XXV
In the spring of 1919, while the Peace Conference was sitting in Paris, I made my first visit to the United States, and lectured in many American cities. I went there again in 1920 and 1921, and on the third visit traveled from New York to San Francisco.
I regard these American visits as the greatest experience of my life, apart from the War, and they added enormously to the knowledge of world forces and the human problem which I had been studying among the peoples of Europe. I was, and still remain, convinced that the United States will shape, for good or ill—and I believe for good—the future destiny of the world, for these people, in the mass, have a dynamic energy, a clear-cut quality of character, and a power not only of material wealth, but of practical idealism, from which an enormous impetus may be given to human progress, in the direction of the common well-being, international peace, liberty, decency, and average prosperity of individual life.
During those three visits, when I talked with innumerable men and women of great intelligence and honesty of thought, I was “made wise,” as they call it, to many of the darker aspects of American life. I was not unconscious of a strong strain of intolerance; a dangerous gulf between the very rich and—not the very poor, there are few of those—but well-paid, speeded-up, ugly-living, dissatisfied labor; something rather hysterical in mass emotion when worked up by the wire-pullers and the spellbinders; and the noisy, blatant, loud-mouthed boasting vulgarity of the mob. I saw the unloveliness of “Main Street,” I met “Babbitt” in his club, parlor car, and private house. But though I did not shut my eyes to all that, and much more than that—a good deal of it belongs to civilization as well as to the United States—I saw also the qualities that outweigh these defects, and, in my judgment, contain a great hope for the world. I met, everywhere, numbers of men and women who have what seems to me a clean, sane, level-headed outlook on life and its problems. They believe in peace, in a good chance for the individual, in a decent standard of life for all people, in honesty and truth. They are impatient of dirt, however picturesque, of ruin, however romantic, of hampering tradition, however ancient. They are, in the mass, common-sense, practical, and good-natured folk, who, in the business of life, cut formalities and get down to the job.
But behind all that common sense and their practicality, they are deeply sentimental, simply and sincerely emotional, quick to respond to any call upon their pity or their charity, and when stirred that way, enormously generous. I agree with General Swinton, the inventor of the “Tanks” who, after a tour in the United States, told me, with a touch of exaggeration, that he thought the Americans, as a nation, were the only idealists left in the world. Europe is cynical, remembering too much history, and suffering too much disillusionment. The United States, looking always to the future, and not much backward to the past, is hopeful, confident of human progress, and strangely and wonderfully eager to find a philosopher’s stone of human happiness, for which we, in Europe, have almost abandoned search.
I think that, as a people, they are more ready than any other to do some great work of rescue for humanity (I have told how they fed ten million people a day in Russia), and to adopt and carry out an ideal on behalf of humanity in the way of peace and reconstruction, at some personal sacrifice to themselves. That is possible at least in the United States, and it may almost be said that it is impossible in any other nation.
As a personal experience, my first visit to the United States was exciting and rather overwhelming, in an extremely pleasant way, except for my extreme nervousness. For the first time in my life I was made to believe (except for secret doubts and a sense of humor) that I was a person of some importance. By good fortune, of which I was not aware until my arrival in New York, I had gained the good opinion, and almost personal popularity, of an immense American public from coast to coast. I do not minimize the pleasure of that, the real joy of it, for there is no reward in the world so good to a man who for years has been an obscure writer, as to realize at last that his words have been read and remembered, with emotion, by millions of fellow mortals, almost by a whole nation—and this had happened to me. It happened by the great luck that since the entry of the United States into the War my daily dispatches from the Western front had been published in The New York Times, and a syndicate of newspapers covering the whole country. Day after day during those years of enormous history, I appeared with the grape fruit and the cereal at millions of American breakfast tables, and because of the things I had to tell, and perhaps, a little, the way in which I told them (I tried to give the picture and the pity of the things I saw), I got home to the bosom and business (to use Francis Bacon’s words) of the American merchant, lawyer, and city man, to the lady whom he provides with a Packard or a Ford (according to his rung on the social ladder) and to the bright young thing who is beginning to take an interest in the drama of life outside her dancing school or her college rooms. My articles were read on lonely farms, in tenement houses, by Irish servant girls, Slav foundry workers, German metal workers, clerks and telephone girls, as well as by all manner of folk in Fifth Avenue, Riverside Drive, and the Main Street of many towns. I am not making a boast of that, for if I had written like an archangel instead of like a war correspondent (there’s a difference), I should not have secured those readers unless The New York Times and its syndicate had stepped in where angels fear to tread—in Chicago, and other American cities. But it was my luck, and, as I say, pleasant and encouraging.
People wanted to see the fellow whose name had become familiar to them over the breakfast table. They wanted to see what manner of man he was (and some were disappointed); they wanted to know if he could speak as he wrote (and presently they knew he didn’t); they wanted to pay back by hospitality, by booking seats for the theaters, by friendly words afterward, for some of the things he had written at a time when they had wanted to know.
One of the first little thrills I had was when I stood at the desk of the Vanderbilt hotel, ten minutes after getting away from the dockside, where scores of telegrams were waiting for me, inviting me to speak at all sorts of places with strange and alarming names, and having picked up the receiver in answer to the urgent calls, heard the voice of a telephone girl saying, “Welcome to our city, Philip Gibbs!... and here’s another call for you.” I have always remembered that little human message from the girl at the switchboard.
I was still a journalist, though about to become a lecturer, and The New York Times desired me to write a series of articles recording—rapidly!—my first impressions of New York. It still seems to me a miracle that I was able to do so, for I was caught up by the social life of New York like a straw in a whirlpool, and my head was dazed by the immensity of the city, by its noise, its light, its rush of traffic, its overheated rooms, its newspaper reporters, its camera men, and, when I staggered to my bedroom for a moment’s respite, by the incessant tinkle of the telephone which rang me up from scores of addresses in New York city, from Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, the Lord knows where.
I wrote those articles, blindly, subconsciously, like a man in a nightmare, and they came out rather like that, with a sort of wild impressionism of confused scenes, which seemed to please the American people.
They were vastly amused, I was told, by one phrase which came from my nerve ganglia all quivering with the first walk through Broadway at night. I confessed that I felt “like a trench cootie under the fire of ten thousand guns.” Now a cootie is a louse, as I had lately learnt, and that simile tickled my readers to death, as some of them said, though it expressed in utter truthfulness the terror of my sensation as a traffic dodger down the Great White Way.
But that terror was easily surpassed when I faced for the first time an audience in the Carnegie Hall. As I drove up with my brother, and saw hundreds of motor cars setting down people in evening dress who had come to have a look at me (and paid good money for it), with the odd chance of hearing something worth while—poor dears!—I was cold with fright. My fear increased until I was stiff with it when, having shaken hands with my brother and received his hearty pat on the shoulder, like a man about to go over the top with the odds against him, I went through a little door and found myself on a large stage, facing a great audience. I was conscious of innumerable faces, white shirt fronts, and eyes—eyes—eyes, staring at me from the great arena of stalls, and from all the galleries up to the roof. As I made my bow, my tongue clave, literally, to the roof of my mouth, my knees weakened, and I felt (as some one afterward told me I looked) as cheap as two cents.
What frightened me excessively was a sudden movement like a tidal wave among all those people. They stood up, and I became aware that they were paying me a very great honor, but the physical effect of that movement was, for a moment, as though they were all advancing on me, possibly with intent to kill!
My chairman was my good and great comrade, Frederick Palmer, the American war correspondent. I am told he made a fine introductory speech, but I did not hear a word of it, and was only wondering with a sinking heart whether I should get through my first few sentences before I broke down utterly. It was a fearful thought, to make a public fool of myself like that!...
I had one thing in my favor—a strong, far-reaching voice, and I had been told to pitch it to the center of the top gallery. I know they heard. A young foreigner I know—not an American—a most friendly and candid soul, told me that he had heard every word, and wished he hadn’t. Attracted by the title of a book of mine, “The Soul of the War,” he had bought four tickets for himself and friends, believing that at last he would hear the inner meaning of the war and its madness, in which he had found no kind of sense. But when he heard my straightforward narrative of what the British Armies had done, he sighed deeply, and said, “Sold again!” and tried to sleep. My loud, clear-cut sentences hammered into his brain, and would not allow him even that consolation.
That first audience in the Carnegie Hall was immensely kind, extraordinarily generous and long-suffering. They applauded my stories of British heroism as though it had been their own heroes, laughed at my attempts to tell Cockney anecdotes, and did not let me know once that I was boring them excessively. Some spirit of friendship and good will reached up to me and gave me courage. Only once did they laugh in the wrong place, and then they couldn’t help themselves. It was when for the sixth time or more I glanced at my wrist watch and then in a sudden panic that it had stopped and that I had spoken an hour too long, put it to my ear!
The way off the platform was more difficult than the way on. I had come through one little door, but there were six of them exactly the same. At the conclusion of my speech, I bowed, walked rapidly to one of the doors, and found it would not budge! I returned again and bowed to the audience before trying another door. No, by heaven it wouldn’t open! Again I returned and bowed, and made another shot for a swing door. At the fourth try I went through.... That experience of doors that wouldn’t open became a nightmare of mine in American sleeping cars when I suffocated from overheated pipes.
I have lectured a hundred times since then, made large numbers of speeches (sometimes as many as five a day) in American cities, faced every kind of audience from New York to San Francisco and across the Canadian border, in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and never conquered my nervousness, so that, if I am called upon for a speech at a public dinner in England, now, I suffer all the pangs of stage fright until I am well under way. But at least my experiences in the United States helped me to hide behind a calm and tranquil mask, and not to give myself away so utterly as that first time in Carnegie Hall.
It was on my second visit, and at my opening lecture in the same great hall, that I obtained—by accident—the most wonderful ovation which will ever come to me in this life. It was my night out, as it were, most memorable, most astonishing, most glorious. For it is a glorious sensation, whatever the cynic may say, to be lifted up on waves of enthusiasm, to have a great audience of intelligent people cheering one wildly, as though one’s words were magic.
It was none of my doing. My words were poor commonplace stuff, but I stood for something which the finest audience in New York liked with all their hearts that night—England, liberty, fair play—and against something which that audience hated, disloyalty to the United States, discourtesy to England, foul play.
It was the Sinn Feiners who did it. A friend of Ireland, and advocate of Dominion Home Rule, I was one of the last men they should have attacked. But because I was an Englishman who dared to lecture before an American audience, they were determined to wreck my meeting, and make a savage demonstration. I was utterly unaware of this plot. I was not speaking on the subject of Ireland. I was talking about Austria, and was trying to tell an anecdote about an Austrian doctor—I never told it!—when from the middle gallery of the Carnegie Hall which was densely packed from floor to ceiling, there came a hoarse question in a stentorian voice with an Irish accent: “Why don’t you take the marbles out of your mouth?” Rather staggered, and believing this to be a criticism of my vocal delivery and “English accent,” I raised my voice, but it was instantly overwhelmed by an uproar of shouts, catcalls, whistlings, derisive laughter, abuse, and a wild wailing of women’s voices rising to a shriek.
For a few moments I could not guess what all the trouble was about. I stood there, alone and motionless, on the platform, suddenly divorced from the audience, which I watched with a sense of profound curiosity. All sorts of strange things were happening. Men were going at each other with fists in the gallery, where there was a seething tumult. In the stalls I was aware of a very fat man in evening dress wedged tightly in his seat and bawling out something from an apoplectic face. Two other men tried to pull him out of his chair. In scattered groups in the stalls were ladies who seemed to be screaming at me. Other ladies seemed to be arguing with them, hushing them down. One lady struck another over the head with a fan. People were darting about the floor or watching the scrimmage up above. From the front row of the stalls friendly faces were staring up at me and giving me good counsel which I could not hear.
Over and over again I tried to speak above the tumult. I carried on about that Austrian doctor, and then abandoned him for another line of thought. I stuck it out for something like half an hour before there was comparative silence—the police had come in and dragged out the most turbulent demonstrators—and then I continued my speech, interrupted frequently, but not overwhelmed. Everything I said was applauded tremendously. Some reference I made to England’s place in the world brought the audience to its feet, cheering and cheering, waving handkerchiefs and fans, and when I finished, there was a surge up to the platform, and thousands of hands grasped mine, and generous, excited, splendid things were said which set my heart on fire.
As I have said, it was not my doing, and it was not any eloquence of mine which stirred this enthusiasm. But that audience rose up to me because they were passionate to show how utterly they repudiated the things that had been said against England, how fiercely angry they were that a friendly visitor to the United States should be howled down like this in the heart of New York. Again it was my luck, and I was glad of it.
It was not the last time I had to face hostile groups. I decided to give a lecture on the Irish situation in which I would tell the straight truth, fair to Ireland, fair to England. The Sinn Feiners rallied up again. The fairer I was to Ireland, the madder they became, while the other part of the audience cheered and cheered. In the midst of the commotion, a tall black figure jumped on to the platform. “Hullo!” I thought. “Here I die!” But it was a Catholic priest, Father Duffy, a famous chaplain of the American Army, who announced himself as an Irish Republican, but pleaded that I should have a fair hearing. They just howled at him. However, by patience and endurance I broke through the storm and said most of what I wanted to say.
The next morning I was rung up on the telephone by an emotional lady. She had a great scheme, for which she desired my approval and collaboration. She had arranged to raise a bodyguard of stalwart society girls who would march to the hall with me, on the evening of my next lecture, and in heroic combat put to flight the Irish girls who were to parade with banners and insulting placards.... I utterly refused to approve of the suggestion.
My lecture agent, Mr. Lee Keedick, enjoyed those “Sinn Fein tea parties,” as they were called, with such enormous gusto, that there were some friendly souls who suggested that he had incited them for publicity purposes! But he missed the best, or the worst. In Chicago, on St. Patrick’s Eve, I was three-quarters of an hour before I could utter a single sentence. It was what the press called next morning a “near riot” and there were some Irish-American soldiers there, in uniform, who fought like tigers before they were ejected by the police.
For the first time in my life I had a police bodyguard wherever I went in Chicago. Two detectives insisted on driving in my taxicab, and they were both Irishmen, but, as one explained in a friendly manner, “It’s not your life we’re troubling about, Boss. It’s our reputation!”
Boston, from Mr. Keedick’s point of view, was a disappointment. A great row was expected there, being the stronghold of the Sinn Fein cause, and when I appeared, behind the stage, there was a large force of police stripped for action. The police inspector came to my dressing room, and demanded permission to precede me on the stage and announce to the audience that if there was any demonstration he would put his men on to them. I refused to give that permission. It seemed to me the wrong kind of introduction for an Englishman to an American audience. As a matter of fact, they behaved like lambs, in the best tradition of Boston, and I was quite disconcerted by their silence, having become used to the other kind of thing which I found exhilarating.
Stranger things happen to an English lecturer in the United States than in any other country. At least they happened to me. I shall never forget, for instance, how in the middle of a speech to the City Club of New York, I was thrust into a taxicab, hurried off to the 44th Street theater, received with a tremendous explosion (a flashlight photo!) in the dressing room of Al Jolson, the funny man, thrust into the middle of a harem scene (scores of beautiful maidens) and told to make a speech on behalf of wounded soldiers while the audience raffled for an original letter from Lloyd George to the American nation.
Surprised by my rapid transmigration from the City Club, and by my presence in an Oriental harem, very hot, rather flustered, and not knowing what to do with my hands, I kept screwing up a bit of paper which had been given to me at the wings, and by the time I had finished my three-minutes’ speech it was a bit of wet, mushy pulp. When I left the stage, a white-faced man in the wings who had been making frantic signs to me, informed me coldly that I had utterly destroyed Lloyd George’s letter to the American nation which had just been raffled for many hundreds of dollars.... After that I went back to finish my speech at the City Club.