He seemed to listen
with close attention to the humorous anecdote with which, in the
American fashion, Mr. Oover inaugurated dinner.

To all Rhodes Scholars, indeed, his courtesy was invariable. He went out
of his way to cultivate them. And this he did more as a favour to Lord
Milner than of his own caprice. He found these Scholars, good fellows
though they were, rather oppressive. They had not--how could they
have?--the undergraduate's virtue of taking Oxford as a matter of
course. The Germans loved it too little, the Colonials too much. The
Americans were, to a sensitive observer, the most troublesome--as being
the most troubled--of the whole lot. The Duke was not one of those
Englishmen who fling, or care to hear flung, cheap sneers at America.
Whenever any one in his presence said that America was not large
in area, he would firmly maintain that it was. He held, too, in his
enlightened way, that Americans have a perfect right to exist. But
he did often find himself wishing Mr. Rhodes had not enabled them to
exercise that right in Oxford. They were so awfully afraid of having
their strenuous native characters undermined by their delight in the
place. They held that the future was theirs, a glorious asset, far more
glorious than the past. But a theory, as the Duke saw, is one thing, an
emotion another. It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to
revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic
about what exists than about what doesn't. The future doesn't exist. The
past does. For, whereas all men can learn, the gift of prophecy has died
out. A man cannot work up in his breast any real excitement about what
possibly won't happen. He cannot very well help being sentimentally
interested in what he knows has happened. On the other hand, he owes a
duty to his country. And, if his country be America, he ought to try to
feel a vivid respect for the future, and a cold contempt for the past.
Also, if he be selected by his country as a specimen of the best moral,
physical, and intellectual type that she can produce for the astounding
of the effete foreigner, and incidentally for the purpose of raising
that foreigner's tone, he must--mustn't he?--do his best to astound,
to exalt. But then comes in this difficulty. Young men don't like to
astound and exalt their fellows. And Americans, individually, are of
all people the most anxious to please. That they talk overmuch is often
taken as a sign of self