e is distinctly
healthier, and adaptations of hectic French plays are by no means so
popular, in spite of the general sympathy of American taste with
French. The statistics of illegitimacy point in the same direction,
though I admit that this is not necessarily a sign of unsophisticated
morality. In a word, when an Englishman goes to France he feels that
the moral tone in this respect is more lax than in England; when he
goes to America he feels that it is more firm. And he will hardly find
adequate the French explanation, _viz._, that there is not less vice
but more hypocrisy in the Anglo-Saxon community.

There is another very important sphere of morality in which the
general attitude of the United States seems to me very appreciably
superior to that of England. It is that to which St. Paul refers when
he says, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." American
public sentiment is distinctly ahead of ours in recognising that a
life of idleness is wrong in itself, and that the possibility of
leading such a life acts most prejudicially on character. The American
answer to the Englishman trying to define what he meant by "gentlemen
of leisure" "Ah, we call them _tramps_ in America"--is not merely a
jest, but enshrines a deep ethnical and ethical principle. Most
Americans would, I think, agree strongly with Mr. Bosanquet's
philosophical if somewhat cumbersomely worded definition of legitimate
private property, "that things should not come miraculously and be
unaffected by your dealings with them, but that you should be in
contact with something which in the external world is the definite
material representative of yourself" ("Aspects of the Social Problem,"
p. 313). The British gentleman, aware that his dinner does not agree
with him unless he has put forth a certain amount of physical energy,
reverts to one of the earliest and most primitive forms of work,
_viz._, hunting. There is a small--a very small--class in the United
States in the same predicament; but as a rule the worker there is not
only more honoured, but also works more in accordance with the spirit
of the age.

The general attitude of Americans towards militarism seems to me also
superior to ours; and one of the keenest dreads of the best American
citizens during a recent wave of jingoism was that of "the reflex
influence of militarism upon the national character, the
transformation of a peace-loving people into a nation of swaggerers
ever ready to