ing this chapter on the name of the
great popular dictator who made war on the politicians and the
financiers. This chapter does not profess to touch on one in twenty of
the interesting cities of America, even in this particular aspect of
their relation to the history of America, which is so much neglected in
England. If that were so, there would be a great deal to say even about
the newest of them; Chicago, for instance, is certainly something more
than the mere pork-packing yard that English tradition suggests; and it
has been building a boulevard not unworthy of its splendid position on
its splendid lake. But all these cities are defiled and even diseased
with industrialism. It is due to the Americans to remember that they
have deliberately preserved one of their cities from such defilement and
such disease. And that is the presidential city, which stands in the
American mind for the same ideal as the President; the idea of the
Republic that rises above modern money-getting and endures. There has
really been an effort to keep the White House white. No factories are
allowed in that town; no more than the necessary shops are tolerated. It
is a beautiful city; and really retains something of that classical
serenity of the eighteenth century in which the Fathers of the Republic
moved. With all respect to the colonial place of that name, I do not
suppose that Wellington is particularly like Wellington. But Washington
really is like Washington.

In this, as in so many things, there is no harm in our criticising
foreigners, if only we would also criticise ourselves. In other words,
the world might need even less of its new charity, if it had a little
more of the old humility. When we complain of American individualism, we
forget that we have fostered it by ourselves having far less of this
impersonal ideal of the Republic or commonwealth as a whole. When we
complain, very justly, for instance, of great pictures passing into the
possession of American magnates, we ought to remember that we paved the
way for it by allowing them all to accumulate in the possession of
English magnates. It is bad that a public treasure should be in the
possession of a private man in America, but we took the first step in
lightly letting it disappear into the private collection of a man in
England. I know all about the genuine national tradition which treated
the aristocracy as constituting the state; but these very foreign
purchases go to prove