The Americans are hot stuff. They go in for cut-throat finance and lime-light lynchings, their swindles are beautiful, their fortunes colossal, and their corruption is picturesque. They have a wonderful country. It is theirs and not ours, and they are welcome to do as they like in it. They can never hurt us. Knowing this, the Englishman sleeps snugly of nights, and when he meets a “Yank” in London or on the Riviera or in Paris, he smiles to himself, professes to be tickled, tolerates him if there be occasion for it, grapples him to his bosom with hooks of steel if there is money in it, and parts from him pretty much in the mood of a man who has been inspecting a new motor car.
And, truth to tell, in the guileless, sight-seeing, rush-about American whom the Englishman encounters on his own midden, there does not appear to be anything which is either very outrageous or very formidable. All you see of him is a somewhat undersized, loosely built human biped, with a fat jowl, straight hair, a nobby suit, a little round white or brown felt hat—and a guide-book. Of course, there is also the smart swagger American, accompanied by a feminine entourage of peaches and dreams. But usually your man from Yankeeland has with him a plain, up-and-down, sad sort of woman who might have stepped out of Noah’s ark—and that is the end of it. When he engages you in conversation, which he commonly insists upon doing, he blows foolishly about his own Country, admits that yours “hez the bulge in antiques,” says that he is glad that he came over, and sticking out his finger in the direction of the woman, remarks: “This is Mrs. Sarah B. Gazabo, my wife.” The real “insides” of the man never strike you, partly because you are busy loathing his accent and admiring his ginger, and partly because he has left his vital concerns, his private essence and sheer Americanisms “way back to hum.” All Americans imported for us by Thos. Cook & Son and his imitators are of this order. For them England is a place in which to tread softly and speak low, or at any rate as low as possible. They visit us in the same spirit that a prize-fighter might visit a cemetery, and though the casual observer would scarcely suspect it, their intention is to be subdued, sober, decorous, and civil.
Eight times out of nine the American is a fine specimen of a manly man, but it is the ninth that is such a wonder. We, the obtuse and effete people of Great Britain, now and again wake up suddenly to the circumstance that we have been the victims of an American invasion. Such a ghastly conviction may at any moment overtake the best of us, for no class of society knows whose turn is likely to be next. There was an American invasion of the turf a year or two back, and English sport is sore and poor about it to this day. There have been sundry social invasions which those most directly concerned find it difficult to forget, and at the present moment we are in the thick of a theatrical invasion which is not doing us an appreciable amount of good. The fact of these invasions and of their always unpleasant consequences so far as the invaded are involved is, in my judgment, a fact of the most serious import to Englishmen.
I shall for a moment drop the American as he seems to be, and regard him as he actually is. What can one record of him that is to his credit? Imprimus: He has devoted three hundred years more or less to the frantic and bloodthirsty pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. Item: During those three hundred years more or less he has done absolutely nothing but pursue dollars. Item: He is still pursuing them. Item: But he makes the best husband in the world, and places woman in the high place to which she is so amply entitled. I will put so much to the credit side, though I make no doubt that there are people in the world who will find themselves unable to commend me for doing it.
Now for the obverse or discredit side. I shall ask you to note:
(1) That the Americans are the only nation who are ruled by a bureaucracy of millionaires and at the same time croon themselves into a state of vacuous coma to the touching strains of “vox populi, vox dei!”
(2) That they are the originators of the yelling yellow press, the pioneers of the New Humour and the apostles of the New Pathos.
(3) That they are the only civilised people who make a point of exporting the finest specimens of their womankind to foreign countries, included in a consignment of cold dollars calculated pro rata with the antiquity, decay and general worthlessness of the name which the former take in exchange.
(4) That having inherited, borrowed or stolen a beautiful language, they wilfully and of set purpose degrade, distort and misspell it apparently for the sole purpose of saving money in type-setting.
(5) That out of twenty-six Presidents of the United States, three have met death at the hands of the assassin.[1]