New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1921-04-10

intimate writings, both in 1912 and
1868, AZ to the amazing courtesy of
ths Americans toward women. II was
in 1912 that he wrote from Boston:
"There is universal Difference paid
to ladies, and they walk about at all
seasons wholly unprotected"
A remarkable tribute to a ROUGH and
early civilization. Or, again, his de-
scription Of their habits at the rough
meals which he otherwise loved so
little:
Nobody will sit down to any one of
these meals, though the dishes are
smoking on the board, until the ladies
have appeared and taken their chairs"
At the present day in America (1921),
II woman enters an elevator, every
man takes off his hat, and women trav-
elers will tell you that America is the
safest country in the world for them
to wander alone. Throughout that
has been the high credit of that coun-
try, and it seems unfair that so little
tribute is given to Americans in Eng
iish fiction for this great quality of
chivalry.
Not that it means that women in
America are any less beautiful or at
tractive than in other countries. Here,
again, we have Dickens's judgment as
early as 1912:
"The ladies Of America" he says,
"are decidedly and unquestionably
beautiful"
And Dickens had a distinct eye for
beauty. Every one who visits America
to-day will bear evidence that there is
here no falling away.
But it is even more remarkable to
find scattered through Dickens's letters
to Forster tributes to American men
which certainly do not seem wholly con-
sistent with the sketches contained in
Martin Chuzzlewit. Americans" he
says, "are friendly, earnest, hospitable,
kind, frank, very often accomplished,
far less prejudiced than you would
suppose. Warm-hearted, fervsnt, en-
thusiastic"
| Great Britain and the United States
are both countries in which every man
likes to "say the thing he WILL" and
therefore we have always INDUCED in
amazing freedom in our criticism of one
another. A whole line of English writ
ers have followed in the tracks of Mar
tin Chuzzlewit, and there have been
some American writer's who have re-
! taliated.
But these things do not add to the
friendship between nations. 1t does
not follow that because there is kinship
between men criticism is more readily
accepted. 1t is recorded of DR.. Jowett
that he said in a sermon to two young
people whom he was marrying: "Above
all, remember to be polite to one an
other" The same advice seems to be
desirable for two nations of the same
speech aiming at friendship which is
oftensachieved, not on account of kim
ship, but in spite, Of it.
Rejecting on the situation to-day be-
tween the two countries, l would sug-
gest some such counsel to those writ
ers and speakers who are now laboring
to improve the relationship between
Great Britain and the United States.
Let. them, at all costs, resist the cheap
and easy temptation to mutual criti-
cism. Let US remember that the de-
probation of kindred peoples is not, as
so many imagine, mark of superior
h.
cultured humanity Let us mutually
learn to select what we can admire in
one Observation-Disclosures things are of
good report" and dwell on those. If
Dickens had done so, then we might
have lost a great satire, but he would
have worked better for the things that
belonged unto our peace.