New-York tribune., 1912-01-07
Anglo-American Memories
Some Recent American Impressions.
Copyright, 1911 by George ". smarey3


lishman does. He thinks not Of himself
and of his own grievance only, but OF
the public, and of the single grievance
multiplied nd iRfnitum; to the vexation
of other Englishmen. 1t is not the
amount of the plumber or the degree Of
Inconvenience he himself has to endure.
He will not stand being imposed upon,
and community composed Of indi-
viduals who will not stand being i'm
posed upon is a community sure to he
less imposed upon than one which Sub
mits.
With us these extortions cost money,
and the imperfect service costs time,
which we think more than money. Mr..
Tilson Young in THE English Review"
has just been pointing out some "Ameri-
can characteristics. among which he
reckons our habitual waste of time. 1t
was described to me once by New
Yorker. The American ma1 OF business,
said my friend, who is himself a man of
business, is up early, breakfasts early,
hurries through his breakfast, races
down town to his office and, once there,
| lights a cigar, puts his feet on his desk
and reads a newspaper till business
hours begin. These are two pieces Of
testimony on the text Don't hurry"
To hurry is one thing, to work swiftly
! is another, and the two are incompat-
| ible / say II as Journalist who has
| lived his life under the ineXorable COM
pulsion of the cable and the printers
devil.
| Mr. Tilson Young is a writer of dis
| tinction: handicapped, so far as Ameri-
can topics go. by his relations with THE
! Saturday Review" periodical which
| finds il difficult to believe that any good
thing can come out of America. But
!. Mr.. Young is not in this instance,
writing in or for nor yet in the temper
| Of. "The Saturday Review" and what he
says may be profitably enough consid-
| cred He seems TO have spent some
| three months in New York; mostly, as
| he tells us. among the upper classes of
whom nevertheless, he does not en-
tirely approve, any more than Ameri-
cans who know New York can entirely
! approve of Mr.. Tilson Young. He is an
Irishman. though not judge, belonging
| to the particular class of Irishmen who
/ for the last two generations have done
us the homo to take charge Of our mu-
nicipaI affairs in New York. He is,
primarily, a writer on music and then
/ on literature. and even on war. He has
written on christopher Columbus and
! the New World of His Discovery; big
book on q big subject; merits or de-
merits of the same to me unknown, but
! it implies an interest in America. These
few facts about him may serve TO as
sure us that he is not likely to write
! nippantly. however distorted his Wow
may sometimes be.
/ am not going to discuss Mr. YounC's
! article about us, but | may suggest to
tho American reader-and ] suppose We
all read what is said by any COM
potcnt person about our Country-that
he is capable of taking general
views To be able 10 take general views
Is test OF capacity for taking par
tiCular views. The remark about upper
classes may have struck YOU. It seems
to have struck Mr.. Young himself, for
on it he stops to generalize:
Yes. my friend. upper classes. There
are classes I'm America as there are
/ everywhere else, from the Andaman ISL
! ands to Dawson City. There is no sillier
! idea IN the world than that class di
/ visions can be abolished. for as soon as
| YOU establish any community Of people
/ in any spot Of this world, so soon will
| they instinctively begin to group them
. selves into classes. In England the class
divisions are very few and simple and
of great antiquity; in America they are
more numerous and more complex and
Of less antiquity-that is the only differ
! ence."
Then he proceeds to define. but I will
quote only one other sentence: that in
America the classes are singulary jeal
Gus OF each other. partly because they
are so very unstable in their compost
| ton" In England az he truly says,
! there are genuine classes. centuries old.
who have evolved aptitudcs for certain
duties, which they continue 10 perform
generation after generation. In America
! a man goes on with certain work only
/ tin ne can leave ii for something better.
I on the question which habit of mind IS
! likely to produce the better workman
and work, English and Americans are
likely to come to opposite conclusions.
G. W. s.