I SAW IN AMERICA
BY G. K. CHESTERTON



WHAT I SAW IN AMERICA

BY

G. K. CHESTERTON

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LIMITED LONDON

MCMXXII

Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD. at the Edinburgh
University Press




_Contents_

PAGE

WHAT IS AMERICA? 1

A MEDITATION IN A NEW YORK HOTEL 19

A MEDITATION IN BROADWAY 33

IRISH AND OTHER INTERVIEWERS 47

SOME AMERICAN CITIES 63

IN THE AMERICAN COUNTRY 80

THE AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN 97

PRESIDENTS AND PROBLEMS 121

PROHIBITION IN FACT AND FANCY 145

FADS AND PUBLIC OPINION 163

THE EXTRAORDINARY AMERICAN 182

THE REPUBLICAN IN THE RUINS 195

IS THE ATLANTIC NARROWING? 208

LINCOLN AND LOST CAUSES 222

WELLS AND THE WORLD STATE 235

A NEW MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT 253

THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA 267

THE SPIRIT OF ENGLAND 281

THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 295




_What is America?_


I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the
mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and
imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there
is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the
thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders,
embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead
or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what
they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant
for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond
that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather
an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be
inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw
dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the
abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as
those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the
fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar
manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in
fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if
men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand
each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger--the moment
when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a
meeting meant a duel.

Travel ought to combine amusement with instruction; but most travellers
are so much amused that they refuse to be instructed. I do not blame
them for being amused; it is perfectly natural to be amused at a
Dutchman for being Dutch or a Chinaman for being Chinese. Where they are
wrong is that they take their own amusement seriously. They base on it
their serious ideas of international instruction. It was said that the
Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of despising
foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to scoff
and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in
international relations there is far too little laughing, and far too
much sneering. But I believe that there is a better way which largely
consists of laughter; a form of friendship between nations which is
actually founded on differences. To hint at some such better way is the
only excuse of this book.

Let me begin my American impressions with two impressions I had before I
went to America. One was an incident and the other an idea; and when
taken together they illustrate the attitude I mean. The first principle
is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is
foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong
because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits
of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly
healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity
can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind.
It is inadequate even in criticising things that may really be inferior
to the things involved here. It is far better to laugh at a negro for
having a black face than to sneer at him for having a sloping skull. It
is proportionally even more preferable to laugh rather than judge in
dealing with highly civilised peoples. Therefore I put at the beginning
two working examples of what I felt about America before I saw it; the
sort of thing that a man has a right to enjoy as a joke, and the sort of
thing he has a duty to understand and respect, because it is the
explanation of the joke.

When I went to the American consulate to regularise my passports, I was
capable of expecting the American consulate to be American.