THE NEW AMERICA [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I
have just read Mr. Norman Angell's article. I write because I like England, having been there, and wish to warn the British against the New American or Babbitt movement in the United States. I was born forty-four years ago in Virginia City, Nevada, of native American parents, so I should know the West. I have travelled a quarter of a million miles in four nations, so I should be able to make comparisons.
Mr. Angell tells of the improvements effected by the collective efforts of the Babbitts in the West. I have lived at the Statler hotels which not only do not remember the guests' names, but are far less courteous and friendly than London hotels. I have seen the old rough West he sneers at pass—the West where every man rose in street cars to give women seats, the wide, open, gambling, drinking West where there was not the one rape case a day that takes place in California to-day, nor the dope, the sneak thieves, the shop- lifters now flourishing in incredible numbers. The old West was rough but immensely better than the new bunch of sanctimonious hypocrites and Bible-toting grafters that has succeeded.
Beware of the new American gang spirit that is making this nation the storm-centre of internecine hate. In America, to-day, there is vastly less politeness, courtesy and common decency than ten years ago. We are infested by pitiful asses posing in the limelight of a bunk uplift. Dozens of clubs are spreading bunk that fools nobody, not even themselves. We have clean-up weeks, shut-down weeks, dry-up weeks, love- your-neighbour weeks, go-to-church weeks, and a million other kinds of weeks that nobody pays any attention to except the officious busybodies that sponsor them for the cheap advertising that they bring. For instance, we have just had fire-prevention week by the fire-insurance companies. We shall next probably have the fill-your-teeth week by the dentists, etc., etc.
Never was a people so disgusted with this stuff and the
meddling of an officious and puritanical government in personal habits as the American people are to-day. They are sick, sore and disgusted from Atlantic to Pacific. Indi- viduality is a challenge, frank speech a crime, minority opinion an outrage to be beaten down with bludgeons under the eyes of the officers of the law in America to-day. Watch contem- porary history in America with its Tennessee trials, its Government agents breaking in the doors of private and innocent homes without warrant and in defiance of the law, arrests without charge and jailing without bail or trial, the rail-roading of innocent men from communities. Look out England ! Watch the mob spirit, or community spirit as it is called over here.
If you want to know a real American small town read Main Street—it is an amazing photograph. Babbitt gives you the next size, from the life. England taught us hypocrisy, but you are babies to us now in that art- Don't let the old hens
who go over there from here to preach Prohibition lie you out of your personal freedom.
Mr. Norman Angell is all right, but when he talks of the new or bunk America he is all wrong. If you doubt this watch our papers for riots, rapes, murders, police and Governmental outrages, and beatings up of citizens. I have belonged to commercial, luncheon, advertising- and other clubs. I have lived in towns of one, five, ten, twenty-five, fifty, two-hundred thousand, and cities of one to six millions. I know my country and I know it has learned to hate its neighbours (I mean one citizen hates another citizen) because of religion, thought, and class. I know that it is unbelievably intimidated by mob spirit, that it is incredibly hen-pecked by the repulsive old termagants who hound the politicians, that it daily becomes more corrupt, that the consumption of booze goes on, only now in the homes and among the young, and that the very word " liberty " uttered aloud makes people stare at you.—I am,
Sir, &c., CHAS. E. WEST. 120 East Broadway, Long Beach, California.
[Our Swift-like correspondent has, we hope, done some injustice to his countrymen, but we must compliment him on his powers of invective. When the people of Long Beach have a let-off-steam week, or start a Juvenal Club, he will certainly beat the band.—En. Spectator.]
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