Philip Gibbs

“ Each man and woman there in this House of a Thousand Windows had a human soul, with its own little drama of life, its loves and hopes and illusions, but in the vastness of one skyscraper, in the whirlpool of commerce, in the machinery of money-making, the humanities of life seemed to be destroyed and these people to be no more than slaves of modern civilization, ruthless of their individual happiness. ”

“ The American visitor observed the fuss made when one king visited another, and read the false adulation of the royal visitor, the insincere speeches at royal banquets, the list of decorations conferred upon court flunkies, and laughed at the whole absurdity, not seeing that it was all part of a bid for a new alliance or a bribe for peace, or a mask of fear, until the time came when all bids and bribes should be of no more avail, and the only masks worn were to be gas-masks, when the rival nations should hack at one another in a frenzy of slaughter. ”

“ Part of the adventure of life in New York is the acquisition of unexpected knowledge by means of lectures; and Carnegie Hall is the Mecca of lecturers. Having been one of the lecturers, I can speak from personal experience when I say that a man who stands for the first time on the naked desert of that platform, looking toward rows of white faces and white shirt-fronts to the farthest limit of the topmost galleries, feels humility creep into his soul until he shrinks to the size of Hop-o'-My-Thumb and is the smallest, loneliest thing in the whole wide world. ”

“ After all, hotel life, and restaurant life, and the glamorous world of the Great White Way, do not reveal the real soul of New York. They are no more a revelation of normal existence than boulevard life in Paris represents the daily round of the average Parisian. They are the happy hunting-grounds of the transient, and the real New-Yorker only visits them in hours of leisure and boredom.
Another side of the adventure of life in New York is "downtown," where the subways and the overhead railways pour out tides of humanity who do not earn their dollars without hard work and long hours of it. ”

“ If I were a citizen of the United States I should be afraid—afraid lest my country should by passion, or by ignorance, or by sheer carelessness take the wrong way.
I think some Americans have that fear. I have met some who are anxious and distressed. But I think that the majority of Americans do not realize the power that has come to them nor their new place in the world. They have a boisterous sense of importance and prestige, but rather as a young college man is aware of his lustiness and vitality without considering the duties and the dangers that have come to him with manhood. ”

“ I came away with the belief that out of Chicago would come help for the idealists of our future civilization, out of Chicago, whatever men may say of its Pit, and its slaughter-yards, and its jungle of industry and life. For on the walls of the Cliff-dwellers were paintings of men who have beauty in their hearts, and in the eyes of the men I met was a look of gravity and thoughtfulness in face of the world's agonies and conflict. ”

“ But I found a great class of women in America too busy, too interested, and too inspired by common sense to be worried by that kind of emotional distress—the middle-class women who flung themselves into war-work, as before, and now, in time of peace, the activities of charity and education and domestic life have called to them for service. There was a woman doctor I met who seemed to me as fine a type of American womanhood as one could have the luck to meet, and yet, in spite of uncommon ability, a common type in her cheery and practical character. ”

“ Every morning the doctor walks away from his cottage to a railway which takes him off to the noisy city, and here until five of the evening he is busy in healing the sufferers of civilization and stupidity—the people who overeat themselves, the children who are too richly fed by foolish mothers, business men whose nerves have broken down by worry and work for the sake of ambition, society women wrecked in the chase of pleasure, and little ones, rickety, blind, or diseased because of the sins of their parents. The little doctor does not deal in medicine and does not believe in it. ”

“ To the popular imagination of Europe, America was the world's democratic paradise, where every man had equal opportunity and rights, a living wage with a fair margin and the possibility of enormous luck. A steady stream of youth flowed out from Ireland to New York, year after year, and Irish peasants left behind in their hovels heard of great doings by Pat and Mick, who had become the gentlemen entirely out there in the States, and of Kathleen and Biddy, who were piling up the dollars so fast that they could send some back to the old people and not feel the loss of them at all, at all. ”

“ I saw a luxury of wealth in New York and other cities which may be a vicious canker in the soul of the people. I saw a sullen discontent among wage-earners and home-coming soldiers because too many people had an unfair share of wealth. I met American Junkers who would use the military possibilities of the greatest army in the world for imperialistic adventures and world dominance. ”

“ The United States of America has a new meaning in the world, and has entered, by no desire of its own, into the great family of nations, as a rich uncle whose authority and temper must be respected by those who desire his influence in their family quarrels, difficulties, and conditions of life. Before the war the United States was wonderfully aloof from the peoples of Europe. The three thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean made it seem enormously far away, and quite beyond the orbit of those passionate politics which stirred European communities with Old World hatred and modern rivalries. ”

“ Be that as it may, it is clear, at least, that the destiny of the American people is now marked out for the great mission of leading the world to a new phase of civilization. By the wealth they have, and by their power for good or evil, they have a controlling influence in the reshaping of the world after its convulsions. They cannot escape from that [Pg 158] power, even though they shrink from its responsibility. Their weight thrown one way or the other will turn the scale of all the balance of the world's desires. People of destiny, they have the choice of arranging the fate of many peoples. ”

“ As a professional onlooker of life (and it is a poor profession, as I must admit) it has always been my habit to study national and social types in any country where I happen to be. I find an untiring interest in this, and prefer to sit in a French café, for example, watching the people who come in and out, and hearing scraps of conversation that pass across the table, to the most thrilling theatrical entertainment. And I find more interest in "common" people than in the uncommonly distinguished, by fame and power. ”

“ In England it was a tradition of liberal thought that democracy meant not only the right of the people to govern themselves, but the right of the individual or of any body of men to express their disagreement with the policy of the state, or with the majority opinion, or with any idea which annoyed them in any way. But, as we have seen by recent history, democratic rule does not mean individual liberty. ”

“ Its society is not so old as our tired, saddened people of Europe, who look back with melancholy upon the four years in which their young men perished, and forward without great hope. The vitality of America has hardly been touched by her sacrifice, and the heart of America is high. ”

“ We held our lines and England sent out her last reserves of youth—300,000 of them—to fill up our gaps. The Germans were stopped at a dead halt, exhausted after the immensity of their effort and by prodigious losses. Behind our lines, and behind the French front, there came now a tide of "new boys." America was in France, and the doom of the German war machine was at hand.
It would be foolish of me to recapitulate the history of the American campaign. The people of the United States know what their men did in valor and in achievement, and Europe has not forgotten their heroism. ”

“ But I did not see them, and I thought of the many homes in England desolated by the appalling sacrifice of youth, so that in every town, and in every street, there are houses out of which all hope in life has gone, leaving behind a dreadful dreariness, an incurable loneliness, mocking at Victory. ”

“ They will give their support to the League of Nations not as a machinery to stifle popular progress by a combination of governments, but as a court for the reform of international laws and the safeguarding of liberty. Europe will not be able to ignore the judgment of America. That country is, as I said, the rich uncle whose temper they must consult because of gratitude for favors to come—and because of wealth and power in the world's markets.
America is at the threshold of her supreme destiny in the world. ”

“ The American people as a whole did truly enter into war in the spirit of crusaders. They sent out their sons as rescuers of stricken peoples fighting desperately against criminal powers. They had no selfish interests behind their sacrifice, and they did not understand that defeat of the nations allied against Germany would inevitably menace them with dire perils to their sovereign power, to their commercial prosperity, and to their ideals of civilization. ”

“ The history of the world is ransacked for thrilling dramas, and an American audience watches all the riotous splendor and licentiousness of Babylon or ancient Rome, while Theda Bara, the Movie Queen, writhes in amorous ecstasy, or poisons innumerable lovers, or stings herself to death with serpents. Royalists and Roundheads, Pilgrim Fathers and New England witches, the French Revolution and the American Civil War, are phases of history which provide endless pictures of "soul-stirring interest" ”

“ What appealed to me more in my brief study of American social life outside New York was another popular institution known as the roadside inn. In some way it is a conscious endeavor to get back to the simplicity and good cheer of old-fashioned times, when the grandfathers and grandmothers of the present generation used to get down from their coaches when the horses were changed, or the snowdrifts were deep, and go gladly to the warmth of a log fire, in a wayside hostelry, while orders were given for a dinner of roast duck, and a bowl of punch was brewed by the ruddy-faced innkeeper. ”

“ It is the arrival of America in Europe. Those boys are coming to fulfill the destiny of a people which for three hundred years has been preparing, building, growing, for the time when it will dominate the world. Those young soldiers will make many mistakes. They will be mown down in their first attacks. They will throw away their lives recklessly, because of their freshness and ignorance. But behind them are endless waves of other men of their own breed and type. ”

“ American men and women. But to find vice and decadence in American society one has to go in search of it; and I did not go. I found New York society tolerant in its views, frank in its expression of opinion, fond of laughter, and wonderfully sincere. Wealth does not spoil its fresh and healthy outlook on life, and its people are idealists at heart, with a reverence for the old-fashioned virtues and an admiration for those who "make good" in whatever job to which they put their hands. ”

“ They have gone back to the United States with the conviction, which I share, with all my soul, that commercial rivalry, political differences, and minor irritations, inevitable between two progressive peoples of strong character, must never be allowed to divide our two nations, who fundamentally belong to the same type of civilization and to the same code of principles. Most of the so-called hostility between us is the mere froth of foul-mouthed men on both sides, and the rest of it is due to the ignorance of the masses. ”

“ Some Englishmen, I am told, go to the United States with a spirit of criticism, and search round for things that seem to them objectionable, taking no pains to conceal their hostile point of view. They are so hopelessly insular that they resent any little differences in social custom between American and English life, and sum up their annoyance by saying, "We don't do that sort of thing in England!" ”

“ Americans who overcame the language difficulty by learning enough to exchange [Pg 185] views with the French inhabitants—and there were many—were able to overlook the minor, petty things which divided the two races, and were charmed with the intelligence, spirit, and humor of the French bourgeoisie and educated classes. They got the best out of France, and were enchanted with French cathedrals, mediæval towns, picture-galleries, and life. Paris caught hold of them, as it takes hold of all men and women who know something of its history and learn to know and love its people. ”

“ It is argued by those who take this line of prophecy that democracy is no enemy of war. On the contrary, they say, a democracy like that of the United States, virile, easily moved to emotion, passionate, sure of its strength, jealous of its honor, and quick to resent any fancied insult, is more liable to catch the war fever than nations controlled by cautious diplomats and by hereditary rulers. ”

“ I was startled by some things she said about the war, and the psychology of men and women under the spell of war. They were true, but dangerous to speak aloud as this woman spoke them. Later, she talked of the heritage of hatred that had been bequeathed by war to the people of the world. "Let us kill hatred," she said. "It is the survival of the cave instinct in man which comes out of its hiding-places under the name of patriotism and justice." ”

“ England lags a long way behind here, with its old-fashioned hotch-potch of elementary schools, church schools, "academies for young gentlemen"—the breeding-grounds of snobs—grammar-schools, and private, second-rate colleges; all of which complications are swept away by the clean simplicity of the American state school, to which boys of every class may go without being handicapped by the caste system which is the curse of England. ”

“ Hard business men gave away their dollars in bundles, denied themselves at meal-time so that Europe should be fed, tried by some little sacrifice to share the spirit of those who made offer of their lives. The materialism of which America had been accused, not unjustly, was broken through by a spiritual idealism which touched every class, and Americans did not shrink from sacrifice, but asked for it as a privilege, and were regretful that as a people they suffered so little in comparison with those who had fought and agonized so long.... ”

“ Vienna, a city of two and a half million souls, once the capital of a great empire, for centuries a rendezvous of gayety and genius, the greatest school of medicine in the world, the birthplace and home of many great musicians, and the dwelling-place of a happy, careless, and luxurious people, was now delivered over to beggary and lingering death. ”

“ But these were only accidental things, to be found wherever humanity is crowded, and after my visit to America I came away with memories, which are still strong in my heart, of a people filled with vital energy, kind in heart, sincere and [Pg 124] simple in their ways of thought and speech, idealistic in emotion, practical in conduct, and democratic by faith and upbringing. The soil of America is clean and strong and free; and the power that comes out of it will, I think and hope and pray, be used to gain the liberties of other nations, and to help forward the welfare of the human family. ”

“ So the American lady of leisure keeps up-to-date with the world's lighter thought and skims the surface of the deeper knowledge, using her own common sense as an acid test of truth when the imagination of a novelist runs away with him, and widening her outlook on the problems of life with deliberate desire to understand. ”