III FROM A SPEECH AT THE LOTUS CLUB, NEW YORK

I wonder whether you in America can realise what an entrancing voyage of discovery you represent to us primeval Anglo-Britons. I prefer that term to Anglo-Saxon, for even if we English glory in the thought that our seaborne ancestors were extremely bloodthirsty, we have no evidence that they brought their own women to Britain in any quantities, or had the power of reproducing themselves without aid from the other sex!

Can you, I say, realise how much more enticing to my English mind America is, than the Arabian Nights were to your fascinating fabulist, O. Henry? One longs to unriddle to oneself the significance and sense of America. In the English-speaking world to-day we need understanding of each others’ natures, aims, sympathies, and dislikes. For without understanding we become doctrinaire and partizan, building our ship in compartments very watertight, and getting into them and shutting the doors when the ship threatens to go down.

We English have a reputation for self-sufficiency. But speaking for myself, who find no name that is not English in my genealogy, I never can get up quite the interest in my own race that I can in others. We English are so set and made, you Americans are yet in the making. We at most experience modification of type; you are in process of creating one. I have often asked Americans: What is now the American type? and have been answered by—a smile. When I go back home my countrymen will ask me the same question. I would I could sit down and listen to you telling me what it is.

It will not have escaped you, at all events, that for four years the various branches of the English-speaking peoples have been credited with all the virtues—a love of liberty, humanity, and justice has, as it were, been patented for them on both sides of the Atlantic, and under the Southern Cross, till one has come to listen with a sort of fascinated terror for those three words to tinkle from the tongue. I am prepared to sacrifice a measure of the truth sooner than pronounce them to-night. Let me rather speak of those lower qualities which I think we English-speaking peoples possess in a conspicuous degree: Commonsense and Energy. From those vulgar attributes, I am sure, the historian of the far future will say that the English-speaking era has germinated; and that by those vulgar attributes it will flourish. Deep in the American spirit and in the English spirit is a curious intense realism—sometimes very highly camouflaged by hot air—an instinct for putting the finger on the button of life, and pressing it there till the bell rings. We are so extraordinarily successful that we may expect the historian of the far future to write: ‘The English-speaking races were so rapid in their subjugation of the forces of Nature, so prodigal of inventions, so eager in their use of them, so extremely practical, and altogether so successful, that the only thing they missed was—happiness.’

When I read of some great new American invention, or of a Lord Leverhulme converting an island of Lewis into a commercial Paradise, I confess to trembling. Gentlemen, it is a melancholy fact that the complete man does not live by invention and trade alone. At the risk of being laughed out of Paradise, I dare put in a plea for Beauty. Both our peoples, indeed, are so severely practical that I do feel we run the risk of getting machine-made, and coming actually to look down on those who give themselves to anything so unpractical as the love of Beauty. Now, I venture to think that the spirit of the old builders of Seville cathedral: ‘Let us make us a church such as the world has never seen before!’ ought to inspire us in these days too. ‘But it does, my dear Sir.’ I shall be answered: ‘We make flying machines, and iron foundries, Palace hotels, stock-yards, self-playing pianos, film pictures, cocktails, and ladies’ hats, such as the world has never seen before. A fig for the Giralda, the Sphynx, Shakespeare, and Michael Angelo! They did not elevate the lot of man. We are for invention, industry, and trade.’ Far be it from me to run down any of those things, so excellent in moderation; but since I solemnly aver that man’s greatest quality is the sense of proportion, I feel that if he neglects Beauty (which is but proportion elegantly cooked)—the ‘result of perfect economy’ Emerson had it—he sags backwards, no matter how inventive and commercially successful he may be.

But this is to become grave, which is detestable, even in a country which has just been taking its ticket for the Garden of Eden.

I believe I shall yet see (unless I perish of public speaking) America taking the long cut to Beauty—for there are no short cuts to Her, no cheap nostrums by which she can be conjured from the blue. Beauty and Simplicity are the natural antidotes to the feverish industrialism of our age. If only America will begin to take them freely she has it in her power to re-inspire in us older peoples, just now rather breathless and exhausted, the belief in Beauty, and a new fervour for the creation of fine and rare things. If on the other hand America turns Beauty down as a dangerous ‘bit of fluff’ and Simplicity as an impecunious alien, we over there, one behind the other, will sink into a soup of utilitarianism so thick that we may never get out.

Gentlemen, I long to see established between the English-speaking peoples a fellowship, not only in matters political and commercial, important as these are, but in philosophy and art. For after all those laughing-stocks, philosophy and art—the beautiful expression of our highest thoughts and fancies—are the lanterns of a nation’s life, and we ought to hang them in each others’ houses.