The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1897-03-03
A FRENcHMAN ON AMERICANS.

We Americans are still inclined to
want to know what the world thinks of
us as nation; and when a people or
persons desire to know what an opin-
ion of them is, they are very likely to
be offended if it is not rather
complimentary. 1t is true that
we find more and more Amer
leans who resemble very closely
the Elijah Pograms, Jefferson Bricks
and like characters-charact that
caused the whole nation to condemn
Dickens, when the truth is that they
are growing fewer and fewer; our
vision has been enlarged and made
keener. To a limited extent we are
getting that rarest of gifts, the gift of
seeing ourselves as others see us.
Recently a Frenchman was among
US and he has published a book en-
titled America and Americans" Now,
this Frenchman, with his keen wit and
trenchant pen, says some things that
are very apt to wound our vanity.
Speaking of American love for decora-
tions and orders of various kinds, he
says:
There are officers of the Legion of
Honor. comrades of the Grand Army,
Sons of the Revolution, Knights of
Pythias, Daughters of the Revolution,
Colonial Danes, Societies of the Dutch,
Societies of New England, the South
ern Society. and how many more 1
know not Then each of these has its
ribbon or its button or its badge, and
in no country in Europe do you hear
so many titles or see so many insignia
IT.
and harmless enough were it frank
and outspoken. But it is not. These
same people toady to foreign noble
men as do no other people in the world.
Politically they are loud, blatant even,
in the reiteration of their republican
ism; but socially they are tuft-hunters.
The number of societies and orders
of various kinds there are in the coun-
try, all of them intended to convey the
idea that the members thereof are a
little more patriotic, a little more at
tached to the flag than those who do
not belong to them, must be a matter
of some surprise to a foreigner, es-
pecially when he remembers that this
is the home of democratic simplicity.
Membership in any of these societies
cannot make a man a better citizen in
any respect, though some seem to think
otherwise. But perhaps the comments |
of this particular French writer were |
by the remembrance of what |
Mark Twain said about the decoration I
of the Legion of Honor-and which so |
piqued so cosmopolitan a Frenchman
as Max O'Rell-few Frenchmen escape
it.
The following comment on our poll
ticians will strike any calm and inn
partial observer as very largely true:
Not to shout the most absurd patri-
0tic bombast all the time is. for poll
tician, political suicide, and not to do
the same thing in the case of the
private individual, is to earn the repu-
-ation of being finical.
The Lodges and the Morgans and
he Suffers are living examples of the
ruth of what is here said.
Speaking of why Americans are
considered TO be under-cultivated by
our Frenchman says:
In Rome. London and Berlin, more
han one unofficial note, from one of
he under-secretaries at the American
embassies of these cities, has been
passed about as a sample of American
ignorance and American bad manners.
The Ignorance of these under-secre-
aries may have been gross. their man
lers shockingly bad, but what of the
breeding and manners of those people
n Rome, London and Berlin who