A PREMATURE
Bethlehem, U. S. A., November, 1917.
I have grown steadily to love the American people. English people I have met in this country have helped me so much. Contrasta!!
I went to Cambridge after life in New Zealand, where a spade is called a spade—and that's all about it; where, if you are strong enough, you knock a man down if he calls you a liar. At Cambridge, I discovered that no one had any desire to call anyone else a liar. Lying persons, and those who told unpleasant truths, were not on your list of acquaintances and as far as you were concerned they did not exist. "Napoo," as Tommy says.
But the people one did know and like, one studied and endeavoured to understand. One also tried to act accordingly so that even if they behaved in a peculiar fashion one avoided allowing them to even suspect disapproval.
So our older universities try valiantly to turn out, not necessarily educated persons, but persons who have a faint idea how to behave themselves when they are away from home. This does not mean merely the use of an elegant accent called here with a little amusement "English." It means that the fellow who takes a superior attitude towards anyone is merely a stupid bounder. It means also that the fellow who thinks himself, as a member of the British Nation, to be better or in any way superior to any other nation is a fool. He may be superior, of course, but the mere thought of this superiority entering his mind ruins him at once, and, as I said before, turns him into a bounder.
In other words, "Love your own country intensely and beyond all other countries, but for Heaven's sake don't let anyone suspect that you regard yourself as a good specimen of its human production." If, unfortunately, you discover, not only that you love yourself, but also that it is owing to you and your like that the British Empire is great, climb the Woolworth Building, not forgetting to pay your dime, and then drop gracefully from the highest pinnacle. You will save your nation and your countrymen much suffering and a good deal of embarrassment.
No one has ever given this advice before, I am quite sure: that probably accounts for the fact that Britishers do suffer and are embarrassed when they meet some of their fellow countrymen over here, for it is quite un-British to be a bounder, and it is quite un-Christian to be a snob. Which is a strange fact, but true nevertheless: yet, who would suspect it.
I used to think that an American was a hasty person, constantly talking about the finest thing on the earth, which he deemed everything American to be; that his wife was a competent, rather forward person, who delighted to show her liberty by upsetting our old notions of propriety. I have often heard people telling the story of the American lady who thought it funny to blow out some sacred light that had never been extinguished for centuries—and all that sort of thing. In fact, anything outrageous done in England or on the continent by a woman is at once put down to an American. We had some charming specimens of Britons on the continent in the days of peace.
And yet we sincerely like the American people. We don't mean to run them down really, but we assume a superior air that must be perfectly awful. I have been just as guilty. I remember feeling quite faint at St. John's College, Oxford, where they seemed to have the unpleasant habit of breakfasting in hall, when I heard two Rhodes' scholars talking. They were very friendly to the waiters, who hated it, and their accent disgusted me. They seemed isolated, too. At the moment, having lived for a year in America, I wonder how on earth one's attitude could have been such. Frankly, there seems no excuse: it is merely rude and unpardonable. Still, perfectly nice people have this attitude. I wish that we could change, because the effect over here is most regrettable. One would like the Americans to know us at our best, because we are not really an unpleasant people.