The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-08-21
THE DISLIKE OF AMERICANS
Largely Grows Out of Spirit of
Meaningless Jealousy.
London Spectator.


We are unable to doubt, though we are
unwilling to believe. that the feeling of the
continent is genuinely unfriendly to Ameri-
CD. The governments, of course, are fairly
civil but even thew are beginning to talk
among themselves. or sometimes openly, as
in Count Goluchowski's speech of the
aristocratic. middle class. and. indeed pop
ular feeling there can be little doubt. In
newspapers. in cluls, in society. even in
the street, the dislike of Americans, the
wish that they might be defeated. the desire.
if it were only safe, TO give them some saw
age snub is unmstakabe.
the same source as the dislike for Great
Britain Overwhelmingly, envy of a pros
the bearing of Americans. and a vague APP
prehension akin to that. felt by many Eng
lishmen about Russia, that they will ultf-
mately threaten the very eXistence-or is it
OF these motives the former is, with the
body cf the peoples, the strongest. They
hear necessarily from the emigrants as well
as the journals of the marvellous wealth of
Americans, of the success of their manu-
features, of the expansion of their trade
and of the general Well-being produced by
all these causes They see that the
Yankees" as they call them, bear none of
the usual burdens, that they have no con-
scrption, no need for watching their neign-
bors no restraints upon their liberty; and
they detest them almost as strongly as So
ciaists detest the rich oonrgeoise: h why:
while Europeans are so miserable they
want taking down.
This distaste is increased by belief that
the Americans are not only no better than
Europeans, but that they are morally and
intellectually inferior to them, that their Of
ficals are corrupt. their clergy hypocritical
their masses given up to purely material in
terests They care nothing for art, have
never erected a building, and have produced
no literature. They look on the Americans,
in fact. much a mugWump looks on an
alderman of Chicago, and sicken to think
that such people is, of all mankind, that
which has succeeded best in the economic
competition and has been most successful
in uniting liberty and plenty. They cannot
bear the peculiar American form of swag-
ger. which is not like either their own swag-
ger or that of Englishmen, and msunder-
stand their directness and realism in speech
as a form of boorishness. All people in the
world we have long noticed. are annoyed
by the English habit of "chaff." and the
continental is so vexed by American ''pawk-
mess and subsatiric humor that he even
fails to recognize, what every Englishman
mand equality is of the very essence of the
special American character. He thinks them
spiteful as well as selfish. and looks upon
their high tariffs, the result of a false polit-
icaI economy as dictated by wish to i'm
poverish Europe and thrust it out of its
natural right to compete for trade. The
continentals have, too, a certain fear of the
republic an idea hardly formulated except
among statesmen, but still visible in the
tions that it may one day arm itself, and
that when it does the external commerce
of the continent. if not its internal ndepen-
ence will lie at the mercy of America. For
all these reasons they hold Americans in
detestation.