great city an intense intellectual activity, of conscious and deliberate
energy. Removed by a thousand miles from New York with its more
cosmopolitan crowds and constant influx of European visitors, it is
self-centered and independent, and out of its immense population there
are many minds emerging to make it a center of musical, artistic, and
educational life, apart altogether from its business dynamics. I became
swallowed up in the crowds along Michigan Avenue, and was caught in the
breeze that blew stiffly down the highway of this "windy city," and
studied the shops and theaters and picture-palaces with a growing
consciousness that here was a world almost as great as New York and, I
imagine, more essentially American in character and views. That first
morning of my visit I was the guest of a club called the Cliff-dwellers,
where the chairman rapped for order on the table with a club that might
have protected the home of Prehistoric Man, and addressed a gathering of
good fellows who, as journalists, authors, painters, and musicians, are
farthest removed from that simple child of nature who went out hunting
for his dinner, and bashed his wife when she gnawed the meatiest bone.
It was in the time of armistice, and these men were deeply anxious about
the new problems which faced America and about the reshaping of the
world's philosophy. They were generous and honest in their praise of
England's mighty effort in the war, and they were enthusiastic to a man
in the belief that an Anglo-American alliance was the best guaranty of
the League of Nations, and the best hope for the safety of
civilization. I came away with the belief that out of Chicago would come
help for the idealists of our future civilization, out of Chicago,
whatever men may say of its Pit, and its slaughter-yards, and its jungle
of industry and life. For on the walls of the Cliff-dwellers were
paintings of men who have beauty in their hearts, and in the eyes of the
men I met was a look of gravity and thoughtfulness in face of the
world's agonies and conflict. But I was aware, also, that among the
seething crowds of that city were mobs of foreign-born people who have
the spirit of revolution in their hearts, and others who demand more of
the joy of life and less of its struggle, and men of baseness and
brutality, coarsened by the struggle through which they have to push and
thrust in order to get a living. I listened to Germans and foreign Jews
in some of the streets of Chicago, and saw in imagination the flames and
smoke of passion that stir above the Melting-pot.
I have memories in Chicago of a little theatrical manager who took my
arm and pressed it tight with new-born affection, and said: "My dearie,
I'm doing colossal business--over two thousand dollars a night! It's
broken all the records. I go about singing with happiness." Success had
made a poet of him. In a private suite of rooms in the most luxurious
hotel of Chicago I met one of the theatrical stars of America, and
studied her type as one might gaze at a rare bird. She was a queer
little bird, I found, with a childish and simple way of speech which
disguised a little her immense and penetrating knowledge of human nature
as it is found in "one-night stands," in the jungle of life behind the
scenes, and in her own grim and gallant fight for fame. Fame had come to
her suddenly and overwhelmingly, in Chicago, and New York was waiting
for her. The pride of her achievement thrilled her to the finger-tips,
and she was as happy as a little girl who has received her first doll as
a birthday-present. She talked to me about her technic, about the way in
which she had lived in her part before acting it, so that she felt
herself to be the heroine in body and soul. But what I liked best--and
tried to believe--was her whispered revelation of her ultimate
ambition--and that was a quiet marriage with a boy who was "over there,"
if he did not keep her waiting too long. Marriage, and not fame, was
what she wanted most (so she said), but she was going to be very, very
careful to make the right one. She had none of the luxurious splendor of
those American stars who appear in fiction and photographs. She was a
bright little canary, with pluck, and a touch of genius, and a shrewd
common sense.
From her type I passed to others, a world away in mode of
life--Congressmen, leaders of the women's suffrage societies,
ex-governors, business magnates, American officers back from the front,
foreign officers begging for American money, British propagandists--a
most unlikely crowd--dramatic critics, shipbuilders, and the society of
New York suburbs between Mamaroneck and Greenwich, Connecticut. At
dinner-parties and evening receptions I met these different actors in
the great drama of American life, and found them, in that time of
armistice, desperately earnest about the problems of peace, intrigued to
the point of passion about the policy of President Wilson, divided
hopelessly in ideals and convictions, so that husbands and wives had to
declare a No Man's Land between their conflicting views, and looking
forward to the future with profound uneasiness because of the threat to
the "splendid isolation" of the Monroe Doctrine--they saw it crumbling
away from them--and because (more alarming still) they heard from afar
the first rumblings of a terrific storm between capital and labor. They
spoke of these things frankly, with an evident sincerity and with a fine
gravity--women as well as men, young girls as fearlessly and
intelligently as bald-headed business men. Many of them deplored the
late entry of the United States into the war, because they believed
their people would have gained by longer sacrifice. With all their pride
in the valor of their men, not one of them in my hearing used a braggart
word, or claimed too great a share in the honor of victory. There was
fear among them that their President was abandoning principles of vital
import to their country, but no single man or woman I met spoke
selfishly of America's commercial or political interest, and among all
the people with whom I came in touch there was a deep sense of
responsibility and a desire to help the world forward by wise action on
the part of the United States. Their trouble was that they lacked clear
guidance, and were groping blindly about for the right thing to do, in
a practical, common-sense way. I had serious conversations in those
assemblies, until my head ached, but they were not without a lighter
side, and I was often startled by the eager way in which American
middle-class society abandons the set etiquette of an evening party for
charades, a fox-trot (with the carpets thrown back), a game of "twenty
questions," or a riot of laughter between a cocktail and a highball. At
those hours the youth of America was revealed. Its society is not so old
as our tired, saddened people of Europe, who look back with melancholy
upon the four years in which their young men perished, and forward
without great hope. The vitality of America has hardly been touched by
her sacrifice, and the heart of America is high.
III
THINGS I LIKE IN THE UNITED STATES
Some Englishmen, I am told, go to the United States with a spirit of
criticism, and search round for things that seem to them objectionable,
taking no pains to conceal their hostile point of view. They are so
hopelessly insular that they resent any little differences in social
custom between American and English life, and sum up their annoyance by
saying, "We don't do that sort of thing in England!" Well, that seems to
me a foolish way of approach to any country, and the reason why some
types of Englishmen are so unpopular in France, Italy, and other
countries, where they go about regarding "the natives," as they call
them, with arrogance in their eyes, and talk, as an English officer, not
of that type, expressed it to me, "as though they had bad smells at the
end of their noses." I am bound to say that during my visit to the
United States I found much more to admire than to criticize, and
perhaps because I was on the lookout for things to like rather than to
dislike I had one of the best times of my life--in some ways the very
best--and came away with respect, admiration, and gratitude for the
American people. There are so many things I like in their character and
way of life that I should be guilty of gushing if I put them all down,
but although I have no doubt they have many faults, like most people in
this world, I prefer to remember the pleasant, rather than the
unpleasant, qualities they possess, especially as they left the most
dominant impression on my mind.
I think every Englishman, however critical, would agree that he is
struck at once, on his first visit to America, by the clean, bright,
progressive spirit of life in the smaller towns beyond the turmoil of
New York. I have already described the sensational effect produced upon
one's imagination by that great city, and have given some glimpses of
various aspects of the social life which I had the good fortune to see
with untiring interest; but I confess that the idea of living in New
York would affright me because of its wear and tear upon the nerves, and
I think that the "commuters" who dwell in the suburbs have good sense
and better luck. The realities of America--the average idea, the
middle-class home, the domestic qualities upon which a nation is
built--are to be found more deeply rooted in the suburbs and smaller
towns than in the whirligig of Manhattan Island, to which a million and
a half people, I am told, come every day, and from which, after business
or pleasure, they go away. To me there was something very attractive in
the construction of such places as Rye, Port Chester, Greenwich, and
Stamford, an hour away from New York, and many other townships of
similar size in other parts of the United States. I liked the style of
their houses, those neat buildings of wood with overlapping shingles,
and wide porches and verandas where people may sit out on summer days,
with shelter from the sun; and I liked especially the old Colonial type
of house, as I think it is called, with a tall white pillar on each side
of its portico, and well-proportioned windows, so that the rooms have
plenty of light, and as much air as the central-heating system
permits--and that is not much. To English eyes accustomed to dingy brick
houses in the suburbs of big cities, to the dreary squalor of some new
little town which straggles around a filthy railway station, with
refuse-heaps in undeveloped fields, and a half-finished "High Street,"
where a sweetstuff-shop, a stationer, and an estate agent establish
themselves in the gloomy hope of business, these American villages look
wonderfully clean, bright, and pleasant! I noticed that in each one of
them there were five institutions in which the spirit of the community
was revealed--the bank, the post-office, the school, the church, and the
picture-palace. The bank is generally the handsomest building in the
place, with a definite attempt to give it some dignity of architecture
and richness of decoration. Inside it has marble pillars and panels,
brass railings at the receipt of custom, a brightly burnished mechanism
for locking up the safe, a tiled floor of spotless cleanliness. The
local tradesman feels secure in putting his money in such a place of
dignity, the local lady likes to come here in the morning (unless she
has overdrawn her account) for a chat with the bank manager or one of
his gentlemanly assistants. It is a social rendezvous dedicated to the
spirit of success, and the bank manager, who knows the private business
and the social adventures of his clients, is in a position of
confidence and esteem. He is pleased to shake the finger-tips of a lady
through the brass railings; while she is pleased to ask him, "How do you
like my new hat?" and laughs when, with grave eyes, he expresses
sympathy with her husband. "Twenty years ago he was serving behind the
counter in a dry-goods store. Now he has a million dollars to his
credit." Everybody brightens at this story of success. The fact that a
man starts as a butcher-boy or a bell-boy is all in his favor in social
prestige. There is no snobbishness, contemptuous of humble origin, and I
found a spirit of good-natured democracy among the people I watched in
the local bank.
[Illustration: THE SOCIAL ATMOSPHERE OF AN AMERICAN POST-OFFICE]
Competing with the bank in architectural dignity is the village
post-office, generally of white stone, or wood, with the local Roll of
Honor on the green outside, and, inside, a number of picture-posters
calling to the patriotism of the American people to support the Liberty
Loan--the fifth when I was there. Small boys at the counter are buying
thrift stamps. Chauffeurs who have driven down from country houses are
collecting the letters of the family from lockers, with private keys.
College girls are exchanging confidences at the counters. I liked the
social atmosphere of an American post-office. I seemed to see a visible
friendliness here between the state and the people. Then there is the
school, and I must say that I was overwhelmed with admiration for the
American system of education and for the buildings in which it is given.
England lags a long way behind here, with its old-fashioned hotch-potch
of elementary schools, church schools, "academies for young
gentlemen"--the breeding-grounds of snobs--grammar-schools, and private,
second-rate colleges; all of which complications are swept away by the
clean simplicity of the American state school, to which boys of every
class may go without being handicapped by the caste system which is the
curse of England. If the school to which I went at Montclair, or another
at Elizabeth, New Jersey, or another at Toledo, is at all typical of
American schools generally (and I think that is so), I take my hat off
to the educational authorities of America and to the spirit of the
people which inspires them.
The school at Montclair was, I remember, a handsome building like one of
the English colleges for women at Oxford or Cambridge, with admirably
designed rooms, light, airy, and beautiful with their polished paneling.
The lecture-hall was a spacious place holding, I suppose, nearly a
thousand people, and I was astonished at its proportions when I had my
first glimpse of it before lecturing, under the guidance of the
head-mistress and some of the ladies on her committee. Those women
impressed me as being wise and broad-minded souls, not shut up in narrow
educational theories, but with a knowledge of life and human nature, and
a keen enthusiasm for their work. At Toledo I saw the best type of
provincial school, and certainly as an architectural model it was beyond
all words of praise, built in what we call the Tudor style, in red
brick, ivy covered, with long oriel windows, so that it lifts up the
tone of the whole town because of its dignity and beauty. Here, too, was
a fine lecture-hall, easily convertible into a theater, with suitable
scenery for any school play. It was a committee of boys who organized
the lectures, and one of them acted as my guide over the school-building
and showed me, among other educational arrangements, a charming little
flat, or apartment-house, completely furnished in every detail in
bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, for the training of girls in
domestic service, cookery, and the decoration of the home. Here, as in
many other things, the American mind had reached out to an ideal and
linked it up with practical method. Equally good were the workshops
where the boys are trained in carpentry and mechanics.... Well, all that
kind of thing makes for greatness in a nation. The American people are
not, I think, better educated than English people in the actual
storing-up of knowledge, but they are educated in better physical
conditions, with a brighter atmosphere around them in their class-rooms
and in their playgrounds, and with a keener appreciation in the social
influences surrounding the schoolhouse of the inherent right of every
American boy and girl to have equal opportunities along the road to
knowledge and success. It is this sense of opportunity, and the entire
absence of snob privileges, which I liked best in these glimpses I
gained of young America....
I mentioned another institution which occupies a prominent place in
every American township. That is the picture-palace. It is impossible to
overrate the influence upon the minds and characters of the people
which is exercised by that house of assembly. It has become part of the
life of the American people more essentially than we know it in England,
though it has spread with a mushroom growth in English towns and
villages. But in the United States the picture-palace and "The Silent
Drama," as they call it, are more elaborately organized, and the motion
pictures are produced with an amount of energy, imagination, and wealth
which are far in excess of the similar efforts in England. A visit to
the "movies" is the afternoon or evening recreation of every class and
age of American citizenship. It is a democratic habit from which few
escape. Outside the picture-palace in a little town like Stamford one
sees a number of expensive motor-cars drawn up while the lady of leisure
gets her daily dose of "romance" and while her chauffeur, in the
gallery, watches scenes of high life with the cynical knowledge of a
looker-on. Nursemaids alleviate the boredom of domestic service by
taking their children to see the pictures for an hour or two, and small
boys and girls, with candy or chewing-gum to keep them quiet, puzzle out
the meaning of marvelous melodrama, wonder why lovers do such strange
things in their adventures on the way to marriage; and they watch with
curiosity and surprise the ghastly grimaces of "close-up" heroines in
contortions of amorous despair, and the heaving breasts, the rolling
eyes, and the sickly smiles of padded heroes, who are suffering,
temporarily, from thwarted affection. The history of the world is
ransacked for thrilling dramas, and an American audience watches all the
riotous splendor and licentiousness of Babylon or ancient Rome, while
Theda Bara, the Movie Queen, writhes in amorous ecstasy, or poisons
innumerable lovers, or stings herself to death with serpents. Royalists
and Roundheads, Pilgrim Fathers and New England witches, the French
Revolution and the American Civil War, are phases of history which
provide endless pictures of "soul-stirring interest"; but more popular
are domestic dramas of modern life, in which the luxury of our present
civilization, as it is imagined and exaggerated by the movie managers,
reveal to simple folk the wickedness of wealthy villains, the dangers of
innocent girlhood, and the appalling adventures of psychology into which
human nature is led when "love" takes possession of the heart. It is
impossible to say what effect all that has upon the mentality of
America. The utter falsity of it all, the treacly sentiment of the
"love" episodes, and the flaming vice of the vicious, would have a
perverting influence on public imagination if it were taken seriously.
But I suppose that the common sense of American people reacts against
the absurdity of these melodramas after yielding to the sensation of
them. Yet I met one lady who told me she goes every free afternoon to
one of these entertainments, with a deliberate choice of film-plays
depicting passion and caveman stuff "in order to get a thrill before
dinner to relieve the boredom of domesticity." That seems to me as bad
as the drug habit, and must in the long run sap the moral and spiritual
foundations of a woman's soul. Fortunately, there is a tendency now
among the "movie merchants" to employ good authors who will provide them
with simple and natural plots, and in any case there is always Charlie
Chaplin for laughter, and pictures of scenery and animal life, and the
news of the week depicting scenes of current history in all parts of the
world. It would be absurd as well as impossible to abolish the
film-picture as an influence in American life, and I dare say that,
balancing good with bad, the former tips the swing, because of an
immense source of relaxation and entertainment provided by the
picture-palace in small communities.