Hail, Columbia! Random Impressions of a Conservative English Radical
by . New York and London; Harper & Brothers. 1921. 12mo, xii + 243 pp. Illustrated. $2.50.
THIS is a most stimulating and suggestive book, and should be read by every intelligent American. Its epigrammatic vivacity and brilliancy are what we should expect from its author; but the interesting thing is that the brilliancy is used to illustrate, not to dazzle; to convey the writer’s profound concern with his subject, not to emphasize his own cleverness. Also, Mr. George is humble as well as brilliant. He appreciates that thousands of miles of country and millions of people cannot be perfectly studied in six months. But he has striven hard to see clearly and without prejudice, and he records in the main only what he sees. Moreover, when we complain of the superficial view of the traveling foreigner, we should remember that few Americans ever get the wide comparative impression of the country as a whole that such a foreigner gets.
Mr. George’s insight into the essential elements of the American character is remarkable. He goes to the heart of things right through the distracting and perplexing superficial symptoms. He does not confine his observation to hotels and highways, to parks and theatres. He seems to have frequented the average man and woman: to have talked with the worker and the idler; to have studied the farmer in the field, the shop-girl behind the counter, the club-woman in her home. His comments on the two great American concerns, politics and business, are acute and just. How admirable is his refutation of the common European gibe against American money-getting! ‘I have met many a hard American, but not one mean one; he is capable of fine gestures as he handles his wealth.'
As this shows, Mr. George’s observation is sympathetic as well as keen. Here he differs from Henry James, whom he resembles in acuteness and in brilliancy. James was horrified by American push and rush, dazzled by American glitter and glare. Mr. George likes them. ’I believe that there are in the world only two perfect constitutions,’he says; ’one is the Swiss; the other the American.’ And he calls the I nited States ‘ God’s own country.’ At moments one may even feel that he is too sympathetic.
Those who have read Mr. George’s profound and careful studies of women will lie especially interested in his analysis of the American variety of the sex. He has considered the American woman attentively and goes into an extended discussion of her merits and her weaknesses. He fully recognizes the charm of her face, her conversation, and her garments — what there is of them. But the more old-fashioned among us will be refreshed by his conclusion that she is not quite so modern or so new or so different as she thinks. Under all the innovations of intelligence and culture and free-thinking and free-living, he detects the same old daughter of Eve, with an astonishing resemblance to her primitive mother. Furthermore, contrary to the general opinion, he holds that man is really more important in American life than woman is. In this we believe he is right. Woman is the symptom, but man is the fact.
What is charming about Mr. George’s book is his hopefulness. He understands fully the vast complication of American conditions, the immense difficulty of producing an ordered and profitable civilization out of such a chaos of conflicting elements. But he looks at the bright side, believes in the richness and resourcefulness of the human spirit, and is confident that somehow, some day, money and machines and materialism, and even democratic politics, will work together for good. And in our hours of struggle and shadow, such optimism is replete with comfort.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD.