A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE current issue of Life contains an able article by Mr. Bruce Hutchison, a Canadian journalist, entitled " A Dangerous European Luxury: Hating America." Life comments editorially: " Mr. Hutchison give us some good advice on how to improve our relations with the Europeans. But, the best advice of all is implicit in [a recent leader in] the Spectator." It often seems to me that a contributory factor to anti-Americanism in this country is the readiness with which transient Americans indulge in it. One cannot blame them for speaking with disgust and horror of McCarthyism; but if they have been to Europe or to Asia, they seem morbidly reluctant to allow their country any credit for its many generous and well-intentioned undertakings in those countries. They are apt to concentrate instead on the blunders, extravagances or solecisms which they noticed their fellow-countrymen Committing; they seem incapable of seeing the wood for the fungi on the trees and the immense risks and responsibilities which America is willingly accepting in the cause of peace are obscured, for them, by the small errors and follies which a young nation, committed to great and unfamiliar enterprises, is- bound in the nature of things to commit. Whatever the origins of the complex which drives them so often to self- 'denigration (and however little we should like it if they took a consistently opposite line), I believe they provide more than they need, or should, of the ammunition with which both professional and amateur critics in this country maintain their boring and seldom very accurate bombardment of America.
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