obscured even now, no doubt, but that they have disappeared, that the lust of gold, the rage for display, the mania for speedy wealth, the hunger for unbridled power have utterly destroyed them, no man in his senses can believe for a moment. The tremendous development of the material side of civilization in this land, the unequaled growth of riches, the stupendous forward rush have brought in their turn loathsome evils, but the body politic is sound, the stock is true, and the change, the reaction, are clearly apparent to him who cares to look somewhat closely and who is not to be deceived by the boiling up of the scum, by the frothing and the seething of the lees and the dregs that come to the surface in times such as the Great Republic has known and is experiencing. The clear wine is there, and when the ebullition dies down, when time has told upon the society that now fer- ments and seethes and bubbles, the rich and healthy life will be apparent to all. Here again reflection forces one to look at home after having considered the condition of things on the other side of the ocean. The question whether we British can afford to look down upon American disregard of law and to thank God that we are not as these shameless Yankees, is not one we care to face too quickly. For we know the answer would be 149 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS against our claim long just of being a law-abid- ing people. Woman has shown us how utterly law may be set at naught with comparative and in many cases, ab- solute immunity. Governments have taught the na- tion that illegality may be a positive help to a shaky Cabinet. With us, as with Americans, is growing a feeling that if only more laws are made, careless whether they be thought out first, improvement of social conditions is sure to result. We are not yet as foolish in this respect as our friends oversea, nor quite as heedless of the maintenance of law as they are, but we are a fair second and it may be that while they are emerging from the chaos they have created, we, on the other hand, may travel farther along the path they are forsaking. X MARRIAGE It is customary to speak of the Americans as an Anglo-Saxon race, and while it is true that as regards the original American stock they are Anglo-Saxon, it is at least open to question whether, with the continual introduction of foreign blood of various strains it is accurate to speak of the present ninety millions of Americans as pertaining to that par- ticular race. Temperamentally they are nearer to the Gallic : like the French the Americans are easily swayed by emotion and feeling; like the French they are willingly moved by oratory and sentiment; like the French they love fine phrases and liigh-sounding words. At the same time they possess that fund of common sense and that power of recovering their balance which is generally considered an attribute of the Anglo-Saxon. They "go off the handle" very quickly, but they regain their self-control in a brief time. They allow themselves to be carried away by enthusiasm or anger, but they are apt to reflect, and seriously, before translating their emotion into ac- tion. Among the phrases which they repeat with much unction, and with entire conviction and sincerity, 151 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS "the sanctity of the home" is a favorite. But one wonders, after a prolonged residence in the country, whether the meaning attached to these words is quite that in which they are taken by ordinary mor- tals in other parts of the world. "The sanctity of the home" has a fine ring to it, and may be counted on in a trial to win acquittal for the accused, if he has, for instance, slain a man for an alleged outrage. A case in very recent years is in point: a girl claimed to have been insulted by the man with whom she had gone driving alone, and with whom she drank whiskey a proceeding which appears curious in a young person of her sex. She related the story to her father, who promptly loaded a gun and shot down the man, without giving him the smallest oppor- tunity of meeting the charge, save that of buckshot which deprived him of life. The jury, with equal promptitude, acquitted the father, because he had vindicated the sanctity of the home. One cannot but wonder what kind of sanctity that is, and further wonder is excited by the fact that human life is held so cheap that any person, believing himself offended, may go out and kill at sight the presumed offender. Here again the spirit of independence asserts it- self; the children claim and enjoy the freedom of action which is amazing to the European. It often turns out all right, but it often turns out all wrong. The home, in the sense in which that word is used even now in Europe, does not really exist in the United States, or exists only in the form of excep- tion. This does not mean that "home" is a thing unknown; far from it; only the conception of the 152 MARRIAGE home and of the relations between the members of the family is different. It suits the people, and so long as that is the case, they have a perfect right to prefer their interpretation to that which obtains in the Old World. Only the sanctity remains rather vague and indefinite. It is a mere formula, in most cases, skilfully invoked by a clever pleader whose business is to save his client even at the cost of truth and morality and justice. This is recognized by the better part of the press and by the more thoughtful among the public. The particular case just cited called forth at once the following sound remarks, among many other com- ments of a similar nature, a proof that the com- munity, that is, the thinking portion, clearly feels the evils and dangers of empty words and phrases, of lawlessness and lynch law: "The acquittal of former Judge in Vir- ginia for shooting down in hot blood a young man whom his daughter accused of 'drugging' and mal- treating her suggests the need of an amendment to the criminal code of that state. "The presiding judge in this case refused to admit testimony as to the truth of the story which the girl told to her father, citing as a precedent a similar ruling in the Thaw case in New York. The prosecution in Virginia offered to prove that the offense charged did not occur, and though this was not permitted, the jury unofficially decided from the testimony of the young woman herself and other circumstances that were brought out that no as- sault was actually made. The acquittal was osten- 153 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS sibly given on the ground of temporary insanity, though the plea for the defense was based almost wholly upon the 'unwritten law,' which warrants every Virginia gentleman and, of course, all native white Virginians are gentlemen to avenge in blood, insults or injuries to the women of his family. "As this is the second acquittal of a man-slayer in Virginia upon this ground within a few months, we submit that, as the 'unwritten law* is a return to barbarism and anarchy, the Legislature of the State put upon its statute book the law upheld by public opinion and sanctioned in the courts in these terms: "Be it enacted, that any white male citizen of Vir- ginia is hereby authorized to kill upon sight, without opportunity for denial or defense, any man whom he has been told or has reason to suspect has seduced or insulted any female relative or connection of his ; and this without reference to the truth or falsity of the charge or the grounds of the suspicion. "Such a law would tend to relieve the criminal code in Virginia, or other state where this 'unwritten law of honor' prevails, of the contempt put upon it by such verdicts as this. It would likewise save the State much needless expense, and avoid the de- moralizing effect of such farcical trials. In a 'government of laws, not of men,' all laws should be enacted, written, and observed or enforced." The foundation of the home, in European society, is marriage, with all its responsibilities, with its privi- leges, with its duties, with its joys. Marriage, there- fore, is safeguarded to a greater extent in the Old MARRIAGE World than in the New. In the latter, indeed, it is not looked upon as unalterably binding, nor can it be so in a land where the principle of personal in- dependence is so strongly rooted and acts with such power upon the inhabitants. Why should there be any binding of the individual in the case of mar- riage any more than in the case of any other con- tract which may be terminated at the pleasure of one or both the parties to it? In very many cases, therefore, marriage ceases to be the solemn engage- ment for life which it has always been held to be in Europe. It is degraded, in innumerable cases, into a ready means of satisfying a passing caprice, an ephemeral passion, and once satiety has made itself felt, nothing is easier or more readily resorted to than divorce. The seriousness of the tie is by very many not recognized or acted upon. It is a provisional com- pact. It is entered into in haste and emerged from more hastily still. The safeguards are in more than one State quite inadequate; minors are able to ob- tain the services of parson or magistrate with little or no difficulty; licenses are got without much trou- ble, and matches made in the twinkling of an eye. Married in one State, the parties can go into an- other and obtain the coveted dissolution of the bonds which sit so lightly on them. One of the parties may obtain the judgment without the other having the chance to contest. The divorce mill grinds exceed- ingly fast, and with much profit to those in charge of it. And divorce becomes a necessity, an inevitable 155 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS consequence of the laxness of the celebration of mar- riages, and of the fatal facility with which men and women enter the state of matrimony. Not long since a young woman who had been married to a fascinating individual pretending to high station in life, discovered, within less than a week, that she was the second wife, the first being undivorced even. On examination, it came out that she had met her gay Lothario one day, had dined with him the next, and had been married to him, with her mother's con- sent, the following morning. Marriage thus lightly entered into ceases to be marriage. The pulpit and the better part of the press de- plore this condition of affairs. They call for stronger and more efficient marriage laws, for uni- form divorce laws, for the prohibition of the re- marriage of the guilty party, during a certain period at least, but they appear to make scarcely any headway if any. Men and women have no hesi- tation in announcing that they are merely waiting for the one or the other to be freed from his or her present bonds in order to wed anew and elsewhere. And the sorry spectacle is presented of a wedding breakfast at which everyone present has been divorced at least once, while several have repeated and triplicated the performance. How can a home be consecrated while such prac- tices endure and are not only tolerated but encour- aged by the facility with which, first, so-called mar- riage and, next, divorce can be obtained? What conception of the sanctity of the family can be had by children who have seen a succession of fathers or 156 MARRIAGE a series of mothers rule over them? The fact that the immediate satisfaction of a desire, a whim, is within the reach of all who care to avail themselves of the means ready to their hand, cannot surely in- still in the minds of the youths and the maidens any particular respect for an institution which de- rives its chief claim to veneration from the fact that it is or ought to be a union of hearts and souls and not simply a pandering to sensual appetites. It may be urged that there are thousands on thousands of decent families in the United States the members of which would shudder at the thought of recourse to the divorce court, and this is happily perfectly true, but there are also innumerable in- stances of the scandalous facility with which mar- riage is set at naught and the family disrupted. The important point is that divorce does not of it- self inflict a stigma; people are received in decent society even after they have proved themselves in- capable of keeping the pledges freely given by them. Men who have deserved the adverse decree obtained against them are none the less considered fit and proper persons for admission to homes where virtue reigns and where the decencies are observed. For in the land of publicity it is not possible to ignore the fact that such and such persons have availed themselves of the facilities at the disposal of the rich for the purpose of severing the marital tie. There is always the danger, in speaking or writ- ing on questions affecting the manners of a nation, of being misunderstood, and there is the almost cer- tainty of motives being attributed to the critic. It 157 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS is easy to charge him with precipitate judgment, with unjustifiable conclusions, with exaggeration; it is easy to urge that he selects certain cases and gen- eralizes from them ; but assuredly no one acquainted with daily life in the United States can deny that the indictment, if so harsh a term may be used, is, in respect to the too general disregard of the sanc- tity of the marriage tie, in any degree overdrawn. The fulminations of church assemblies, the denuncia- tions of the higher order of newspapers, the caustic reproaches so often spoken by public orators, all concur in proving that the view here taken is not an unfair one, and that the danger, for danger it is, does threaten the very springs of family life and family honor. Even as a small lump of leaven leaveneth the whole lump, so may a small amount of poison destroy the virtue of a society. The levity with which mar- riage is too frequently entered into, the readiness, eagerness, nay, haste, with which recourse is there- after had to the Divorce Court, are two points on which the attention of the observer, especially of the sympathetic observer, cannot fail to dwell. Were one secretly or openly a hater of the democracy of the United States, this evil is precisely one on which no stress would be laid, as it can safely be depended upon to work incredible harm to the national mor- als. But for anyone interested in and proud of the wonderful progress of the country, seeing in it the gage of eventual development of a power destined to be most beneficent to humanity at large, for any such person to refrain from speaking out 158 MARRIAGE on the subject were worse than cowardice. It is not by merely flattering a people that it can be brought to a realizing sense of its imperfections and of the need of pruning and cutting. All truths should not perhaps be uttered, but some truths must be spoken at any cost, and those which affect the deepest well-being of a race are among the latter. What is the reason of the prevalence of hasty marriages, or ill-considered matches, and of the in- numerable divorces which bring shame to the public conscience? There are two or three reasons, and the first, the most evident, is the working of the democratic prin- ciple; the influence of individualism and a totally erroneous application of the idea of liberty, degener- ating into lawlessness, are two others. The democratic principle, as has been shown al- ready, tends to develop both individualism, which speedily is carried to the extremest length of worst egotism, and lawlessness. It may thus be said that the first reason contains the other two. If it be clearly and thoroughly understood that the Amer- ican looks upon democracy in a way vastly dif- ferent from Europeans ; and that he carries out the idea on which it is based to its logical limit, the peculiar state of mind of the devotees of marriage followed by divorce will be more readily under- stood. The democratic principle leads men to de- sire to do what they themselves please, regardless of its effect upon those around them. That is egotism, individualism run mad, but such is the actual state of the case. Men and women alike do not recognize, 159 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS do not admit, in practice, any limitation of their individual rights. Here again the critic may not improbably be accused of exaggeration, but it is impossible to study the American people in their daily life, it is impossible to hear their expressions of opinion, to observe their application of these views of life to life itself, without coming to this conclusion, a little sooner or a little later, but in- fallibly. Now, so long as selfishness, unsuspected or open, is a mainspring of action, it follows that nothing will be held sacred which interferes in the smallest degree with the complete satisfaction of personal aspirations and desires. Individualism, as practiced and taught, leads directly to the propagation and encouragement of egotism. The average man and average woman are trained, as a rule unconsciously, to seek to have their own way. Personal success is the thing men aim at ; it is the goal of their aspira- tions and their hopes. They intend to "get there," as they themselves express it, and getting there, somehow, is a process destructive of all consideration for others. Indeed, the others are either obstacles to be overcome or thrown aside or possible aids to be made use of. They are not perceived to have any claims to consideration; that is probably the last thought which would enter the mind of the hustler. The weak go to the wall, fatally ; the strong and the unscrupulous alone push to the front. In business as in politics, the primary object is success in the aims set before himself by the man who starts out to conquer his place in the world. 160 MARRIAGE To that everything else must yield: morality itself, if it happens to get in the way, as it has a habit of doing. So in the relations between the sexes, the individualistic tendency becomes at once manifest. The deeper and truer conception of the marriage tie is that each party to it is prepared and willing to sacrifice personal preferences for the sake of the other; that it is no longer a separate but a united aim which is pursued ; that mutual support and mu- tual encouragement are the immediate gain ob- tained ; that burdens are diminished by being shared and joys increased by the happiness they bring the other; that it is impossible to see always with a single eye, but that it is possible and delightful to learn how to look with the other's eyes ; that differ- ences are certain to arise, seeing men are mortal and necessarily faulty, but that differences can be ad- justed and smoothed over without contention and separation. This view, however, is not that apt to be taken by the individualist, and the ordinary training be- stowed upon the American child is not of a sort to foster unselfishness and abnegation. Given the early education and the atmosphere in which young men and young women live; the facility with which they learn of the various "society" scandals ; the leniency with which divorce is looked upon as a rule ; the habit of having their own way and the general tendency of the greater majority of those who sur- round them to act for their own benefit regardless of others, it is not surprising that the sense of duty should be little cultivated, that the need of careful 161 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS consideration before entering upon the marriage state should be lost sight of, and that alliances should be contracted with a heedlessness that is well- nigh criminal. The Church, divided as it is into many com- munions, has at least to its credit that officially it opposes the current of popular indifference to the evil of divorce, obtained without difficulty, and dis- pensed with lavish hand by courts. But here again there is a weakness in the position of the ecclesiastics which is not without influence upon people desirous of breaking loose from a contract usually looked upon as binding for life. Individual clergymen are always to be found who, for some consideration or other, will remarry divorced persons. A very re- cent case created much scandal on this account. The pair who sought to be united with "the blessing of the Church" did not fail in their purpose: the groom was enormously wealthy and the proffered fee was a fat one. It was not a case in which the clergyman could possibly plead ignorance of the facts, for they had been blazed abroad throughout the length and breadth of the land; it was simply an instance of that lack of principle which is too often exhibited in this connection by men whose profession leads the ordinary layman to expect that they shall stand up for principle instead of being influenced by money and patronage. The assemblies of the various ecclesiastical bodies are in the habit of denouncing the loose notions en- tertained of the sanctity of the marriage tie, and the consequent resort to divorce. They pass resolu- 162 MARRIAGE tions of the very strongest and most uncompromis- ing character, but these fail to reach the root of the evil, and fail all the more badly because of the weak- kneed among the parsons. It is not by means of canons and votes that the harm done by the spread of divorce will be stayed or cured; it is not by the preaching of sermons, however eloquent, that the tide of demoralization will be kept back. These things, very good in themselves, fail utterly to strike the cause, and so long as the cause is untouched, so long, logically, will the harm continue. The sanctity of the home can be maintained and defended not by the use of the shotgun, the pistol or the knife, as is assumed by the juries of certain States in the Union, where human life is of no value in comparison with the satisfaction of prejudices and the slaking of hot anger, unreasoning and maniacal. It is not to be maintained either by allowing the very bond of the family to be so loosened that it fails of its proper purpose. The reform must be thorough, and it must aim at diminishing the sense of irresponsibility which is too often characteristic of the relations between the members of the same family. To put it tersely, the relations of the family to the individual and of the individual to the family are not quite in the United States what they are in Europe. In Europe, the individual owes a duty to the family, and is Bound, traditionally and morally bound, to think first and foremost of the family, not of himself. What he does is certain to affect the family as a whole, therefore he must consider its 163 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS interests. His own personal wishes and preferences may be antagonistic to the requirements of the whole body; in that case he has to sacrifice them. He is one of many, united by a common tie : that of blood, of tradition, of responsibility. He cannot act as though he were alone to be thought of; he cannot do that only which pleases him. He is held fast by in- numerable habits and modes of action, which have been the habits and the modes of action of those who have preceded him, who have handed down to him the honorable record which constitutes the fam- ily history, the family standing. He is educated, trained, started in life in accordance with the re- quirements and the beliefs which govern that par- ticular class to which he and his belong. He speaks of himself, and thinks of himself as a member of a family. He is one of a select number. The family is the main thing; the individual is secondary. In the United States it is the opposite, although family pride and family tradition, as understood in Europe, exist in a small degree and in certain parts more than in others. There are sets which have pre- served the old English, French, German or Dutch pride of birth and ancestry, but these are compara- tively few. The greater number of families in the United States are ignorant of the power of that in- fluence; the leading motive is not devotion to the family as such, but the success of the individual. The family owes a duty to him ; he does not appear to consider that in return he has some responsibil- ity toward the family. It must provide him with the education he needs, give him the start in life 164 MARRIAGE to which he is entitled, and then he is practically done with it. He has got out of his relatives what they are able to furnish him with ; his business is now to make his way. He is not attached to the place where he was born; the "old homestead" may occa- sionally be spoken of by him with some emotion of recollection, but it is an exceptional thing to see a man, who has made his way in the world and amassed a fortune, return to the cradle of his childhood and there spend the remainder of his days. On the con- trary, the American who is getting on in the world is more apt to pass from one habitation to another, each succeeding one more splendid and more luxuri- ous than its predecessor, so that it may be in keep- ing with the change in his circumstances. Exquisite- ly beautiful estates are thrown on the market and cut up into house lots, because the owner has mi- grated to a more fashionable .resort, where his wealth will have the chance to display itself, and not always with vulgar ostentation. Here and there one comes across a property that has remained in the same family for two or three hundred years, which is still occupied by the descen- dants of the original owners, which is rich in asso- ciations and memories, and which preserves intact all that the story of the family has of the honorable and distinguished. But this is the rare exception; the rule is newness and continual change. Why this should be the case puzzles the observer at first. But reflection gives the key to the riddle. The self-made man is the man in the majority: the self-made man naturally likes to see his own handi- 165 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS work, and the best setting for it is a home of his own making, a house designed after his own fancy. The place he came from, if he did come from any place in particular, has no attraction for him; it is not his creation. Every successful American has in him the same self-pride which led Louis XIV to re- ject all the splendid palaces of his predecessors in favor of the Versailles which he created for himself. The home then becomes the outward and visible sign of the success of the owner. It stands as a monu- ment to his skill, his energy, his talents. It is a perpetual sweet savor to him, an enduring testimony to what he himself, and not any forbear, has accom- plished in the great struggle for fortune. This is a perfectly natural and perfectly intelligible state of mind, and in a country where progress and develop- ment are so continuous and so rapid, it is not to be wondered at that the habits of the Old World should fail to commend themselves to the inhabitants of the New. In Europe, taking it all round, men look back: the past is rich in tradition and story and legend and memories of great deeds performed by the ancestors. The tradition has to be maintained, the record carried on, and the comparison with the past is the test applied to the success of the present. The links are many and close which bind a man to the paternal estate; the very isolation of the English land, guarded by its silver streak of sea, has tended to keep men within the borders. But all these con- ditions are changed in America; the tribe of ances- tors, no matter how distinguished and famous, does not help a man to make his way; the traditions of 166 MARRIAGE the family will not smooth his path nor make his lot any easier; he has to reckon upon himself, to carve his road to success, to found his home for himself, and to create his own tradition. Once he has received that education which his parents can afford to give him, which, in nearly every State is provided gratui- tously for him, it lies with him and with him alone to turn it to profitable account. The family has done with him, for he has done with the family. Each member strikes out for himself or herself, each one goes on his or her own way, and it may be that the scattered brothers and sisters will not meet again, unless, perchance, in some of those associa- tions of persons bearing the same name which have sprung up of late years, and draw together all those who are connected with some branch of some old English stock. Thus there is not the profound sense of family allegiance which exists in European society, and the man or the woman who seeks freedom from the ties of wedlock, does so unhesitatingly, as a matter which concerns himself or herself alone. Personal interest only is at stake ; nothing pertaining to a wider circle is involved, and the very fact that the action of an individual necessarily exerts an influence on so- ciety at large is forgotten in the pursuit of indi- vidual gratification. Commodore Vanderbilt gained fame by his remark : "Damn the public !" but those who laughingly quote that celebrated saying are themselves apt to apply the principle which dictated it, whenever their own interests clash with public morality. A man whose vast wealth gives him the 167 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS great prominence which wealth bestows in the United States does not stop for a second to consider whether that wealth and that prominence involves, on his part, responsibilities toward the public, to- ward society. All he thinks of is what he desires to do, and having decided that he wants to do that par- ticular thing, he does it, remorselessly, unhesitat- ingly, simply because it suits him. And he would be infinitely surprised were he to be told that in thus satisfying his own wishes he is guilty of a moral crime against the society of the land that has given him his wealth and his influence. Again, the training of children in average Amer- ican homes is not on the whole such as to impress upon them, at that period of life when impressions sink deep in the mind, a real regard for others than themselves. It is a moot question, of course, and one not really solved, that of the proper training to be given to children. The American claims that he has turned out the finest specimen of womanhood the world has ever seen when he turns out "the American girl." That is as it may be, and opinions differ, even in America, concerning the supposed superior- ity of the girl. But it is certain that the American training of the child, boy or girl, is wholly in the direction of independence from parental control at the earliest age. Boys and girls alike imbibe from the first the sense of freedom from all rule and all obstacles to the fulfillment of their wishes. There is no restraint, to a certain extent, except the re- straint resorted to for the sake of peace, of com- fort ; and not as a matter of principle, as a means of 168 MARRIAGE discipline. The American child has as decided an objection to discipline as the grown American has to law which presses unfavorably upon him. And it is easier to yield to the child than to compel it to obey. Hence the development of individualism which afterwards bears both good and bad fruit, for it must not be supposed that this form of education, however startling and repugnant even to the Euro- pean, accustomed to the traditional methods of his land, is devoid of excellence. Far from it : the very independence induces later the determination to make one's own way, and not to be dependent upon parents or family for that income which the boy or the girl can earn alone. It has the advantage of cultivating self-reliance and resourcefulness, initiative and en- ergy; the child as it grows learns more and more to do things for itself; it learns early to look to it- self for the satisfaction of its desires. Parental authority is doubtless greatly weakened, and harm- ful results flow from that fact, but, on the other hand, good also is derived from the spirit of self- help and self-direction. Girls are too apt to make unfortunate marriages, and then to have recourse to the attractive court which decrees divorce; too apt to reject with contempt the warnings of their elders and to start out in life for themselves without the safeguards which are still considered necessary for women, even in so advanced a state of society as obtains in the United States. But there is much advantage also, and in comparison there are not only more girls and women capable of earning a respect- able livelihood for themselves, but there is also a 169 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS far higher standard of opinion respecting the woman who makes her own way in the world and is not con- tent to rely for the necessities of life upon her im- mediate or her distant relatives. Nor is the European tradition, the European habit absent totally. There are many families in which all the sweetness of family life, as understood and practiced in England or France, abounds ; where the parental authority is still dominant ; where the sense of responsibility and interdependence is yet strong and lively, and it would be difficult to find finer examples of true homes and beautiful family life than one meets not infrequently in this country. The general system has gradually arisen as a con- sequence of the struggle for the necessities of life in a land where such struggle is keen and competition is fierce; where every man has to work and every woman to slave, unless she is endowed with a suffi- ciency of this world's goods ; but there is this radical difference in favor of the American conditions, that woman's sphere of usefulness and activity has been vastly extended, that it has enabled her to assume a rank more in consonance with her natural rights, to prove her capacity, her power of sufficing unto her- self, and to relieve her of the burden of inferiority which is still too largely her share in the Old World. The training of the average American child does not fit it for the fulfillment of the European tradi- tions of the family, and it is impossible, or at least exceedingly difficult, to make the American under- stand the condition of things in this respect in the old European countries. The French law, which re- 170 MARRIAGE quires the consent of the parents to the marriage of children, is utterly unintelligible to the American youth, who holds very firmly to the opinion that mar- riage is a matter concerning two people only, and with which parents have no real and sound right to interfere in any way. The independence of thought, the independence of habit which are characteristic of the American, are opposed to the application of European ideas and traditions in the education of the young. Those who bear affectionate regard to these traditions and ideas mourn the fact, but all the mourning and wailing, all the regret and longing will not change the practice one iota. Conditions are essentially different, and results must perforce be different also. It is not, then, by fulminating condemnation of the habit and practice of easy divorce that the churches will ever succeed in checking the evil practice. All the canons they enthusiastically pass will not prevent the average individual from continuing to seek in the courts that relief from bonds which have swiftly become irksome. The protests of the press, eloquent and sound as they are, fail to move those who have absolutely no notion of the individual's responsibility to the community. Society is not on the side of the Church or the press in this respect. Divorce is not condemned by the bulk of the people and is not looked upon as a wrong thing. On the contrary, it is currently and commonly spoken of as a ready means of getting rid of difficulties which, were separation not easily obtainable might, and in many cases would, be met 171 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS with a sincere desire to overcome them. But why trouble with overcoming obstacles when they can be avoided altogether? Why think for a moment of striving to introduce harmony instead of discord when it is so easy to get rid of the discord by simply getting a divorce? Why worry over the possible difficulties of marriage when marriage need not be more than a passing recreation and satisfaction? Why think of responsibilities to the community when one has been brought up in the individualistic creed? Along this line, surely, lies the work of the pul- pit and the press, not, as the former appears to imagine, in the framing of more canons, in the elab- oration of more regulations. The curse of the United States is the superabundance of laws; laws which are swiftly enacted and as swiftly ignored or evaded. What is wanted is not more law, but a recognition of the force and necessity and useful- ness of law; not more canons and sermons, but an effort to so alter the training of the child, from its earliest years, that it shall realize, once arrived at man's estate, that the individual lives not for him- self alone, especially in a democratic community but has weighty responsibilities toward that com- munity; responsibilities which cannot be shirked without danger to the individual, without positive harm to the common weal. It is not necessary to check or destroy the demo- cratic spirit, so fruitful of good in so many ways; it is only necessary to enlighten it, and to make its possessors perceive that democracy has not ful- 172 MARRIAGE filled its purpose when it has bestowed liberty upon the individual, but that it also has to conserve the morality of society, and that in a higher and more thorough way than may be possible under any other form of government. For if there be indeed a virtue in democracy, and of that there can be no doubt, that virtue should work for the welfare of the mass as well as of the in- dividual. Democracy does not mean government for the private benefit of the isolated but government for the highest good of all. It has a task to achieve yet in the United States, and it is capable of carrying it to a successful issue. When, to the sense of free- dom, of personal independence and power, now so rife among the Americans, is added the due recogni- tion of the duties and responsibilities of the individ- ual to society, freedom and independence will not be lessened, but broadened, and happiness, declared by the Constitution to be an inalienable right of man, will be far more surely secured for the greater number than it is at present. The selfishness too evident in the conception and practice of life will be replaced by a higher and healthier conception of the relations between the members of the community, and most, if not all, of the evils which now afflict so- ciety will disappear. But selfishness, or that form of it dignified too often with the name of independence, must first be checked and diminished. In that direc- tion should the churches work, and along that line should the press teach. XI WOMAN A noteworthy effect of democracy in the United States has been the uplifting of woman. Democracy has accomplished many things, and will yet accom- plish more, for in it lies the hope of the human race, but what it has done for woman surpasses all else. Not that the end is reached yet, or the goal won ; far from it ; but at least a fair start has been made, and there can be no going back, no retracing the steps taken, no undoing the good work accom- plished. The steady rising of woman to the place which she claims as her just due, to the equality she insists she is entitled to, is not now to be stemmed, and all the arguments brought against it, all the ridicule showered upon it, will but result in the stronger growth of the belief that woman has as much right to liberty and the consequences of liberty as her brother man. The United States is unquestionably ahead of Europe in the general education of women, and the day is past when it could be claimed that woman is intellectually inferior to man. She has as eager a desire for instruction, as quick a mind to receive it, as steadfast a perseverance in striving after it, 174 WOMAN and she attains eminence as readily as does the so- called nobler sex, which has so long considered her practically an inferior being. It is perhaps the most marvelous of the many marvelous spectacles which America presents, this spectacle of the progress made by the feminist movement. It is not much more than a couple of generations since it took prac- tical form, and the successes it has scored since then augur well for the future triumph of the idea which underlies it. It is needless to say that even now there is an enormous amount of opposition to the extension of the rights of woman to the same limits as the rights of man; that among women themselves are very many who are strongly in antagonism to the views of the reformers and progressists ; that among men the vast majority entertain the identical opin- ions which have held sway for centuries, and believe conscientiously that any further development along the present lines can only insure harm to the social body, and to the family in particular. This is nat- ural, and not every movement for the spread of freedom is at once successful. The movement for the establishing of the absolute equality of men and women cannot, in the nature of things, but evoke virulent opposition. The habit of looking on woman as an inferior, in every sense of the word, is so rooted that it will take years to instil different notions in the mind of the rising generation. Then the fact that in many colleges where co-education is the rule, the women manage to secure more honors than their male competitors, that they exhibit a quickness and 175 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS a readiness in assimilating the instruction received, that they prove by their application and earnest- ness their fitness for higher education, indisposes many against them, instead of securing their sup- port. It is hopeless to try to convert those who are convinced that the whole idea is unsound ; that is the result of centuries of habit. But with the young generation it is different, and as the years go by it may confidently be expected that the question, so important and so fraught with vital consequences to the welfare of the community, will be discussed with less prejudice and a greater readiness to con- cede that in a democratic country women are en- titled to equal rights with men. And truly it is not a comforting reflection for a Briton that it has been the deliberately chosen part of a body of women in Great Britain to prove to the world that they are essentially, constitutionally, unfit to exercise power. In respect of the suffrage movement this country of ours has made a lament- able exhibition of itself, which contrasts unpleasantly with the saner methods of the American friends of the cause. In America woman suffrage, though it does not excite wild enthusiasm, is steadily making its way, and whether one believes in the idea or not, there is no disposition to turn it into ridicule or to oppose it by any but rational means. Consequently women have won the suffrage in a number of States and will win it the land over. With us, the madness of the "Furies," as they have well been called, has set the movement back for years. And the weak and very half-hearted condemnation 176 WOMAN of the militants by the Constitutional societies re- veals plainly the secret admiration the latter have for the former. On the simple basis of justice, of the application of the democratic principle, British women ought to have the right of suffrage. But is it to be wondered at that hesitation has been transformed into hostility when the very actions of the women and their defense of these actions prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are incapable of seeing the right and wrong of matters, that they lack common sense, fore- sight, ordinary intelligence? "The American girl" and the American woman generally has not been guilty of such folly as her British sisters. She proved herself capable, she upheld in sensible fashion the justice of her claim and she has carried her point in more than one State and is likely ere long to secure the suffrage in Fed- eral matters. In other words she has shown herself superior to that portion, at least, of her British sisters whose conduct has debased the high ideal of womanhood and set back the accomplishment of a legitimate and just demand. Already it is the sense, unconscious in many cases, of this fact which has made the American woman different from her sisters in Europe; for she ig dif- ferent. She has acquired the feeling that she is as good as man, and it will be impossible for man to uproot that notion once it has taken firm hold. She has learned that she can do many things, and do them well, which it was taken for granted a woman was incapable of performing. She has won her place 177 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and holds it ; she is aware of her powers, and means to use them. She sees that these powers involve re- sponsibilities and she is willing to assume and dis- charge these. She has secured for herself not the education of the public and high schools alone, but of the college and the university, and in these higher fields she has proved her ability alongside of men trained with the advantage of long tradition on their side. That she is not infrequently inferior yet in certain points is not an argument against her even- tual capacity to equal man in this respect. It is probably the outcome, the very natural outcome, of the long subjection in which she has been held, of the refusal to give her instruction, of the assump- tion that the Creator did not intend her to occupy a place by the side of man, but one beneath him. The conditions of life in the United States, differ-; ing so widely in many ways from those of life in Europe, have facilitated the success of the feminist movement. The diminution of home duties and re- sponsibilities, due largely to economic causes, has led to the need of other occupations ; to the filling of time with other matters than housekeeping, where housekeeping is either not called for or is already in charge of someone else. Women necessarily re- quired an occupation: education of the mind ap- peared to offer the needed satisfaction, and once it was tasted, it was liked. Hence the great growth of the numbers of college-bred women, numbers which are steadily and rapidly increasing throughout the country. It is too early to pronounce definitely upon the 178 WOMAN vexed question of the effect of college education upon woman and the home. It is urged by some opposed to the higher education of women, that it unfits them for home duties ; first, by taking them away at a time of life when they ought to be learning house- keeping; second, by leading them to interest them- selves in questions which are not of their competence. These arguments have really no very solid founda- tion, and already have been successfully controverted in actual experience by the simple fact that many a woman college graduate has proved that a broad education, far from impairing her ability to make a good wife and a good housekeeper, tends rather to develop in her the very qualities needed in these positions, besides affording her a means of widening her life and thus making her yet more of a help- meet and a companion to her husband. In truth, the force and persistency of the cen- turies old tradition of the intellectual inferiority of woman is accepted without reflection by many men and women alike, and out of that tradition, con- vention has built up a system of repressive rules and observances which hem in woman even now and even in the democratic United States, albeit much less there than in Europe. In the latter, the rise of woman has been exceedingly slow, and her status has been uplifted little by little and only with extreme difficulty. This is the logical consequence of the condition of society as the latter gradually emerged from the overthrow of the old Roman civilization by the invasion of the Teutonic nations. In the state of war which then obtained, woman necessarily was 179 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS relegated to the background ; her dependence upon the physically stronger sex was accentuated, and lasted so long that it became an article of faith. And at a time when instruction was confined to an exceedingly small minority of the whole population, it was natural that no thought should be bestowed upon the intellectual development of woman herself, although it was mainly women who formed the audi- ence of the minstrels and who aided in the conserva- tion of the literature of the day, not infrequently, indeed, contributing to it themselves. Even with the improvement in the social conditions which followed upon the substitution of peace for war as the normal state of society, with the growth of instruction, albeit still slow and partial, it was a belief so firmly implanted in the minds of men and women alike that the latter was incapable of higher instruction that no real attempt was made to supply them with opportunities to prove their fitness for it. And this in face of the fact that in France, for example, it was a woman who led the way in the uplifting of literature and language, and that women shone in the galaxy of illustrious writers who made famous the reign of Louis XIV. Even the eight- eenth century, with its marvelous impulse toward progress and liberty, failed to recognize the pos- sibility of woman equaling her brother man in let- ters, science and art. It was reserved for the nine- teenth, and especially for the nineteenth century in America, to proclaim the right of woman to obtain an education similar in every respect to that of man. 180 WOMAN The real cause of the uplifting of woman is of course to be sought still further back. Whatever may be thought of the worship of the Virgin, by those who do not form part of the Roman com- munion, it is undeniable that the action of the Church contributed greatly to bring about a higher concep- tion of the status of woman and to develop a more chivalrous attitude with regard to her. And that sprang from the essential result of the Christian doctrine, which, as has been aptly said, taught the dignity of the human soul. Now even the bitterest opponents of the equality of women would scarcely venture to affirm that women have no souls. It was this doctrine, the truth of which deepened with the centuries, that gradually aroused men to the recog- nition of the rights of man, those rights so ardently proclaimed by the French revolutionists, and which are now accepted as the basis of democratic govern- ment. But if man enjoyed these natural rights, it was hard to deny them to woman, and thus little by little dawned the thought that woman was not the inferior but the complete equal of man. It is this democratic belief which is at the root of the differ- ence between the American woman and her sister in Europe. In the latter, the faith still holds that be- cause physically weaker she is therefore intellec- tually weaker, and, consequently, unable to under- stand many questions which the nobler intelligence of her brother man solves without the least difficulty. In America, on the contrary, the feeling has grown steadily that the intelligence of woman is as keen, as strong, as true as that of man; that woman is quite 181 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS as capable of mental improvement as is man ; that she is as able as he to enter into the study of questions affecting the moral welfare of the home and the com- munity. This just appreciation of her capacity has led to the spread of education for women on the same general lines as for men; it has brought about the foundation of institutions in which, either in com- pany with men or apart from them, women are able to obtain the instruction for which their intellect craves. It has caused the admission of women to learned professions, where they have proved their fitness for duties hitherto considered strictly con- fined to men. It has enabled them to show that the supposed inferiority existed because it was sedulously kept up by the denial of opportunities, but that once the principle of equal opportunities, already vin- dicated in the case of men, was applied to women, they also manifested the beneficial results of the spirit of democracy. The American woman has the advantage of being brought up in an atmosphere of independence; not of political independence only, but of independence of thought. It is characteristic of the American that he is an original thinker in business, in the arts, in the professions; he is not bound down hard and fast by traditions which are weighted with the respec- tability of age; he shakes himself free from tram- mels which hamper his European competitor, and he does not hesitate to attempt experiments which may prove disastrous but which are often crowned with brilliant success. He is inventive; resourceful; he is full of initiative, and these qualities are met with 182 WOMAN in the women of the race as they are in the men. It was impossible, therefore, that the American woman should continue to be bound by the ideas of the Old World, that she should be willing to remain what her sisters in the older lands had been forced to remain for so long. It was impossible that, breathing the atmosphere of freedom, of individual- ism of the United States, she should be content to lag behind and to renounce the opportunities which democracy offers to all who are intelligent, active, persevering and able. She saw her chance and took it. She took it in spite of an opposition rooted in old beliefs, which, though they cannot be as strong in a new land as in an old one, nevertheless still form part and parcel of the accepted conventions of so- ciety. She has had to fight for her rights, exactly as the men of 1776 had to fight for theirs, and like them she has won the battle. She still has much to overcome, much prejudice to destroy, but the prog- ress she has made is such as to warrant the belief, optimistic it may be, that the day is not far distant when her complete equality will be acknowledged without dispute or reservation. John Knox, when he set about his reformation, saw clearly that the hope of progress and the gage of victory lay in the education of the people, and he founded that admirable school system which has enabled the Scottish race to make its mark wherever Scotsmen are found. The French revolutionists per- ceived the same truth, and although they could not carry out the principle in its entirety, they pro- claimed universal and compulsory education for all 183 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS classes. The founders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts likewise had already applied that principle, and had given education a foremost place in their plan of government. The United States, as it grew, developed common school education with the result that at the present moment instruc- tion is practically universal and all children are enabled to acquire it. The women of America, far from being intellectu- ally inferior to men, saw for themselves that the first step in the march to victory must be education, higher education for women, and to that they bent their efforts. They would have wished co-education established in all the colleges and universities, and it was with regret that the more ardent champions of the cause saw the founding of separate colleges for girls. But even with separate education, the rapid growth of higher instruction for the sex to which it had been so long denied was marvelous. Institu- tions which now number their students by hundreds, remember easily the day when there were scarcely some scores. And with every passing year the move- ment will gain greater force and greater develop- ment. In America higher education for women is no longer an experiment; it is a settled fact. A woman writer has said : "Kings are enslaved by women, you know, and statesmen are led by them, though they oughtn't to be. And poets worship them, else how could they write poetry ? There would be nothing to write about. It is reserved for boys and savages to look down upon them." Of a surety it is not the American woman who runs the risk of 184 WOMAN being looked down upon. Her power is too well es- tablished, her influence too great to admit of any but respectful consideration of her claims. She has gained a position for herself, and she is certain to maintain it. Her prestige, her charm are recog- nized. She has developed herself into a type of her sex, and however much the type may grate upon those who hold by antique traditions, it is the type of the future. She has asserted her right to absolute and perfect equality with man, and she will not rest until she has fully compassed her ends. No one now in America would venture to propose the closing of educational institutions to women, and education is for them what it has been and what it is for men: the means to liberty. The women in America are the really civilizing class. Culture must largely depend upon them in the present conditions of things. Men, most men, are too much occupied in the struggle for life and wealth to have leisure or inclination for the pursuit of the more refining influences. They have not time, or think they have no time, to maintain purity in politics. The women have interested themselves in politics ; they have not yet succeeded everywhere in obtaining the suffrage, but their influence is felt and, on the whole, it is a very beneficial influence. They have been the movers in more than one ad- mirable and much needed reform ; they have secured the promulgation of laws which have contributed to the moral and physical improvement of women and children throughout the land; they have tended to set up a higher standard of public morality; they 185 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS have forced discussion of subjects of genuine im- portance, which, however, were neglected because the rulers of the "superior" sex had other matters to take up their attention. It is recognized that they have contributed very greatly to the development and amelioration of edu- cation. The instruction of the larger number of the children is in their hands, and in higher insti- tutions of learning they occupy positions won by merit and retained by capacity. They have, by persistent and unceasing effort, accomplished much in the uplifting of moral standards, in the promotion of temperance and purity. Their record, as reform- ers, is simply superb, and their work in that direc- tion is yet far from being done. They have origin- ated and carried out schemes, of the most practical kind, for the alleviation of suffering and poverty: the college settlements in all the large cities do an amount of good which one may sneer at but which is undeniable. They are one of the strongest mo- tive forces in the extension of the benefits of ap- plied Christianity, and they daily give proof of that spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice for which their sex has been famous in all ages and in all countries. There is more. The American woman, well edu- cated, well informed, interested in innumerable and diverse subjects, has fitted herself to be a comrade to man. Her attractiveness and charm lie no longer only in her power to please the eye ; her intellectual quali- ties commend her to the serious consideration of man. She can discuss topics which interest men, as she can talk delightfully on points of especial at- 186 WOMAN traction to women. She can take part in conversa- tions on the most serious themes, and she can lead the talk into channels of gaiety. She is richer in- tellectually than she was in other times, and more generally so. It is the rule, in the United States, and not the exception, to meet women who can hold their own in any discussion, and this fact lends a charm and im- parts an interest to the intercourse with them which are lacking in the converse with the merely well brought-up girl or woman who was bound by conven- tion to ignore so much. The man who prefers to consort with his recognized inferiors is not the man who is well thought of; the man who seeks the so- ciety of those who are his superiors mentally, and profits by it, is the one who himself will rise. This is generally acknowledged, and the habit is encour- aged. Yet, singularly enough, the opposite is at the root of the tradition concerning woman. If she be, as is still held by so many, inferior to man, the latter's avowed liking for her society and compan- ionship reflects upon him. But she is not, save in so far as circumstances have made her so, and her pres- ent effort to attain complete equality should enlist sympathy and aid rather than ridicule and opposi- tion. But even in advanced America it is very hard for her to win at all points. It is customary to speak of the American as particularly chivalrous in his bearing toward women. Yet that same American in- sists as we do here upon making a marked difference in the retribution for precisely analogous work per- 187 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS formed on the one hand by men, on the other by women. The number of women teachers greatly ex- ceeds that of men teachers. Very many of the women have attained high distinction as instructors, both in their pedagogical and in their administrative work ; none the less the scale of salaries for women is calculated on a lower basis than are the salaries paid to men. It is difficult for a woman of proved ability and efficiency to obtain a position as high as a man can secure without the least trouble. The prejudice is still extant, still vigorous, and although it has time and again been proved unfounded, it persists and a man is given the post which the woman had every right to look for. Very nearly three-fourths of all the teachers in the United States are women, yet the highest prizes in the profession are still largely re- served, and jealously reserved for men. This is a condition which the women naturally object to and which cannot continue much longer, the palpable in- justice of it being too great. And, in the long run, the democratic sense of the people refuses to tolerate injustice. The desire for education among women is genuine and startling. It not only manifests itself in the attendance at the institutions designed expressly and exclusively for them and in their resorting to those colleges and universities where co-education is the rule; it is also visible in the fact that the majority of listeners at public courses are women. Among the educational agencies which have done so much, and are still doing so much for the intellectual ad- 188 WOMAN vancement of the Americans, and which include the press as well as the schools and universities, the lecture platform must be counted as one of the most important. The people generally are anxious to be informed on many subjects, and in the remote coun- try districts as in the populous cities, the lecturer is a welcome guest, bringing, as he does, the food ardently craved by the American mind. Now, at public lectures, the much larger portion of the audience is invariably composed of women. Not women attracted by a passing curiosity, al- though no doubt there are some of that class, but women earnest in their desire to acquire further in- formation and instruction, women who feel the need of mental food, and who gladly avail themselves of the opportunities put in their way. In the large cities, the audiences thus gathered are among the most interesting which a lecturer can meet. Appre- ciative, quick to respond, able to follow the develop- ment of the theme, keen in their criticism, and, on the whole, sound in their judgment, it is a pleasure and a stimulus to speak before them. It is the women, as has already been said, who in great meas- ure contribute to the esthetic culture of the race. It is on them that it mainly depends and will continue to depend until the "nobler" sex can afford to spare some of the time devoted to the providing of daily bread or the acquisition of wealth to the pursuit of other things. That there are results of this eagerness for knowl- edge not entirely satisfactory is not to be wondered at. Pedantry and affectation make their appearance 189 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS as an inevitable consequence of the cult of knowledge. The "wearisome woman" is far from being unknown to the public lecturer, but she is after all a minute minority. The bulk of the women who attend the public lectures are sincerely anxious to obtain in- formation, and that not for the purpose of parad- ing it, but simply in order to broaden their minds, to quicken their understanding, to enable themselves to better appreciate and understand the problems of life with which they are continually in contact, to make themselves worthier companions of their hus- bands, their brothers, their sons, their friends. And they succeed ; of that there is not the remotest doubt. The average American woman can talk in- telligently on just the subjects which interest the "lords of creation," and she talks with a vivacity and a grace and a charm which recall the legendary women of the French salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The young American girl is different from her European sister ; she is more independent, more self- reliant, more defiant of conventions and traditions. She is the fruit of the society from which she springs, in which she has been educated, in which she has learned, from childhood, to be independent and to think for herself. She is not the European type; she is unlike the French jeune fille or the English maiden; she very often lacks the peculiar sweetness which marks the latter; she has not the retenue of the former. But she cannot be like them ; she be- longs to a different race and has felt other influ- ences. She is the American girl, able to take care 190 WOMAN of herself, impatient of domination, full of the sense of her right to equality with all men, and prepared to make her own way in the world if need arise. She has inspired the journalist, the novelist, the illustrator; she has furnished the world with a new emanation of woman, distracting in many respects, singularly attractive, distinctly different, wildly ad- mired by many, reproachfully considered by some; a being combining the winsomeness of the English girl with the startling novelty of her own land. That is the type ; there are many varieties of it, and also, it must be said, every American girl one meets does not come up to the model. But there are very many who do, and the rest approach it as closely as they may. Among the refined and well-bred, the type produces results absolutely bewildering in their charm ; among the less educated and less refined, it creates an air of style which is itself very taking. This is due, in part, to the prevailing repetition of modes in cheaper forms. All women, no matter what their rank in the social scale, wear about the same cut of garments, and follow the same fashions. There is no dress distinctive of rank or district for there is no distinction of rank, and all districts are permeated by the influence of the department store and the wholesale houses which turn out "costumes" in millions. The materials differ, but the general effect of them is the same. And the spreading of the most recent modes by the press, for the Sunday paper especially devotes much attention to the Woman's Page, enables the girl in any part of the 191 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS country to imitate her richer and more fortunate sisters. Nor is she held back by any Old World idea of convention, of certain fashions being suited to the town and others to the country : she boldly appropri- ates them all, and turns out attired in the latest style to meet her swain or to attend service. And the effect, in the cities, at any rate, is satisfactory. The effort to be stylish, smart, calls out in the girl qualities that else would be uncultivated. There are painful and regrettable results, at times, and the love of dress is too powerful with some, but on the whole it is pleasant to see the neatness and trimness of the innumerable women who flock in the streets, who issue from the lofty office buildings, who emerge in hundreds from the stores. The general care of the person is noticeable, and that attention to per- sonal appearance is not without its beneficial effect upon the mental attitude of the woman. One feels continually, in the United States, the truth of the great principle of opportunity offered to all; one feels it in the case of women as in that of men. It is intelligible how a girl who has begun life in a factory can rise to be a woman of society, in the wide sense given to that word in that country. In the atmosphere of freedom in which she lives, the American woman develops and expands. She has the consciousness that no rank is beyond her reach, and if there be frivolous women there as elsewhere, there are certainly more who take life seriously and look upon it as something to be used to the utmost. That is because there is no strong class tradition to 192 WOMAN hold woman down, and if men have benefited by the fact, women are equally improving under it. The European misses many things to which he is accustomed; he is offended by many manifestations of a spirit unlike the spirit of his land; he cannot stomach, very often, the independence and freedom which continually obtrude upon him in manifestations very apt to be unpleasant at first, and he is often inclined to criticize sharply the attitude and man- ners of the American and at times with justice. But these offensive demonstrations, which the truest Americans regret and blame, are no more than the inevitable consequence of the transition from a con- dition of practical subjection and inferiority to a state of freedom and equality. The more the posi- tion of woman, the more her status in society rises, the less will these points obtain the importance they not infrequently have at present. The change is great, and it is bound to affect some unfavorably, as every change does. The Marchioness of Rambouillet and the ladies who frequented her celebrated salon called down upon themselves the animadversion and ridicule of their contemporaries ; the greatest of comic writers poured upon them a flood of fun and sarcasm, care- fully selecting the shafts that would tell most surely, yet the influence of the Marchioness is now recog- nized to have been one of the great civilizing and refining forces of the seventeenth century. The crusade she led has had results that have proved last- ing, and it is the same with the change now taking place in the United States among women: it will 193 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS surely manifest itself one of the most beneficial not to women alone but to men as well, for in our modern society the greater the respect for women, the higher their position, the better the men are. The influ- ence of woman can but ameliorate many conditions yet requiring reform, and it is one of the most in- teresting of the many interesting topics, this of the growth of the movement for the equality of woman in every respect. The fears entertained by some by many, it may as well be conceded that the further emancipation of the sex will prove harmful to both, is not borne out by history. Nowhere has the uplift- ing of woman borne evil fruits while, on the other hand, wherever she has been and is kept in subjection or in a state of distinct inferiority, the results are invariably harmful to man himself. In the end, there is no loss of womanliness in the education of women and in the fitting of them to take their place by the side of their brother man rather than beneath him. The virtues and the pe- culiar qualities of woman do not appear, to an ob- server in the land, to have been diminished or de- stroyed by the development of the intellectual facul- ties or by the raising of the social and political standard of the sex. They are inherent in woman, and have found, in the United States, as in Eng- land, expression in works meritorious in every re- spect. All that has been accomplished by women in the old country and in the new speaks loudly in their favor. Benevolent institutions are most deeply indebted to them, and many owe their very existence to them. They have had great influence upon the 194 WOMAN Development of education along sensible lines ; they possess, in many States, the right to vote for mem- bers of the school boards, and are eligible themselves to serve upon these administrative bodies. All that interests the home, the family, the morals of the com- munity, has attracted them, and their interest in these questions has been of the most practical char- acter. They have already proved their ability and their intelligence; no one need fear that in the fur- ther progress of the sex to the inevitable perfection of equality the finest qualities of woman will suffer. They have not suffered so far, as anyone truly ac- quainted with American women is well aware, and there is no possible reason for imagining that recog- nition of the fact that the uplifting of man must be concurrent with the uplifting of woman will work harm to the one or the other. The United States has accomplished wonders in many ways ; it will yet exhibit to the world a community in which no distinction is made between the sexes in respect of all natural rights, as it already offers the cheering spectacle of a land where class distinctions find it impossible to obtain a real foothold and to repress the just ambition of the citizen of every degree. XII THE GOLDEN CALF The ancient Hebrews had scarcely made their exit from the land of Egypt laden with the spoils of their late tyrants, than they proceeded to give a public manifestation of a characteristic trait, and to cele- brate joyfully their love for and adoration of gold. The dance round the Golden Calf, the false god, has remained famous in history, and the sarcastic an- tagonist of the Semitic race finds in it, even to-day, a weapon against the much-maligned and ever-per- secuted Hebrew. Yet, in all fairness, if the Jew loves money even as his own soul which is not to be wondered at since it has been, all through Christian times, at once his peril and his protection is it not plain that the Christian in general has exhibited and exhibits now an equal passion for the precious metal? The very motive of the brutal and unjust persecu- tion of the scattered race has been the Christian's greed of gold; and as he found it more convenient to rob the Jew than to earn the wealth he coveted, he tortured, burned and quartered him as his re- ligious fancy suggested. The American of to-day dislikes the Israelite, who flourishes within his gates, and threatens to found a 196 THE GOLDEN CALF New Jerusalem within New York itself. The Amer- ican refuses to herd with the Hebrew in the vast caravanseries whither he flocks in winter as in sum- mer. He proclaims his infinite superiority to the accursed race of Shylocks, and will neither eat nor drink with the members thereof. The American is a Christian, and a good Christian may not, in his opinion, mingle with the descendants of David. Be- sides, the latter are such bitter rivals in the race for wealth. They push themselves in everywhere; they control banks ; they "run" great department stores ; they enter the directorates of companies; every- where, in everything they manage to worm their way. There is not a form of business, not a chance to make money but the trail of the Hebrew is over it all. Hence the distaste is intelligible. No man ever loved a rival, much less a successful rival, and the Hebrew is singularly successful in the United States. It might be deduced, from this antipathy, so strong that it compels notice, that the American is not a money lover; that it is his repugnance for the coarseness of materialism, for the crudity of fortune- making which impels him to repel the Israelite. Alas! it is not so, but in part, jealousy. For the American above all ideals has set up for the time the acquisition of wealth as the touchstone of suc- cess. In Old Europe one still asks, of a newcomer: "What is his family?" for birth and connections have not lost their hold ; but in America it is : "What is he worth?" Money is a great god to whom the masses, high and low, bow down in adoration. Money 197 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS is the scale by which everything is measured. To have money, or to appear to have it, is the aim of numberless Americans. It is of the wealth of the country in general and of the individual in particular that people speak first and most of the time. It is the utterly wealthy who are to the masses, the real heroes of the national legend and the national imag- ination. The rich man holds the place, in the mod- ern American civilization, which the greater warrior held in Europe during the Middle Ages; the press and the orator and the demagogue speak of the coal baron, of the trust magnate. The very titles, er- roneously supposed to be held in abhorrence because they were used to designate the mighty in the old lands of Europe, are employed here to distinguish the rich. In the popular mind a great President, a Washington, a Lincoln, a Roosevelt, are certainly men to be proud of, and they are spoken of with some respect and admiration, but with nothing of the fervor, of the ardent satisfaction evoked by a "Jupiter" Pierpont Morgan, a Rockefeller, a Harri- man, a Vanderbilt or a Gould. The ex-boss Croker, who has steadily and consistently refused to reveal the origin of his vast fortune, has been an object of envy to thousands. If they only knew the secret for the transmutation of what? into gold, how eager- ly they would apply it! Carnegie, with his untold millions and his libraries carted round the whole country, attracts men of "light and leading" who would not turn round to look at a celebrity of less wealth. The man who can help others to make money is a 198 THE GOLDEN CALF benefactor; he can always have his court of adula- tors and flatterers. Let him be an inventor, who dis- covers new applications of the secrets of nature to the industries of the country, or a speculator, bold, venturesome, loud-tongued no matter, the people will flock after him, for he holds, or they think he holds, the key to the treasure house. Every "get- rich-quick" scheme, however preposterous, however evidently a swindle, attracts thousands and thou- sands. This is not confined, it is true, to the United States, for everywhere and at all times men have coveted riches, but it is more markedly the case there than anywhere else. In vain does the more serious portion of the press warn the public against these enterprises ; in vain does the government invoke the aid of law to check them; they continue to flourish because public opinion is back of them, because pub- lic and private greed are leagued together to foster them, because most men long with all the strength of their nature to acquire, quickly, easily, wealth and yet more wealth. And wealth is needed to maintain the appearances of wealth. Money must be found in some manner or other to enable the free and independent American to enjoy all the luxuries, all the pleasures which civil- ization is continually evolving. The poorest devil must have his automobile, for the rich have theirs, and it would not be seemly that they alone should enjoy the new mode of transportation and excite- ment. Mortgage and credit are taxed to the utmost to satisfy the ambition to seem richer than one really is ; to give the impression of plutocracy. The 199 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS clerk and the shop-girl out for the day must have the outward air of glorious luxury and splendid envir- onment. Nothing less than the best, or what resem- bles the best, will satisfy even the man whose income plainly forbids indulgence in aught but the cheap and ugly. All must at least appear to stand on the same plane; there can be no outward token of difference between members of the same commonwealth, and if thrift and honesty suffer in carrying out this cher- ished ambition, at all events personal desire for show is satisfied. For thrift and honesty are often swamped, in the mad struggle for money, and in the rivalry for ex- ternal seeming of riches. Dishonesty is rampant, and not a day passes but the press announces yet another defalcation, yet another bankruptcy, yet an- other embezzlement, yet another theft. The trusted head of an institution turns out to be a scoundrel, and no one is particularly surprised; the president of a bank is discovered to have made away with its funds and to have betaken himself to a foreign clime no one is startled, for the occurrence is far from be- ing an uncommon one ; the honored director of some religious society dies, and it is found that he has dis- sipated its funds, leaving widows and orphans to want. These things are not extraordinary ; they are commonplaces of life in the United States. The courts and the police have innumerable examples of them coming daily within their ken, and yet others are hushed up, covered and concealed. Men want money, want it badly, and take any steps that sug- gest themselves to obtain it. Honesty, as the word is 200 THE GOLDEN CALF understood, has suffered a singular eclipse in the hustling life of the present. American ingenuity is famous in the arts and sciences ; it should be more famous yet in the art and science of making money somehow. For no- where has the process been more sedulously culti- vated; nowhere has it been carried to such a pitch of perfection nefarious perfection too often. Studied with infinite pains, it produces results that amaze the older world and delight the inhabitants of the new, who see in this a further testimony to their superiority to the effete nations of Europe. It is not an enviable superiority. Rascals and sharp- ers abound in the Old World, and dishonest men and fraudulent bankrupts are, unhappily, far from un- known. But, at least, there is not the glamor of success attached to their names and their records. A scoundrel is a scoundrel in the Old World; in the New he is very apt to be termed simply a "mighty smart man." The fact that a man has stolen a very large sum of money is taken by the gold-hungry as a proof of his talents ; they are talents, no doubt, but not of the kind that in a decent community should win any form of praise. There are, it should in justice be said, not only a very great majority of absolutely honest men in the country, but also very many papers, that set their face against the applause too willingly and too freely bestowed on the success- ful rascal. There is a portion of the press which steadfastly refuses to honor the scoundrel, no mat- ter how large his stock of millions, which strives with might and main to imbue the public with a 201 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS clearer conception of right and wrong, and which preaches the doctrine that there cannot be one mor- ality for the successful plunderer on a large scale and for the petty pilferer whom the police courts send unhesitatingly to prison. But it is very difficult for that portion of the press and that leaven of honest men to make headway against the tremendous force of the influences at work to debauch and corrupt the public and the private conscience alike. Corruption is rife every- where. It is met with in public institutions, where it breeds under the most favoring conditions; it is found in municipal government, which has been de- clared by one of the leading observers and thinkers in America to be a standing failure; it is encoun- tered in the State government and State legislatures, which are notoriously subject to the influence of money; and it finds its way even into the depart- ments of the Federal Government, where it preys upon the resources of the nation. Money is power, and the power acquired by money is ruthlessly used to acquire greater wealth. Not all the types of gold-hoarding, gold-loving misers which the genius of writers has ever evolved, ap- proach the types of money-seeking and money-get- ting men who have attained fame and fortune in the United States. The most astounding ingenuity is manifested in the framing of schemes destined to en- rich the few at the expense of the many. The trusts have swollen to such proportions that they have be- come a menace to law and order, and threaten the very existence of the democratic principle itself. 202 THE GOLDEN CALF The noble old ideals of the American commonwealth have been sadly shattered during this recent period. The freedom which the Constitution guarantees to every man has been turned into a mockery so hollow that none are now to be deceived by it. The pluto- crat has become an aristocrat and a tyrant ; he looks on himself as a being above the law, and not Louis XIV himself, in the proudest days of his absolute monarchy, entertained and expressed greater belief in himself or held in greater certainty the subjection of all men to him. Money is worshiped in every land; in the United States it is the very breath of life to a great number. It is sought for in every country; in America the gold-hunger is developed to an extent that appals the observer. Gold has become the god of a part of that world, and to obtain it there are men who sacrifice principle and honor and reputation. Suf- ficient it is if they in return secure some share of the prosperity which through misapplication afflicts the land, and saps the very basis of the national ideals. There are heard voices in protest, often in indig- nant, in burning protest against this perversion of a thing good in itself, but infinitely bad in excess, but these protests are too often unheeded and un- heard. When men are so busy "making their pile," they have neither time nor attention to spare for the moralists, the patriots who would warn them of the consequences of this madness. Those who preach thrift and honesty are not listened to; those who proclaim with brazen voices that they possess the 203 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS secret of speedy wealth at once gain a hearing. A man goes into bankruptcy and emerges better off than before; he has shaken off his creditors, and starts upon a new course of money making. He re- peats the performance, and manages to obtain credit and business, to the surprise of those who are not aware of the methods employed by such gentry. In France, bankruptcy entails dishonor; in America, in spite of laws framed to protect the honest creditor, bankruptcy does not place a stigma on the man. There are those who have twice, yea, thrice, taken this mode of escaping their obligations, who yet are received, dealt with, and, after a fashion, honored. That money is often used, after being obtained by means not too savory, for beneficent purposes, is a fact. The millionaire who has ruined thousands, who has wrecked homes, devastated business, driven men and women to despair, and even to suicide, becomes a public benefactor, and distributes with lavish hand large sums to church organizations, to colleges and universities, to scientific societies, to charitable or- ganizations. He is lauded for his generosity ; decor- ated with honorary degrees by some universities, which rival each other in courting his favor; ban- queted and interviewed; his story related by an ob- sequious press, which glosses over the incidents of his career; he is sought for on many hands, and he feels that success and wealth are sure opiates for the public conscience. But that money has not changed its origin in changing its destination. What the multi-millionaire, enriched at the expense of thousands of impoverished fellow-creatures, thus be- 204 THE GOLDEN CALF stows upon companies of men and women who believe themselves high-minded, is not of his necessity. His benevolence costs him nothing, for he is well aware that it is impossible for him, however lavish and ex- travagant, to spend upon himself all the gold he has squeezed out of other men's pockets. His generosity is forced, in a way; the money has to be got rid of; it cannot go on accumulating indefinitely; it is ever breeding and bringing forth more money, and the simplest plan therefore is to purchase with it that consideration and honor which are to be readily ob- tained from the hungry mob ever clamorous for gold and gold and gold. He need not fear many refusals: there are few establishments which will hesitate even for an in- stant to accept what has now become classic under the name of "tainted money." Gold is the test of manhood, with many of them ; the proof of superior- ity. Nor are the churches more delicate in their sense of honor. They are not, as a rule, members of that ancient communion which, during the Middle Ages, exploited with such remarkable skill the fears of the great among the innumerable company of sinners, and thus secured the building of cathedrals, abbeys, priories, monasteries, the endowing of all these in- stitutions with large grants of land and sums of no small magnitude. But if their tenets are different in matters theological, their practice in matters tem- poral is substantially similar. They do not hesitate to sanctify the money wrung from others by dedicat- ing it to what they are pleased to term the service of 205 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS God. So long as it is into their treasury that the dollars are poured, their condemnation of usury and theft on a gigantic scale is hushed. They have no reproaches for the man who enriches them; they pray for him and laud him from their pulpits. They will never be at a loss to discover in him all the noblest and finest qualities of human nature, and those indications of something essentially and pe- culiarly divine which may be translated into plain speech as: "He has given us a lot!" Who shall wonder, then, with these examples prom- inently brought before them, that the bulk of the people should be a prey to a consuming thirst for gold, and should believe in all good faith that money surpasses charity itself since the latter, at the best, covers only a multitude of sins, while money covers every one of them and does more : transforms them into virtues and meritorious acts? Who can feel surprise that dishonesty is encouraged and thrift condemned when the lavish use of gold, obtained by means that are condemned in the pilferer and lauded in the great stealer, bestows upon the "benefactor" the applause of institutions of learning and the ad- miring blessings of the company of the pious? If all that is needed in order to secure these tangible evidences of well-doing, evolved from evil-doing, be to perform the operations of fleecing on a large scale, who can wonder that men should essay to at- tain equal distinction? It is in innumerable ways that this absorbing pas- sion for the making of money manifests itself and that the worship of money is encouraged. Pride in 206 the fact that such and such men, multi-millionaires, are inhabitants of a particular town or city reveals itself in the publication of their names on every possible opportunity. The stranger who is being driven about the place to see the sights is invariably informed that "here lives So-and-So, one of the rich- est men in this section." "And here dwells another, who made his pile in so many years, and is now contemplating entering the Senate, for he has the wherewithal to do so." "Here is the present home of one who not so long ago lived in a sort of shack, and now has a palace," the architecture of which is as startling as the owner's rise to fortune. The local press annually publishes the list of "largest tax-payers," so that the man in the street may ap- preciate how wealthy are the residents among whom his lot is cast. Buildings and monuments are esti- mated not at their esthetic value, often considerable, but at their pecuniary cost. Such an one has in- volved an expenditure of one million; this library cost five hundred thousand dollars; that museum three times as much; this schoolhouse two hundred thousand; this hotel a fabulous sum; this statue, which makes the artistic grieve, so much. People, especially the wealthy lacking in sense of the fitness and proportion of things, estimate the ar- tistic worth of any production simply by the price the dealer puts upon it. The latter can tell of in- numerable instances in support of this affirmation. A superb screen, a marvel of art, was refused be- cause the price asked for it did not satisfy the ex- igencies of the purchaser. The amount of money 207 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS paid would not impress the visitors to that home of "elegance and culture," and therefore an ugly screen, immediately marked up mentally to half as much again, was substituted and eagerly bought. It is the cost and not the real worth of the object which in the United States as elsewhere, indeed, appeals to the man desirous of showing off, of making his neighbors believe him one of the elect. The vulgar display of diamond rings, diamond studs, diamond scarf pins is but an outcome of that longing for show of wealth which pervades more particularly the unbred and ill-educated class, still the most numerous one in the land. But it is more or less apparent in all stratas of American society, and the loud osten- tation, the lavish exhibition of glittering jewelry is to be noticed in the most "aristocratic" as in the most plebeian. When the late President McKinley uttered his dic- tum that what is cheap is nasty, he expressed the inmost belief of countless thousands of his fellow- Americans. Lavishness and extravagance, the pay- ing of absurd prices for what is not worth a fourth of the money; these are habits now strongly im- planted in the character of the majority of the people, and it will take time to eradicate them and to substitute saner views of wealth and a conception of the value of thrift and simplicity. The delight in squandering money is universal. The very institutions of learning are not free from it. It is visible in the habits of the schoolboys and schoolgirls, of the students in the colleges and uni- versities. In the pursuit of sport it is manifest: 208 THE GOLDEN CALF money is the one great object, and the sport itself is made subsidiary to the gate receipts. The teams are thriftless and extravagant; for years the sums ex- pended in the annual training of a small number of football players in all the great universities, but notably in Harvard and Yale, attained proportions so great that at last even public opinion was aroused against a system which distorted sport and athletic training into a school for profuse expenditure and luxurious habits. The very essence and principle of sport disappeared, and men strove for superiority not for the sake of generous emulation and friendly competition, but for the sake of the large income obtained from a public eager to see the costly teams matched one against the other. The price for ad- mission rose steadily, until it acquired proportions which fairly staggered the believer in athletics, and prevented the ordinary man from gratifying his de- sire to witness a clean struggle between two bands of high-spirited and honest young fellows. The speculator was prompt to avail himself of the chance offered him, and he reaped a golden harvest from the multitude which, because the price of admission was high, at once longed to behold the contest. It was not, and is not, in very many cases, any interest in the sport itself which causes the vast crowds to crush at the entrance gates : it is the feeling that a high-priced entertainment cannot be omitted from the list of enjoyments of the universally wealthy American. The close of the school career is also made an oc- casion for show and expenditure. The children of 209 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS people in less than moderate circumstances must cut a dash then, if they never do so again, and all manner of costs are heaped upon the parents. The girls must have graduation dresses, in which fitness and simplicity and inexpensiveness are to have no part; class pins must be purchased, class photo- graphs taken, flowers provided, and every element of ostentation and display must enter into the feast day, else would the girl feel herself disgraced and distanced by her fellows. Instances of this excessive love of display might be repeated endlessly. But to what end? Anyone, any native of the country, can sum them up for himself. The evil is patent, widespread, growing. It has at- tracted the attention of press, pulpit and public. It is an inevitable consequence of certain causes still at work, but which will not always be as powerful as they are at present. It is an ugly side of society as constituted in the United States ; it is not necessarily a permanent evil, and the day will come when men and women will leave to that small minority which is de- void of brains and possessed of money, the con- temptible part of displayers of wealth and bad taste. Even now hopeful signs are evident : a sense of fitness is leading very many to carefully avoid display; women, with an instinctive sense of what is becoming, are eschewing the wearing of jewelry at all hours, or of splendid toilets at all seasons. They are learn- ing to proportion, to distinguish, to select, and the result is as gratifying to them as it is to the esthetic observer. They are beginning to set themselves apart from the vulgar affectation of gorgeousness, 210 THE GOLDEN CALF and betaking themselves to that sweet simplicity which is unattainable by the mass. The man of taste is becoming more frequent, and his dress marks him out from the vulgar and cheap dandy. The signs of reaction, it has been said, are already evident. The reaction is stronger and deeper than most persons suspect. Wealth is beginning to lose its glamor, to suffer a diminution of its power to blind and dazzle. There is a tendency to apply to the rich, to the plutocrat in particular, the universal test of fitness and worth. In the press, in private conversation, one notes a changing point of view : the rich man does not invariably command respect be- cause he is rich; he is being subjected to criticism, frequently adverse and biting; his methods are be- ing condemned ; his expenditures scrutinized ; his lav- ishness and extravagance derided. Not quite so easily as of yore does he obtain attention; not so readily does he sin against the proprieties. Men are awaking to a truer perception of the real place wealth should hold in a democratic community ; they are beginning to appreciate the dangers which its over-accumulation and its selfish administration nec- essarily entail. They are becoming more exacting, and in the right direction. No longer do they accept the plutocrat at his own estimate; they weigh him in the balance themselves, and are not surprised often to find him wanting. The public press reflects, guides and fosters this healthful condition; it attacks fearlessly the merely rich who presumes upon his gold to violate every canon of de- cency and honesty. It is beginning to preach a AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS sounder economic gospel, and with its tremendous in- fluence it is bound to have a profound effect upon opinion. All the press does not do this; many papers are still in the thrall of the worship of the Golden Calf, but the number of those which have asserted their independence increases steadily. There will always be, in so vast a country as the United States, and among so mixed a population, flatterers of the merely rich, but the sound sense of the American an invaluable quality apt to assert itself in a manner most disconcerting to those who have forgotten or neglected it may be relied upon to correct the worst abuses. A public opinion is being formed; a sound opinion well directed, well enlight- ened, and with the power behind it that comes of education, of morality, of disinterestedness, of true patriotism. No one need despair of the Republic: the true ideas are manifesting themselves and will as- suredly gain the upper hand in time. For it takes time to alter habits and to inculcate new views of life. Rome was not built in a day, and a fever leaves the patient weak for a season. Democracy has suf- fered from the tremendous prosperity of the land and its inhabitants, and its vital principle has been checked to some extent; but it is vital, and will, be- yond peradventure, sway the masses as now it sways the small number of clear-sighted and right-thinking men. The plutocrats, the multi-millionaires themselves are getting glimpses of the light. More than one among them is endeavoring to solve the problem of the righteous administration of riches. Sons and daughters of men who amassed their wealth in ways which morality condemns, while the law is helpless to punish, have abandoned the attempt, and wisely abandoned it, to solve the vexed question of how to undo the evil wrought by their sires. The evil is done, and can never be undone. The dramatist and the novelist may, in the free use of their imagination, and for the sake of the effect they can draw from a good situation, make the plunderer restore to his victims the money he once bereft them of; but in the real life of the present day such a course, how- ever poetic and ideally just, is practically impossi- ble. It is for the inheritors of that ill-gotten wealth to win forgiveness for deeds in which they had no share by just and wise use of the millions they have. And they are trying to make such use of it, and are giving themselves to the task with singleness of pur- pose and devotion and earnestness. They are doing good where those who went before did evil ; they can- not heal the wounds that were made, they cannot bind up the hurts that were inflicted, they cannot give back the lives that have been sacrificed, but, feeling their responsibilities, they are putting forth every effort to lighten the burdens of those around them, to bring a little sweetening into unhappy lives, to diminish the sum of poverty, and therefore of crime. Setting thus before a public whose intense curios- ity is ever awake an example of the wise and gener- ous use of riches, they are largely contributing to the better appreciation of the real use of vast fortunes and tending to diminish the hatred and jealousy ex- 213 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS cited by the sight of colossal wealth obtained by methods that will not always bear examination. They are teaching the other rich that they have a duty to the community, and that immense fortunes involve responsibilities other than squandering and show. Above all, they are making manifest that the democratic spirit is quite consonant with wealth, and may, indeed, tend to a clearer understanding of the way to apply it for the general good and not alone for the private benefit and advantage of its possessors. There is abundant proof of this. All the great fortunes in the United States have not been made by unfair means, by oppression, by extinction of competitors, by methods that startle men when chance discovers them. Economy, carefulness, abil- ity, perseverance, have borne fruit there as here and rightly and justly so. If there are establish- ments, colossal hives of men, where they are ruth- lessly exploited, there are many where the life of the working-man and working-woman is pleasant and fortunate. If there are unscrupulous seek- ers after wealth, there are more upright and just toilers both among the employers and the em- ployed. And the use made of fortunes is, as a rule, not in the way of wild extravagance and senseless ostenta- tion, though much of both, as already said, exists; but in that of benefit to the public. It was said the other day in one of our papers that no appeal ever goes unheeded in Great Britain, and that large as are the amounts subscribed to any given purpose, 214 THE GOLDEN CALF sums as large and larger are immediately forthcom- ing with the advent of a new call for aid. That is absolutely true, and in addition it must be remembered that there is an infinite number of in- stitutions in this country depending wholly or in large part upon private beneficence, the beneficence of the rich public, and of the moderately well off. There are no statistics to show the total amount thus dispensed year by year, nor need there be. The habit of generous giving is ingrained in the British people, and it is as deeply seated in the Amer- ican. In the United States as here countless benefactions remain unknown save to the beneficiaries ; gifts are made that the press, quick as it is to discover what- ever is being done or said, never suspects. There the left hand is kept quite as much in ignorance as it is with us. Of the gifts made for public purposes the list is unending. Let one series, one class of these serve as an illustration of the splendid bounty of the American. The universities and colleges are espe- cially singled out by benefactors, many of whom have and have had no connection with the institution, while others are graduates who thus testify to their enduring love for their Alma Mater. In one univer- sity only, that of Harvard, the funds annually avail- able in the form of scholarships and bursaries for undergraduates amount to over $75,000. In the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences the fellowships amount to nearly $40,000. And one gift of $55,000 is to be added to that. These are two departments 216 only; the other schools are not forgotten, though naturally the gifts to them are on a less liberal scale. Then there are the gifts from the classes, that is from the body of students graduated in any one year. These classes establish a fund which, after a certain term, is handed over to the University. Most of the buildings of the University are gifts, some from known, some from anonymous donors. And what is true of Harvard is true of Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, and the many other establishments of learning. As for institutions for research, for the alleviation of pain, for the succor of the distressed, for the pro- motion of laudable social purposes, the promotion of the realization of high ideals; they are simply in- numerable. But they do not obtrude themselves upon the attention of the passing visitor; they are not advertised, and consequently their very existence is unsuspected by the stranger who is soon weary of the colossal skyscrapers and the magnificent rail- way stations in New York. Yet they exist, and are more deeply significant of the mind of America than one is apt to perceive at first. There is that form of benefaction which hides it- self, which one learns of by accident, and it is wide- spread. All the love of gold does not make every American its slave, and ostentation is as repugnant to thousands as it is dear to many. The infinitely sweet practice of giving is practiced with a skill and a consideration for the beneficiary which draws out the best in the heart of those privileged to know of it. 216 THE GOLDEN CALF The hospitality of the Americans is genuine. It is quite true that it is at times overpowering in its profuseness, but it would be a capital mistake to suppose that the lavishness and beauty which so often mark it are the outcome of a desire, even if unconscious, to brag, to exhibit the wealth and liberality of the entertainer. Undoubtedly there are such entertainments and the press duly records them, since the object would not be attained were not due publicity secured. But to assume there- fore that all American hospitality is but a manifes- tation of vainglory would be to fall into serious error. The American hospitality has for its mainspring a real, sincere and strong desire to treat the stranger within the gates to the best of everything. The American does not inform the guest that house and contents are his, which is only a grandiloquent way of speaking which deceives no one, the profferer least of all. The American actually puts himself and his at the service of his guest. He wants him to have the "best of times," to see everything, do everything and feel that he is thoroughly welcome. The dainty luncheon, the splendid dinner, are in honor of the guest, and it is to do him honor and not to vaunt or make vulgar display that everything is choice, everything luxurious. American hospitality is on a large and generous scale, but what makes it true hospitality is that it is sincere. The welcome is no perfunctory phrase, it is genuine. Americans do love money; they have that in 217 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS common with the rest of the civilized races of the earth. They also know how to use it wisely and generously. They do not all worship the Golden Calf: they do make the Almighty Dollar their servant. XIII ART One of the traits which strike the dweller in the land more than the swiftly touring visitor is the curious lack of perception of true proportion and true value. The American, especially in the press, very often in books, and constantly in conversation, appears to attribute a wholly erroneous importance to mere size and mere costliness. The latter, of course, may be referred to the excessive worth which wealth has secured for itself in popular opinion, but the admiration for bigness in itself can scarcely be thus accounted for. Partly, perchance, it is due to the vast extent of the country; partly, to the juvenile habit, now being shaken off, of vaunting everything American in order to impress the hearer and beholder alike. But allowing largely for this, it does not explain the peculiarity, the cause of which seems rather to be a lack of a sense of real proportion, combined with a wrong standard of value. There are wonderful things in the United States, materially and intellectually, and the average man is perfectly ready to admire them as they deserve to be admired; but more is required of him: he AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS must own, nay, he must proclaim aloud, he must cry and spare not, that these things are unrivaled, un- approached, because they are the biggest things of their kind. That is the wrong view; it is in this way that the erroneous standard of value manifests its influence. These wonders of the New World are admired by the intelligent man not because they are huge, big, great, unusual, but because they are char- acteristic, typical, informing, revealing the spirit and genius of the race, exhibiting the results of widely different conditions from those which pre- vail in the Old World. At present there is not, in the whole of the United States, a single erection which matches the Eiffel Tower in height. But it is not the height of that tower which has nearly reconciled the art world of Paris to its presence: it is the art in it, and the science in it, and the skill to which it bears testi- mony. The Eiffel Tower, which has a great beauty of its own, attracts attention not because it is so lofty: that is one part, but a part only, of the spell it exercises ; its main charm comes from its elegance, and from the triumph of engineering skill which it typifies. The mere material side does not win praise ; the ideal does. The thought which conceived and carried out the project, and gave to the finished work the lightness and the grace which are now visi- ble, that is what one thinks of in contemplating the springing web-work of iron and steel. The American skyscraper is a much, and wrongly, abused emanation of the national genius. It deserves abuse, all the abuse it meets with and more yet, when 220 ART one is invited to marvel at it because it is composed of so many superimposed stories ; because in its con- struction so many tons of steel and stone and con- crete have entered; because it is simply higher than any of its predecessors. These considerations have nothing whatever to do with it as an expression of the American spirit. Height is to be met with everywhere; quantities of material are swallowed up in innumerable constructions ; buildings may be lofty and vast, yet remain absolutely expressionless, wholly meaningless. The mere height of the sky- scraper, the mere addition of floor above floor, does not confer upon the building any distinction what- ever. What makes the towering office building pro- foundly interesting is the fact that it is the solution of a problem of modern life, and that in evolving the solution the architect has evolved at the same time a typical form, which is possessed of beauty in its own right. The skyscraper is representative of American life, which is mainly commercial and industrial. It speaks at once to the mind of the man who beholds it for the first time ; it is significant of a civilization entirely different, in its radical as- pects, to the civilization of Europe, where tradition causes the retention, in so many cases, of forms out- worn and ideas long since grown old. The wealthy American builds himself town houses recalling the palaces of Italy; country homes in imitation of the chateaux of France and the stately homes of England; but he does not perceive that these are and must remain imitations. They do not embody the American genius ; they merely suggest AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and how imperfectly often the genius of a foreign country and of a vastly different epoch. But when he comes to erect a business building, then the American launches into a field he has made peculiarly his own and in which he scores triumph after tri- umph. He then realizes in stone and steel and concrete the essential idea of his civilization, and the result is a construction unmatched in the Old World, and profoundly American, and therefore with a beauty and a truth that are evident and satisfying. To draw attention to the size of the building is to draw the attention away from the real value of the monument; the height, the slenderness, the soaring appearance of the upper tiers ; these are but parts of the whole, not the one thing which makes it re- markable and admirable. The lofty office building is interesting because it is an office building, and one destined to meet certain conditions. It expresses a deep idea, just as the old medieval fortresses and the cathedral express even now a state of civiliza- tion and a state of mind which have disappeared. The skyscraper is an impossibility to the wildest imagination if placed in fancy in the Middle Ages ; the cathedral and the medieval fortress are equally impossible nowadays. People build, at great ex- pense, churches on which they lavish ornament, and they call them cathedrals ; technically they are such ; in reality, in very sober truth, they are not. The day of the genuine cathedral passed away long ago, and all the present generation can do is to imitate the expression of a deep faith which is not to be met with in the special character it then had. But the ART skyscraper is the triumphant and genuine and sin- cere expression of the American genius in commerce and business. It is a true, a genuine manifestation of a very present and very living faith, which is not religious faith, but is faith all the same. In this respect the lofty building has its value; not in the cost, not in the quantity of material, but in the out- ward and visible expression which it is of the feeling of a civilization. Even in the inability of the architect to make the exterior of his building beautiful and satisfactory to the esthetic taste and the skyscraper is often la- mentably ugly is typified that general absence of artistic feeling which is noted in America. Unquestionably this statement will provoke indig- nant protest. A country whose inhabitants spare no money when it is a question of acquiring master- pieces by artists whose names have become famous the world over ; a country where ornament flourishes lavishly upon all manner of constructions and erec- tions; a country which is considered by Europeans to be rapidly stripping the galleries and residences of the Old World of their most cherished treasures, is and must be a country where the feeling for, and the understanding of, art are highly developed and thoroughly characteristic. Yet, modestly, humbly, regretfully, the statement is adhered to. The sense of beauty is not a characteristic of the American people; it is not evident; it exists among individuals, that goes without saying, but the people as a whole are devoid of it. And this 223 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS is seen even among cultured persons. There is the study of art; there is collecting of masterpieces; there is reproduction of others by means of casts, copies and photographs, but all that does not involve the existence of a sense. A single look at an American city suffices to convince one that beauty in itself is not sought for, either in the ensemble of the city or in the particular or indi- vidual buildings. There are handsome buildings; but they are in a minority. Not only that, but they are side by side with erections that cause one to shudder. A pure democracy is not favorable to the develop- ment of high artistic sense. The mass in a democ- racy has vulgar tastes, which does not mean coarse tastes, but vulgar, ordinary, of low standard. The mass has not the appreciation of beauty, although it flatters itself that it is a judge of beauty. It knows it not; it does not understand it; does not perceive it when it beholds it. The mass has its own concep- tion of what beauty is, and that conception is pro- foundly erroneous. In a country where the mass is continually sending up recruits into the ranks of the patrons of art, there is but one result to be looked for : the domination of the bourgeois idea of art and of beauty. And that is precisely what one sees in the United States. Gorgeousness and expensiveness abound, but they are not beauty; size and vastness are continually forced upon one, but they do not constitute beauty. And the fact that these are the points on which stress is laid, from which gratifica- tion is derived, proves of itself the contention that 224 ART the artistic sense is not part and parcel of the American intellectual make-up. Consider most of the railway stations in the United States: those at the great termini. How many of them are anything but ugly? There are some where signs of improvement are visible, and there are now two in New York which stand out superbly; but take the general run of them. Take Boston, the City of Culture par excellence, and con- template its North Station and its South Station! Or rather don't! Travel along the lines of railway through the country; travel between the points which form the great centers of population and activity, and every- where, on either hand, before, behind, the most ex- quisite scenery is defaced, debased, degraded, de- stroyed by an efflorescence of commercialism, for it is commercialism and not art which is most typical of the United States in the present day. Enter the homes of many of the rich, and barbaric splen- dor appalls, but the true art sense is more conspicu- ous by its absence than by its presence. There are everywhere evidences of wealth, but the testimonies of art sense are infrequent. It is only when the expression of the remarkable industrial and scientific skill manifests itself that unconsciously the art sense comes to the front. And not even then always, for how many bridges, for instance, are simply ugly! How many marvels of genius merely hideous ! The truth is the Americans have not, any more than the Anglo-Saxons, the innate feeling for art. They cultivate it with praiseworthy perseverance; 225 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS they spend large sums in the pursuit of it; they collect with indefatigable earnestness specimens and masterpieces; they gather together and exhibit in museums and galleries exquisite gems ; they pur- chase, even the poorer, photographs and casts, and adorn their dwellings with them; but they have not the natural appreciation, the genuine apprehension, of the beauty which lies hidden to the eye of the un- trained, of the unendowed. Side by side with beau- tiful things they unhesitatingly place appalling hor- rors, and they never suspect what they have done. The one and the other are equally satisfying; they constitute Art for them. Art is a commodity like candy or ice-cold soda; everyone can understand it, and apply it, and enjoy it. There does not occur to them the thought that some races have the artistic feeling and others lack it, and that they belong to the latter class. "Money can do anything," consequently, it can produce art. But that is the error. It does not; it produces nothing of the kind. It helps the artist, but the artist has to be, first and foremost, and by the side of the artist must be the public capable of appreciating his work, and finally there must be the artistic atmosphere, and that is not found. The ideal has not been pursued by the Americans, save in matters political, and even in these they have somewhat fallen away from the ardent love of it which was characteristic of the early days of the Union. Or, more correctly speaking, the problems have multiplied so fast and have become so pressing that it has not been possible to obtain as rapidly 226 ART and as completely, results such as the optimist nat- urally looks for. But in the realm of the ideal properly so called, they have made but few incur- sions. They have not produced a great poet, a great musician, a great painter, essentially Ameri- can for Sargent is French, in large measure, Euro- pean ; a great sculptor, for Saint Gaudens is French too in his inspiration and training. Their love of these things is not an essential part of their nature, of their make-up; it is usually added on, cultivated, often painfully and with much trouble. The desire is there, but it is not nationally realized. The explanation of the fact may be found in the changed conditions and in the lines which the peo- ple of the United States have been practically com- pelled to follow. Neither Greece nor Italy, the Italy of the Renaissance both of which countries have given the world such marvelous realizations of the ideal were situated exactly as the United States. A glance at the map of the country, a re- membrance of the astonishingly rapid growth of the Republic, a recalling of the swift progress in all matters material, industrial, commercial; of the tre- mendous, unceasing immigration which has con- tinued to bring into the country thousands and millions of strangers who have had to be molded into citizens ; the discoveries of illimitable natural resources and springs of wealth these conditions are entirely different from those of the Grecian states or of the Italian republics and principalities where art flourished and created the marvels which even now stand as the highest types of the beautiful. 227 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS "In the days when Art was still religion," said Longfellow. And the American poet showed thus that he clearly perceived the impelling motive; a motive which has not existed and does not now exist in the United States. Art, with the Greek and the Italian, was part and parcel of the expres- sion of his national life : of his religion ; of his belief, ingrained, vital. The sense of beauty, the striving after the ideal, the seeking after the perfection of form, the manifesting in marble or metal or color the wonders beheld by the spiritual eye these are not and have not been elements of the American character. It is not because the early settlers had to contend with the Redskins, later with the outer foe, later still with one another, when the country had become consolidated and was again on the verge of disruption; it is not because the state of war on a small scale was upon them. The Greeks and the Italians were far more continuously engaged in warfare, foreign and internecine, than ever were the inhabitants of the United States, yet Art grew and flourished exceedingly among them, and the bloody quarrels of factions within the cities, the rivalries and the bickerings and the jealousies, the fighting within and fears without, never for a day stayed the progress and development of the esthetic sense and its manifestation in wondrous masterpieces. The poets sang with clear voice songs that are immortal; the musicians made their strains heard; the architects created styles and reared impos- ing monuments; the sculptors drew inspiration from the past and the present; the whole intellec- 228 ART tual and artistic life was rich, abundant, varied, superb. But in the United States nothing comparable has yet been seen, and while it is customary to speak of the country as young, it is that only relatively to the older civilizations of Europe. And the civil- ization of the country was not itself young; it was the most highly developed civilization of the time, the civilization of Europe which was translated here. It had not to emerge, as that of the Old World, slowly and with difficulty from the ruins of an older one, swept almost completely away by the flow of Northern invasion. It had the inestimable advantage of being made ready to hand for the pur- poses to which, under new and different conditions, it was to be applied. It was an adaptable civiliza- tion ; one that was susceptible of accommodating it- self to the altered situation and it did so adapt itself. It was not, then, from lack of knowledge, of intelligence, that the esthetic sense did not assert itself in the New World; the cause was different. The civilization which was transplanted to the shores of New England, to the coasts of Virginia and Carolina, was the Anglo-Saxon civilization, and the informing spirit of it was Liberty, not Art. It was in the pursuit of liberty that the Pilgrims sought the shores of Massachusetts in bleakest winter, not in search of the beautiful in nature. Their whole mind was set on things spiritual and political, not on things esthetic. These, indeed, were rather ab- horred by them. The detestation of the forms, rites and ceremonies of a Church that had retained, even AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS after the Reformation, some traces of the sensual- ism, of the estheticism of the Roman worship, was not calculated to lure them to cultivation of the beautiful for its own sake. It was the beauty of the soul which they hungered for ; the beauty of the body, the loveliness of nature spoke not to them. And as their spirit, as their ideals spread and all who have even a superficial knowledge of American history know how rapid was that spreading so spread their lack of estheticism, their want of the sense of the beautiful in matters other than politics and religion and a purely spiritual religion at that. Afterward came the marvelous, sudden develop- ment of the commerce and industries of the land, turning the minds of men toward wealth and profit, and not toward art. So the great bulk of the people set wealth first ; they do so now, and to them anything artistic is but an emanation, a manifesta- tion of the possession of riches. They purchase paintings and statuary because these are accepted in the Old World as tokens of riches ; because the more remarkable products of the studio can become the property of the rich only, not because, in many, many cases, the owner has the remotest sense of the real value, the art value, of the objects which adorn his house and which find themselves in odd conjunc- tion with the ugly and the commonplace. The American stock is Anglo-Saxon, and the Anglo-Saxon race has not the art sense, the art power, to the same extent as the Latin race. This does not mean that England has not produced art- 230 ART ists of great worth, but that the fundamental love for and understanding of art is not an element of the character of the race. Nor is it an element of the American character as constituted at the present time. Whether it will enter into that char- acter as the mingling of races goes on, as the influ- ence of the innumerable Latins coming into and settling upon the land makes itself felt as it must do in the course of time is a question to which, at this moment, it would be difficult, if not impos- sible, to give an answer. There will arise an American art, that goes with- out saying; an art which will incarnate and mani- fest the ideals of the new race, but it is not in the least likely that it will bear much relation to what Europeans are accustomed to call by that name. That is, the sources of inspiration will necessarily be different, and if it be possible to conciliate the ideal and the practical in poetry, in music, In paint- ing, in sculpture which it is permissible to doubt then American art, when it has found itself, will probably develop along these lines. American archi- tecture already exists, and it is not that of the Congressional Library, nor the buildings of Columbia University, nor of the numerous Capitols and State Houses throughout the land that is an art copied and often very badly copied from that of Europe but an American architecture which will be mainly industrial, commercial, residential in its application. The French influence is likely to be the strongest in shaping this development, and naturally so, for there is much intellectual kinship between the pres- 231 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ent-day American and the Frenchman. Further, the influence of French art, with its lightness, its grace, its thoroughness, is exactly what the Americans need. The French race is eminently an idealistic race, while it is also exceedingly practical. But the idealistic prevails, and that is where the American, in art, is just now deficient. To him art is still the handmaid of industry, of wealth ; it is not, or is scarcely, cultivated and sought after for its own sweet sake. The Frenchman loves art for art's sake ; for the sake of the intimate intellectual joy it gives to its votaries, and that is one of the reasons why the Frenchman is so singularly successful in com- bining the artistic and the practical. He has man- aged to overcome in large measure the countervail- ing influence of the bourgeois, and he has educated all classes in an innate love of the beautiful. This is what is needed in the democratic United States, where the love of art in all its forms is aca- demic rather than genuine. They are sincere enough, are the Americans, in their worship of art; they are quite in earnest in their pursuit of musical knowledge; they are really anxious to understand and appreciate the value of painting and sculpture ; their attention is easily drawn to the rich and beau- tiful in applied art, as witness the collections in their museums and in private homes. But for all that the impression is strong that the feeling is not a natural one; that it is in great part artificial; that they pursue the study and cultivate the love of art in all its manifestations because they feel that as Americans they cannot afford to neglect what 232 ART has cast such glory over Europe and has inspired so many writers and singers. Art is not a vital principle of life in the United States ; it is an ac- complishment, an added grace which money can secure. There are schools for the teaching of art, and many pupils attend them. There are number- less exhibitions of painting and sculpture ; there are competitions in architecture; there are students of landscape gardening; in a word, every effort is made to prove to themselves and to the world that Americans are as superiorly endowed artistically as they are in other respects, yet the whole effect is an effort, and thus a proof in itself of the lack of spontaneity of the artistic sense. It is strange, at first sight, that the country has not yet given birth to a great poet. America has none at present. Yet it is not for lack of subjects inspiring enough. The face of nature is wondrously fair in the United States ; scenery as grand, and grander than that of Europe meets the traveler at every turn; scenes almost as sweet and pastoral as those of England are met with continually; yet no poet has sung the beauties of the American land- scape in a way to rivet the attention of his country- men and to arrest that of the foreigner. The history of the country has much that is epic in it: the War of Independence, the fortitude of Washington, the War of Secession, the figures of Lincoln, of Lee are such as to inspire a singer, yet they have evoked no responsive song. There are writers who have addressed themselves to the task of depicting the life of the people, and who have succeeded admira- 233 bly in revealing the vast fund of interest that lies therein. They have brought out with strong or tender touch the force and the gentleness of the national character, and have reproduced the types evolved in various parts of the country. The power is there, one cannot help feeling. The ability exists ; the springs of inspiration are numerous enough and abundant enough, but the seekers after the beau- ties of poetry are few and far between. That, no doubt, is because these things are not sufficiently practical to interest the average Ameri- can. Fiction appeals to him as a restful form of reading, but in fiction he requires and demands much action. Description bores him, and he skips it with a mighty skip; analysis of character wearies him, and he leaves it unread. The authors quickly learn what the public prefers, and as their object, in the main, is to gain reputation and solid reward, they indulge the public. There are a few who delve deeper and produce works so sweet, so tender, so true, that the memory of them lives fragrant, but they are the exception, not the rule. The part of the public they look to is a minority. The great mass of readers want excitement, rush, adventure, and to that the writers are consequently inclined to sacri- fice everything else. As a result, there is not a large quantity of really artistic work in fiction; it forms but a small portion of the tremendous output that goes on day by day. It exists, but it is not the most characteristic feature of American literature. Music is pursued with careful attention to the se- lection of all that is best in that particular field, and SM ART probably there is no place, Germany not excepted, where musical criticism flourishes more abundantly and is more scientific than in the larger cities of the United States. Two or three orchestras of more than ordinary excellence perform the works of the greatest composers, the works of the living as of the dead, and vast audiences religiously follow, intent on not missing one of the finer points about which they have learned from the careful analysis placed in their hands as they entered the hall. They ap- plaud correctly, at times warmly. Externally they are all that a musical enthusiast should be: atten- tive, respectful, but one cannot help wondering, whether, after all, music is really in the American soul. Liberal patronage of high-priced concerts and most expensive grand opera is not in itself a proof of the existence of the musical taste, and somehow one misses the native music; one does not meet with it, one does not hear it. The people, in city or country, do not break out into melody, save an occasional Moody and Sankey hymn or a ditty from the latest musical comedy, which is not infre- quently farcical but rarely very musical. Music does not well up out of the American soul, although the American ear and the American intellect are intent upon it. Of late years some excellent statues have made their appearance in the public squares, but they are far from compensating for the multitude of terrors which, as in our dear London, even yet disfigure noble avenues and fine squares. In most cities there are Art Commissions, charged with the troublesome 335 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS task of deciding on the appropriateness and in some centers, on the morality of the figures or groups offered to the admiration of the public. These commissions do some good, but to their pres- ent duties, if art in sculpture is really to be en- couraged, should be added with unlimited auto- cratic powers the duty of utterly destroying the dreadful representations of the human form which pass for memorials to the honor of some unfortu- nate, quite helpless to avoid the perpetuation of his presentment. The worst proof of the lack of real sense of art in the United States is the way the streets are dis- figured and the scenery in the neighborhood of every city rendered ugly by the profuse use of huge billboards, although they are rather more than that ; they are vast expanses upon which the coarsest and crudest illustrations are painted in staring color. Nothing is more exasperating than to have these flaring advertisements perpetually thrust at one, and nothing, one would think, could be more likely to induce a person of taste from ever pur- chasing any of the articles so vaunted. They are everywhere, high and low; in the best quarters as in the poorest; in the immediate neighborhood of fair parks, and in the open country, where, in addi- tion, even houses are turned to account for the proclamation of some quack medicine or hair restorer or stove polish. There is no escaping from them, and while it is perfectly true that even in artistic Paris the adver- tiser has likewise seized upon every coign of vantage, 236 ART there is at least the redeeming feature that the ad- vertisements are artistic, while in the United States they are frequently the very offensiveness of crudity and coarseness. Considering that there are men in the country, and not a few, capable, thanks to the training they have received, of producing posters of merit and bills that are a pleasure to look at, it is the more to be regretted that the inevitable adver- tising boards are so thoroughly and completely hideous. But they pay: they pay the owner of the land; they pay the advertiser; they pay the bill poster, and once a thing pays, no other considera- tions can prevail. The beauty of the city may be marred; what matter? Money is being made by the marring. The better sense of the better bred is shocked. Money is being got, and money tops art any day and every day. No; the American has not the true art sense. Individual Americans have it, and appreciate all forms of beauty, but taken collectively he is wholly lacking in it. In respect to art, the average Ameri- can is hopelessly bourgeois, terribly Philistine. It does not appeal to him; it is merely a something that can be procured, like everything else, in return for dollars. But there is ever another side to a picture, and when America and the Americans are discussed, it is not one side but many that have to be taken ac- count of. For the country and the people present so many and such varied aspects and characteristics that what is true of one part of the land, of one portion of the people, may not be true of other 237 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS parts. It is a land of contrasts and surprises, of differences that seem inexplicable; very often of oppositions that are wholly unexpected, and this in matters of art, as in questions of politics or any- thing else. There are splendid monuments, side by side with thoroughly hideous ones; there are men and women with the most refined, the most deli- cate, the most accurate perception of art in all its manifestations, and there is an overwhelming ma- jority utterly unable to grasp the most rudimentary notions of the ideal. By the side of those who look on literature, on painting, on music as merely frivol- ities which are expensive and wearisome but which must be accepted because it is the proper thing to accept them, there are those whose taste is critical, whose understanding is perfect, whose enjoyment is of the highest. There are collections, private and public, which make the wonder and the joy of the artist; there are evidences of genuine feeling for the beautiful and proofs of the existence of a true es- thetic spirit. Above all there is the determination, perfectly plain, that America shall not lag behind the coun- tries of the Old World in any one particular. Con- sequently, the study of art is included, in a minor degree, even in school programs, and in colleges and universities there are courses and lectures and demonstrations which tell of and which contain in themselves the promise of a development of the un- derstanding of art and its practice. There are so- cieties of painters, of sculptors, of architects, of musicians, and there are literary clubs like the sands 238 ART of the sea in multitude. The school children are being taught by the subtle method of placing con- tinually before them reproductions of the master- pieces of all countries and all ages. There are books, numberless, published as introductions and guides to the knowledge of art in its various mani- festations. These facts lead to the conclusion that if a genuine national art is not evolved in the course of time, it will not be for the lack of persistent and generally intelligent teaching. It may be that the artistic atmosphere will form and grow in the United States as it has done in other lands, and that the artist will find himself in congenial surroundings. All things are possible in America, and where so many wonderful things have already been carried out, it is on the cards that the sense for art may in its turn be created and maintained. But there are many difficulties to be surmounted, and the progress can in no event prove very rapid. The continual churning-up of the social strata, the incessant irruption into the wealthy class of those who have risen from the ranks, without any of that tradition of the beautiful and the ideal which is the appanage of the highly cultured, make for delay in advancement. So much gold is wasted on atrocities and inferior productions, so little knowledge is shown of the qualities which constitute a master- piece, so little interest in art as compared with the keen interest felt in money-making that one cannot be very hopeful for the growth of the esthetic sense throughout all classes. 239 XIV EDUCATION The trite saying, knowledge is power, might also be rendered knowledge is liberty, for there is nothing which is so indispensable in a democracy as that instruction which enlightens the individual regard- ing his duties and his responsibilities. That is the essential point : without that knowledge he can never be truly free. Every man in a democracy being, whether he will or no, interested in and responsible for the government of the commonwealth, it follows that he should receive the training which will enable him to take an intelligent interest in the adminis- tration of the country, and to realize the greatness of his responsibility toward the community at large. There is a great deal of education in the United States and men are naturally proud of the results they obtain, but there is not enough instruction in the duties of citizenship, not nearly enough in the respon- sibilities of freedom. There are excellent systems of common schools, wherein the rich and the poor alike receive the best of teaching; colleges and technical institutions where the youth may fit himself for busi- ness or a profession ; universities where he may pro- ceed to highest studies and to original research. 240 EDUCATION The program of the schools, the curriculum of the colleges, the syllabus of the universities give him the widest choice of subjects and permit him to select such lines of work as please his fancy or serve his more determinate purpose. It would be difficult, indeed, to discover any topic on which instruction may not be obtained, save, perchance, the most use- ful of all to the citizen of a democratic state: civic instruction. It exists, up to a certain point; but it is to be found more especially in higher institutions of learn- ing, and while it is true that many students attend these, it is likewise true that the vast majority of the voters never go beyond the elementary teaching to be had in the public schools. The voters who com- pose this class, being the most numerous, are those whose suffrage will determine the result of the elec- tions; they are those who least apprehend what the responsibility of a citizen is; who least understand that a vote is not simply a marketable commodity, and should not be turned into one, but that it is a power which should be used with discrimination and with singleness of purpose. These men have not the smallest perception of the consequence of vot- ing beyond the fact that if the candidate for whom they have been ordered, by the boss, to plump, is returned, some ulterior material benefit will accrue to them personally. They take the commercial view of suffrage: their vote is a means of getting a few dollars in return for a walk to the polling booth ; it is a possible way of securing a desirable berth in the employ of the city, State or Federal adminis- 241 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS tration; it is not exercising the right of a free man to determine the character of the government. Universal suffrage is a curse and an evil at the present time in the United States because it is the appanage of the ignorant and the venal ; because the patriot, the true patriot, who is ever ready to make sacrifices for the good of his country, and who is unselfish, is outvoted by .the mass of sordid and careless individuals who care naught for the success of a wise policy and have no thought save for the personal advantage they may draw from the sale it may be repeated, sale of their vote. It is a curse, because, with the prevailing laxity of public opinion, with the lack of thorough and widespread civic instruction, it is not the best men who deter- mine the fate of measures but the nerveless, the weak, the ignorant, the venal, led as these are by the unscrupulous and the daring. Admirable in theory, and a logical consequence of the principle that all men are free and all are therefore interested in the administration of affairs, it fails and is vicious because in practice it includes among the free those who are enslaved by ignorance and bound by the fetters of selfish greed. At times there is an explosion of public senti- ment, and a really great man is elected by popular votes, but that is rare. The rule is that voters fol- low the behests of the self-appointed dictators, and these men do not seek the good of the country; they aim simply at their own personal profit. They control the votes of the great mass of people; they buy and sell them as they would any other com- 242 EDUCATION modity; they bargain with candidates; they settle the distribution of patronage, and the partition of the spoils. Great improvement has been made within the past few years but it is great only relatively; there yet remains very much to be done before the democratic principle of universal suffrage can be said to have justified itself. While it is true, as has just been said, that public sentiment will rally round a great man, one worthy of all the honor that his country can confer upon him, this is no more than saying that voters are apt to cast their votes for any man who is strong, for such is the tendency of democracy that it almost invariably inclines to the very strong, even to the tyrannical. There is in the manifestation and proof of strength an extraordinary attraction which de- mocracy cannot resist. The Sovereign People are carried away by the sight of individual power, and readily confer upon the possessor of it the most extensive sway. This is a grave danger to the per- manency of democratic institutions, but the danger, recognized by a few, is unheeded by the many. A sound and thorough civic education would guard against the mass of the voters being thus swept off their feet, and casting their ballots without due reflection. It may be objected that this view of the responsi- bilities of a voter in a democratic country involves too heavy a demand on the intelligence and on the time of the citizen. No doubt that is the case, but it is the natural, the logical consequence of true democracy, which is not a thing composed of sonor- AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ous, empty phrases such as are too often served out to the people, but a reality and a grave one at that. Democracy involves, let it be once more repeated, responsibilities that are not extant in despotic gov- ernments or in aristocratic communities. In a democracy all citizens are equally responsible for the proper conduct of public affairs; all are equally bound to inform themselves seriously and fully, and to cast their votes not in accordance with their personal advantage, but for the good of the entire community. A man cannot decently expect to en- joy all the benefits of liberty and at the same time to escape from the duties it entails upon him. He is not a true democrat when he does this ; he is not a faithful citizen. He is bound to assume his share of the common burden, which he ought not to re- gard as a burden at all, but as what it is, a high privilege: the privilege of the free man. Along this line, therefore, it is that education should train men in a democratic state, and for this purpose education must be general, thorough, and include not alone those subjects which are of use everywhere and under all conditions, but especially civic education, the teaching of the duties and re- sponsibilities of the citizen to the community. All manner of things are more or less well taught to the children in the public schools: they are given small doses of this, that and the other, but the great number are left ignorant of the real task before them. They are told of the wonderful development of the land, of its illimitable resources ; they are trained to believe in its superiority over all others 44 EDUCATION in the world; they are led to contemplate its in- effable greatness, but they are not taught, or not sufficiently taught that all these splendors involve corresponding duties on their part, and that the discharge of these duties is expected and required of them if the Union is to remain the great exemplar of applied democracy. The field is a rich one, and the ground is fertile, for in the United States one of the greatest charms of life is the love and desire of education. It is general, it is universal, one may say. Education is not the monopoly of the select few: it is the inheri- tance and the prerogative of all. Generally com- pulsory, the opportunity to acquire knowledge is freely offered to all the schools are good taken all round: the teachers usually well equipped and in- terested in their work; the taxpayers abundantly willing to make the necessary sacrifices for the main- tenance, on a high scale of efficiency, of the estab- lishments of education. A wonderful generosity manifests itself constantly in this direction. Re- spect and admiration are entertained for those who devote themselves to teaching. In few, if any coun- tries, is this the case to a similar extent. The influence of the teaching body is extraordin- arily great although it is exercised quietly. Heads of educational institutions rank among the first of the land; their opinion is eagerly sought after; their views are closely studied ; their counsel prized ; their cooperation desired. Scarcely an interview, hardly a symposium is published in the press but includes one or more representatives of the edu- 245 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS cational staff of the country. It is a high honor to be called to a chair in a university or to the presidency of a college. The college is the natural goal of thousands who, in Europe, would not dream of such a continuation of the elementary education they have received. The boy engaged in selling papers expects to enter the establishment which has made his city or his State illustrious, and there to obtain that knowl- edge which will enable him to rise in the world. The lad who has to earn his way saves all he can in order at some future time to gain the advantage of a college education. The facility with which this can be had is a potent factor in the general uplift- ing of the nation. It is largely because instruction is freely given that all careers are open to every man and woman in the land. It is because institu- tions of higher learning abound everywhere that men and women can fit themselves for better work and for the attainment of a place higher in the social scale. Democracy is a living force in this respect, and the spread of schools, colleges and uni- versities is one of the most beneficent results of the principle. This involves, on the other hand, the responsibil- ity of giving to the multitudes which resort to these institutions that civic education without which the citizen of the Republic is and remains imperfect, and incapable of properly discharging his duties to the community. For the smattering it is often no more of many a subject not of pressing and im- mediate necessity, might well be substituted in the 246 EDUCATION schools themselves, and certainly in many of the col- leges, a foundation, sure and firm, in the knowledge of the principles of democracy and of the duties consequent upon it. Scholars are a glorious fruit of universities, but the schools and the colleges should especially devote themselves to the making of men and women, of citizens aware of their privi- leges and prepared to perform their duties to the commonwealth. This plain part of the work of the educational institutions is yet but imperfectly ful- filled; it needs to be greatly extended. Most of the problems which men and women alike, in the peculiar conditions of life in the United States, have to face once they go out into the world, are connected with social, economic and political questions. They should therefore be trained to meet these difficulties and to aid in solving them for the greatest advan- tage to the greatest number. Of the several points which compel attention, in connection with education in the United States, there are two or three which must be mentioned as developed largely by the democratic spirit ever at work among the people; that spirit which inspired the founders of the Union, and which directs their worthiest successors. The first is the individual generosity which has built up, and in more than one case, founded insti- tutions of learning. Reference has already been made to the readiness with which money is every- where voted for the maintenance of schools; this inclination to favor a system by which everyone profits is doubtless meritorious, but, after all, it is 247 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS not unexpected or surprising since the benefits de- rived from the schooling of boys and girls are ap- parent to everyone. What is particularly fine, what is very admirable, is the way in which the higher establishments are supported, encouraged and strengthened year by year, and without the smallest diminution of that just interest in them which is one of the most beautiful traits in the American char- acter. Benefactors are never wanting, and it is to the credit of the greatest institutions that their re- sources are largely drawn from the gratitude of their own scholars. It is the graduates who come forward with loyal fervor to supply their Alma Mater with the wealth needed to carry out to the full the noble purposes she has in view. It is the rich who have some relation with the university, through a son, a brother, if not themselves directly, who lavish upon learning the abundance of their fortune. In every college and university throughout the land are to be seen testimonies to this American spirit of aid for the learning which is to make men for the nation. There are State universities, deriv- ing their income from the appropriations made by the legislatures ; but there are especially institutions which in nowise depend upon the will of a body to maintain them, but which grow and expand, thanks to the munificence of private individuals and to the wise administration of their funds by their corpora- tions. In these colleges and universities, as in the schools, are seen seated side by side the sons of the well-to- 248 EDUCATION do, of the rich and of the laboring classes. The descendant of an old family; the lad who is earning his way; the son of the tradesman; the boy who comes from an humble home, whose own parents never could hope for higher education, are there, being taught together and learning to know each other. That is what is most inspiring, perhaps, in the educational system of the country. It is true democracy, which takes no account of position but makes success depend upon personal effort and per- sonal merit. Yet another feature: the absolute freedom of the instructor in most of the large universities not quite in all, it must be confessed. That freedom is practically unlimited, save by the consensus of opinion within the university as to the best meth- ods, and by the sound sense of the instructor him- self. But here enters into account a point of much in- terest and singular charm: the influence of the stu- dent body upon the teaching staff. While, in the largest universities, there is not, and through the force of circumstances there cannot be that close and intimate relation between the teacher and the taught which is one of the advantages of the tutorial system, there is a stimulus and a spur which the instructor speedily feels. There is also a communion of thought, a harmony of effort, a willingness on the part of the student to do his share of the work fairly; on the part of the teacher to make the way as plain as possible. This is due in great measure to the character of the American youth, as fine a 249 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS product as is to be met with. He is genuinely likable; he is attractive, because he is sincere and simple; he is enjoyable because he has the capacity for enjoyment himself, and withal, save in some ex- ceptions, a desire to profit by the instruction he is in the place to receive. He is not always a scholar, a "grind," as college slang has it, but he is quite ready and willing to do a day's work in a day if properly handled. That is important, for the spirit of independence is strong in him. He is, like all his race, impatient of strict discipline, and is always more easily and successfully led than driven: which is in his favor and in that of the wise teacher, for the latter is well aware that it is far more profitable to lead than it is to push and press forward the unwilling. The American youth is critical of his instructors; he does not entertain for them the traditional respect which is assumed to exist in Europe. He judges them as he judges his own comrades, and he accords his respect and his attention or withholds them in accordance with the outcome of his comparisons. He is perfectly willing to do anything for the man who takes the trouble to study him and to treat him as a human being; he is ready to follow, but he will not easily be constrained. He will rigidly enforce discipline if the enforcement be left to him; he will probably kick over the traces if the man in author- ity holds the reins too tight. He can be depended upon to the uttermost once he has passed his word and to that there are very few exceptions indeed. He is honorable in his dealings, and amenable to 250 EDUCATION remonstrance on matters which he looks at in a dif- ferent light from his seniors. He enters upon studies, and reveals interest in questions which would seem far from his horizon; he delves willingly into the matters brought before him, and enters into discussions and debates with heartiness and enthusi- asm. He "wants to know," once he has been taken with a study; and it is for his instructor to supply the want. He takes naturally to administration; he establishes societies of many sorts and manages them; he enters upon business and succeeds in it even while in college; he can "run" things and he likes to do it; in short, in college, in the university, he trains himself for the busy life of the world to which he is looking forward. Best of all, he is a youth, not an old head on young shoulders, but a real youth with all the charm of his age and with all the essential traits of it. He loves sport; he grows wildly enthusiastic over foot- ball, almost as much over baseball, mildly so over rowing and tennis. He gets into scrapes and he gets out of them; he is delightfully forgetful, at times, and still more delightfully winning in seeking to ex- cuse himself. He has the secret of attracting old and young, and while the praises of the American girl are sung in lyric mode until it becomes difficult to find the original of the rhapsodies, the American youth, unsung and little drawn by illustrators, re- tains the freshness and vigor of his character, and the full charm of his age. No one can claim to know the American who knows not, somewhat intimately the American 251 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS youth, with all his cordiality, his ease, his frank- ness, his thoroughness in all he does. He can be tremendously conceited, and at the same time abso- lutely modest; he believes in himself, in his country, yet he is ready to take advice and to seek it. He is prudent in many of his enterprises and amusingly rash in other matters. He has comradeship strong- ly developed, yet he can pull his own oar and make his ow/i way. He is entirely pleasant to meet, and he leaves memories that are dear to the man who has long been with him. He is the hope of his coun- try,, and that hope will not prove illusory. The yovmg generations, as they succeed each other, are contributing something more to the common stock, and in them is to be aroused that high sense of duty to the Republic which is the surest warrant of the continuance and magnificent development of democracy along the lines of progress and usefulness to humanity. To education the success of the United States is very largely due, and in directing education, the country, guided by men of great wisdom, has avoided many of the difficulties and complications which em- barrass the older European countries. The fortunes of the Birrell Education bill in England were watched with curiosity by many in the United States who could not understand what all the pother was about, and to whom the contentions of Church- men and Nonconformists were worse than Greek and Hebrew. That was because in America all the com- plications with which the Liberal Government so un- successfully attempted to deal are practically un- 252 EDUCATION known. Education is not confided to the care of rival churches and sects, ever quarreling and fight- ing, but is the duty of the State itself, which owes to its citizens elementary instruction at least, and in many cases gives them yet more advanced teaching. Consequently, with the universal desire for instruc- tion characteristic of the American, and the absence of polemics on the question of religious teaching, the problem which still baffles British statesmen does not present itself here. Children are all taught what the State should teach them ; the question of religious instruction is left to be dealt with, as it ought to be, by the churches themselves. The United States is not, officially, a Christian State, and the various States composing the Union, while many of them are officially Christian, have adopted the plan of separating entirely secular and religious education. And on the whole, the results are satisfactory. The churches themselves are stirred up to greater activity, and the work that else would be but imperfectly performed is carried out with thoroughness. Pupils of all creeds sit side by side in the schools, as do pupils of every social class and of every color, for, except in the South- ern States, the negro and mulatto are no more segregated than are the children of the poor. In practice, some schools are attended more largely by the children of the well-to-do than by those of the working classes, usually so-called, but this is due not to any discrimination between them, which would not be admissible, but simply to conditions of residence the various quarters of the cities being 253 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS more particularly sought by one class rather than by another. The mingling of pupils has a distinctly beneficial effect upon the fundamental notions they carry away with them after their school years are over; they have imbibed, at an age when impressions are easily and lastingly made, the idea of the practical equal- ity of all men in the country. They have become accustomed to intercourse with those not so rich as themselves, it may be, and moving in a different so- cial circle; they have found out that it is not so- cial position which wins distinction in school, but talent and effort, and these lessons are of the utmost value in life. For no man, in the United States, can know what the morrow will bring forth. The individual whom he has possibly disdained and looked down upon, may turn out his superior in the race for supremacy in life. The fact that opportunity is given to one and all and that there is no class distinction as such, prevents the ordinary man from supposing himself safe from competition ; on the contrary, he is well aware that he will have to rheet it. And his train- ing in school teaches him that it is on himself he must rely and not on any adventitious circumstances of birth or wealth. Americans contract readily the habit of reading, thanks to the schools, and are, in the main, apt to keep it up. The young, particularly, develop it to a quite remarkable extent. The reading rooms of the public libraries always contain large numbers of youthful readers, and circulating libraries also draw 254 EDUCATION many of them. Fiction is not the only branch of literature they patronize; naturally enough it is the chief one, but they add to works of the imagination others of a more serious character. The results of this fondness for instruction, of the spread of education among all classes, are strik- ingly evident, and a walk through the streets of any American city, a conversation with the ordinary workman returning to his home at the end of the day, a chat with the farmer or his boy, suffice to reveal how vast is the influence and how uplifting. There is something in the air and bearing of the average workingrnan which marks at once his pos- session of a certain amount of intellectual training. He is as a rule bright and quick ; that is because his mental discipline has been looked after in childhood and youth. It is worth watching a regiment of State militia, or a regiment bound to war, for the purpose of noting the peculiarly intelligent aspect of the men in the ranks. There is certainly lacking that smart- ness which is considered in Europe a sine qua non, but in its place there is seen easily enough a greater intelligence, a greater keenness, a greater individual- ity; all things which, no doubt, do not conduce to make a soldier after the pattern dear to the heart of Frederick the Great, but which produce a fighter capable of taking care not only of himself but of others as well, should need arise. And education has entered into the whole life of the people, entered into it in a way that is not readily understood, because not easily perceived, by the 255 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS transient visitor. It is not only the large diffusion of libraries through the land, although that in itself is an index of the interest taken in study ; it is not only the maintenance of schools in every district; it is the earnest and general desire manifest among a class which, in older lands, is content perforce to re- main uninstructed, to obtain education and to turn it to account as a means of mental and temporal improvement. Few things are so admirable, in a land where admirable things greet one at every turn, as the persistent effort made, often under most dis- advantageous and distressing circumstances, to se- cure that instruction which will give the oppor- tunity of rising. Men and women alike share that yearning, and seek to satisfy it even at the cost of self-denial and sacrifice. Anyone who has had the chance to observe the youth of America will bear witness to that trait of the national character. The Americans, in this respect, resemble that sturdy Scottish race that so early developed a system of instruction which re- sulted in fitting its sons to fight their way in every part of the world, and to attain success where other races would fail. The Scottish shepherd laddie, who reads his Homer and his Virgil while tending his flocks, has his counterpart many times repeated in the United States, and the origin of many a man who has gained fame, not at home only but abroad, is as humble, in the conventional sense of the word, as that of many an eminent Scotsman who, thanks to the spirit of his nation, the traditions of his coun- try and the opportunities it affords for education, 256 EDUCATION has passed into a higher realm and benefited human- ity. The great number of colleges and universities is additional proof of the democratizing of education. Everyone, practically, has the chance to obtain higher training, after the work of the primary, sec- ondary, and high schools. The poorest lad, if of parts, can obtain in some one of the numerous estab- lishments that first help to the studious which is of such incalculable value at the time it is given. And this is due to the beneficence, the public spirit of private individuals ; it is not the State which thus smooths the way ; it is an American, man or woman, feeling the prevailing admiration for instruction, who has given or left money for that special purpose. The colleges and universities of the United States are not primarily for the rich man's son, with a pos- sible opportunity for a sizar, but they are for all the youth of the land regardless of the monetary condition of the parents. In them the able youth can maintain himself and win his honors and make a name for himself. In them he is started by the aid intended for him and his like, an aid which he not infrequently repays in after life. He takes up oc- cupations of profit with the knowledge that his pur- suit of them will in no respect militate against his standing ; labor, honest labor is honored, as it should ever be. The fact that a student is poor will not for an instant prevent his forming useful and agree- able friendships ; will not debar him from participa- tion in the best life of the institution; will not pre- possess a single instructor against him, but on the 257 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS contrary, will enlist in his behalf the cordial sym- pathy of those who witness, approve and encourage his efforts to make a man, an independent man of himself. It is in the colleges and the universities that the spirit of "get there" is seen at its best and produces the most satisfactory results. The competition is keen there as in the greater world outside, but the struggle wholly benefits the contestants. If the vic- tories of Great Britain have been won on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow, the triumphs of the United States have been largely won in the district schools, in the colleges and in the universities, cen- ters of a life whose intensity and strenuousness are typical of the vigor of the national life; where the lad from the farm can gain that insight into the problems of life and that mastery of the knowledge he craves which, later, will make him the man of mark and leading in his community. Deeply interesting, singularly attractive is the American youth, whether he belong to the rich class which has given him all the comforts and charms of life from childhood, or whether he be sprung from that sturdy and reliable farmer stock which is spread over the whole territory of the great Union. He is well worth studying, for in him lie the possibilities of the future, and the observer who applies himself to the task and follows the careers of these youths in after life, learns soon that democracy, among the other great benefits it has conferred upon the land and its people, has conferred none greater than the love of education and the respect for it 258 EDUCATION which form an essential trait of the American character. And how splendid are the opportunities presented to the American youth in college and university! In the larger institutions especially, he has the chance to see and hear all the men of high reputa- tion who, from his own land or from foreign shores, visit the establishment of which he forms a part. It is not one view of life which he acquires during his residence; it is many different experiences which he hears told ; his mind is broadened by contact with innumerable other minds ; his intellect sharpened by contact with hundreds of other intellects. He im- bibes knowledge unwittingly and wittingly; he ac- quires instruction consciously and unconsciously; he is every day gaining something and every day, even if inclined to laziness all round, which is not a fre- quent phenomenon, he learns something new and use- ful. That on the whole he profits by all this, is not to be wondered at: the strange thing would be that he should be less able, less quick, less intelligent and less attractive than he is. As material for the formation of a manly char- acter he is to be envied. Responsive and adaptable, he readily follows a leader who inspires him, and a teacher in the United States, no matter what the grade of institution to which he belongs, must be a leader, not a driver, in the ordinary sense of the word. It has already been remarked that the Amer- ican in this respect is restive to driving, but respon- sive to enthusiasm, to inspiration, to leadership. With these qualities, anything can be made of the 259 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS American youth; it is for those in charge of his mental and moral development to see to it that the results are obtained. And it is because he is so sus- ceptible to the right kind of influence, and because he can be interested, that the hope of the democracy of the future is so bright. All that is needed is to train the youth of the land to a full sense of their duties and responsibilities as citizens ; to inform them thoroughly and accurately of the history of their race and their ancestry, their political ancestry, and the consequences will work themselves out fav- orably for the nation. Civic education, in large and generous measure, education directed not to vain boastfulness of past glories, but to the understanding and apprehension of the problems of democracy and especially of the problems which confront his own country, education which shall develop and root in him unalterably the sense of personal honor, of public honor, of public spirit, of true patriotism which is neither brag nor jingoism that education given to the youth of America will assure that brilliant future so often predicted but which will never be realized unless measures are taken to insure that the men shall be ready when the need arises for them and the need is ever present and ever will be. XV THE PRESS The writer of impressions and the dweller in the land are apt to be of one mind on the question of the press, and that mind is not favorable to an in- fluential part of the press. The papers which have the largest circulation, all over the country, are those which compose what is popularly known as "the yellow press," a fit appellation. It is enough to say of these that they seek not so much to give the news of the country and of the foreign lands with which the United States are in constant communica- tion, as to superexcite the love of gossip and scan- dal, ingrained in so many people, and which has been largely developed and intensified by these journals. The appetite grows by what it feeds upon, and while every society contains a large proportion of persons whose curiosity is more particularly directed to- ward the affairs of their neighbors and toward sa- lacious incidents, it is unhappily a fact that no- where is that regrettable feature more prevalent than in America. The yellow press lives on sensation-mongering ; it employs any and every means of stimulating the de- sire of its innumerable readers for further scandals 261 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and greater excitement. It panders to every evil tendency of human nature; it promotes hatred, malice and all uncharitableness, and the one object which it holds superior to this, is the making of money. For the yellow press and its various pro- prietors do not enter upon their business of corrupt- ing and debasing the minds of the readers from a simple delight in filth and nastiness and falsehood ; it may even be maintained that did they believe cleanli- ness, the uplifting of men's minds, and the proclama- tion of eternal verities a paying fashion of editing newspapers, they would, without a moment's hesita- tion, enter upon a career of virtuous journalism. But they want to make money ; gold is their god, and the only god they worship. They believe and ex- perience supports their belief that more money is to be made by serving the baser sides of man than by helping man to become better. They are on the same moral or, properly, immoral plane as the keepers of gambling* hells, of dives, of houses of ill- fame, of low grogshops, of bucket shops, and the other numerous businesses which trade upon the folly and the criminal tendencies of men. They ex- ploit vice, and exploit it joyously, enthusiastically, energetically. They seek to spur the greed for all that is vile and mean and disgusting. They resort to bare lying, when they cannot otherwise attract attention. They must continually produce effects startling and unexpected; they cannot be content for a single moment to let the world go on tranquilly. Distortion, misrepresentation, falsification they thrive on and cultivate with ardor. Their "scare 263 THE PRESS heads" are models of untruth ; their statements may confidently be assumed to be false by the more ra- tional and reflective of the community, but that matters not one whit to them: they are well aware that the great majority of their readers do not seek or desire truth, but sensation; not fact but inven- tion ; not news, but scandal, the spicier and the fouler the better. This may seem a harsh judgment to pass on the newspaper-reading public which eagerly purchases and peruses these sheets ; on the men of business who hurry over their columns, on the women who study them, on the girls and boys of still tender years who impregnate their minds with all the un- savoriness and all the abominations which are coarse- ly and crudely told in these debased productions of the publisher's art, on the workmen who, after a day's toil, delect themselves in the enjoyment of attacks on all that is best in the world, and in in- finite details of all that is worst. But as a man and a woman also is known by the company he keeps, so is the newspaper reader to be judged by the kind of journal which he buys regularly and which he reads from beginning to end. Of the forces at work to impair the national character, to destroy the ideals which are after all the ideals of the Amer- ican nation, few, if any, are to be compared in deadly and disintegrating effect with the action of the yellow press. It is a blot and a stain upon Amer- ican civilization; a school of crime and evil ever open and ever active; a propaganda of sin and cor- ruption and falsehood which all the efforts of the 263 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS churches and of the educational institutions appear unable to check, much less to stop. The yellow press, in the modern American society, is the pirate of old days, exercising his craft and following his evil tendencies. It is found every- where ; not a railway carriage, not a trolley car, not a waiting-room, not a news-stand, not a hotel, not a theater or other place of amusement, but it is present in. Its issues are seen in every hand: the hands of old men, of old women, of young men, of maidens, of schoolboys and schoolgirls. The lads who rush about with their raucous cries and their bundles of infamy, are the apt pupils of the school. They learn that men and women are ever ready to peruse filth and falsehood; that between the clean sheet and the foul and thank God, there are clean sheets, and many of them the average reader will take the foul one, and they also being infected with the all-pervading spirit of greed of gold, in however small quantities, will naturally turn to the readiest means of earning the coveted dollars. The pupil in school, the student in college quickly realizes that it needs not literary style to secure acceptance of manuscript by the editors of these disreputable sheets : all that is needed is the art of dressing up an incident, of ferreting out a scandal, of creating one out of whole cloth, of defaming the pure, of lauding the vile, to obtain immediate recog- nition as "a bright, newsy writer." And the pupil in school, the student in college, if not strong enough in character or sufficiently under the influ- ence of higher views of life, takes to writing for the 264 THE PRESS yellow press as a duck takes to water, and thus adds one more to the forces of corruption and evil. By way of adding to its attractiveness, the yel- low press resorts to the extensive use of illustrations. The improvement in processes of photographic and half-tone reproductions has been utilized to the ut- most, again especially with the view of stimulating curiosity for all that had best be kept in the shadow. The glaring limelight of the printed column is not sufficient, and the aid of the "artist" Heaven save the mark ! is called in to supply any possible omis- sions on the part of the wholly unscrupulous writer of "news." It is easy to imagine the character of the illustrations thus showered upon readers: the heroes are criminals, the heroines abandoned women. Now and then amid the collection which is in itself an imposing Rogues' Gallery, appears the presenta- tion of some public man, horrified to find himself in such company; of some unhappy lady, of gentle birth and breeding, who, because she has taken part in a function of a wholly private nature, discovers to her shame that she also is gibbeted with the band of adventurers of both sexes, with the prize-fighter, with the false coiner, with the forger, with the mur- derer, with the demi-mondaine. And there is not only no redress for this pollu- tion; there is no protection against it. The "enter- prising reporter," as often as not a woman as a man, coolly tells the victim that if he or she will not give the picture for reproduction, it will be obtained without consent. At need, if the portrait is not to be had, another is substituted and the name altered. 265 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS In this simple fashion the yellow journal maintains with its readers its assertion of being "live" and al- ways able to gratify the public lust for scandal and immorality. Instances of this method are so numer- ous that every reader of the papers can recall them. As for the victims, who cares what they think? Is not the land the very paradise of liberty? And does not liberty consist in destroying all privacy and tearing away all modesty and all protection from those who are so belated in their notions as to sup- pose that the individual had any rights as against the yellow press? Above the yellow press is to be found a large num- ber of papers which are emerging from the slough, and exhibiting a proper sense of the function of the newspaper. They are not wholly free, unhappily, from the characteristics which, highly developed, mark the lower and fouler class of sheets. They are still too apt to grant large space to the tittle-tattle and scandal of which the American public is said, by these very papers, to be so enamored. This, at least, is the conclusion legitimately drawn from the oft repeated declaration of the newspapers and of the theaters that they give the public what the pub- lic calls for. The justice of this statement is more than open to doubt. The public reads the papers because the habit of reading them has been formed, but it would read decent papers and does read them. If the proprietors of the press were to raise their standards the public would follow them. The remedy lies with the press itself. The reform must come from within. There will always be a public for 266 THE PRESS sheets that pander to evil curiosity and to vicious tendencies, but it is the height of calumny to pro- fess, as so many newspapers do, that it is the public which is responsible for the low standard of much of the periodical literature published in the United States. There is too much sterling worth in the people of the land, too much real perception of the difference between good and evil, too sound a moral standard to render it possible to accept the verdict of the press on this point. No doubt the public does not manifest vigorously enough its objection to the kind of pabulum served out to it; no doubt it pur- chases too eagerly and too readily the issues of the yellow press and of the papers in the higher stratum, but that is a habit which can be changed and which should be changed. Nay, which will be changed as time goes on, for it is impossible not to notice the steady upward trend of public opinion, a trend which is one of the most gratifying, one of the most en- couraging signs of a healthy condition of the public mind. The papers in the class now under consideration are, equally with the yellow journals, continually and blatantly proclaiming their superiority as news gatherers and affirming their superiority in this respect to the papers of the Old World. This is one of the amusing and frequent instances of the deep-rooted habit of self-glorification, which prevails in America to an extent undreamed of in Europe. As a matter of fact, the class of papers referred to is not so much a gatherer of news as a recorder of tittle-tattle and parish pump happenings. Taking 267 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS an issue of one of them at haphazard and of one of the Very best in this respect, of a journal whose editorial page is well worth reading for the soundness and general fairness of the views it ex- pounds what does the reader, the impartial reader find? Exactly one column and a half of foreign news, of which a fair portion is of the nature of what the French call faits divers. The pranks of a goat, escaped from its pen, three accounts of mur- der and sudden death, an obituary notice of an un- known woman, a canoeing accident, a hope for finer weather, a brief reference to an important occur- rence in the South, and a story of a fire, constitute the first page. There are illustrations, of which the most prominent are that of a woman who figures in a scandal ; another that of a boy who has caught a trout; another a series of portraits of young women students who have published a college paper, the crude contents of which are poured out upon the public ; a baseball player, of course ; and a pastor, utterly unknown outside of the small church which he is leaving "to better himself." There are, it is true, full accounts of the stock market, and this part of the journal is edited with care and has value, as also the excellent editorial page. But accounts of accidents and crimes form the main part of the reading matter, and inevitably suggest the Police Gazette style of thing. This curious conglomeration of what is worth while and what is so utterly ephemeral as not, in good sooth, to be worth wasting printer's ink upon, is the result of two causes : the first, divided author- 268 THE PRESS ity; the second, pure and unadulterated commer- cialism. There does not appear to exist, in papers of the class to which the one quoted from belongs, any superior, central authority. The editor-in-chief takes charge of the editorial page, and he does his work thoroughly and satisfactorily. But he has no apparent control over the other parts of the journal. The city editor is supreme over the greater portion of the twelve or fourteen pages which make up the issue. He does not trouble, it would seem, to ob- serve the nature or tendency of the editorials, and consequently it is not infrequently the case that opinions highly contradictory one to the other ap- pear on different pages; on the first in the form of scare heads, less lurid, however, by far than those of the yellow journals, and on the editorial page in the course of a well-thought-out and well-written leader. It is for the reader to reconcile, if reconcile he can, these discrepancies, but he is so used to them that he scarcely notices them. Commercialism is the second and more important cause, commercialism being, of course, merely another way of saying the love of money. The important point to be contin- ually borne in mind by everyone in responsible po- sitions on the staff, is that the paper must be made to pay. Therefore every means of bringing in addi- tional subscribers, additional purchasers, even if only occasional, is resorted to. Every "hayseed" celebrating his silver wedding is sure to find his portrait and that of his helpmate presented to the weary eyes of the indifferent reader, who cares not a 269 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS jot whether Hiram Grasshopper, of Pumpkinvifle, has or has not enjoyed marital felicity for twenty- five years or twenty-five seconds. But Hiram and his tribe will buy the issue containing the portrait. Students in some small institutions of learning and "fudge" are eager to see themselves reproduced in the gallery perpetually kept open by the press, and their desires are readily gratified, to the ecstasy of the said students and the gratification of their par- ents, who forthwith acquire numberless copies of the paper to send to their relatives and friends by way of showing how famous their progeny has become. The society reporter an impossible female, as a rule has no other reason for existence but this whetting of the public's desire to see itself celebrated in print as belonging to the fashionable society of Tompkins* Crossing or Snooks' Corner. And the reporter, be he man or woman, never fails to describe every woman as a "society belle" and the society she pertains to as "the most exclusive set." All of which the so-called beauty swallows whole, and pays out her money to distribute among her friends. But this is not newsgathering, nor is the paper which indulges in this class of padding a real news- paper in this respect. It is, however, a common class and one that has many admirers and votaries, for, after all, what do these worthy citizens of a great country care for the events of importance in their own land or abroad? The important things, the mighty events are the local bazaar, the local "tea-fight," the church sociable, the school com- mencement, the broken engagement between Silas 270 THE PRESS (the vouth who delivers milk, but is represented as **a scion of one of our oldest families") and Mary Jane (whose mother takes in washing, but who is spoken of as one of "the leaders of fashion"). It is these things which, duly chronicled in the columns of the daily paper, make that paper successful in that particular community, and consequently it is these things to which the soundly business and prac- tical management gives the most space. The United States has become a world-power. This fact is insisted on most earnestly by the press of all shades of opinion and of all sorts of character. No one seeks to deny it, for it is patent. Only, one wonders how it is that the bulk of the press of a world-power takes so little cognizance, compara- tively, of world affairs? Of the countries with which the United States is in closest touch, little is said in the press. A few brief telegraphic dispatches serve to tell all that the public cares to know, ap- parently, of what goes on in Great Britain, in France, in Germany. If a revolution breaks out in some South American state it does attract mention, but it is soon relegated to "Brief Paragraphs." Important debates in parliaments of Europe are alluded to, but never is the debate itself reported at all fully. Foreign affairs have acquired a certain value of late years, yet one would hardly gather the fact from the perusal of the ordinary American newspaper, which claims, at the same time, to excel in its own line as a purveyor of world news. The balance is unequal, the selection odd. There remains to be spoken of a third class of 271 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS newspapers, the honor of the business. These are the journals whose reputation is so well established, whose management is so superior, that they can af- ford to disregard the claptrap of the yellow press and the parish pump news of the better sort above the yellows best of all, who can afford to dispense with the picture gallery, and to give news in the place of sensation, information in the place of mis- representation. These papers, and they are to be found in every principal city of the United States, are as good as any published anywhere else; they are admirably edited; well printed; full of useful and interesting matter ; and have a decided influence on men's minds, for it is natural that those who read them habitually should learn from them how to think on public questions and how to treat the affairs of the State or the municipality. Scare heads and spicy "space" reports are unknown in them; gossip is practically banished from them; crime and vulgarity do not obtain admission to the front page, but are either excluded or relegated to some remote and lonely corner, where they will not infect and disgust the decent reader. These papers are true representatives of the energy and push of the American journalist; far more so than those sheets which are ever on the watch for what is technically known as a "scoop," and is usually a fabrication, or, at the least, a wild exaggeration. Their leaders are sound and sensible; their re- ports are accurate; their news full and substantial. They are the pick of the lot, and they are those which have the smallest circulation, but an influ- 272 THE PRESS ence for good which it is difficult to overestimate. There is a form of the newspaper which cannot be overlooked: the Sunday issue. This is confined to the yellow press and the second class, the journals of the highest rank not permitting themselves in- dulgence in the publication of what is practically a weekly magazine, made up of the most varied ele- ments. The Sunday paper is now an institution, and in certain respects a regrettable one, but which has its raison d'etre. The day of rest is one on which, in the winter more particularly, the average American does not quite know what to do with himself. In the summer season there are the resorts open for amuse- ments; there is the country, rendered so accessible by the numerous lines of electric cars; there is the easily enjoyed pleasure of idling on a bench in one of the beautiful parks to be found in every city worthy of the name. But in winter the meteorologi- cal conditions are unfavorable for outdoor enjoy- ment, save walking and walking is not a favorite pastime of the American. The house holds out su- perior attractions : not the fireside, for in towns and cities, except, perhaps, in the South, the fireside is almost non-existent, the radiator or the register having taken its place. It is pleasanter to remain indoors, moreover, than to go out when the ther- mometer indicates below zero or when a wild snow- storm paralyzes traffic. It is then that the Sunday paper has its innings. It is the solace and comfort of the multitude, and it is for that multitude, for that democratic population, that it is published. It 273 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS is not intended for the intelligent man, for the re- fined woman, for the student, for the poet; it is frankly meant for the masses, and the masses show their appreciation of the fact by purchasing it greedily and reading it through and through, litter- ing the streets, the cars, the hotel public rooms with its scattered sheets. The Sunday paper is a hodge-podge of scraps of so-called "news." It has a little on foreign affairs, usually in the shape of a letter retailing the "fash- ionable" gossip of London and Paris, less of the latter than the former. It has a little about the doings at Washington ; talk about the next Presi- dential nomination; chatter about social matters in the capital; and it has columns of parish pump babble ; columns of reports of games, football, base- ball, bowling, track athletics according to the sea- son of the year; pages about "society" and its per- formances, the more extraordinary the better ; about actors and especially about actresses, whose counter- feit presentments embellish the vast expanse of the printed page; elaborate information on the latest modes, for the benefit of all the Irish "help" eager to emulate the "style" of their richer sisters ; fiction, of the most sensational variety: in a word, a com- mingling of all that can in any way interest the many readers, with multifarious tastes, who become purchasers of the bulky issue. Comic pages, in which the comic is almost invariably gross and vul- gar; collections of stories revamped and sent forth anew, albeit tired and worn by their centuries of wanderings through many lands; jokes hoary with 274 THE PRESS age, but offered as choice specimens of that Amer- ican humor which is declared to be so superior to that of all other nations ancient and modern; ar- ticles on subjects of real interest, side by side with futilities that are so inconceivably stupid as to astound the intelligent observer. Yet the Sunday paper has its good points, and in its incomplete way serves a useful purpose. It creates and develops the liking for reading, and cer- tainly awakens in many minds a desire for fuller and more accurate information on many of the questions it touches upon. It contains very often articles of real worth, which impart information well worth spreading, and which reach countless thousands who else would never learn much that is of use to them. It discusses political themes occasionally with vigor and clearness, and in so far aids in the training of the masses, which, thanks to universal suffrage, one of the banes of good government in the United States as elsewhere where education is not general and thorough, hold more than the balance of power. It enables very many who have had no opportunity to follow up their elementary education, to obtain at least a view of topics far beyond the range of their daily lives, which are, to some extent, broad- ened and helped thereby. It may be said that the Sunday paper, like many another manifestation of American enterprise, is yet but at the outset of its usefulness. It has come to stay, and while its presence is lamented by many, while the character of its contents is often unfortu- nate, it does not follow that substantial improve- 275 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ment will not follow in the wake of the general up- lifting of public opinion and public standards throughout the country. At present it is a miti- gated nuisance; in the future it may well prove a valuable addition to the forces that make for good. It must not be forgotten that the great bulk of the population is not church-going. There are churches galore in every city and town, but their number is absurdly out of proportion to the numbers of the population. And numerous as they are they are not always filled. The teachings of the pulpit would fail to reach as large a part of the public as they now reach were it not for the press, which in its week-day issues reports the most notable addresses or those the authors of which have been careful to send them to a reporter and in its Sunday issue prints very frequently an address or sermon written especially for the non-church-goer. When the sense of proportion is better developed, when the managers of these bulky sheets better un- derstand the relative value of the matter they print, when they more clearly perceive the immense influ- ence for good of which they may be the instruments, they will modify their publications and their papers will be a valuable force in the community. They can be made to become so. XVI FOREIGN RELATIONS In few matters has there been such a marked change in the United States as in the relations with foreign powers, and especially with Great Britain. The change is very significant of the altered influ- ences at work within the nation, influences which have much to do with the point of view taken by the press and the people at large. Not many years ago the self-respecting "man in the street" consid- ered himself bound to declaim against Britain and everything British. That unfortunate country was even more "perfidious Albion" to him than it ever was to the great Napoleon* He saw her hand in nearly every disaster, domestic or foreign; he sus- pected her interference in every election that ran counter to his wishes ; he wished her harm, intensest harm, with a whole heart; he rejoiced over her mis- fortunes, crowed over her mistakes, and thanked God that he was not an Englishman. Here again there were exceptions, as there are to everything, but these exceptions were few and far between, and did not manifest themselves in the councils of the nation. Toward France the feeling was more humane, if 877 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS not much more cordial. At least France had once again, and resolutely, cast off the errors of Empire and Monarchy, and had entered upon a career of greatness as an imitator of the United States. It could not quite be expected to approach the latter in glory and honor, but at all events it was making a praiseworthy effort to emulate the finest country in the world, and to be republican and democratic. Russia had a place privileged. Tradition had it, and has it still, for the wily diplomatists of the autocratic realm have taken care to perpetuate it that Russia had shown herself the friend of the United States at the time of the Civil War. It had done nothing of the sort in particular, but tradition and legend constitute, as has been wittily said, the true history believed in by the masses. That there was any incongruity in a democratic country dis- playing warm affection toward the worst autocracy in the civilized world, did not appear to dawn upon the Americans. It did not prevent, later, the French Republic from making close alliance with the same land. Germany was looked down upon with amusing in- difference, tinged with contempt, for it was some- what absurd in that piecemeal empire, held together by a Prussian sovereign, to put forth ambitions as a world-power. That it had a splendid army was un- deniable; that the army had proved its spirit and excellence in a great war, was admitted, but then the war had been with another European country, and one manifestly enfeebled by a prolonged dose of Imperialism. This weakened any conclusions that 378 FOREIGN RELATIONS might hastily be drawn from the completeness of the success won by the German arms. Other countries did not greatly preoccupy the man in the street. They existed doubtless, but mainly for the purpose of supplying the land of the free with fruit-peddlers and cheap labor the great attack on that pernicious institution not having then been developed in its full beauty. Turkey, Italy, were of no particular account; Austria-Hun- gary was not much thought of. The Northern realms of Sweden, Norway and Denmark were prob- ably all right, and caused no disturbance to the peace of the world. Spain, after a time, came more to the front. It held Cuba and Porto Rico, the former a most desirable possession most lamentably misgoverned. It lay so conveniently close to the shores of the United States that the idea that Provi- dence the Providence represented by the fish-eagle whose wings are deployed above the escutcheon of Stars and Stripes had manifestly intended it for American occupation early took root in the popu- lar mind ? and the man in the street grew hot as he talked of the foulness of Spanish corruption. When the French started their celebrated Repub- lic, at the close of the eighteenth century, and framed their first Constitution, they prefaced it with the Declaration of the Rights of Man. They were so enthusiastic over the perfection of this feat that they forthwith proceeded to declare to the European world that the time had come to destroy, extirpate and annihilate all kings, emperors, princes and other powers, and to substitute in their stead 279 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the beneficent system invented by the energumens of the Republic. They marched their armies into Italy and Austria and Germany and would have fain landed them in England also. Their forces proclaimed everywhere the blessed Rights of Man, the first and chief of which, in practice, was that the French should tyrannize over every land in virtue of their marvelous discovery, or invention, which- ever it might be called. They were in deadly earnest, and sincerely convinced that they were called by the Supreme Being so long as He lasted, for presently He also was found to be an inconvenient incumbrance and a relic of a barbarous past of ignorance and wretchedness, intellectual and physical to prop- agate throughout the world the glorious principles of the Revolution, together with the efficacious con- verter that bore the name of good Doctor Guillotin. Their enthusiasm for Bonaparte was largely due at the first to the belief that this wonderful master of the art of war was working with a single eye for the triumph of those ideas. They found out their mistake presently, but they kept on then insisting that the European world should at least be French. Well, the average American was, not long since, quite of the same opinion and practised pretty nearly the same eminent virtues. He was equally convinced, and is now, that his form of government is so ut- terly superior to every other ever adopted by or forced upon any body of men, that it was his solemn duty to impose it upon all lands. There were dif- ficulties in the realization of this superb project: distance; the lack of a sufficiently large army and 280 FOREIGN RELATIONS navy; stupid obstinacy on the part of European powers ; crass ignorance on the side of the European populations ; an indisposition on the part of the man in the street himself to abandon the making of money for the shedding of blood. A modification of the plan adopted and carried out by France in the good old days became necessary. The superiority of the American democracy must be made so plain to all men that all would clamor to have it adopted in the land of their birth. The supremacy of Amer- ican ideas must be preached in unmistakable ac- cents, so that even the deaf should hear, and the fool should understand. So far nothing better could be desired, and no one, even the most fossilized of European Conservatives could take offense at the program for the conversion of the earth to a great and stupendous imitation of the great and stupen- dous United States of America. It was in the application of the doctrine that the peculiar spirit of certain portions of the American public manifested itself. Of all foreign countries there was one above all which it was essential to reduce to a fitting sense of its inferiority and in- capacity to exist as a power, whether a world or a parish power, and that country was Great Britain. So the efforts of the patriots, as they styled them- selves, were mainly directed to make the British un- happy, to bring them to a realizing sense of their pettiness and inefficiency ; to expose to the world the greed, the meanness, the selfishness of Britain; to proclaim to all and sundry the wretched condition of the lands over which floated the Union Jack: 281 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS Egypt, India, Ireland, above all Ireland, which had sent so many of its sons and daughters to America, and kept on sending them just as fast as the steam- ers could convey them across the Atlantic. This pastime of twisting the lion's tail, as it was called, flourished throughout the length and breadth of the land ; it furnished the press with an inexhaus- tible theme; it provided demagogues and Fourth of July orators with a superabundance of material ad- mirably adapted to the comprehension of their audi- ences; it enabled stately senators to work off speeches which else had not been listened to ; it made the fortunes of statesmen ; it was a rich sport, the more attractive that it was confessedly devoid of even the smallest particle of danger, for the British lion refused to be roused to wrath and watched the pranks of its distant revilers with a calm peace that was peculiarly odious to the more energetic among them. A sport that has passed away, alas ! mourn- fully reflect the few who would even now indulge in it, could they only muster a sufficiency of audi- tors and spectators. They recall the palmy days when the least allusion to England sufficed to evoko the most hysterical demonstrations on the part of an otherwise well-balanced people, and they patheti- cally remark that the times are out of joint in- deed. The anti-British spirit is by no means dead, how- ever, and the causes which gave it the vigor and asperity that distinguished it have not wholly dis- appeared. The tendency to bluster and threaten, which marked American relations with other foreign 282 FOREIGN RELATIONS powers as well as with England, is dying out, and at the present time is rightly considered absurd by all the sensible men in the country. This fault it may be permitted to term it that arose in large measure from the sense of growing strength. The United States was very much like a young fellow whose muscular strength is developing rapidly, and who, carried away by the very exuberance of his animal spirits, is apt to be rough and even somewhat brutal without the least inclination to harm. But as soon as the lad realizes his strength, as soon as he per- ceives that the mere display of it, on occasions when it is out of place and uncalled-for, affects him un- favorably, his common sense comes to his aid and he learns to husband his strength for the time when it shall really be necessary to put it forth. He does not care or wish to be brutal or aggressive : it is only ignorance that has made him so ; ignorance fol- lowed by knowledge of his activity and energy, and the desire to prove it to all and sundry. But once he sees that not only is his strength recognized, but gladly recognized, and the proper application of it applauded, the motive for needless exhibition of it is removed. The United States has passed through some such experience. The people could not help feeling that they were becoming, that they had become a mighty nation ; they could not shut their eyes, even had they wished to do so, to the fact that their country was becoming and had become one of the greatest and most powerful on earth. Their susceptibility less- ened; their readiness to take offense diminished; the 283 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS steadying influence of reflection and responsibility made itself felt, and they assumed an attitude worth- ier of a mighty and enlightened land. Cut off, as they were, from immediate communion with the nations of Europe, their interests, their modes of thought, their principles of action in gen- eral different from those of the countries on the other side of the Atlantic, feeling that their pur- poses and their methods were usually misunder- stood and grossly misrepresented, keenly alive to the ridicule freely showered upon them, imbued with the susceptibility of youth, rebelling against the in- adequate conception of their strength and progress which was so general and so firmly impressed upon the Europeans, they naturally exhibited a tendency to assert themselves which took the shape of offen- sive attacks upon the forms of government estab- lished in the Old World, of contempt for the habits and manners of the inhabitants thereof, of insults and pin pricks, unworthy, no doubt, of a nation claiming greatness and influence, but easily intelli- gible once the causes of that conduct were examined into. From the moment that Europe in general, and Great Britain in particular, woke to the fact that the far distant Republic was really a nation, a power, able and ready to maintain its dignity, that the mighty struggle it had passed through was at once colossal and fraught with tremendous conse- quences to the human race, that Americans had won for themselves the place they clearly occupied in the world, recognition though belated and, in some 84 FOREIGN RELATIONS respects, grudgingly granted changed the disposi- tion of the Americans and induced them to assume a tone more consonant with their own real greatness, their own importance, their own share in the direc- tion of the world's affairs. No country, conscious of the intensity and vigor of its national life, can submit to be treated as the United States was too often treated by the chancelleries of Europe, by the press of the countries of Europe, by the speakers who had the ear of the public. That its ways were not the ways of the Old World did not seem to its people, and with perfect justice, any reason why they should be considered unworthy of fullest equal- ity with the most ancient realms, or should be scorned or laughed at as beings strangely different from the accepted type prevailing in Europe. Na- tions and individuals alike have their sense of self- respect, their sense of deserving respect at the hands of others, and when that is denied, the high-spirited individual and the high-spirited nation alike will fiercely resent the stigma of inferiority sought to be fastened upon them. The Americans are not, in their nature, antagonis- tic to Europeans ; they are too close to them in in- numerable ways: they share with them traditions which, if less strong in their land, have a common origin and form a connecting link; they are as capable in every respect of solving the problems of life and government which come up incessantly on either side of the ocean ; they have as clear a per- ception of civilization; they understand the reign of law just as well, even if they do revolt against it, and 285 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the feeling that they were looked down upon by Europe was absolutely unbearable to a proud race, whose deeds, if not equaling those of the fighting races in bloodshed, are remarkable in the fields of industry and science a race which has demonstrated the falsity of the idea that the democratic form of government is applicable to a -small territory only, and which has bestowed upon millions of immigrants from the Old World benefits that could never have been theirs in their native country. It must be added that the irritation felt toward Great Britain, especially, has been sedulously fos- tered upon other grounds and that methods of wilful misrepresentation have been and are still too fre- quently resorted to by those who seek to satisfy their hatred of a mighty empire or to exalt their own land at the expense of others. Several causes have been at work to develop and maintain the anti- British spirit, so visible even yet in certain circles. It is worth while to examine these seriatim. The first is tradition. "The evil that men do lives after them," and a city, a nation preserves long the memory of wrongs inflicted upon it. There is Ge- neva, for instance, the Calvinistic Rome, which to the present time celebrates its successful resistance to the night attack directed against it in the six- teenth century by the then Duke of Savoy, former lord of the town. The feelings of hatred and vin- dictiveness which of yore inspired the celebration, and which were fully as potent as the sentiment of gratitude to the Almighty for the deliverance vouch- safed, have practically died away. The Genevese 286 FOREIGN RELATIONS of to-day entertain no dislike of the Savoyards or of the representative of the ducal race, but they maintain their anniversary and cherish the abhor- rence of their foes of more than three hundred years ago. The French are very good friends with the English, but Joan of Arc's burning and the defeat of Trafalgar and the rout of Waterloo stick in their memory. They are not in the least affected by these past events in their intercourse with England now- adays ; the entente cordiale is none the less cordial because of the reminiscence of them and they are well aware that the English, in common with themselves, deprecate and condemn the execution of their great patriot. But they properly and rightly keep on placing wreaths upon the pedestal of her statues, and they celebrate her anniversary with pious and patriotic enthusiasm. But the Genevese and the French alike have other memories of foes striven with and overcome; the Genevese are Swiss as well as Genevese; they share the inspiriting history of the little Republic; they recall Morat and Granson and Tell and Gessler with the same joy as do the inhabitants of Zurich, Uri or any other of the Four Cantons of early days. The French fought the English for a hundred long years; they fought the Spaniards; they fought the Italians; they fought the Prussians and the Aus- trians ; they won victories and they suffered defeats ; at sea they had a glorious record followed by one of terrible disasters. Their memories are fuller and more varied; they have not concentrated them upon one incident, upon one war. That is the case with 287 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the Americans. The prominent event in American history is the War of Independence ; next to it comes the War of 1812. Both these wars were fought against England. The War of Secession was an in- ternal strife, a civil contest, and while tremendous, fierce and bloody, it was fought between Americans. The recent Spanish war is not a great event; car- ried on against a nation plainly incapable of re- sistance to the overpowering might of the Republic, that contest has not aroused in the country any enthusiasm and is not looked back upon with any great pride. The one great nation with which Americans have fought, the one great struggle from which they have emerged with triumph is the strug- gle with the Britain of George III and the Britain that was engaged in the Napoleonic wars. The whole of the military glories of the country cluster round these two events, and it is not forgetting the memorable battles of the Civil War to say this. These battles are on another plane; there is no dis- position now, there scarcely ever was any, to mag- nify them or to draw satisfaction from them, be- cause of the nature of the strife out of which they arose. Every Northerner recognizes the fact that there could be but one outcome to that struggle: the defeat of the South. There was no real glory to be won in a fratricidal death-grapple; sacrifices, abnegation, bitter sorrows, woeful disruptions of families as of the Union itself, but nothing that men would love to look back upon with unmixed pride. Both sides fought well and gamely ; both proved their devotion to the cause, and both were immeasurably 288 FOREIGN RELATIONS glad when at last the inevitable surrender came, and the Blue and the Gray once more were united. It was different with the War of Independence and with the War of 1812. In the former, as in the latter, the young Republic was matched against one of the two greatest military powers in the world, and in both her arms proved triumphant more than once. That of itself would not have created or per- petuated a feeling of animosity toward the country of the foe, but the circumstances which led to these conflicts were such as to give rise to the bitterest feeling on both sides, and made between them a breach which was to be long in healing. The com- mercial interests involved in the War of 1812, the national self-respect felt to be at stake, embittered that contest, and the fruits of the two wars taken together were the angry and hateful spirit which could not speedily die away, and which, for pur- poses of their own, politicians kept alive, fanning the flame of slander and misrepresentation, and teaching garbled accounts of the origins and sequelae of the conflict. Even now most of the histories of the United States used in the public schools give but an imper- fect and erroneous view of a momentous event, these histories being, as a rule, rather partisan accounts than impartial statements of fact; intended not so much to teach history as to conserve a tradition of hostility excited by injustice and ungenerous treatment of the thirteen colonies ; to impress the minds of the young with the belief that tKe wrongs inflicted were the work of the nation instead of being 289 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS mainly the work of an obstinate sovereign, deaf to sense and reason, resolved to go his way, and reck- less of the consequences to a land which he ruled over but of which he was not. These histories do not, as a rule, tell how unpopular the war was in Eng- land, as also in the colonies, nor how leaders in the old country refused to have act or part in it. The object has not been history, but popular legend, and the result has been a totally false impression of the policy and conduct of Britain then and since. A young and spirited people finds it difficult to forgive or forget. For a very long period, smart- ing under the sense of injustice, a sense which grew keener as the sense of power grew also, the Amer- icans could not bring themselves to realize that the Britain of the nineteenth century, the democratic Britain, was different from that which, governed by a George, had denied them what they looked upon as their inalienable rights. Then came the Civil War, which set the North against the South and caused complications in the relations between these two parts of the country and the great European states. The advantages which, commercially, the business men of Britain were quick to see might be derived from the conflict between the two parts of the Union were naturally enough availed of, to the fierce wrath of the North. The Trent affair added oil to the blaze, and Eng- land already hated, was more cordially detested than ever. The ravages of the Alabama and the fitting- out of ships intended to prey upon Northern com- merce, the running of the blockade, spite of many 290 FOREIGN RELATIONS captures and of the ever-growing risk, were addi- tional reasons for the bitterness which daily grew and grew. Although, in similar circumstances, it is not doubtful that the Americans would have acted in precisely similar a manner, and availed themselves of the advantages offered them; although they had practically done this in the case of the Berlin de- crees ; it is not surprising that they should have resented the attitude of a large part of the British people, openly in sympathy with the South. But these feelings have been softened by Time, the great healer; and men, no longer carried away by the angry passions of the days of war, have learned to take a calmer view of events which aroused such tremendous animosity. The Spanish war aided in this ; for, no matter what may be the inner story of the diplomatic side of that contest, it is felt in the United States that it was the attitude of Great Britain, standing as the firm friend of the United States, which prevented complications that might have led to unforeseen conflicts with other powers. Manila Bay was not only a victory for Admiral Dewey and his fleet; it was also a victory for those, on both sides, who earnestly desired that the two greatest nations on earth should henceforth work to- gether in concord. More and more has the entente between the United States and England become a guaranty of the world's peace, and the great change in the policy of the Republic toward the other na- tions of the world has done much to cement inter- national friendship and to remove possible causes of friction. 291 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS Another, and important cause of the anti-British spirit, and one that is yet unhappily far from being removed, or even markedly diminished, is the deter- mined hostility of the Irish element. That element is numerous, noisy, poorly disciplined, credulous, fanatical, and chauvinistic. It is handled skil- fully by those who see in it possibilities of advance- ment and profit for themselves; it is directed and controlled by men, many of whom are patriots in name only, and self-seekers in reality. But the Irish- man, with his fine traits, his quick temper, his pas- sionate devotion to tradition, his lively imagination, his intense susceptibility, his moodiness and way- wardness, his ready yielding to inflammatory ora- tory, is not always able to discern in his leaders the true from the false, and shouts as bidden, pays as ordered, and clamors as he is told for separation from the Empire. A cardinal principle of the direc- tion of the Irish element in the United States is the cultivation of an intemperate hatred of Great Britain and all her people ; a determination -ever and on all occasions to misrepresent her and to traduce her ; to ascribe to her the foulest of motives ; to charge her with the worst of crimes. For a long time this system worked admirably, and the bulk of the American nation, already inflamed against Eng- land, willingly lent ear to the declamations of Irish demagogues and the denunciations of the abettors of murders and outrages. And here again it must be admitted that, no matter what opinion may be entertained of the ca- pacity of the Irish to conduct a government in a 292 decent and wholesome manner and, in view of the administration of municipal government in New York, Boston, and other Irish cities, that opinion is likely to be unfavorable in spite of this, it must be admitted that Irish grievances were numerous and serious and weighty; that the Irish had good rea- son to protest against the way they have been gov- erned; against the view taken of them by the major- ity in England. These grievances have largely been removed by the action of successive parliaments, and there is a fair prospect that ere long the Irish will be suffering from the worst trouble of all: that of having no grievance left. But the memory of for- mer maladministration is potent still, and it is more potent in the Irish circles in the United States than anywhere else. Many there be who have never set foot in Ireland; many others who would not, if they could, return there to live, even with the exhilarating prospect of fighting the Government; but none the less these patriots from afar are among the most rabid of the opponents of Britain, and it is they who claim to dictate to the Federal Government what line of conduct it shall or shall not pursue; who, when Mr. Birrell's bill failed, announced that they would make Mr. Bryce's path a way of sor- rows ; who have warned the United States Govern- ment that they will not tolerate any truckling to or dealings with the oppressor; who gave freely of their funds to aid the Boers, not because the Boers were ever friendly to the Irish, for they were not but because the men of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were fighting England. 293 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS It is this element which seeks to perpetuate ill feeling between the United States and Great Britain ; for the element, or its leaders, as a body, is con- vinced that it holds the balance of power in America, nnd that the Irish vote can compel the Cabinet at Washington to do precisely as it is told to do. It has had great influence in the past: it still has in- fluence, but not by any means approaching what it fondly believes. Americans have become tired, of late years, of being dictated to by a party which is only partially American, for the Irish are always very careful to call themselves not Americans, but Irish-Americans, thus emphasizing the fact that they come first and the country second. And it is recog- nized that if one race of immigrants is to be con- ceded the privilege of ordering the foreign policy of the nation, other races, becoming rapidly very nu- merous, and bringing with them causes of hatred against their original governments, may in their turn insist, through the medium of their votes and their persistent clamor, on moulding the relations of the country with other lands. Finally, another cause was at work, one that has ceased to have any power: jealousy of the greatness of the British Empire. Probably this statement will evoke the liveliest protests and the most spirited con- tradictions, yet it is a statement of fact and not of imagination. Emulation there now is, but this emu- lation has replaced the former jealousy, or envy, if that word be preferred. It is not possible for a country to attain the height of prosperity and power to which the British Empire has attained during 294 FOREIGN RELATIONS the nineteenth century without stirring up envy and emulation. Very early the Americans laid stress upon the extent and magnitude of the British pos- sessions, and while they felt that their own country was called to as splendid a destiny, while they be- held its marvelous development and its phenomenal growth, they could not, being human, but feel some jealousy of that power which, far from having been crippled by the loss of its fairest colonies, was turn- ing its errors to account, mending its ways and dis- playing to an amazed world a capacity for adminis- tration of alien races such as had never been witnessed in the history of humanity. The Pax Britannica, the Might of Britain, ruler of the seas, compelled emulation, and caused envy. But so soon as the greatness of the United States became indis- putable, so soon as all European nations began to vie one with another in courting the friendship and support of the Great Republic, the feeling of envy was replaced by one of satisfaction: the end was achieved: if Britain was great, if the Old Country was powerful, so was the young nation that now stretched from one ocean to the other, that had fought a war for the maintenance of the Union, that had in the meantime developed resources so vast, so illimitable that all was open to it in the realm of commerce, industry and finance. Under those con- ditions, envy was out of place, jealousy absurd, and emulation alone, the emulation of an equal, suited to the dignity of the land. And that conclusion was sound. There is one point in which Americans and Britons 295 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS are alike, in the matter of foreign relations: a not always veiled contempt for races of color. This is aside from the antipathy felt toward the negro by a large proportion of the inhabitants of the United States. The negro stands on a footing of prac- tical inferiority, whatever may be said to the con- trary by ardent advocates of perfect equality. But the reference here is to the races of Central and South America and of the East. Just as the Briton, while sacrificing himself to the welfare and uplifting of the races of India, nevertheless looks down upon them, just as the same Briton, laboring indefatigably for the raising of the Egyptian fellah, considers him an inferior being, so does the Ameri- can view the Mexican, the Latin-Americans, the Chinese and the Japanese. The latter, it is true, have greatly disturbed the conception of natural in- feriority, and their attitude toward Western na- tions has compelled these to revise their former ideas of the lower condition of the Orientals, but it is still true that the American is apt to class all for- eigners, of races different from his own, as "dagoes." This expression comes so readily to his lips that it is plain it renders his feeling exactly. The Span- iard and the Italian who enter the country and settle in it, the Greek and Armenian, the Slav and the Syrian all alike come under that broad designation. It is not intended to be deliberately insulting: usu- ally there is no thought of that in the mind of the man who uses it; it is simply a mode of expressing that conviction of racial superiority which is allied, in the American mind, to the conviction of national 296 FOREIGN RELATIONS supremacy. The ancient Greek looked upon all for- eigners as barbarians, the Hebrew stigmatized out- siders as gentiles and does so still; the Roman felt and manifested the heartiest contempt for those who enjoyed not the high distinction of Roman citi- zenship, and the Briton of to-day and his kin, the American, do in this respect, and with regard to all races not of their own blood, precisely what Greek and Hebrew and Roman did of yore. In consequence of this rooted feeling the treat- ment of foreign races, of foreign nations, exhibits frequently a tendency to haughtiness verging on in- solence. It is not to be supposed that these nations should expect and obtain just the same sort of treat- ment which is accorded to Britain, France, Germany or Russia. They are not in the same class ; they cannot claim the same privileges ; they have not the same rights. That is the unspoken, unexpressed feeling of the masses ; the statesmen are hard put to it at times to conciliate this disposition with the ne- cessity they clearly perceive of treating foreign governments with courtesy and fairness. The visit of the Secretary of State to the South Americans was the more impressive and the more effective on this account. It assumed the character of an educational trip for the Americans, and of a recog- nition, on the part of the mighty republic, of the countries and people so visited. But there were many in the United States who could not understand what need there was for such honor being paid to mushroom republics and acknowledged tyrannies. The Philippines present an interesting aspect of 297 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS this curious contradiction in principle and practice. The theory sedulously maintained is that the Philip- pines are free, that they are the equals of the Americans, that they are being trained to self-gov- ernment. The fact is that the Philippines are not in the least free and independent, that they are in no- wise recognized as the equals of the conquering race, and that there is really no practical brotherhood between them and the Americans who lord it over their isles. And in a similar way the Cubans and the Porto Ricans, while unquestionably helped and edu- cated by the Americans, are very far indeed from being looked upon as are, for instance, the Germans who immigrate in such numbers into the United States or the Scandinavians who form so large a pro- portion of the population in certain states. This is quite natural, and simply proves that theories do not invariably fit in with hard facts. The civilization of Great Britain and of the United States is far in advance of that of most other lands. The people of these countries are firm believers in freedom and justice; their ideals are practically the same; their methods of work are analogous, but all nations have not yet learned to believe in that su- periority. The Hindoos take from the British all the advantages with which the latter are ready and eager to furnish them, and then turn these to use against the ruling race. More and more will the unrest in India grow as the education given spreads more and more and excites ambitions and aspira- tions that must necessarily be antagonistic to the British Raj. So in the colonial possessions of the 298 FOREIGN RELATIONS United States it will prove impossible to win the natives to a hearty sympathy with American meth- ods, which are essentially foreign to them, which they do not understand, and which they cannot understand. It is not enough to proclaim self-gov- ernment: it is first necessary to educate the people up to it, and such education must perforce be, in cases such as India on the one hand and the Philip- pines on the other, a matter of generations. Races which have never troubled about or been troubled by notions of equality and liberty, cannot assimi- late them by decree. The British method in India is better than the American method in the Philip- pines, for it is based upon the recognition of that fact. However there is no government in the United States that would dare to proceed on sensible lines in this respect, that would have the moral courage to proclaim the truth that races are not to be en- franchised in a day or by a mere dictum, as were the negro slaves by President Lincoln, but that it takes years and years to teach even a highly developed race what true liberty is and how it should be util- ized. It was not in one generation that the English learned to vindicate their personal and national rights, that the French grasped the lesson of prog- ress, and to expect tribes of savages to become in the twinkling of an eye capable of self-government is the very height of political folly. But that folly is imposed upon the United States Government by the rooted conviction of the citizens that everyone who comes into contact with American institutions, that passes under the Stars and Stripes, becomes 299 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS thereby miraculously and suddenly endowed with qualities and powers of which there may have been no trace whatever beforehand. In its relations with European powers and with countries which, like Japan, have risen to the fore- most rank and require to be considered, there are difficulties of a different nature. The day is past when bluster and threatening, when imperiousness and aggressiveness marked the relations between the Republic and its neighbors across the sea. The tone and manner of American diplomacy have changed in- finitely for the better, and this not only without loss to the dignity and influence of the country, but with great increase thereof. The manners which are so plentifully lacking in the intercourse of Americans at home are to be found in their full beauty in the relations with foreign lands. Firmness, it has been found, can be allied with tact; resolution with courtesy, and the position of the country has gained enormously of late years in consequence. But there remains a difficulty which complicates the pacific and just settlement of disputes between the United States on the one hand and foreign countries on the other. That difficulty is the inability of the Federal Gov- ernment to protect the subjects of friendly foreign powers within its borders. Strange as it may seem, one of the most power- ful governments in the world is absolutely prevented from carrying out obligations solemnly entered upon, and finds itself repeatedly in the humiliating position of being compelled to acknowledge the fact. With the intense susceptibility of the American to 300 FOREIGN RELATIONS criticism of any sort, it is almost marvelous that the country has gone on so long laying itself open to just strictures on this point. A treaty between the United States on the one hand and a foreign government on the other does not, though it pro- fess to do so, guarantee liberty and safety to the nationals of that government within the boundaries of the United States. It is, in this respect, a one- sided affair, of which the advantage lies with the American and the disadvantages with the foreigner. It is not a question of a party, or of antipathy, or anything of that sort: it is merely the result of the conflict between Federal and State authority. "State Rights" constitute the insuperable obstacle. No State in the Union has the power to make a treaty with a foreign nation; but every State in the Union has the means of nullifying the provisions in such a treaty which look to the protection of for- eigners. Italians are murdered and Italy demands indemnity and apology: the Federal Government replies that it is unable to act, because it has no jurisdiction over the State in which the crime has been committed; Japanese are attacked, and the Mikado claims that the treaty shall be carried out in letter and spirit, but the Federal Government finds itself confronted by the opposition of the State in which the regrettable affair has occurred. It is helpless ; a pitiable condition for the Government to be in. The country is well aware of this peculiar condition of affairs, but the moment it is recom- mended that some modification shall be introduced by which the engagements solemnly entered into on 301 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS behalf of the nation shall be carried out in their integrity and without interference on the part of individual States, protests are heard and the very political existence of the members of the Cabinet is threatened. Yet a nation, a great nation, cannot shirk its duties and responsibilities ; not, indeed, until it discharges these in full can it truly claim to be called great. This is felt by very many in the United States ; a change is earnestly desired; the possibility of the national honor being jeopardized by local action is not contemplated with equanimity, and there can be little doubt that ere long the Federal Government will be fully empowered to carry out the provisions of international treaties regardless of the obstacles which at present exist. XVII ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS When a distinguished prelate of the American Protestant Church returned from England, not long ago, he was, as a matter of course, met on the land- ing stage by the usual band of reporters primed with questions, armed with pencils and notebooks, and prepared to dress up the statements the bishop might be induced to make, so that the "scare heads" should appeal forcibly to the curiosity of the public. That prelate had been most hospitably entertained in Britain and wherever, in the course of his jour- ney ings, he had come under the British flag. He had heard his country extolled, and the cordial rela- tions existing between their respective governments dwelt upon with great satisfaction. He had listened to speeches of welcome and had replied to them; sentiment had been poured out freely on both sides, and the joy of union and harmony had been cele- brated and toasted. Probably he had permitted himself to quote the not unknown psalm: "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Yet, he astounded the readers of the interview by saying: "You can de- pend upon it there is no love lost between the two 303 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS countries. There is, I fear, a good deal of gush about it." There exist in the United States many British societies, mostly of a charitable or beneficiary char- acter, with one, the Victorian Club, of Boston, whose purpose was for some years, to cultivate better knowledge of Britain among the Americans. There are American societies, such as the Transatlantic Union of Philadelphia, and the Pilgrim's Club of New York, which also seek the same end. At all meetings of British societies the speakers, whether British or American, lay stress upon the kinship of the two nations, upon their community of lan- guage, of literature, of historical tradition, of ideals in politics, justice, freedom. They emphasize the importance of the bonds which unite the two lands, and they rejoice at the thought that the days of mistrust and suspicion are over and done with, that the times of enmity are past, and that the lion and the eagle are now firm friends, and earnest allies, in fact, in promoting concord and peace throughout the world. Which is the true view of the relations between the two countries? That of the prelate who sees in the manifestations of good-will mainly "gush," or that of the British and Americans who see in them a proof of a better understanding and a gage of closer and sincere union? Are the efforts of the latter, however well meant, mistaken and foredoomed to f ruitlessness ? Is the bishop unwittingly a prophet and does he foretell further strife and dissension? Are the hopes of those Britons who, while passion- 304* ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS ately attached to their own country, love and admire and respect the United States and its peo- ple, futile and vain? Are the beliefs of the Ameri- cans who cherish sincere regard for Great Britain, who recognize the immense amount of good wrought by her sons in all parts of the world, who are not blinded by fanatical hatred of monarchy, are these beliefs naught but error? It would be painful to be compelled to accept this view of the matter. And it would be a mistake to do so. The prelate is partly right, but wide of the mark in other respects. The promoters of genuine friendship between the two nations are perchance too optimistic, but at least their object is a praiseworthy one, and their en- deavors will not all end in disappointment. The point to strive for is a clear perception of the real value and of the real meaning of this Anglo-American friendship, of the real nature of the relations between the United States and Great Britain. There are very many, in America, at the present moment, who entertain a deep-rooted hatred of Eng- land; that is a fact which cannot be blinked. The bulk of the younger generation, trained in the pub- lic schools, is taught to dislike and detest every- thing British, to cast contumely upon the people, to abhor the monarchial system, to consider the Meteor Flag the embodiment of cruelty and tyranny, the incarnation of all that is contrary to the spirit of freedom, whether personal or national. It is not safe, not entirely safe, at the present time, for a British subject to display the colors of his country in the United States. He must be prepared to see 305 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS them assailed and hauled down, and it is at last doubtful whether he would obtain even a modicum of protection from municipal authorities in such an event. That in British possessions the American flag flies unmolested on the Fourth of July, or on any other day in the year, is not considered by the patriotic American a reason why similar courtesy should be extended to Britons in his own land. There no flag may float in assured security save the Stars and Stripes and, in most cities, the green ensign of Erin. The Union Jack has been borne through the streets of American cities and has been applauded, that is true; even, mirabile dictu, it has been seen flying side by side with Old Glory from the top of the Bunker Hill monument in Boston, but these ex- ceptional marvels are not to be taken as a demon- stration of regard, still less of affection, for the symbol of England's might. They are seed scat- tered in ground that may just as well prove rocky and unpropitious as favorable. It is possible that in the years to come the feverish susceptibility of the American may not only tolerate but welcome the sight of the Union Jack as freely as that of the Stars and Stripes is welcomed in England, but it is only a possibility and a remote one. The American is essentially of exclusive tendencies. The earth is his, and the fulness thereof, and the Briton who has long believed himself the Elect must learn that he has a formidable and determined rival for world supremacy. The American Eagle sweeps over the universe, and whenever the American sees anything which can be construed into the badge of his national 306 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS superiority, he never fails so to construe it. In a little Presbyterian church in Saint Andrews, in the province of New Brunswick, the visitor's attention is called to a handsome pulpit surmounted by the symbolical representation of the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove. An American tourist immediately exclaimed : "Why ! there is the American eagle !" And it was somewhat difficult to undeceive that pa- triotic person. The school training is perhaps next to Irish en- mity the most effective influence in perpetuating hos- tility to Great Britain. The character of the school histories has already been referred to. So long as that form of teaching is maintained, so long will perverted ideas on the subject of England and her policy be instiled in the minds of the young, and everyone who has had experience in this direction is aware that these early impressions are the most difficult to alter or eradicate. To most of the school children and this is by no means an exaggeration the British flag is the symbol of tyranny, cruelty and misgovernment. It represents the country which they are taught to consider the hereditary and bitter and treacherous foe of their native land. No matter what they may learn later, what they may observe for themselves in after life, the first impression remains and colors their feelings toward Great Britain. It is not to be completely effaced: it may be diminished, but the seed of dislike and en- mity remains. Ignorance, whether arising from lack of opportunities of instruction or from rooted prejudice, is one of the most fertile breeders of 307 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS mistakes and conflicts. Neither the average Ameri- can has any clear and true notion of the England of to-day, nor the average Briton a sound apprehen- sion of the real greatness and power of the United States. On both sides there are wrong ideas ; on both a vast amount of appalling error to be cleared away. The two nations can gain only by becoming more closely acquainted, provided that acquaint- ance is based upon the recognition of certain facts which it is absurd to blink at or attempt to over- throw. The Briton must learn that the American nation counts for as much in the world as does his own, and is going to count more and more every day; a nation which exists perfectly well without much, in the social constitution, which he is apt to con- sider indispensable to the due development and prog- ress of a people; a nation which has a spirit of its own, a genius of its own, a way of its own of solv- ing problems, a conviction that it is capable of handling difficulties for itself and in a way which is peculiar to itself; a nation which is very proud of its history, commercial, political, military, naval, and which does not for a moment believe that it has anything to envy in these respects in the nations of Europe. On the other hand, it would greatly conduce to the peace of nations and the progress of truth were the American to get into his head that words do not invariably and everlastingly represent un- changing facts: that because one country has a monarchical form of government, it is thereby ren- 308 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS dered inferior to one that has set up the republican form under peculiarly favorable circumstances ; that monarchy has not always been an unmixed evil, and is not so now, but very often a great political bless- ing; chat the ideas of one generation are not neces- sarily the ideas of the generations that come after, a point fully exemplified by the change in the United States themselves ; finally, that the Anglo-Saxon does not bear a grudge, or at all events, does not bear it long ; consequently that the British,, when they speak of affection for the Americans, express a sim- ple truth, for they feel both admiration and respect for the country and its people. And both might well bear in mind that the pecul- iarities of Americans on the one side and of Britons on the other are precisely the things that make them known as Britons or Americans, and that it is folly to expect either of them to abandon their national traits. The Englishman is entitled to speak his language after his manner, and the American has no less a. right to modify the parent tongue to suit his needs and his preferences. The United States present the interesting spec- tacle of a race which still calls itself Anglo-Saxon, and yet which is every day becoming less and less purely so. The enormous, and ever-increasing immi- gration, which brings hundreds of thousands of for- eigners from every clime and of every stock into the country, and does this week by week, month by month, and year by year that immigration is caus- ing a profound change in the constituent elements of the race. The fundamental element is yet, no 309 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS doubt, Anglo-Saxon, but the mingling of bloods, and consequently of ideas and habits, is fast changing the general character of the race. There is a remark- able power of assimilation, which is incessantly at work. The children of the Slav, of the Scandina- vian, of the Latin, of the Oriental, become intense Americans, imbued with the sense of the power and greatness of the nation of which they are young citizens ; they acquire the American, not the Anglo- Saxon habit of mind ; they have nothing in common with the British; they have neither sympathy nor natural admiration for the country from which the United States has sprung; their language is not the English of England, but the English of America; their traditions are foreign to British traditions, and therefore to suppose that they are inclined to love England and the English, to gaze with gratification, mingled with awe, upon the vast empire on which the sun never sets, is to make a mistake fraught with painful consequences to the optimist, who would base upon the supposed complete kinship of the two races a belief in perpetual amity between them, or even hopes of abnegation in the matter of diplomatic negotiations. It is easy to mistake the strength of feeling for England and things English. It is quite true that there are many families which take a pride in being descended from well-known families in the old coun- try ; that the love of English coat-armor is strongly developed among many individuals who can trace some sort of ascendancy in the land whence came the Washingtons and others ; that many an Ameri- 310 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS can will at once say that were he not American he would prefer to be English, and this may be accepted without hesitation as a true expression of feeling. But he is an American, and an American he re- mains even if he take up his abode across the Atlantic. Few Americans abandon their allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, and this is an honorable trait in them. On the other hand very many Britons renounce allegiance to their sovereign, some be- cause they may not enter certain professions in the United States unless they have become citizens; some because they believe that their chances of suc- cess are greatly increased by the change in their nationality; some from frank preference for the country of their adoption; many because they have married American wives, and the American wife is, as a rule, intractable on the question of allegiance to the land she has been born in and to which she is devoted. It may be taken as nearly certain that the Briton who has espoused an American and who makes his home in the States is at heart an American himself, no matter how exuberant his outward devo- tion to his former or present sovereign may be. The whole atmosphere round him is American; he im- bibes it continually; his children are brought up in it; their schooling is American, and their affections are very naturally and very properly bestowed upon the land they have been educated in. When it comes to a question of choosing between the two, the nat- uralized American has no alternative; he must go and he does go with his new country; the non-nat- uralized Briton, the dweller in the land, will find him- 311 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS self, if married to a native, in a position of exceed- ing difficulty. On the other hand, these naturalized Britons, and those who have married Americans, enjoy opportu- nities of influence which, to their credit be it said, they avail themselves of to promote cordial rela- tions between the two great nations. Their affection for the one does not suffer by their love for the other; their interests as well as their sympathies lead them to desire that concord and harmony shall reign, and that better knowledge shall be more widely spread. But neither they nor the unchanging Briton, true to his allegiance "in spite of all tempta- tions," can affect the cardinal fact that Americans are not at heart English, any more than the Eng- lish are Yankees or anything else. They may do their utmost to maintain kindly feelings; they may speak eloquently on the ties which bind the two na- tions, but they cannot change the reality, which is that year by year the American nation is becoming less and less Anglo-Saxon and more and more purely American. But the optimists may consider that the ten- dency, so strongly and so frequently exhibited, to seek connection, family connection, with Britain, is a sign rather of closer kinship. It is nothing of the sort, any more than the fact, frequent in England, that a family claims with right to "have come over with the Conqueror," makes the members of that family desire to be Normans and French citizens. The pride of ancestry is unquestionably great, and the number of French names in the peerage is sig- 312 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS nificant enough, but not one of the thousands of Englishmen whose ancestors were originally French would consent to part with his English nationality now. They are English to the core. In exactly the same way are Americans, though descended from some of the oldest and most Saxon of houses, Ameri- can to the marrow. They are proud of their de- scent, they refer with satisfaction to the fact, but that does not make them English, and in the unhappy event of a quarrel between the two countries, their English descent would not make them flinch one second from fulfilling their duties as citizens of the United States. Nor should too much reliance be placed on the community of language and literature. Neither language nor literature, though undoubtedly strong bonds, have ever availed to keep together in amity races sprung from exactly the same stock or those having formed part of the same empire. The fact that two men, coming from opposite ends of the earth, speak the same language, is not a guaranty of permanent good-will between them. Nor is it a pledge that the language will remain the same and that its influence will persist. There was a period during which the inhabitants of Italy, Gaul and Spain spoke the same speech and had the same civi- lization. That language was the tongue of an emi- nently imperial and masterful race; the civilization was the highest the world then knew; the laws were practically the same ; the political principles and the constitution of society were similar. Yet the lan- guage changed, and at the present day a French- 313 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS man, an Italian or a Spaniard does not, simply as such, understand the speech of the other national- ities, although philologists insist that the three tongues are in principle alike. Philologically they are; practically they are not, and the fact that they are all three Romance tongues never prevented and never will prevent the nations that speak them from pursuing their own policy, from quarreling with their neighbors, and from fighting them even, if need arise. Italian was in high favor at the French court when Francis I asserted his claim to superiority over Charles V and lost the battle of Pavia, and Spanish was currently spoken when Henry IV had to oust the Spanish garrisons from his towns and cities. That Americans should modify the English spoken in England, that they should change the meaning of some words, alter numbers of phrases, is not, therefore, to be wondered at. English is a living, not a dead, language, and the mark of a living language is continual change and development. Language adapts itself to the needs of the nation which uses it; it alters without ceasing both in the land of its origin and in the lands to which it is transplanted. It is bound to be modified, and all protests against this fact are as vain as those uttered against the weather, which man has never yet been able to affect. The English of England must perforce turn into American in the United States; instead of the dif- ferences between the two forms of speech diminish- ing and disappearing, as some would desire, they 314 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS are certain to increase and multiply, and the day will come when an American tongue will have been evolved from the parent stock. The American re- sembles the Anglo-Saxon in many ways; in many others he is quite unlike him, as seen in Britain; so with the language: at present it is still English, with some modifications and additions, but day by day it tends to become a separate idiom, one which will be formed out of the needs of the nation that uses it, a nation now no longer purely Anglo-Saxon, but a mingling of many races and many nationalities, each of which is contributing its share to the com- mon speech. The Americans are not, then, disfiguring the English language; they are adapting it, which is a very different thing. They are doing exactly what the English themselves are doing and have done for centuries, for the language of to-day has lost many terms formerly familiar, and has acquired many unsuspected of the writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. New words are coined, new terms produced, new meanings attached to ex- pressions of long standing; orthography is changed, pronunciation is altered. The same processes are going on in the United States, and with absolute reason. To endeavor to stem the current would be idle. The change has come and will persist. One may feel sentimental regret at this ; one may oppose vehemently the alterations, but King Canute could as easily have triumphed over the advancing tide as the conservative purist can hope to succeed in maintaining forms that have been abandoned or ex- 315 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS pressions that have come into use for the very reason that they express what the speaker desires to say. There is an enormous amount of bad writing and worse speaking in the United States; that may be granted without difficulty, for it is patent to every educated man or woman. The specialists take the most terrible liberties even with the American Eng* lish they have learned at school and in college ; they have no respect for grammar; often none for sense; but this is not an American peculiarity ; it is to be met with in every land, where there are always writers for the press they are the worst offenders who believe that the more extraordinary perversions are the more original and the more striking is the consequent style. The true test of the use of English in the United States is to examine the work of the leading writers and the leading speakers. It will be found that they do not differ much from their compeers on the other side. In the everyday tongue, more liberties are taken assuming that they are lib- erties and not justifiable changes and adaptations but, when looked at impartially, it is generally seen that these are in the direction of terseness and vigor of expression. Concentration, the use of ellipsis, a frequent subtleness of humor, of the best and the raciest these are the traits most visible. The quick- ness and restlessness of the American manifest them- selves in his familiar speech as in his familiar actions. Accustomed to act swiftly, impulsively, yet with a solid basis of common sense and prudence, the American reproduces these qualities in the terms he invents and the phrases he constructs. He has the 316 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS art, in a high degree, of endowing a well-known word with an altogether new meaning, and the mo- ment it is heard in that sense the appropriateness of the expression strikes the mind joyfully. It is the American tongue, arising and growing. And in the course of time it will be, although of the same origin as English, as little of a real bond be- tween the two races as French and Italian or French and Spanish form a bond between the nations which speak these languages. The literature follows the language, just as the Constitution does not follow the flag. At present there is not a great body of American literature such as constitutes a real national possession, but it is coming. Americans will no more be content to depend on Great Britain for their intellectual treasures in every branch of knowledge and imagi- nation than were the Germans satisfied to rest con- tent with translations and adaptations from the French once the national spirit began to manifest itself among them. Germany had been in a worse condition than even is the United States at the present time with regard to a purely national litera- ture, yet almost in the twinkling of an eye a splendid production took place and a blossoming of genius occurred. There is ample material for a great and varied national literature in America and there are intellects enough to supply writers of mark. Al- ready many admirable works have seen the light: great historians and notable philosophers have arisen; novelists of striking merit, capable of evolv- ing new forms and of exploring new fields have 317 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS made their appearance. Poetry still lacks its mighty singer, and it may be that he will never come, and that the United States will never rival Europe in the domain of that form of literature, but even should this prove to be the case, a national literature will exist. The books which most please the American reader, especially in the range of fiction, are not invariably those that win approval in the old country. The American drama is not in favor in England, where it is imperfectly understood, while English plays have to be dressed up for American consumption. This is simply stating the difference between the two countries, and indicating the line of divergence in matters literary which will run farther and farther apart as generation succeeds generation. Frenchmen do not grow particularly enthusiastic over Spanish literature, even of that period when the tongue of Iberia and that of Gaul were so nearly akin as to be understood in the one and the other land. Had not Corneille transformed the work of Guillem de Castro into a French masterpiece, the blood of no Frenchman would run faster on hearing the "Mocedades del Cid" translated for him into his everyday speech. It is safe to say that the "^Eneid" would not prove equal to the "Marseil- laise" in rousing the warlike passions of the masses, yet the *'^Eneid" is written in the tongue from which modern French is derived. So with the lapse of years it is not to be supposed that Americans, who will have obtained for themselves masterpieces of their own, will become enthusiastic over British 318 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS friendship and British alliances simply because Mil- ton wrote "Paradise Lost" and Shakespeare his im- mortal dramas. Even now, the plays of the great bard which thrill Americans are not so much the historical dramas, in which the Englishman learns the story of his country's greatness, as those com- positions which may be said to belong to every age and to every clime. The form of literature which most binds peoples is the popular. The songs of England, of Scotland, of Ireland are heard the world over among Britons, but they are scarcely ever heard in America. That is, the American is not a singer in the way the Briton or. the Frenchman or the German is. He does not express his feelings in song, whether joy- ous or plaintive. He has produced no "Annie Laurie," no "Lass of Richmond Hill," no "Wearin' o' the Green ;" his very national anthem, "America," is but the national anthem of Britain, with words adapted to it ; the greatest university in the country, although endowed with a Department of Music, has borrowed an English air for its solemn functions, and has turned the pathos and charm of the original into something doleful rather than uplifting and stirring. This important link is wanting, and the music, the popular music, of the United States is that of a foreign and inferior race: the despised negro. There are, it is true, some beautiful airs of American origin, but there is not that mass of song which in older European countries expresses the sentiments of the people. Not the English or the Scotch songs and ballads are heard in common, but 319 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the productions of the comic opera and the vaude- ville show. In manners and customs, in those habits which are most familiar, there is not the perfect resem- blance and harmony which would guarantee close ties. The American does not do things as the Briton does them: his home is a different thing from the traditional home of England; the house he dwells in is designed and planned in a fashion wholly unlike the ordinary English house. The American who goes to England complains that he cannot see over the wall or hedge which borders the road or the street; that his natural desire to view the residence and its surroundings is balked; that the churlish owner conceals himself and his belongings, violating thus one of the cardinal principles of democracy as practised in the United States: that no man has any right to privacy. The interior of the American house is open, as is the exterior; just as lawn merges into lawn, and garden into garden, without any visible line of demarcation, so does the planning of the interior provide for the throwing of hall and reception rooms into one large space. The American hotel is a public resort : Tom, Dick and Harry, without a sou to their names, march into the halls and reception rooms there and avail themselves of the commodities they find at hand; they cannot do this in the ordinary British hotel, for the public rooms do not exist, at all events not in such numbers or on such a scale as in the United States. The Englishman is careful to observe and respect the rights of private property; he will not 320 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS trespass upon the grounds of his neighbor; he will not cut across spaces simply because the short cut is tempting. He will proceed round, and show that while he avoids trespass himself, he relies on its being avoided in the case of his property. But the Ameri- can is impatient of any restraint or restriction of this sort. For him there exists no right that is superior to his own, and all the notices against tres- pass, all the boards bearing inscriptions of a pro- hibitive character, are merely so many inducements to him to do the very thing he is told he must not do. There is a famous and fine monument at Concord, in Massachusetts, representing a Minute Man of 1776 on the watch for the British foe. It is worth seeing for itself, and it is most interesting in connection with the historical events it commem- orates. The situation is picturesque ; the surround- ings lovely, and the combination of all these attrac- tions draws many visitors to the place, which is reached by a wooden bridge spanning a stream. A notice has been put up requesting motorcars not to cross the bridge. They all cross it, after the chauf- feur and the passengers have read the prohibition. These things show a deeper difference in the spirit and character and habits of the two nationalities than is generally supposed to exist. In England a right of way is sedulously maintained against pos- sible closing by the owner of the land, but it is not sought to force an owner to let people traverse his property if their sweet will incline them to do so. In the United States the man whose pride in his lawn is justified by its approach to velvetiness, sees S21 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ic casual passer-by cross it leisurely, and go on way without the smallest feeling that he has in any way exceeded the bounds of propriety. In England the invited guest at a function is content to be welcomed and hospitably entreated, and to carry away memories only. But the American guest or casual visitor, a certain type at least, must have a solid token of his entertainment, and portable objects are apt to pass from the ownership of the host to the pocket of the guest. This is not called stealing; it is not even dignified with the appellation of kleptomania ; it is "carrying away souvenirs." The bronze bassi-relievi on the gates of the Capitol at Washington are witnesses to this habit of the American on a visit. The guides who show the tourist through the place will tell him that the moment Congress has adjourned it is neces- sary to remove curtains and carpets, else they disap- pear under the hands of the constituents who come to see the place where their representative is elo- quent. When the Duke of Abruzzi came with his squadron and entertained a company of visitors on board his flagship, he discovered, to his amazement and indignation, that as brilliant a razzia as ever was conceived and carried out by Raisuli had swept through his vessel. Even his own personal belong- ings had vanished. And the wrath which led him to express his views on the subject called forth the following statement from the American admiral: "The American souvenir hunters will steal any- thing except a cellar full of water. At Boston, on one occasion, I was in command of the Indiana, when 322 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS a reception was given on board ship. It was the first time a first-class man-of-war had visited Boston harbor. When the reception was over, and we went to turn on the searchlight, we found that even the carbons had been taken. The screws on the search- light had been taken out, and the big lamp was unfit for use. An examination of the two dozen or more guns showed that all the gunsights had been car- ried away, while the officers' quarters had been robbed of everything that could be taken." Commenting upon this, a Boston paper remarks : "Nothing but profound mortification for Americans follows reading authentic reports of the pilfering of the Duke of Abruzzi's property and that of other members of his party while they were visiting the Jamestown exposition. Admiral Evans does not ex- aggerate at all when he describes his own experience here in Boston harbor with visitors to our own ships ; and the testimony of hotel-keepers, managers of restaurants and guardians of public property generally is uniform, namely, that we have come to be a people with a very shady reputation for pilfer- ing. People who would be insulted if called thieves, and whose word is inviolable in business or in ordi- nary intercourse, and who could be left for an in- definite time in the presence of coin of the realm, do not hesitate to take 'souvenirs,' as they call them. It is a habit that points toward other and worse deeds. It shows a breaking-down of moral fiber under way (sic) that will imperil good name and pos- sibly liberty itself later if temptation sufficiently strong comes along." 323 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS La propriete c'est le vol seems to be the uncon- scious attitude of very many in the United States ; it does not matter what form property takes, whether the private grounds of a residence, the flowers and shrubs upon it, or the articles within the residence. There appears to be an irresistible tendency to do just what should not be done, per- haps by way of affirming the ever-proclaimed liberty of the American citizen. It is difficult to explain this radical opposition in habits between the Briton and the American save on that ground. It surely is not a liking for pilfering, for that does not apply in the least to the ineradicable custom of marching precisely where you are asked not to step ; it is no more, certainly, the wish to possess something in- trinsically valuable, for anything that turns up an- swers the purpose of a souvenir. It may be rudi- mentary socialism of the collectivist stripe, which leads its unwitting disciples to manifest in this way their belief that all property is in common, but what- ever the patent or secret motive of such conduct condemned, as has just been seen, by the sound sense of the press and people it is evident that here is an essential difference between the Briton and the American, the former having great respect for prop- erty and its rights, the latter very little. Of the ties which have been discussed the real force is sentiment, and to sentiment the American is exceedingly responsive, the large element of the emotional in his make-up accounting for this. And sentiment being an excellent thing in itself, in proper doses, it can be relied upon to further greatly the 324 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS cordial relations between the two countries. It will be long ere the changes in language and literature attain the proportions which will make it difficult for the inhabitants of the two countries to hold the freest intercourse together ; till then, and after that, sentiment will play its part. It is sentiment that dictated the supremely chivalrous thought of flying the Union Jack side by side with the Stars and Stripes on that October day when the Honorable Artillery of London was visiting Boston; it is sen- timent that inspires the orators who dwell on the friendship between the two races ; it is sentiment that sends so many Americans to England to see Avith their own eyes the bust of Longfellow in Westmin- ster Abbey, the memorial window to Lowell, the Harvard Chapel in Southwark Cathedral, and then to visit Cambridge where John Harvard was edu- cated, Scrooby, Austerfield and other places. It is sentiment, allied to the conviction that it is best for the progress of humanity that Great Britain and the United States should forever be at peace, that keeps alive the belief in the close kinship of the nations, and that fosters the efforts of societies which strive to disseminate true knowledge of the one and the other land. Herein is the large hope that ancient hatreds and past enmity will die out com- pletely, but it is not the only basis for that hope, and language and literature, and a common origin, and a common tradition are supported by a yet more powerful influence: the community of ideals. The United States is a democracy, with imperfec- tions and with disadvantages coexisting side by side 325 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS with wonderful benefits. The American in principle abhors and detests class distinctions and honorary titles. The Briton is a member of a monarchy: he believes in that form of government which he has slowly evolved and patiently perfected till it has provided him with what is, probably, the most per- fect of democratic governments ; for the mere pres- ence of an hereditary ruler and the existence of a peerage do not infirm the democratic principle of British self-government. Both nations are ardently devoted to that principle; both have made notable sacrifices for it; both treasure it and are resolute not to abandon it. This is a strong tie between them, for it is one that cannot be loosened. And both nations apply the principle in the fullest meas- ure: justice is even, spite of the present fact that in the United States money too often causes it to waver a temporary, passing phenomenon which ere long will be relegated to the past. Both believe in education for all, although in America greater prog- ress has been made in this direction than in the old land; in the latter the progress will be more rapid in the future. Both believe in political equality, and guarantee it successfully; both seek to preserve the rights of the minority; both aim to develop all that is best in national character; both strive for peace with honor. These indeed are the ties on which the lovers of both lands may count to hold together the greatest of republics and the mightiest of empires. As the years go on, as intercourse, already great, becomes greater and closer, as knowledge spreads and prejudice dies out, the two lands will more and 326 ANGLO-AMERICAN RELATIONS more draw nearer and more and more work for the good of humanity. In their hands lie, to a large extent, the securing of the progress of civilization, of concord, of peace. Both are awaking to a reali- zation of the fact, of the responsibilities it entails, and are abandoning old and wrong notions for a truer perception of their common task. XVIII THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY Destined to be a blessing to the nations suffi- ciently advanced to understand and apply it, the principle of democracy bears within itself a danger to the communities founded upon it, a peril ever present, and ever ready to destroy the true life of the nation. That peril is tyranny by the masses and tyranny by the individual. The land where liberty reigns in virtue of equality of opportunities, where all men may rise to any position, where individual talent may confer any distinction, where there is no check of class distinction, no repression by tradition ; that land, if wisely governed by her sons, will re- main the home of real liberty and of genuine prog- ress ; will be as a light to guide the nations, and a hope of those that are yet enslaved. But if that liberty turn in the direction of lawlessness, it will speedily turn to anarchy, and for the glory of the past will be substituted the oppression of the fu- ture. No human institution has ever proved per- fect ; no form of government yet devised by men has, so far, shown itself capable of avoiding all dangers to the public weal, and democracy obeys the same law and is exposed to the same danger. 328 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY Blindness and over-confidence on the part of the citizens of a state have ere now wrecked the most stable, apparently, of governments: blind trust in words and formulas ; overconfidence in the ability of the inhabitants to meet and overcome all diffi- culties, in the name of themselves. There is vast en- lightenment among the men of the United States ; there is not yet perfection of knowledge: there is wide political experience; there is not yet certainty of fullest political science : there is varied skill in the handling of difficult questions ; there is not yet ab- solute reliability in the solutions. Americans, this may freely and gladly be granted, have already ex- hibited surprising power and talent in settling prob- lems both new and great ; they do not possess, albeit they may indulge to fond belief, the key to all the riddles of government. Republics, because demo- cratic in principle, are doubtless bound to replace little by little the imperial and monarchial and princely forms of government, but none yet, not even happy Switzerland, not even mighty America, is the ideal Republic. Often, too often, republic is but the veil of tyranny and harsh dictatorship. Not in the United States, doubtless, but in many another land, and this fact, which ought to be constantly present to the minds of the Americans, is too fre- quently lost sight of. True, it is improbable that the fate which over- took the Roman republic of old is in store for the Union of to-day, yet is it equally true that in the palmy days of Republican Rome few or none sup- posed that such a calamity was ever to befall the 329 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS City of the Seven Hills. The fate of nations is not wholly on the knees of the gods ; nations, like indi- viduals, largely fashion their doom for themselves. As they work, as they plan, as they act, so befalls their end. To the individual is given a trust; his life, and its effect on himself and those around him: to nations likewise a trust; their power and their influence for the advancement of humanity; and as they discharge that trust, so do they become great and free in the eyes of men, or small and enslaved to their own shortcomings and their own faults. Democracies are peculiarly subject to the danger of tyranny, and the stronger they grow, the larger they become, the greater grows the peril. With the accumulation of wealth, with the development of in- dustries, with the extension of commerce, with all that goes to make up worldly success, the danger to real liberty increases in a ratio that astounds those who afterward behold the effects of the ills that have sprung from what were blessings. Men remain men throughout the ages ; their growth in self-mastery is painfully slow; their ac- quisition of virtue, as individuals or as societies, lamentably lingering. The American of this twen- tieth century, heir to so many civilizations, possessor of so many advantages denied to the innumerable generations which have preceded him on earth, is apt to be carried away by a feeling of overweening pride in the achievements of his race, and to deceive himself into the belief that never has there been and never will there be any nation like unto his own, so richly endowed mentally and intellectually, so ener- 330 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY getic, so far-sighted, so quick of apprehension, so ready to seize opportunities, so steadfast in the de- fense of its natural rights, so keen to protect its conquests in all realms, so able, so resolute to hold fast to that liberty which untold millions have sighed for and never beheld save with the eyes of hope, which millions on millions long for now and see unattain- able. In the splendid onward rush of success which attends him, in the intoxicating sense of triumph which continually mounts to his brain, he is apt to forget; and as he forgets, some parcel, some small portion of that highly-prized and much-vaunted lib- erty escapes him, not again to be regained save at the cost of efforts most dire and most trying. The American stands to-day, more than the mem- ber of any other race upon earth, as the representa- tive of advancement, of progress. On him rests a responsibility so great that it might well make the boldest pause ere endeavoring to discharge it fitly. He knows not fear; he is full of confidence: two excellent helps in the carrying-out of his work. But he is inclined, too much inclined to trust in the magic power of his name, of his form of government, as the men of old trusted in their bow and spear. And as he founds himself on this magical name, on this perfect government, lo ! it brings forth tyr- anny and slavery and wretchedness and woe to thou- sands in his land. His liberty is threatened by no external foe, but by the more insidious and dan- gerous secret enemy within, sprung from democracy itself. Many years have passed since Heine said that AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS "democracy brings forth two kinds of men: those who establish it and those who destroy it Washing- ton and Bonaparte." Many years have passed, yet the saying remains true. And it is the present dan- ger of the United States that it is bringing forth men whose deeds and whose policy are surely de- structive of the true liberty for which the Fathers fought. Inordinate pride, unbounded self-satisfac- tion, lust for power, greed for money, determination to have their own way regardless of the rights of others, these are the characteristics of those who are sapping the very foundations of the stable govern- ment of the land. These are the things which, un- checked, will work the ruin of the democracy as surely as the sun rises and sets in the heavens, and were it not that many minds are awake to the peril, that many men are striving against it, that the sense of the people to the need of vigilance and action is being aroused, an evil day were in store for the great country. Where individualism plays so large a part in the everyday life of a nation as it does in the United States, where opportunity is so wide and so free, where man may dare and do, as he may in that land, the desire of the heart is apt to be for uncon- trolled power and absolute might. So arise those who unconsciously at first, open-eyed afterwards, take on themselves to tyrannize over the public. With the growth of the sense of power comes the almost irresistible wish to increase that power to the utmost. Ruthless and unscrupulous, the successful man degenerates into the tyrant, and he need not be 332 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY a political despot: the field for autocracy is broad and presents many chances to him. He may rule alone over mines and their millions of dependents ; he may bind together the laborers in the cities; he may unite in his grasp the lines of transportation; he may subject to himself the wealth of financiers; he may hoard the food of the people; no matter in what particular fashion he sets to work to gratify his instinct for absolutism, he attains his end to the detriment not alone of the individuals whom he causes to suffer, but to the yet greater loss of the liberty of the State, and the principles of justice on which it is based. When he associates with himself others, engaged in some similar or allied business, when he conceals himself behind the soulless corporation or trust, he is none the less a tyrant, such as his forefathers hated and fought. He calls himself by the name of a Trust or a Union, but he is a despot using his tremendous power not for the advantage of the country but for his personal profit. He bears no golden scepter in his hand, wears no jeweled crown on his head ; men call him not Majesty as they cringe before him, but they cringe, as did the Egyptians before the Pharaohs, as did the French before Louis, fourteenth of the name, as the Russians before their Czar. They tremble at his nod, they obey his behests, they fulfill his commands, for he has the power to enforce them, and that power he uses with- out clemency, without mercy, without fear. For whom has he to dread? Is he not sovereign of the souls and bodies of men? Does he not buy them 333 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and use them as it pleases him ? Who is there to say him nay in his progress in wealth and omnipotence? He controls the press that is venal ; he cares not for that which is honest and incorruptible ; he holds the treasure of the land in his grasp, and for the pos- session of some small share of these he knows that many men will sell themselves and all they ought to honor. He cannot, it is true, buy them all; but he need not do so; he can always count on a large following, large enough for his purposes; he can rely on finding hired defenders who will swear he is the most beneficent creature and the most pure- minded the sun of God ever shone upon. He cares not a straw for the high-minded; not a stiver for the just; he despises the incorruptible; he con- temns the upright in heart. He reigns by virtue of his wealth, which is his strength, and so long as he is rich beyond the ability of men to understand, so long is all well with him; so long will he have his sycophants and his flatterers, and so long will he ride rough-shod over the laws of the land. The laws of the land! They do not exist for him ; he is above them ; he flouts them, and only when they, administered by wise and impartial and coura- geous judges, interfere with his tyrannical progress does he stay for one moment to curse them and declare they ought to be swept from the path of such as he. This particular type sets its ambitions on doing certain things in the management of the lines of communication and transportation. So far, the purpose appears innocent enough; but in the execu- 334 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY tion of it, the master mind necessarily has to take account of those institutions which may advantage him or the reverse, and as such a man does not pro- pose that institutions shall injuriously affect him, he straightway proceeds so to manage them that they shall be subservient to him. Thus, little by little, and often with a rapidity unsuspected by the vast multitude of citizens, the autocrat carries out his scheme and attains the end he seeks. There is the refuge of the courts, fortunately, but even the courts find themselves unable to control or check, in every case, the dangerous progress of the giants of finance and speculation. For these men, wise as serpents, never fail to have as their counsel able lawyers in whom the love of gain over- rides the sense of duty to the public; lawyers who are ready to place their skill in using the law at the service of the law-breaker. Let another extract from a public print emphasize this point ; it is from a first-class newspaper in New England, and treats the question raised by the eloquent Bourke Cockran in Congress: "In his recent speech in the House, Bourke Cock- ran expressed his belief that 'there are at this mo- ment no resources at the disposal of society suf- ficient to put any man possessed of eight or ten million dollars in jail.' He admitted that 'it is a humiliating confession, but it may as well be made.' 'We all deplore it,' he declared, 'but no man has yet raised his hand to strike when the perpetrators of crime command millions.' And he asked his col- leagues if this is not 'the most sinister, the most 335 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS ominous spectacle ever presented in the history of this country.' This is scarcely accurate . . . yet there is no doubt much truth in Mr. Cockran's claim. There are very eminent men of millions in New York, who have, it is alleged, committed per- jury in addition to violating the criminal code as it relates to the officers of trust companies and other financial corporations. Nobody expects that they will be sent to jail though District-Attorney Jerome or the State's Attorney-General may yet dis- appoint expectations in this particular." And the paper, having thus admitted the exist- ence of the evil, seeks to ascertain the cause, and it finds it in the action of lawyers who "build up for- tunes by telling rich clients how to 'beat the law,' '' and in "the lawyer-made laws," cunningly devised for the protection of their clients. Between excep- tions, stays, appeals, writs of various sorts, bail and other legal obstacles that block the path of justice like a labyrinth of pitfalls and barbed-wire fences, even a resolute prosecuting officer like Folk or Jerome finds it difficult to convict a rich law-breaker and actually get him into jail. In olden times in Europe the robber baron in his eyrie laughed at the process of law as it was in his time. He was safe in his stronghold and defied any power save that of a stronger than himself; the feudal lord mocked at the edicts of the King and yielded to them only when his fortresses were taken and his bands of retainers destroyed. The modern law-breaker relies on the intricacies of the law it- self, to which he turns for the purpose of finding 336 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY means of avoiding the law. The oppression of the people by the feudal lords caused the peasant insur- rection; the oppression of the masses by the mighty rich and the trusts will bring about an insurrection, taking another form, of course, but more danger- ous to the men against whom it will be directed. Already it has taken shape, and a new tyranny has arisen to combat the other; the tyranny of labor, itself most grinding while most effective. It was inevitable that, in opposition to the oppres- sion of capital there should be formed a union of the workers. Labor has its rights, although these have not always been recognized, and once the la- borers, in whatever trade, manufacture or industry, were taught to perceive this fact, it became compara- tively easy to draw them together and to marshal them as an imposing force destined to combat the conditions under which labor struggled. There can be, there is no doubt of the right of the working- men to unite in this fashion, nor can there be any doubt that the labor unions have wrought great and lasting improvement in the condition of the em- ployees. In so far as they confined themselves to this task, they merited nothing but the heartiest ap- proval of the lovers of liberty and democracy, for liberty is not consonant with oppression in any form, and that man is not free who has to submit to in- justice. But, unhappily, the labor unions speedily went beyond the proper sphere of action in which they could 'exercise their rights. It was proper and just that they should seek to improve the rate of wages, 337 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS wherever that was possible; that they should obtain fixed and suitable length of hours for their mem- bers ; that they should strive to put an end to child labor and to the employment of young lads and of women in ways hurtful physically and morally to them; it was right that they should ask their mem- bers to stand together and to make sacrifices at need for the sake of the principle they advocated. So far the unions remained within the strict limits of liberty, which ought to be common to all men, and they rightly and properly set their strength against the power of capital. But when they went further and took to forbidding members from working with men not in the unions, when they endeavored to pre- vent those who were willing, although they them- selves were not, to work under favorable conditions, or for a wage less than the unions required, they overstepped the bounds of right. When their sym- pathetic strikes a tremendous weapon, used re- morselessly reacted not only upon the firms or cor- porations they were fighting, but also upon the utterly innocent public, then they entered upon a course fatal to the principle of the democratic Re- public of which they are citizens and in which they enjoy the protection of the laws and the advantages of stable government. It is not intended here to enter into the vexed and complicated question of the relations between capital and labor; it is sufficient, without doing so, to mark the fact that the plan pur- sued by so many of the unions, of striving to pre- vent men from accepting and retaining work on any terms other than those approved by the officers, 338 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY is a direct attack on the liberty of the individual and on his right to earn his livelihood in an honest way. The unions do not seem to perceive that their own actions must eventually bring about a demand for the enforcement of the laws which guarantee that liberty, and that the enforcement will in its turn create the possibilities of autocratic government. The more the law is broken in a democracy, the more it is disregarded, the more the mass of the peo- ple is made to suffer unjustly through the strife of capital and labor, the more rapidly will that democracy be led to the strong man who can deliver it from the double bane, and the more readily will it be induced to delegate its power to him for pro- tection from its internal enemies. For all who at- tack liberty are the enemies of democracy, how- ever specious may be their arguments, however un- selfish may be their professions. And capital used to tyrannize over the people, and labor unions em- ployed in coercion, are equally foes to the true free- dom which men look for in the United States and have a right to expect that they shall enjoy in its fulness. If men would only look clearly at facts, if only they would reason with themselves and apply their minds to a study, even superficial, of the history of other lands and other societies, they would under- stand that no surer means of destroying democracy can be found than turning the advantages and bless- ings it is so fertile in, into means of oppression. It is inevitable that, under such circumstances, the 339 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS people should turn toward the government for aid and succor, and this is regrettable in many ways. It is not desirable that the Executive should be clothed with powers so ample that they prac- tically amount to autocracy ; it is bad for the holder of the office and it is worse for the noble people who commit the mistake. It leads them to rely upon force, in some form, instead of upon the due appli- cation of the laws ; it teaches them to forget their own responsibilities and to place them upon the shoulders of others ; it induces them to forget the cardinal principle of democracy, that the government is of the people, and not of a man or a set of men, however able, distinguished and patriotic. Yet the tendency in the United States, as with us, is dangerously in this direction. Instead of cour- ageously and intelligently facing the problems and in all conscience they are weighty enough and seri- ous enough instead of striving to have the laws so administered and enforced that they shall compel real respect and instant obedience, men are more and more inclined to resort to what they are pleased to term "paternalism" in government but is really autocracy. And granting that it were not the in- evitable outcome, granting that the government ran no chance of degenerating into a despotism estab- lished by the consent of the governed, what likeli- hood is there that matters would be improved, when the government is, after all, the creature of the vot- ers? If the unions on the one hand and the cor- porations and trusts on the other are able to con- trol it in large measure through the influence at 340 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY their command, what probability is there that in- crease of power in the Government itself would bring about real and permanent improvement in the con- ditions complained of as unbearable? Could it be assured that the men at the head of the affairs of the Nation would always be thoroughly disinterested, without fear and without reproach, even then harm would result from the abandoning of the duty of the people itself to cure the ills it suffers from. A democracy is laden with greater responsibilities than a monarchy, even than a so-called constitu- tional monarchy such as may be seen in some parts of the continent of Europe. That it has greater responsibilities is a part, and an essential part, of its existence. The government which is of the peo- ple must remain a government by the people and for the people, and not one administered exclusively by a body of men, no matter how select, how well chosen, how well qualified for its task. That is the point which must be pressed home to the minds of all men in a democracy. Their political education is important ; they need to have it ; it is indispensable to them. They must be made to realize that their fate, the fate of the nation, economically, socially, is in their hands, and must remain in their hands unless the whole structure and principle of the government are to be altered. The trusts and corporations and the labor unions are too selfish and too narrow in the view they take of their relations to each other and to the great public. A democracy is a brotherhood, and in a brotherhood there must be continual concession 341 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and compromise if harmony is to be preserved. It is not the setting of one class against another, it is not the creation of classes, it is not the division of a large part of the population into capitalists and workers that will maintain OF further the democratic ideas on which the Union has been estab- lished and by which alone it can live and prosper. There must be recognition, and very practical recognition, of the need for concord, for justice, for the firm and strict application of the laws, for righteous dealing; for thus only can the progress already made be continued and increased and the permanent happiness and welfare of the citizens be secured. The war between capital and labor, for it is nothing else, is harmful in the extreme. The laboring man is justified in seeking and demand- ing improvement in his condition, already so greatly improved; the capitalist is justified in asking pro- tection for the wealth he has amassed, but neither capital nor labor has a shadow of a right to resort to tyrannical methods in order to gain its point. There is something higher in the country than either of these two opposing forces : the people themselves, who are ground between the upper and the nether millstones. There is something vastly more important than the acquisition of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, as the phrase goes, and that is the good name of the Nation. There is something of more value than the claim of the striker to prevent others from taking up the work he has abandoned of his own free will, and that is the right of every man to life, liberty and the pur- 84ft THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY suit of happiness. Destroy that right, as it is being destroyed in this savage conflict, and with it is destroyed the true spirit of democracy; pre- serve it at all costs, and the work of the Fathers will not have been in vain. The cure for the evil is plain : it lies in the educa- tion of all citizens ; not merely the education which . takes account of history, in fragmentary and rudi- mentary fashion, not merely the education which gives but a varnish of knowledge, but that larger education which teaches men and women alike their duties toward the commonwealth. In that educa- tion lies at once the hope of the Republic and the salvation of democracy. It is impossible to lay too much stress upon this point. It is the important one, the point on which depends prosperity in the future, not material prosperity, but that high and better moral prosperity without which the other is empty and vain, leading only to corruption and eventual destruction. And what Briton, at the present time, calmly observing the manner in which government has been and is being carried on in his own dear country, democratic, as is the United States, but will sorrow- fully reflect that the same dangers threaten his land, the same causes are at work, the same tendency toward autocracy manifest? There is, however, a difference; the apathy of our people is infinitely greater; their indifference to vital questions is much more marked; their ten- dency to accept evil legislation simply because the party in power has decreed that it shall be accepted 343 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS is more marked than the same fault in the United States. The American caucus is no more tyran- nical than the Parliamentary whips; the Adminis- tration no more determined and contemptuous at times of the rights of the people than is a British Cabinet. These late years among us have shown that to the procrastination of the Conservative party to push through measures of social and con- stitutional reform unquestionably called for by the change in economic, social and political conditions, has succeeded the insolent attitude of the Radical Coalition toward the constituencies, and the forcing through of measures without discussion and the bringing of the country to the verge of civil war. Here, as in America, men are too apt to think and speak only of their rights and to wholly disregard and ignore their duties. And it is a source of com- fort to the writer of this book to hear other voices raised that recall men to a sense of duty. In his Cambridge lectures on Military History, the Hon. J. W. Fortescue said: "There is really only one political or social prin- ciple which has any permanent worth, and it is expressed in the homely proverb, 'Give and take.' "What is the civic form of this proverb? It is this: No rights without duties, no duties without rights. In England I am afraid though I may be wrong that for some time past there has been too much prating of rights, and too little reflection upon duties ; though the commonwealth depends for its stability upon the equal recognition of both." The dangers which threaten the success of demo- 344 THE PERIL TO DEMOCRACY cratic government in the United States are evident among us. The remedy in either case is the same; recognition and fulfillment of duty toward the State; direct and practical interest in the adminis- tration of the government; determined retention of power in the hands of the voters instead of con- centration of power in the hands of an oligarchy. xrx THE CONCLUSION What, finally, is the belief of the observer who, noting the strange contradictions, the surprising differences, the peculiarities, the continuous strug- gle, the varied influences and causes at work among and upon a people compounded of so many nation- alities based upon a sturdy Anglo-Saxon stock? That the popular impression that the United States is indeed the land of liberty is a just and true one. It is perfectly certain that liberty, as the Englishman understands it, is not as large or as common as in England; it degenerates into license and lawlessness at times, but in other directions it is genuine and complete. Every nation is apt to have a varying conception of liberty. To the American, to the native, as to the newly-arrived immigrant, it is unquestionable that the country offers the form of liberty for which he craves. The native American sees himself guaranteed the political independence which is so dear to him; the immigrant beholds him- self rid of the trammels which bound him down in his own land. The educated European who makes his home in the Republic, ere long learns to dis- tinguish between the merely superficial manifesta- 346 THE CONCLUSION tions of the American form of government, of the American character, and the deeper and entirely sound basis of both. A man is indeed free in the United States; whether he be a poor wretch seek- ing peace and the chance to make a living, or whether he be in easy circumstances and enters business or one of the professions. He can speak his mind; he can aim high and attain success, if it be in him to succeed ; he is not troubled by obstacles due to tradition or to convention; he is taken for what he is worth, really worth, and if he have the steadiness and application and talent which insure mastery, he is certain to win it. Nowhere, as in the United States, is it so true that a man can carve his way for himself. Effort and ambition are ap- proved, and when the reward comes it is not grudged. It takes earnest labor to reach the goal; plenty of it. The competition is keen and hard, but it is all worth while, for the triumph ultimately obtained is a personal triumph. It is a land of unbounded possibilities for the worker, no matter in what line; of unbounded op- portunities for the sturdy and steady man, and for the resolute woman. Both sexes find here chances such as they cannot find in the Old World; chances that are ready to be availed of; and men and women alike discover ere long that the secret of success is work, strenuous work, and honesty, and straightforwardness. These things insure the gain- ing of the coveted end, and they are good things to have. It is not a land for the idle, the lazy, the in- 347 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS capable. These will inevitably be pushed to the wall. Influence, if they possess it, will not long bestead them. It is personal worth which alone tells in the end; without it, and the determination to make the most of it, it is useless to affront the fight for life and competency. The morally weak, the intellec- tually feeble go down at once; the strong alone sur- vive. The battle of life is a reality in the United States: there is no sitting down to lament the hard- ness of one's lot; the only thing to do is to strive. It does not answer to be content with one's station in life ; that is not the way to succeed in that coun- try. Men and women must ever be ambitious, and determined to reach higher yet. That is the strenu- ous life so much spoken of. It is true that it is strenuous ; it is also true that it is healthy and in- spiring life; it is life in very sooth, albeit it lacks entirely the sweetness and restfulness it has in the older countries of Europe, in the highly civilized lands where social distinctions have set almost in- surmountable barriers in the way of the masses. It is a life of continual work, of unceasing anxiety, but one feels the excitement and interest of it. The stimulus is agreeable, and if many fall by the way- side, spent with the strain of it all, it is at least more satisfactory than slowly rusting and weakening. To the man of action the United States is a true El Dorado. He finds there a congenial atmosphere; competitors, eager and keen; rewards great in pro- portion to the sum of the effort. It is an inspiring land. It will long remain so. Many, many years must 348 THE CONCLUSION elapse ere the sense of vigorous manhood, now so strongly experienced, grows faint and dim. The land is vast; the development of it will occupy men for many a generation; and always will the energy characteristic of the race which inhabits it be the distinguishing trait. For countless generations will opportunities present themselves to the able, the in- telligent, the resolute; for years unnumbered will it be, as are the Britains beyond the seas, a country for the young, for the brave, for the hopeful. And this to an extent which the stay-at-home in Europe can never understand, for it is out of the question to endeavor to comprehend the United States merely from reading about it. The country and the people must be seen to be appreciated, and even then it is not certain that the full and clear perception will be obtained, so varied are the aspects of the one and the other, so manifold the differences between Europe and America. The United States is in no danger whatever of turning into an empire, a monarchy, an autocracy of any sort or description. Amazing as is the ex- tent of the land, numerous as the population is, and steadily, rapidly growing more numerous, which would indicate, or appear to indicate, the inevitable- ness of a change in the form of government, there is no prospect, even remote, of the Americans turn- ing from their chosen system to try the effects of one outworn. Democracy has laid its hold upon the Nation, and it will not be loosened. This for two reasons : the first, that no matter how strong, how able, how unscrupulous even, a Chief Magistrate may 349 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS prove to be in the future, the abiding sense of the Nation is against autocratic power, and while it is certain that under conditions which arise from time to time, there is more than a willingness, there is indeed a determination, to clothe the President with greater powers, it is equally sure that the country as a whole is ever ready to curtail these powers when it becomes desirable to do so. And it is one of the distinguishing features of the American character that it speedily finds the way to carry out a set purpose. The main object of increasing the powers of the Executive is to enable the new and dangerous prob- lems to be dealt with, but already it is becoming plain that the deep Anglo-Saxon faith in the utility and reliability of the courts of justice as a prefer- able means of staying and destroying oppression, is part and parcel of the belief of the Nation. The second cause is the feeling, born in the breast of every American, that it is a sound and wise principle that office shall not be held long by any one man, and that every man shall have the op- portunity of attaining to the highest offices in the land. Any tendency to autocracy is checked by the simple fact that ambitions are too numerous in the country, that the aspirants to power are too eager and too frequent to permit of the concentration of that power in the hands of one man or a small group of men, or to permit of its being long immobilized in one individual, far less continued in his family or in the person of his most trusted friends. The democratic feeling that all sovereignty re- 350 THE CONCLUSION sides in the people, and that any delegation of power can, in its nature, be but temporary and partial, is vigorous in the United States, and it is the great protection against any real change in the form of government. As for the objection that the country is becoming so vast that it will soon be impossible to govern it under democratic principles and meth- ods, that may be dismissed without much discussion. The inventions of the present day, which practically annihilate space and permit swift communication be- tween the most distant points, constitute a safeguard which never before existed. Then education, whether by means of the schools, the colleges and universities, or the press or the public platform, is doing its share to strengthen the democracy by enlightening and informing it. In the development of education, as most men clearly see, lies much of the hope of the future. And the love of education in the country must be personally ex- perienced to be fully understood. It is a force of the first magnitude, which must be reckoned with in any prognostication of the future of the United States. And that it will be valued daily more and more is as certain as that the sun rises and sets. Education is an essential in the United States; something that everyone insists upon possessing, and the means of obtaining it are being multiplied daily. It is through instruction that such marvelous prog- ress has already been made ; it is through instruction that even greater progress will yet be achieved. For the American understands, appreciates its value, and is ever prepared to make sacrifices in its favor. It is 351 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS not with him an object of party controversy or re- ligious warfare: it is a natural right which must be satisfied. There are many, both in the New and in the Old World, who cannot bring themselves to believe in the value of education for the masses, and who point to the semi-educated specimens which abound in proof of the evil of general instruction. No one will deny that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that universal education in the United States has its disadvantages; but it must be borne in mind that very great progress has been made which would have been wholly impossible but for that general educa- tion of the multitude; that the unpleasant results evidenced in the coarseness or criminality of the few are infinitely less than the indubitable benefits con- ferred upon the race which has been singularly ad- vantaged by the spread of instruction. For one failure there are innumerable successes, and no mat- ter what may be urged against universal education, the truth remains plain: that it is in that very education of the masses that the uplifting must be sought. Without education it is impossible ; there is but the one means to the one end ; and in a democratic country, where opportunities are freely extended to all, it is education which is the prime necessity. In the fact that the American people clearly perceive this lies the conviction of the ultimate development of the Nation into one of the most remarkable, if not absolutely the most remarkable, the world has ever seen. It is not necessary to emphasize the benefit to the community at large of developing the intelli- 352 THE CONCLUSION gence of the individuals who compose it; one might as well urge that health is a good thing. And the Americans are not to be turned from their purpose by any fear of possible failure ; they are aware that failures must always occur in larger or smaller pro- portion, but these are invariably overborne where resolution and steadfast purpose are present, by the triumphs won. With the steady growth of education comes the more refined atmosphere which in its turn brings about many of the graces of life at present not easily discerned in American society. These will certainly flow from the great stream of knowledge, and it requires no prophet to foretell that ere many generations have followed one another, so great and marked a change will have taken place that it will be difficult to believe that there ever was any other condition. The spirit of democracy is progressive, not retrogressive; it is essentially a civilizing prin- ciple: at present the race is yet in the stage of fermentation and formation; it is yet occupied with the solution of very pressing problems, but it will unquestionably advance to a conception of social in- tercourse in which all that is at present largely con- cealed by what may be termed faults of manners, will shine out and become as marked a characteristic as, unfortunately, mannerlessness is at this moment. The very increase, daily greater, of the sense of power and consequent responsibility, is bound to work for the weal of the country and its inhabitants. The careful observer, who does not allow his view to be clouded by merely transitory manifestations, 353 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS sees plainly the steady onward progress of society in the United States ; the growing feeling for all that is truly good and noble. Strange would it be were it otherwise, since the country has produced and produces now so many men and so many women filled with the highest ideals, imbued with the purest conceptions of political and family life, endowed with talent and ability; true leaders of the masses, which in their turn see in them the exemplars, the types of the highest American manhood and woman- hood, that let this be very distinctly said is the equal of highest manhood and womanhood in the most highly civilized lands of Europe. The press, which is very far indeed from being all yellow, is one of the most powerful factors in the progress which is being made. The perusal of the articles which day after day appear in the col- umns of the leading papers is enough to prove that the best journalists of America are in nowise in- ferior to their European comrades in the standards of public morality they support and advocate, in the force with which they express their opinions, in the purity of their language, in the understanding of their responsibilities and in their determination to accomplish what is their duty: the enlightening, the teaching of a nation of free men. They are daily contributing to the formation of a strong and healthy public opinion and public courage and spirit. A public opinion which is rightly guided and which finds expression in powerful, but moderate form, is the sort which is now more and more to be met with. It is a force which tells already; which will tell 354 THE CONCLUSION yet more and more. It is the outcome of the sense of responsibility ; of the pride in the country and the principles of the government. Men are understand- ing that they themselves are to do the work which lies ready to their hand, and that it is to be done by continuous and united effort, and not by spas- modic or individual attempts. Throughout the country this is the case. Everywhere are men of highest merit preparing to come forward, or actually presenting themselves to discharge the duties the citizen owes to the State. And the people gladly recognize the value of these men; they honor them; they support them, and surely this is public opinion in all its beneficent activity. Lawlessness exists, as it most unhappily does with us, in the form of disregard of law. But it is with this as with so many other things that re- quire alteration and reform: it is most patent be- cause men are more determined to put an end to the evil. The simple fact that the press, that public speakers, that statesmen, are daily drawing attention to the need of the careful, the rigid observance of law, is in itself a sign that the. day of lawlessness, of disregard of law is coming to a swift end. It is not one solitary voice which is uplifted here and there throughout the country; it is a chorus of voices, coming from the press, from individuals ; an insis- tent demand that justice and its administration shall be the chief purpose of all. The outbursts against the evils of the abuse of law as at present seen, are growing in number and gaining in strength. Men are resolved that their courts shall be respected 355 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS and their decisions carried out. They care not for more law ; they demand the adequate enforcement of the statutes which already exist. The courts are justifying the confidence reposed in them. They do so because in part, public opinion is ranging itself on their side. There are instances, of course, of weakness: the jury system, the treat- ment of witnesses, the power of wealth, the venality of many lawyers, the intolerable delays brought about by skilful splitters of hair and raisers of ob- jections, at this time mar the administration of justice; but these evils are pointed out and dwelt upon by the press, by the judges themselves, and the people are beginning to understand the importance of the lessons continually taught them. The ad- mirable conduct of certain famous cases has done an immense deal of good, for it has proved that the courts are entirely to be trusted, and that the equi- table administration of justice is no mere theory, no mere imagination, but a substantial fact on which accuser and accused alike may rely. The tendency, growing happily stronger, is to have recourse to the courts rather than to additional legislation ; to trust them, rather than the blind impulses of the mob. In a word, all omens, all signs point to the permanent establishment of the true reign of true justice in the country. And this connects itself with a yet wider field : the international peace. The people of the United States are not warlike, in the sense of seeking or desiring war. Their habit is not that of the Euro- pean nations who, by force of circumstances, are 356 THE CONCLUSION ever considering the possibilities of imminent, armed contest. They are, on the contrary, a nation ever relying on peace. It is to them the right condition of society. There are jingoes in America as every- where, but they are very far from influencing the Nation as a whole. And it is not merely the feeling that war is harmful to commerce, to business, which thus leads the Americans to prefer peace to combat. It is the conviction that most wars are quite unjus- tifiable, and that most of them can be avoided, and should be avoided in exactly the same way that con- tinual quarrels between individuals are avoided. Men, in their intercourse with each other have ceased to draw and fight on the slightest provoca- tion, or on no provocation at all. And what is com- mon sense in the individual is no less common sense in the Nation. This is what the people of the United States see quite plainly. It is so simple, so self-evident that it makes them the partisans and champions of peaceful methods. They will not suc- ceed in putting an end to all wars ; they may even be drawn into wars themselves, but it is quite certain that this will not be the case until after every effort has been made to avoid the arbitrament of the sword. The peace idea is firmly implanted in the American breast: the idea of honorable peace, and the American leaders of the American people know that they can maintain the supremacy and the for- tunes of their country without constant resort to the mailed hand. Not only this, but American statesmen have shown and show a courageous determination to press upon 357 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS the other nations of the world broader conceptions of international rights, which must bring about a distinct amelioration of conditions in times of war, especially as regards neutrals. Their contentions, on the whole, would, if adopted, diminish the evils at present inseparable from war between two great powers. These contentions are opposed because the diminution of the evils is looked upon as a mistake: the idea still holds firm that the more horrible war can be made the more rapidly will the parties to it tire and be ready to make peace. But when one re- members the twenty-five years of warfare against Napoleon, when, assuredly, the horrors of war were plainly evident, one is more inclined to side with the advocates of the American ideas. War is profitable still to one side or the other, and it is that profit, albeit less than in former centuries, which inclines nations to hold to ancient views and to reject prog- ress in a humanitarian direction. But backed by the weight of a mighty nation, of a country itself immensely powerful, and plainly destined to have a preponderating voice in the settlement of world af- fairs, the American and not the European idea is the one that will almost surely prevail. And when the constituent elements of the Amer- ican race, as it is even now being formed, are taken into account, when its mingling of men from all lands is considered, it will be seen how the very number of nationalities must tend to a policy of peace rather than one of war. It is eminently true that the foreigner who becomes naturalized and that is prac- tically every foreigner turns into an enthusiastic 358 THE CONCLUSION American, but he generally maintains regard, if not affection, for his native land. The Irishman, who remains Irish, may earnestly desire to see the might of America's arms turned against England: indeed, he openly declares this and calls America "Greater Ireland," but all the woes and grievances of Erin will not induce the bulk of the population to resort to war merely for the sake of satisfying the hatreds of a portion of the inhabitants. The Germans do not experience any dread of conflict with their Fatherland, though feeling against it may at times run high, and threatening murmurs arise as suspicion is excited by the Kaiser's colonial policy. The aver- age man in the United States is not interested in war; the ordinary politician is not in love with it. The attitude of the Nation is a powerful factor for the preservation of the world's peace, and it is likely to remain so. There is no reason apparent why there should occur any change in this regard. Even co- lonial expansion is at a discount in the United States ; mercantile, commercial expansion, is another matter, and it is seen that that may be secured with- out resort to fleets or armies. The attraction of the United States is wonderful. Men resort to it from all parts of the world. The Briton comes in his thousands; in one State alone, and one of the smaller states, some one hundred thousand Britons are domiciled. The great majority of these have become citizens of the United States, and good citizens, devoted to their new country and serving her with heart and soul. Germans innumer- able, Italians and Spaniards in droves, Russians and 359 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS Slavs past counting, Scandinavians so numerous that they form entire communities, Asiatics ; every race, every creed, meet in the land. Most of these immigrants naturally belong to the poorer classes ; that does not mean that they remain in the condi- tion they have first known: they rise out of it, be- cause in America man can rise. They reach higher, they become ambitious, and their ambition is grati- fied. To them, therefore, the United States and democratic government appeal in the strongest possi- ble way. Question them, and they readily declare their preference for the land of their adoption. There is a reason for this: it is the liberty they enjoy, it is the opportunities they have of bettering themselves. But it is not alone the poor and the wretched, driven from lands of autocracy, or the better-off who have heard of the advantages of the land, who crowd to it. The institutions of higher education, of higher technical training are filled with many men from many lands. They come from the four corners of the earth, and they bear with them when they return, which all do not the memory of what they have seen, of what they have experienced, of the ad- mirable organization, of the excellent teaching, of the multiplied chances of success, of the freedom they have enjoyed, of the hospitality they have met with. Many of these never go back to their native land: they settle in the country, immigrants of the utmost value to the people among whom they make their home. They do not return because intelli- gent, able to judge they see clearly that in this 360 THE CONCLUSION country the career open to them is greater than any they can enter in their former homes. They find that success is not the appanage of a chosen few, but is ready to the hand of him who is willing to work. And they remain. It is absurd, to put the thing mildly, to speak, as so many do nowadays, of the Americanizing of Euro- pean ideas and manners and customs, using the word in a derogatory sense. There is and it has been set forth unhesitatingly a very great deal in America that is offensive and regrettable. None own this more frankly than the Americans themselves, and none are more earnest in seeking to correct the evils and abuses they perceive. But all the love of sensation, of exaggeration, all the habit of boast- fulness, of brag, all the tendency to gossip and scandal, all the breaking away from law and order are not things typically American and to be met with in the United States only. These evils have grown to greater dimensions, it may be, in America, but they exist in European lands as well, and it must be borne in mind that the trend of opinion is against them in the United States as it is in England, even though no American court of justice has yet smitten the offending press as it has been smitten in Britain. The worst part of the press commands a regret- tably large circle of readers; doubtless it may with truth claim "the largest circulation," but that should not make one lose sight of the value and power of that better part which influences so many thousands of minds in the right way. There is love 361 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS of sensation, but the jaded appetite of the reader refuses now to be more than lazily stirred by the clamor of the yellow sheet; sensation is discounted by the sensible, even if eagerly sought by the multi- tude. And the sober, the sensible, the wise do, in America as in other countries, have influence over the public, and when it comes to deciding on a leader it is rarely that the people take him from the ranks of the sensation-mongers. They do do so from time to time, and invariably repent in sackcloth and ashes. There is love of gossip, but who shall be audacious enough to say that that hunger is felt in the American land alone? Where does it not flourish? Where does it not seek its food of scandal and falsehood and misrepresentation? These things are not, then, American in principle, any more than they are English, or French or Ger- man or Spanish or Italian. They are attributes of imperfect human nature, and they have developed greatly in the United States because circumstances have favored them. It was not ever thus ; it will not be ever thus. The peculiar development of civiliza- tion is nearly as much responsible for the so-called "Americanizing" of things European as are the American people. Similar causes have acted upon the nations of Europe; less vigorously, less rapidly, no doubt, but at bottom it is the same force at work and it produces the same results. It is a common error to assume that the peculiari- ties of a nation are the essentials of its character. In the case of the Americans it is taken for granted that they are all given over to the Demon of Wealth- THE CONCLUSION at-any-cost; that they are the slaves of restless inquisitiveness and well-nigh irresistible curiosity and love of prying; that they are the victims of uncon- trollable brag, and worshipers of the Big in all its forms ; that throughout their family relations runs a streak, more than a streak, of disregard of sacred obligations. There is a basis of truth for all this; just as there is a similar basis of truth in the charge that in England and in France and in Germany there are men dishonest and women untrustworthy. It is always easy to reason from the instances which are brought out into the limelight of the press and the courts. If one studies the records of the police tribunals in particular, it is natural that a low idea of the morals of the country should be the outcome. If one takes for granted that the idle and vicious rich, who are to be met with in every land, are the type of the great mass of the people, then it is cer- tain that a false judgment will be passed. And not only passed, but supported by proof, drawn from the instances referred to. But the American Nation is not, surprising as it may appear to many, composed exclusively of pluto- crats and of breakers of the laws of God and man. These exist ; their presence is patent, for they take care to keep themselves well before the public, and a mistaken notion of their importance leads that part of the press which busies itself with such things, to keep talking of them as though they were Amer- icans of the Americans. They are no more so than the similar class in European countries is typically English or French or German. There are infinitely 363 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS more good people than bad in the United States; there is, indeed, no comparison between the numbers of the one and the other class. There are innumer- able families which are as pure, as sweet, as blessed as the most perfect French or English homes. There are thousands to whom wealth is not necessarily the prime desire in life, but honesty and uprightness and morality; these form the root and backbone of the Nation. Else it would ere this have destroyed it- self. Above all, in America man stands for what he is worth. Let it not be imagined that the noisy revel- ers who day after day fill the society columns with accounts of their doings and follies are the exemplars to whom the youth of the land looks up. Far from it; they are estimated at their real valuelessness nine hundred times out of a thousand. It is not to them that young men, who have striven hard to ob- tain an education, look for guidance and encourage- ment. The very strenuousness of the struggle through which the youth of America is compelled to forge to the front, is a preservative against most of the vices of the idle and rich. Alongside of the plutocrats who squander the easily gained wealth stand the rich whose understanding of their respon- sibilities is perfect, and who discharge these respon- sibilities without sound of trump or blowing of horn. The American is apt to put forward all that is least attractive in his civilization. It is easy, therefore, to imagine that that civilization is rotten to the core: the opposite is the truth; it is sound. 364 THE CONCLUSION The habit, gradually diminishing, of making much of everything that goes on is the cause of the er- roneous impression. Attention has been drawn too largely to the mere material progress of the coun- try; too little has been paid to its marvelous prog- ress morally and intellectually. There are other things American besides the pursuit of wealth, be- sides the disregard of law, besides the heedlessness of the sanctity of marriage. There is the real equal- ity of opportunities, unknown to a similar degree anywhere else in the wide world, save in countries such as Canada, the Cape and Australasia new countries also ; democratic countries also. There is the love of instruction; the readiness to make great sacrifices for the acquisition of education. There is the patriotism which manifests itself not in shouting or in the exploding of crackers, but in the cult of the ideals of the Founders of the Republic, in the private and amazing beneficence of individuals; in the reverence, growing every day, for the memorials of the past. There is the uplifting of the status of woman, that is also carried to a point as yet unat- tained by any European country and which is go- ing on steadily and surely. These things are eminently American, as is the freedom of speech and the freedom of judgment, as is the cordiality one meets with everywhere, the encouragement given to the willing worker, the dis- regard of circumstances which, in other countries, militate against the outsider. Let the United States be fairly judged; let their people be looked at not in the columns of a sensa- 365 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS tional press alone or in the deeds, so oft reprehen- sible, of a small, a very small section of the popula- tion, but in their homes, in their daily intercourse, in their institutions of learning, in their innumerable establishments for the relief of the poor, the sick and the - crippled, and the ignorant, and then one will gain a clearer idea of what the country is and of the future yet in store for it. Let the steady growth of sound public opinion be taken into account, as is not usually done; observe the way in which day after day develops the sense of responsibility, individual and national; note the manner in which men of great parts and noble char- acter are coming forward more and more to share in and direct the Government, and it will be con- ceded that not only is the United States far from being unable to correct the evils which are acknowl- edged to exist, but that there is not the faintest reason to despair of the greatest Republic the world has seen: the home of millions of earnest, true men and women ; the hope of a humanity yet unborn. The hope of a humanity yet unborn ! For below the strife of the multitude, below the seething of passions, the sweeping of the mad selfish- ness, the striving after power for individual satis- faction; below the contention of oposing forces of capital and labor; deep below the bitter poverty that blasts human lives, and the squalid splendor of shameless corruption and sin, that brazenly flaunts itself; below all the passing, ephemeral manifesta- tions of the littleness of man and the frailty of his works, lies, clear to the sight of him who cares to 366 THE CONCLUSION fathom the profound, the living truth that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are insti- tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." These immortal words, penned by patriots, are not prized by their descendants alone, by the untold millions who, in successive generations, have fore- gathered to them in the land they set free ; they are believed in by all thinking men the world over; they form the precious creed of all who seek the welfare of humanity, the steady progress of the human race. Not in one age, not, perhaps, in many ages, will they bear their full fruit, but surely will they eventually bear it, for they stand as a revelation, as they stand as a declaration. In the land where they blazed like Heaven's own light in the time of storm and stress, they have al- ready been greatly realized; they will yet be better realized, better understood, better taken to heart. The inmost soul of them is passing into the soul of the mighty Nation that is being welded out of the innumerable elements the wide world has furnished; the children of the next generation will fathom them more deeply than those of the present, and they who shall come after them in the future years shall make them clearer yet. In them, in the truth they con- tain, has lain the secret of the progress of the Na- tion; in that same truth, made more fully manifest, brought nearer to the understanding of everyone, 367 AMERICANS AND THE BRITONS lies the hope of the coming generations, of the many nations, not in one hemisphere or the other, but the broad earth over. As the meaning of them sinks deeper into the hearts and souls of men, will men proceed farther on the road they are traveling now: the road to perfect equality, to true life, to genuine liberty, to sound conception of happiness. Great as has been the onward advance, greater will it be, for each year makes plainer the power of the truth. It is active at this moment; it has built up the land and its people ; it has in itself the virtue to correct, to destroy the evils that are the consequence not of the democratic principle, but of the wrong interpretation of it, or of the return to outworn creeds and threadbare tradition, that can but clog the feet of those who would press forward to the glorious goal. It is the truth which has set men free ; which makes even the humblest look up in hope, the faint take courage, the brave hurry on with re- newed effort. It has built up a nation where man may carve out his own way, confident that his re- ward will come; it has destroyed the old lines of division, and broken down the parting walls. The path is clear for the wayfarer; the road free to the traveler. Each man may go forward, in the measure of his strength, to the attainment of his hopes. And it has done and will do more. It is the proclamation of the solidarity of mankind. Each works not for himself alone, but for all the others likewise. It makes all citizens share in the work of the State; it makes them all understand that they have a duty to others besides themselves: to the 368 THE CONCLUSION family, the city, the commonwealth. It will grow and grow stronger and brighter and more penetrat- ing, and in the centuries humanity will look back and be grateful, for with the inspiring breath of it man renews his belief in his own nobility, in his own high mission. What matters it that imperfections and blemishes still exist; that real and great evils still prevail? These will disappear, slowly, to be sure, but dis- appear as other blemishes, other imperfections, other evils have slowly disappeared in ages gone by. 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