realization of this which came
gradually to the top. In the beginning the almost universal opinion was
that the loss of the aching limb was for the better. I have heard
socalled cultured foreigners discuss the matter in my presence,
doubtless unaware I was an American. No more tourists, they gloated, to
stand with their backs to the Temple of Heaven in Pekin and explain the
superior construction of the Masonic Hall at Cedar Rapids; no more
visitors to the champagne caves at Rheims to inquire where they could
get a shot of real bourbon; no more music lovers at Salzburg or
Glyndebourne to regret audibly the lack of a peppy swingtune; no more
gourmets in Vienna demanding thick steaks, rare and smothered in onions.

But this period of smug selfcongratulation was soon succeeded by a
strange nostalgia which took the form of romanticizing the lost land.
American books were reprinted in vast quantities in the Englishspeaking
nations and translated anew in other countries. American movies were
revived and imitated. Fashionable speech was powdered with what were
conceived to be Yankee expressions and a southern drawl was assiduously
cultivated.

Bestselling historical novels were laid in the United States and popular
operas were written about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Kit Carson.
Men told their growing sons to work hard, for now there was left no land
of opportunity to which they could emigrate, no country where they could
become rich overnight with little effort. Instead of fairytales children
demanded stories of fortyniners and the Wedding of the Rails; and on the
streets of Bombay and Cairo urchins, probably quite unaware of the
memorial gesture, could be heard whistling _Casey Jones_.

But handinhand with this newfound romantic love went a completely
practical attitude toward those Americans still existing in the flesh.
The earliest expatriates, being generally men of substance, were well
received. The thousands who had crossed by small boats from Canada to
Greenland and from Greenland to Iceland to Europe were by definition in
a different category and found the quota system their fathers and
grandfathers had devised used to deny their own entrance.

They were as bewildered and hurt as children that any nation could be at
once so shortsighted and so heartless as to bar homeless wanderers. We
bring you knowledge and skills and our own need, they said in effect, we
will be an asset to your country if you admit us. The