The Irish standard., 1913-01-18
IMPRESSIONS OF
AMERICA GIVEN
By Rev. Robert Hugh Benson, Dis
tinguished English Priest
and Scholar.
In an Extended Visit Here He
Found a Great Deal of the Reli-
gion in America
Only Philanthropic and Produc.
tive of Friendship and Good
Fellowship.


Fellowship.
Scarcely anything can be imagined
more difficult than for an inllabitant
CT the Old World to assess his i'm
pressions Of the New. When an Am
erican visits England he has a thou
sand aids and guides; the history Of
his own family it may be, or at any
rate of his race, the story of civiliza-
tion and religion, the tale of the "old
unhappy things the reproductions or
srecimens, of art that he has seen
all these matters direct him at least
how and where to look for what he
must ask and what expect. He may
know little or nothing of the last five
hundred years of European history, as
the .Englishman may know little or
nothing Of modern America, but both
American and Englishman alike share
in the heritage of the first fifteen hun
dred years after Christ: Rome be-
longs to them alike, both Imperial and
Catholic; the saints and the kings and
the poets of Christian Europe have
had as much 10 do With Chicago as
with modern London or Paris.
- -Ealt the. l1nglishnar has I'D such .ad-
vantages i'll America. TO him, soaked
as he rs III 1nbroken tradition, the
most venerable building in New York
l.; of yesterday, and the Civil War is
an unintclligible quarrel Of the day
before. He must begin all over again;
there is no rhythm, to him, in Amer
lean history. no gradual transfornla-
ton from heptarchies 10 unity, from
feudalisln to constitutional sovereign.
ty and from sovereignty to democracy.
He is under extraordinary disadvan-
tages-under the disadvantages that
rest On a conservative son of an old
house who meets for the first time
his adventurous cousin returned from
abroad.
AS the. American in Europe, there-
lore, Is apt to pick out for notice first
those things that are of the past; so
the Englishnan in America pcrceiyes
first those things that are most
characteristic of modernity: he
winces under the rush and clatter of
machinery. he is awed b.. the size Of
skyscrapcrs, by the distances over
Which he travels and the speed with
which he goes, by the bulk of for
tunes that are made, and by the alb
se7ce of what he knows as conserva-
tlsm. This last point in particular,
strikes him; he notices how little. on
the whole, family tradition counts,
how a son will sell his fathers house
and set up elsewhere for himself with
out qualm, how the gardens have no
walls round theli1-a very significant t
symbol indeed-how men shake hands
with their photographers and have
their boots BACKED in public places
how, in a word, all that instinct which
rises from a feudal past and which is
in the very air he has hitherto
hreathed, has given place in America
to spirit public and democratic in a.
sense Of which he has never dreamed.
AT first he is g, little shocked and
chilled. 1t seems to him as IL there
We're no such thing as privacy or in
dlvidualism anywhcrc-as if he had
awakened in the morning, so to speak
| and found his bed room walls to be
of glass. This is further driven home
to him by the character Of American
Journalism; he finds that he is not
supposed even to resent having his
personal habits described in headlines.
The number of cigarettes he smokes
In the days: the manner in which he
I turns his head when he speaks: his
raids on grapefruit-ail these things
are. proclaimed before him when he
opens his morning paper.
Then, little by little il he is not
completely fool, he begins to under.
stand that it Is not that there is no
indiSidualism. but that it is Of a diff
ferent kind: notthat there is no home
life in ,"-nlerica, but that America it.
self is home life; not that the Amer
icans.- house is not his castle, but that
! his country is. He begins to sec that
the children in the street look happier