An American Criticism

Te Aroha News, Volume XVII, Issue 22693, 6 August 1903, Page 2

An American Criticism

ARE THE ENGLISH DEGENERATING. Do the English people show any signs of moral or physical decadence ? If we may trust so keen an observed as the late Mr G. W. Stevens, himself a patriotic Englishman, there are such signs. ‘ Compared with our ancestors ~ he said, ‘ we do not drink so well, love so well, fight so well ; physically and emotionally we have subdued our selves to a lower plane. ’ Yet no one can come in contact with the English of to-day and conclude that they lack courage or energy. England is suffering rather from misdirected or unapplied energy. She is in the posi tion of a man who, having enjoyed for many years a large income, continues after his income has diminished to live extravagantly and-ddly. The number of superfluous luxuries which a wealthy Englishman gathers about him is appalling ; an army 'of servants more horses than he can • Use, houses in town and country. % Nor is indulgence in luxuries confined to the rich. The typical Eng lishman puts nothing aside. At Manchester the working classes are famous for buying the first of the early vegetables : and among the same class all over tL« kingdom the use of alcoholic liquors is ex essive. r Jo the imigination of an American the English aristocracy figures as a kiad of ornamental thing, furnishing some gifted s atesmen and many brave soldiers, but chiefly useful as a theme for the novelist and as an examplar of good manners and good ‘ form ’ The aristocracy may b© all this—though a keen observer declares that English duchesses have the worst manner* in. the world—but it is also something more and something worse. It is a contrivance for putting second and tldrd-class men into places that should be occupied by first-class men.

This is most apparent in the army. All the correspondents and military critics who have dealt with the South African war, whether friendly or hostile to the English, have agreed upon one point, namely, that the English officers, as a class, are supremely brave, but also supremely stupid, care less and incapable of adapting them selves to new conditions. Th» inefficiency of the English officers is duo mainly to the fact that the army is an aristocratic institution. Young men join the army not as a profession, but as a kind of sporting club. At a dinner party in London there was an officer lately returned, wounded, from the war. He was of the extremely ; ‘ haw, haw ’ English type ; and he declared that ‘ South Africa ’ was & ‘ beastly place.’ There was really no amusement there until Lady Eita doodle came out and gave afternoon teas. Then it was ‘ rather nic*.’ To a great extent the officers of the Governmentare selected upon the same aristocratic theory. The administration like the army, is still in many respects « feudal institution. It does not gather to itself the best talent of modern practical England; and hence its blunders. What is to be thought of a Government which, though it foresaw months, if not years, before the event, the clouds of war gathering over South Africa yet sent its troops into the field armed with obsolete toy weapon*, which carried about half as far as the Mausers of the Boers? In order rightly to understand the past or reasonably to conjecture the future history of England ene must remember that the British Empire has been created not mainly by the intellectual, but rather by the moral, qualities of the English. Upon thi* point one finds writers the most diverse expressing themselves in words nearly the same. “The English did nob calculate the conquest of the Indies.” said Emerson, “ it fell to their character. ” —Hamper’s Magazine.