face; while the foreigner, if he is not blinded by patriotic conceit, has the definite advantage of comparison, which is the starting-point of investigation, which leads the inquiring mind to ask whether that which is new and strange may not be better than that which is old and familiar, and makes it necessary to try to ascertain what has brought about the change and the result it has produced. The foreigner has the advantage of detachment and is uninfluenced by prejudices which are accounted national virtues; he is frequently more discriminating but not less just than the native. And yet so profoundly am I impressed with the truism that almost no one understands any one else, and very seldom even himself, and so difficult is it to appreciate the motives and actions of our fellow beings, that one's feeling of confidence is shaken when he attempts the almost stupendous task of interpreting national psychology. Realizing this, I am very well aware that the point of view of the alien can never be that of the native, and that some of the conclusions reached in the following pages will be challenged. If so, they may be attributed to the impossibility of that mysterious barrier that nationality raises ever being quite leveled. It may be over

1 This may appear to conflict with the views expressed in later pages on the absorption of the foreigner, the immigrant, into the American, but it does not. There is a difference between the immigrant who comes to America with the definite purpose to become an American and who divests himself of his nationality as he does his strange clothes the more quickly to adjust himself to his new life, and the foreigner, who while he may make his home in America, and perhaps contributes a little to its development and progress,

thrown by long years of residence, by constant and intimate association, by marriage and new family ties; but here and there a little of that barrier will be left, like an old walled city whose defenses have long crumbled, but where a tower still stands to remind the visitor that there were walls to be beaten down before the stranger could enter the gates.

Unless a writer is content merely to wander aimlessly in the beaten track and is satisfied so successfully to conceal his convictions that by pleasing everybody he satisfies nobody, he is forced at times to disagree with the conclusions reached by other authors and to view actions from his own experience. The rule imposed upon himself by Bodley1 has been observed by me never to make a harsh criticism unless my own impression was corroborated by the published opinion of a respected and impartial American authority. A regard for the feelings of others should make a foreigner sparing in his judgment. I do not concede that all disapprobation must necessarily be avoided, or that a useful purpose is served by profuse and indiscriminate praise, which is a sure and ready means of gaining an ephemeral popularity; neither is captious faultfinding to be indulged in simply to magnify one people or civilization at the expense of another; but still retains his nationality and is always conscious that he is, say an Englishman instead of an English-American; and who while making no claim to being an American has not been influenced by Americanism. It is the foreigner, sharply to distinguish him from the American of foreign stock, to whom my remarks on the foreign point of view apply.

1 Bodley: France, vol. i, p. 50.

a judicious discussion of national characteristics is not only valuable but essential if the evidence is sufficient to lead to a positive conclusion. No foreigner has more harshly criticised the Americans than the Americans have so often criticised themselves; much of which, I believe, is unwarranted. It is the idealism of the Americans that makes them such searching self-critics. Buried deep in the nature of every child of this race is an intense spiritual aspiration, overlaid, it is true, by the material, but against which the spiritual ever struggles. It is this idealism, this longing to triumph over the material, that is perpetually voiced in self-reproach, that breaks out in revolt against the sordidness of politics and the commercialism of life; it is this which makes the American criticise himself at times so fiercely, that makes him so quick to resent the criticism that comes from without; and that the American is extremely sensitive to foreign criticism cannot be denied. But this is not the place to elaborate the theme; later it will be discussed in its wider relation to the American character.

If I repeat that this work is the result of nine years' conscientious study and preparation, it is not to ask the indulgence of the reader for any deficiencies which the text may reveal,— and that it falls short of what such a book ought to be no one more keenly appreciates than myself,— but it is my protest against what I may, I hope with moderation, call the impertinence of the literary journalist, who

approaches a serious task lightly, and without regard for his responsibilities turns out the stock book on America; who, after a week in New York or Boston and a couple of days in Washington and a day in Chicago, poses as an authority and considers himself qualified to instruct his own people on a subject of which he is totally ignorant, and frequently unsuited by temperament and training. Would it be making undignified a serious subject to suggest that in this day of frequent international conference and congresses it should be regarded as a violation of international comity for a person to write a book on a foreign country, its people or its customs, who has not given proof of the proper qualifications for the task?

CHAPTER II

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A NEW RACE

I PURPOSE to write of the origin, growth, and development of the American people and to trace the causes that have produced a new race. From the feeble seed thrown by destiny on a rock-bound shore there has sprung a mighty race and a civilization the marvel of the world; a new system of political philosophy that made man conscious of the dignity of his birthright. The causes that have produced the American race and American civilization lie buried in no obscurity. No lava of a culture long dead must be cleared away before the truth stands revealed. On the palimpsest of a virgin continent, on verdure-clad mountains, in primeval forests, on the trackless waste of inland oceans, and rivers so vast that they gave to man a new conception of the might of nature, the American people have written in enduring language the record of a race.

Just as the story of the struggle and intellectual progress and spiritual development of a man is of vastly more interest than the record of his possessions and material success, so the history of the mental growth of a people is tenfold more vital and enthralling than the chronicle of their wars and conquests. With wars, with battles, with the rise and fall