Americans

What’s the difference, between an American and a European really? There’s the rhythm of life of course but one can exaggerate this. It isn’t such a whirl as all that, not for the ordinary American and not outside New York. Still there is all the time the urge for action, as opposed to reflection. Quite a civilised American woman said to me, “I always feel guilty if I read a book during the day, when I ought to be doing something. At night, in bed, it’s different’’.

In Europe there are people who have lived in the same house and been in the same job for twenty, thirty, forty years, and who would hate to pull up their roots and change to something new. That’s not the American way of life. They love change, they call it “the spirit of adventure,’’ aspirit that they think is more characteristic of America than of Europe. There was a very interesting remark in a book by an English writer giving what he thought was a reason for this American characteristic. He wrote:

“We in England, and the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Russians, have all got one thing in common — we are descended from the men who stayed behind. In the States they are descended from the folk who moved away’’.

And so they still like to “move away’’, to change homes and jobs. They seem to be constantly pulling down old and often quite beautiful houses or throwing away things merely because they are old. They have none of the Englishman’s sentimental love for things because they are old.

One often hears of the Englishman’s “reserve’’; how he likes to “keep himself to himself’’; and how on a long railway journey, with four Englishmen in the carriage, often there won’t bea word spoken during the whole journey. That wouldn’t be the case in America. The Englishman thinks it is ill-mannered to ask personal questions. The American doesn’t feel that at all. In the short ride between the boat on which you arrived in New York and the hotel to which you are being driven, the taxi driver will have told you all about himself, his wife and family and probably the towns in England that he was in during the war. He will inquire where you have come from, what your job is, how you like America and how long you are staying in New York.

The Englishman prizes privacy, the American prefers sociability. The Englishman’s suburban house has its little garden with a hedge or a fence all round it to shut him off from his neighbours. —“The Englishman’s home is his castle’. The American houses have no_ hedges or fences separating them from the pavement or from each other. There are none of those little shut-off gardens; generally just a strip of grass with trees on it. The American in his home doesn’t object to being seen by everyone—he actually likes it. And inside the house, instead of the separate hall, livingroom, dining-room so typical of the English house, the American has the “open plan’’ house, just one large room where all the family activities (usually noisy) go on with, perhaps, a “dining recess’’ or a “kitchen-breakfast-room’’.

“But,’’ I said to a young man | know here, “don’t you sometimes want privacy to be by yourself?’’ “If 1 want privacy,’’ said he, “I go to bed’’.

With this sociability goes overwhelming hospitality. You get {aken to parties at the houses of your friends and of your friends’ friends; you are invited to theatres, dinners, sports meetings, motor trips; from the first minute you are on “first name’’ terms with the people you meet; they all show the keenest interest in your affairs and ask you to let them know if they can help you.

“Yes,’’ said a somewhat cynical young American to me, “and by the following week they have forgotten all about you. They like new things — and they get rid of their friends as they do of their cars. No one strikes up acquaintance sooner than we do, and nobody finds it harder to make a real friendship.’’

Many Americans are terribly impressed with mere size; to them “bigger’’ and “better’’ seem to mean the same thing. The Cathedral* in New York is the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world; the finger of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour is eight feet long and forty people can: stand inside its head; the Rockefeller Centre* cost 100 million dollars to build, has 13,000 telephones, and its hanging gardens are four times the size of tl.e famous hanging gardens of Babylon one of the Seven Wonders oi the ancient world; Macy’s (the famous department store) employs 11,000 shop-assistants and sells a million dollars’ worth of goods every day; and if all the people in the sky-scrapers came out at once, the streets couldn’t hold them. As for their newspapers there is no doubt at all that, for the number of pages, they certainly take the prize, the daily edition of a newspaper has anything from 60 to 100 pages, and the Sunday editions remind you in size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

However, American society must not be regarded as all of one piece. Chicago is decades away from Boston, the Middle West — a dilferent country from New England, the South from both, California — the West generally —a world away from all. No one who knows America even a little would make the mistake of thinking Americans all alike. In New York If there is a dirtier city in the world than New York, we have yet to see it. If there is a city in the world which could usefully employ many thousands of men for many months on rebuilding and repairing its streets and avenues