elieve in
education, but they do not believe in educators. There is no money to be
made in that profession, and the making of money is the test of
character. The born poet or artist is thus handicapped to a point which
may easily discourage him from running at all. At the best, he emigrates
to Europe, and his achievement is credited to that continent. Or,
remaining in America, he succumbs to the environment, puts aside his
creative ambition, and enters business. It is not for nothing that
Americans are the most active people in the world. They pay the penalty
in an atrophy of the faculties of reflection and representation.

Things are different in Europe, and even in England. There, not only
are artists and men of letters honoured when they are successful--they
are, of course, honoured at that stage in America; but the pursuit of
literature and art is one which a young man need not feel it
discreditable to adopt. The contemporaries of a brilliant youth at
Oxford or at Cambridge do not secretly despise him if he declines to
enter business. The first-class man does not normally aspire to start
life as a drummer. Public life and the Church offer honourable careers;
and both of them have traditional affinities with literature. So has the
Law, still in England a profession and not a trade. One may even be a
don or a schoolmaster without serious discredit. Under these conditions
a young man can escape from the stifling pressure of the business point
of view. He can find societies like-minded with himself, equally
indifferent to the ideal of success in business, equally inspired by
intellectual or aesthetic ambitions. He can choose to be poor without
feeling that he will therefore become despicable. The attitude of the
business classes in England, no doubt, is much the same as that of the
business classes in America. But in England there are other classes and
other traditions, havens of refuge from the prevalent commercialism. In
America the trade-wind blows broad, steady, universal over the length
and breadth of the continent.

This, I believe, is one reason for the sterility of America in Art. But
it is not the only one. Literature and Art in Europe rest on a long
tradition which has not only produced books and pictures, but has left
its mark on the language, the manners, the ideas, the architecture, the
physical features of the country. The books and the pictures can be
transplanted, but the rest cannot. Thus, even though