The New America
By an Englishman, . New York: THE MACMILLAN Co. 1919. 12mo, x+l45 pp. $1.25.
HERE is a little book with a large purpose. It consists of only a few pages, but abounds in solid sense. One can read it through in an hour or two, but it has food for thought which may well occupy people’s minds for many days, It deals with a new America, but in part also it pictures a new England and suggests the approach of a new world-order.
Mr. Dilnot, who has written a life of Lloyd George, was in America during the last days of our neutrality, and watched our country gird herself for strife and put forth all her strength with stern resolve. He saw America at a time, therefore, when she was least respected abroad; but also throughout the period when she won the admiration and affection of the Allied world. Here are the customary comments of an intelligent visitor on our habits, manners, social graces, and peculiarities. The comments are always kindly, and the discernment discriminating, if not deep. We can pass them by for the most part without particular praise or disagreement. One gentle criticism, however, I should like to remark upon and underscore. It relates to American seaside manners and the curious abandon that goes with summer bathing. Here is an Englishman — man, not woman — who notices and is scandalized by the free intercourse of people in their bathingcostume as they sit in the sand or loll around on the beaches of Coney Island, Long Branch, and elsewhere. ‘The prejudiced English eye finds something unpleasant in those half-clad men lingering about, sun-bathing with their women friends.’ It is strange that the impropriety of all this has never impressed Americans.
The real purpose of this little book, however, is not concerned with things like this. Here is an attempt to introduce Englishmen and Americans to each other and to each other’s country. Here are sympathetic portrayals of such prominent figures as Colonel House and Elihu Root and the late Mr. Roosevelt, and more particularly of President Wilson, whom the writer heard in that most dramatic moment of his life, and it may be of the nation’s life, when he stood up before Congress to declare war on Germany. ‘He stood erect and at ease,’ never shifting a foot as a nervous man might occasionally do under tension, and his long white fingers showed no quiver.’ And as the writer shows us some of our great men, so he shows us also some of our great works in connection with the war. We are taken to Hog Island, to the aviation field at Dayton, and elsewhere, and always with appreciative eyes.
But let the little book be read by our people of all classes. It will promote understanding and will develop goodwill. The author is right; ‘Americans and British have had to fight together and they have also had to work together. The fighting is over, but they have to go on working together.’ And what they must work for and help each other to obtain is an England and America leagued together with other nations for the peace and progress of the world. P. R. F.