Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-11-03

certain peculiar features of the Magyar
civilization He was astonished at the
close attention and enthusiastic ap-
plause of these men, all of whom, &C
cording to the intellectual expatriates
who haunt MontpsrnaSse, are morons
and Rabbits.
Comparing Travel Facilities.
A common gibe. of the present era is
that everybody in America has an auto
mobile, but has nowhere to 60 in 1t. 1t
might be instructive to compare the IA
cility for going to places of interest in
America and, let us say, Italy or Greece.
1t might be even more instructive to
point out that not all of France is
Provence. In one of his short stories
Mr.. Hemingway describes some Ameri-
can expatriates renting a chateau in
Touraine, and he points out that they
found it "a very fiat. hot country, much
like Kansas" and while admitting that
automobiling may easily become a mere
expression of restleSsness, it does enable
one to achieve both solitude and social
intercourse. And he who travels
through America and finds no places of
interest must have mind of limited
caliber.
Given a friendly reception and ade-
quate social freedom, the expatriate liv-
ing in America is perhaps the least
heavily taxed alien in the civilized
world. This Is a feature of life on this
side which has been inadeQuately treat
ed. Property and income taxes for per-
sons of moderate means are so small
as to be negligible. In England an in
come tax of 20 per cent and high rates
on property values make life in the
country an expensive affair. Many old
houses carry a tax more than double
the rented value. A light car will be
taxed a hundred dollars or more per
These are material considerations, and
1t is not proposed to harp too heavily
upon them. Material considerations
have a way of adjusting themselves
after a while. The American expatriate
discovers that ice water is no longer
a matter of life and death, and the
living in America grows to
like domestic cigars and finds himself
able to exist without his draught ale
That these things are good is admitted,
but they are not fundamental necessi-
ties of the spirit of man.
Character in Countries.
Character" says Emerson in his es-
say on The American Scholar" lis
higher than intellect" And this is true
Of countries as of individual persons.
The European expatriate in America
can find for himself place where his
own personality will contribute to the
existence. Leaving out of the
argument the cranks and the fractions
children Of politics, who want to pull
United States has developed no Sys-
,em Of surveillance to Cypress the resi-
dent alien.
Before the war made the world zap
safe for bureaucracy, one was
of being in a foreign country
1t all, save for the flag waving over the
)ost Office and Schoolhouse. And even
low the triumph of mediocrity is mod
fed in many ways by broad tolerance
and a humorous charity in press and
pulpit and in private intercourse.
But perhaps of all the manifold adj
of living within the Republic
he flexible social fabric appeals most
20 the European of liberal views and
Iverage intelligence. The American ex-
,atriate in Europe, whether he choose
france or England, must resign him.
elf to years of exclusion from the in
innate social life OF the natives.
This arises not from any churlish-
ness on the part of the latter, but from
\ fundamental cleavage between Ameri-
can and European sentiment concern
habit in England to make the
nome secluded, to keep strangers at a
to live, as they say, very
much to themselves" Even among in
Inmates it is startling, on returning to
England, to observe the rigid respect
each family pays to the privacy of the
others. Visits are infinitely more for
MI and less frequent, even when houses
are adjacent, than in America. Some
times, as in the case OF garden parties,
they are. in Nine. de la Barca's MEM
Orable phrase. less visits than vista
tons. High hedges and dense shrub
berries preserve the immemorial pri-
vacy of the home. In many an Eng
fish country house the entire social
activity of q twelVemonth may be COM
prised in a score Of visiting cards on q
tray in the hall.
Habits every Colonial"
To drive 20 miles after dinner to
friends house, to talk, dance to radio,
to rustic a supper OF bacon and egg
and coffee and drive home
in the small hours, as their cotem-
poraries do in America, would be i'm
possible to the inhabitants of a small
town in England. They would neither
think of it nor enjoy it. They regard
the easy social habits Of North America
as very colonial" and no doubt suited
to a wild, half-civilized territory, of
which they read amazing things in the
papers.
In France, as any experienced ex-
patriate can explain, apart from the
Language difficulty. the chances of es-
tablishing genuine social contacts are
slight
The point about these statements Is
that the texture of American social life
is designed to admit a vast variety of
and activities. and the ex-
patriate from Europe speedily discovers
a congenial milieu, whereas in Europe
there are rightly and an exclusiveness
which force an alien to mingle with his
own countrymen and few Of the bohe-
milan natives.
Such an existence is not merely for
eign to Americans. it is foreign to the
ma jority of human beings, which is why
Americans nearly always return 10
America with chastened spirits. There
was always an air of unreality about
the reasons they advanced for abandon
ing America. 1t may appear delight
fully cosmopolitan to live i'll the Latin
Quarter or to rent cottage in fish
ing village on the Riviera. But SO long
as the expatriate is drawing his income
from his own despiSed country and so
long as he forms no genuine social con-
facts with the country OF his adoption,
he is bound to appear to himself and TO
his neighbors something of fraud.
Character is higher than intellect, and
a mans character is bound to starve
when bereft of the normal healthy col
lisions with men and women of his own
way of life, of his own flesh and blood
The lonely white man in some distant
jungle is supported by his position, his
sATnr hi 9 n
tranced by what is, or ought to be, a
noble ideal.
Transplanted Organism.
But the American expatriate in Eu-
rope is no more than an isolated, trans
planted organism in a strange and I'M
congenial soil. The intellectual who