in every art the
technical tradition has been interrupted, there remains in Europe what I
will call the tradition of feeling; and it is this that is absent in
America. Art in Europe is rooted; and there still persists into the
present something of the spirit which fostered it in the past. Not only
is Nature beautiful, she is humanised by the works of Man. Politics are
mellowed by history, business tempered by culture. Classes are more
segregated, types more distinct, ideals and aims more varied. The ghost
of a spiritual life still hovers over the natural, shadowing it with the
beat of solemn wings. There are finer overtones for a sensitive ear to
catch; rainbow hues where the spray of life goes up. All this, it is
true, is disappearing in Europe; but in America it has never existed. A
sensitive European, travelling there, feels at once starved and flayed.
Nothing nourishes, and everything hurts. There is natural beauty, but it
has not been crowned and perfected by the hand of man. Whatever he has
touched he has touched only to defile. There is one pursuit, commerce;
one type, the business man; one ideal, that of increasing wealth.
Monotony of talk, monotony of ideas, monotony of aim, monotony of
outlook on the world. America is industrialism pure and simple; Europe
is industrialism superimposed on feudalism; and, for the arts, the
difference is vital.

But the difference is disappearing. Not that America is becoming like
Europe, but Europe is becoming like America. This is not a case of the
imitation that is a form of flattery; it is a case of similar causes
producing similar results. The disease--or shall we say, to use a
neutral term--the diathesis of commercialism found in America an open
field and swept through it like a fire. In Europe, its course was
hampered by the structures of an earlier civilisation. But it is
spreading none the less surely. And the question arises--In the future,
when the European environment is as unfavourable to Art as the American,
will there be, in the West, any Art at all? I do not know; no one knows;
but there is this to remark. What I am calling commercialism is the
infancy, not the maturity of a civilisation. The revolution in morals,
in manners, and in political and social institutions which must
accompany the revolution in industry, has hardly yet begun its course.
It has gone further in Europe than in America; so that, oddly enough,
Europe is at once behind and in front of this con