[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—As an American, I
must protest against the stilted effusion of " Americanus " in your issue of July 14th. " Americanus " declares that he desires to " make, passes ".
with his small brush over " his own doorstep." Granting that his brush is his own and his doorstep his own, why does he proceed to neglect his own doorstep and wash " dirty linen " in public ? Prohibition and its effects in America are largely an American affair, and I feel sure that all good Americans are anxious to keep our Prohibition scandals at home. " Americanus " has merely added to the mass of misrepresentation concerning Prohibition with which London has been flooded. T_Tpon hearsay evidence " Americanus " has, for the edification of an English reading public, debauched the fair name of American womanhood. He has cited an unnamed physician in an unnamed town in making charges of gross immorality amongst American High School girls. It seems to me, if he respects the womanhood of his own country, he should substantiate these loose charges with sworn evidence. Similar charges have been made in the sensational Press of America and speedily disproved.
I fear that " Americanus " has fallen prey to a malady which afflicts too many Americans in England—in the presence of titles and noble blood they fall before an inferiority complex and forget the democratic principles of their own country and are ready to turn on the country of their birth.
If " Americanus " will descend out of the clouds of Oxford or Cambridge, whichever it may be, and read again what he has written, I am sure that he will feel ashamed of having contributed so loose an attack upon America to an English periodical. It can serve no good purpose, despite his inane and unconnected references to world biology and world psychology—whatever they may be.
Since " Americanus " failed to write under his own name he did not perpetrate his contribution for notoriety. I sincerely trust that he did not contribute for a fee. If we of America have " dirty linen " let us cleanse it quietly in the secrecy of our own backyard, and certainly let us uphold the name of the womanhood which gave us birth, at least until that • vomanhood is convicted in open court.—I am, Sir, &e.,
PENNSYLVANIA.
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