Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



209 



UxMTED STATES IN A NEW 

 LIGHT. 



In the Sociological Rn<ieiv for July A. E. Zimmern, 

 writing on seven months in .\merira, upsets gaily some 

 of the prevalent notions about the United States : — 



NEVER BEEN A DEMOCRACY. 

 America never has been a political democracy, as everyone 

 familiar with the Constitution, and the circiniistances under 

 which it came into being, will admit. It has never been less a 

 free democracy than it is to-day. The liberty of the subject is 

 far less surely safeguarded than in Western Europe ; there is 

 far less free speech (by which is not meant unbridled speech) 

 and far less free writing, both in books and newspapers. Class 

 distinctions, so far from being absent, are becoming as marked 

 .ns ihcy are in Europe, though somewhat difterent in form, being 

 based on distinctions of wealth, nalionalily, and colour rather 

 than of rank and breeding. And the belief that the country 

 enjoys self-government is, as Mr. Roosevelt has lately once or 

 twice observed, the thinnest of fictions. In reality it is governed 

 by a small knot of powerful financiers and business men, who 

 enjoy immunity owing to the shelter afforded them by the toiii- 

 p'.icated structure of the ostensible government. 



NOT A NATION, BUT A MEDLEY OF NATIONS. 



There is to-day, he adds, no American nation. 

 America consists at present of a congeries of nations 

 who happen to be united under a common federal 

 government. An increasing number of immigrants 

 leading a migratory life have neither the rights nor 

 responsibilities of citizenship. There is a new prole- 

 tariat, or hobo, which has assumed gigantic propor- 

 tions, representing the Wanderlust of all the nations 

 and the bitterness of the disinherited. 



DOES NOT ASSIMILATE ALIENS. 



.America " docs not assimilate its aliens, as England 

 does." On the whole, the different races keep them- 

 selves to themselves, and lead their own spiritual life. 

 So far as the\ lose their nationalism, they lose their 

 best spiritual heritage. America is not a melting-pot ; 

 it is a pot of varnish, or, as a German says, it is a 

 sausage-machine for grinding out equality sausages. 

 The various nationals have a new environment and new 

 qualities. These are the qualities of the pioneers. 



DISTINCTIVE QUALITIES. 



Mr. Zimmern enumerates " an inexhaustible fountain 

 of kindness and good-nature, a wonderful alertness and 

 adaptability, an undaunted self-confidence, a ferot ious 

 optimism, an ingenious delight in novelty, a nonchalant 

 venturesomeness, a strength of purpose, and a vigorous 

 tenacity in action, a complete absence of self-conscious- 

 ness, all the qualities of childhood excepting reverence, 

 alxjvcall, intense and abounding and infectious vitality, 

 instinctiM- loyalty and comradeship in action, idealism 

 in the darkest hours. " Pioneers, () I'ioncers,is the song 

 of succes-.ive generations of young .Americans, novi- 

 ciates into the Dionysiac spirit of transatlantic life." 

 Hut " the human soul can strike no roots in the 

 America of to-day," for want of a social background. 



TROUBLE IN CUBA. 



Mr. Sydney Brooks writes in the North American 

 Reviav for July on Cuba and the Cuban question. He 

 says there is nothing that the great majority of the 

 Cuban people so heartily dread and abominate as 

 another .American administration of their country. 



GRANDMOTHERLY INTERFERENCE* 



He develops this by saying : — 



Anyone who has been at all behind the scenes of Cuban 

 politics and administration knows perfectly well that the 

 amount of supervision exercised by the .Vmerican Minister in 

 Havana goes far beyond the mere terms of the I'latt -Vmend- 

 ment and is frequently enforced in matters that exclusively 

 concern the Cubans themselves, and that it is mere gallantry to 

 speak of the Cubans as a self-governing people. In this way 

 the Cuban administration is largely deprived of the moral 

 authority that every Government ought to possess, and the 

 political inexperience which it is the sincere wish, I iielieve, of 

 the .\nierican people to remove is really perpetuated. The 

 Cubans never quite know where they are or with whom they are 

 dealing. One day the American Minister receives instructions 

 from the .State Department ; the next day he may receive con- 

 tradictory instructions from the War Department. A habit of 

 meddling with the details of Cuban administration and of 

 hampering and hauling up Cuban .Ministers in the discharge 

 of the ordinary functions of government has thus grown up, 

 greatly to the resentment of the rulers of the island and to the 

 seiious impairment of whatever sense of responsibility they may 

 possess. 



AN EXPLOITED PEOPLE, 



It is rather a dark picture that Mr. Brooks draws 

 of the internal state of Cuba : — 



Undoubtedly graft is rampant in Havana and, indeed, 

 . throughout the whole island. If it would be an exaggeration 

 to say that the country is being sold block by block, it is. 

 well within the truth to say that many concessions have been 

 granted for illicit considerations tliat ought never to have 

 been granted at all, and that the government is honeycombed 

 with jobbery and corruption. It is true that in most, but not 

 in all cases, the public h.as benefited by being furnished with 

 facilities that otherwise would not have been forthcoming ; but 

 no one seriously disputes the fact that graft has assumed 

 sinister proportions and is one of the main pivots of Cubar* 

 politics. ,\Ioreover, the fiscal policy of the Ciovernment throws 

 a wholly disproportionate burden on the poor, who are still 

 funher oppressed by an absence of small hokiings and a lack 

 of opportunities for getting credit on any but .Asiatic terms, and 

 who are further demoralised by the revival of the lottery. .\ , 

 very competent observer, Mr. Forbes Lindsay, has justly re- 

 marked that Cuba presents the curious anomaly of "a highly 

 prosperous country with an extremely needy population." 

 The native Cubans are lending more and more to become the 

 dispossessed employees of alien capitalists, and, were the sugar 

 crop to be ruined by bad weatlier or were a period of commer- 

 cial depression to set in, an acute situation would undoubtedly 

 arise. Meanwhile it is enough to note it as a blot and a 

 danger-point that the Cuban Government has shown itself to 

 be lar iimre zealous in the service of "the interests"' than in 

 that of "the people.'' 



In conclusion, Mr. Brooks advises the .American 

 people to tolerate just as much as they possibly can. 

 .Another .American occupation of the island would, he 

 says, be regarded with extreme suspicion and resent- 

 ment by all the Republics of South .Ainerica. and would 

 raise a crop of very delicate domestic problems, both 

 fiscal and otherwise. 



