AMERICAN SOUNDINGS I HAVE called these papers " Soundings " because
as I wrote them I felt as if I were dropping the lead into American shore waters. I do not pretend to plumb the depths of American psychology after my recent and delightful visit to the United States. Such " scurry " performances have become far too common and too dull. Yet I realize fully that I cannot keep pen from paper, so stimulating, so. exacting is the- Columbian air, and so full of a fatal fascination are the problems involved-in a study ' of the RepublieS future. These problems are of import to the whole world: This being so—and :who will deny it -who speaks -words Of-sobriety- and- truth ?—the - charac- teristics of the. Americans must be of vital interest to all who speak our noble tongue throughout the globe.
• There is, of course, no such person as the-average man in America or anywhere else. He is as much a fiction as were 'John Doe and Richard Roe-in the English, or Aegihius in -the Roman Law: -But that fact does not-make-him useless. If we construct him properly, this synthetic creature may be of the very greatest use in my dialectic.
The average- American, the man in Main Street, in the Elk Lodges, or in the Ku-Klux-Klaverns, is full of a kind of infantile froth and folly. He is absurdly given to ritual and to flag-waving, to shouting for an hour in chorus, " We want Blank for the Blanket State," to walking in dreary and perspiring processions with the pavement temperature at 100 Fahrenheit, to bellowing out " Me for Ma," or some such felicitous slogan, or to folloWing an - amateur braSs band through the mazes of a National Convention busy with the grave and significant act of nominating a Presi- dential candidate. Yet as often as not the patient and glorious average man is inexpressibly bored by these direful vagarieS, for I am sure he is no Babbitt in his heart. He merely:does what is expected of hiM, however disagreeable. If he is told that it is absolutely necessary to play the fool in order to nominate the man he wants nominated, he endures his ill-fortime with an acquiescence . which he dare not even make sonibre, lest 'he should be called disloyal—a creature unwilling to do proper homage to his State's " Favourite Son."
But, though worthy of a better fate in his Primaries, lttS Conventions, and his Press, the patient victim makei rib protest. He is, as I have said, by nature and-tradition in- finitely long-suffering. He consumes what is put before him and if he Can only get his mail deliVered to him In time and can catch his train or his trolley-ear you will never hear a word of complaint from his lips.
Since he does not take the trouble to free himself from his supposed. obligation .to be inordinately ". merry and bright," and to wallow in the muddy mixture of emo- tionalism, pseudo-patriotism, and pumped-up and con- ventional buffoonery supposed to be required by party or social esprit de corps, he must take the consequences. One of these is to be perpetually misunderstood and discon- sidered by foreign observers. The foreign observer actually believes that he is the Uncle Sam of the Press caricatures, and treats him as such. The results are apt to be strange and disconcerting. For example, the French Government, the French Press, and the French people were all infected by this idea when they sent. 4. Caillaux to WaShington to settle the Debt problem—the pseur donym by which we now describe an act of national in- solvency. They, no doubt, genuinely believed when the Delegation left Paris that all that was necessary was to " gentle " Uncle Sam—i.e., alternately dig him in the ribs and tell him heart-moving tales of destitution among. the heroic soldiers of Liz Belle France.
Foreigners, as Macaulay pointed out in a famous pas- sage, made a similar mistake in the case of the Puritans. Because of their wild and ridiculous exhibitions of religious - enthusiasm, because they awoke screaming from dreams of damnation, or thought they saw Demons and Saints in day visions, because they rolled on the ground in agonies of terror or " rode naked through the market-place," it was supposed on the Continent that it would be easy for sane, experienced and disciplined soldiers and politicians to meet the Puritans and defeat them in the field or in the Council Chamber !
-There could not have been a worse error of judgment. _" Those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the -hall of debate or in' the field of battle." " They -brought," continues Macaulay :in his analyiis of the -average Puritan, " to civil and military affairs coolnesS of judgment and immutability of. purpose." Once more, after sununing up their " uncouthness " and absurdity of behaviour in Many cases of human activity, he ends with a poignant apology; which I desire tOadoPt inthis context in the word and in the spirit: I find the average American as he found the average Puritan--,-" brave, wise and honest." He is a man " not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier."
We may smile at the parading of brass bands, the shouting in unison for hours, the waving of flags big and tiny till physical exhaustion perforce closes the incident ; but we have always known that in fact they meant little or nothing. We may think of our own gilded state coaches, palace rituals, bows and kneelings, ceremonial kissing of hands, wigs, civic uniforms, swords of office and Caps of Maintenance, and other " explosions of all the upholsteries," as Carlyle called them, as more sensible, or more seemly, or as in better taste. All the same, we haye never been so foolish or so blind as to pay undue attention to their transatlantic equivalents. Therefore we suffered from no delusions as to the use of flattery or emotional rhetoric when we sent our represen- tatives to Washington, not to talk about debts, but to pay them. Because at times statesmen, like Senator Borah, may have seemed to adopt exaggerated or undiplomatic language, we were not so insular as to expect them to be unwise or unsteady in Council.
There is another characteristic of the average American which requires discussion and inquiry before I analyse specific examples of the American Discontents, but it must be reserved for longer treatment than is possible at the end of an article. I want to discuss an " American trait " of special import—a national characteristic not the less important because it is quite as prevalent amongst average Britons as amongst average Americans.
J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
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