NORTH AND SOUTH [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] was
very interested reading Mr. Nicolson's note on the curious northnesses and southnesses which have evolved in every land, for this reason. Some years ago, lecturing in America, I spoke of this strange social climate which reproduces a geography that never was on sea or land. I held that in every country there is a hard-headed, businesslike north ; and, in balance, an easy-going, artistic south. That the east of a country is socially, and even physically, a simplified prolonga- tion of the north, and the west is always as southern as it can manage to be. I also held that no nation is stable until it has evolved these natural temperamental poles. (I foolishly thought that I was the only person who had spotted this oddity.) I continued, that every country I knew of had established itself upon a north and south line, with one exception, that the United States of America had departed, geographically and temperamentally, from the world-rule, and was organising itself along an eastern and western axis ; and that, consequently, the U.S.A. citizen must, in time, be psychically different from every other human being ; and be, indeed, foreign, and perhaps even incredible, to all the world. I hope Mr. Nicolson will comment on this addition to his riddle.—Yours faithfully, JAMES STEPHENS.
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