CHAPTER V
The American Attitude Towards Women
The Isolation of the United States—American Ignorance of the World—Sensitiveness to Criticism—Exaggeration of their Own Virtues—The Myth of American Chivalrousness—Whence it Originated—The Climatic Myth—International Marriages—English Manners and American—The View of Womanhood in Youth—Co-education of the Sexes—Conjugal Morality—The Artistic Sense in American Women—Two Stenographers—An Incident of Camp-Life—"Molly-be-damned"—A Nice Way of Travelling—How do they do it?—Women in Public Life—The Conditions which Co-operate—The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again.
It will be roughly true to say that the Englishman's misunderstanding of America is generally the result of misinformation—of "parsnips"—of having had reported to him things which are superficial and untrue; whereas the American's misunderstanding of England is chiefly the result of his absorption in his own affairs and lack of a standard of comparison. The Americans as a people have been until recently, and still are in only a moderately less degree, peculiarly ignorant of other peoples and of the ways of the world.
This has been unfortunate, so far as their judgment of England is concerned, in two ways,—first, as has already been said, because they have had no opportunity of measuring Great Britain against other nations, so that one and all are equally foreign, and second and more positively, in the general misconception in the American mind as to the character and aims of the British Empire and the temper of British rule. From the same authorities, the popular histories and school manuals, as supplied the American people for so long with their ideas of the conduct of the British troops in the Revolutionary War, they also learned of India and the British; and the one fact which every American, twenty years ago, knew about British India was that the English blew Sepoys from the mouths of cannon. Every American youth saw in his school history a picture of the thing being done. It helped to point the moral of British brutalities in the War of Independence and it was beaten into the plastic young minds until an impression was made which was never effaced. Of late years not a few Americans have arisen to tell the people something of the truth about British rule in India—of its uprightness, its beneficence, its tolerance,—but it will be a generation yet before the people as a whole has any approximate conception of the facts.
It was in no way to the discredit of the American people—and enormously to their advantage—that they were for so long ignorant of the world. How should they have been otherwise when separated from that world by three thousand miles of ocean? They had, moreover, in the problems connected with the establishment of their own government, and the expansion of that government across the continent, enough to occupy their thoughts and energies. For a century the people lived self-concentrated, introspective, their minds filled only with thoughts of themselves. If foreign affairs were discussed at all it was in curiously childlike and impracticable terms. The nation grew up a nation of provincials (there is no other word for it), with a provincialism which was somewhat modified, but still provincial, in the cities of the Atlantic coast, and which, after all, had a dignity of its own from the mere fact that it was continent-wide.
The Spanish-American War brought the people suddenly into contact with the things of Europe and widened their horizon. The war itself was only an accident; for the growth of American commerce, the increase of wealth, the uncontainable expansive force of their industrial energy, must have compelled a departure from the old isolation under any circumstances. The quarrel with Spain did but furnish, as it were, a definite taking-off place for the leap which had to be made.[113:1] Since then, foreign politics and foreign affairs have acquired a new interest for Americans. They are no longer topics entirely alien from their every-day life and thoughts. It would still be absurd to pretend that the affairs of Europe (or for that matter of Asia) have anything like the interest for Americans that they have for Europeans, or that the educated American is not as a rule still seriously uninformed on many matters (all except the bare bones of facts and dates) of geography, of ethnology, of world-politics which are elementary matters to the Englishman of corresponding education;[113:2] but with their début as a World-Power—above all with the acquisition of their colonial dependencies—Americans have become (I use the phrase in all courtesy) immensely more intelligent in their outlook on the affairs of the world. With a longer experience of the difficulties of colonial government, they will also come to appreciate more nearly at its true value the work which Great Britain has done for humanity.
Americans may retort that their knowledge of Europe was at least no scantier than the Englishman's knowledge of America, and the mistakes of travelling Englishmen in regard to the size, the character, and the constitution of the country have been a fruitful source of American witticism. But why should Englishmen know anything of the United States? The affairs of the United States were, after all, however big, the affairs of the United States and not of any other part of the rest of the world; while the affairs of Europe were the affairs of all the world outside of the United States. Undoubtedly the American could fairly offset the Englishman's ignorance of America against the American's ignorance of England; but what has never failed to strike an Englishman is the American's ignorance of other parts of the world, which might be regarded as common to both. They were not common to both; for, as has been said, since the beginning of her history, which has stretched over some centuries, England has been constantly mixed up with the affairs, not only of Europe, but of the remoter parts of the earth, while the United States for the single century of her history has lived insulated and almost solely intent on her own affairs. So though the American has no adequate retort against the Englishman for his ignorance, he need not defend it. It has been an accident of his geographical situation and needs no more apology than the Rocky Mountains. But, like the Rocky Mountains, it is a fact which has had a distinct influence on his character. It is probably unavoidable that a people—as an individual—which lives a segregated life, with its thoughts turned almost wholly on itself, should come to exaggerate, perhaps its own weaknesses, but certainly its virtues.
