s the timbers swelling before
his eyes like pumpkins in some super-tropical summer. But he may have
formed the conviction that no such proclamation could be found outside
Shakespeare's town. And indeed there is a serious criticism here, to any
one who knows history; since the things that grow are not always the
things that remain; and pumpkins of that expansiveness have a tendency
to burst. I was always told that Americans were harsh, hustling, rather
rude and perhaps vulgar; but they were very practical and the future
belonged to them. I confess I felt a fine shade of difference; I liked
the Americans; I thought they were sympathetic, imaginative, and full of
fine enthusiasms; the one thing I could not always feel clear about was
their future. I believe they were happier in their frame-houses than
most people in most houses; having democracy, good education, and a
hobby of work; the one doubt that did float across me was something
like, 'Will all this be here at all in two hundred years?' That was the
first impression produced by the wooden houses that seemed like the
waggons of gipsies; it is a serious impression, but there is an answer
to it. It is an answer that opens on the traveller more and more as he
goes westward, and finds the little towns dotted about the vast central
prairies. And the answer is agriculture. Wooden houses may or may not
last; but farms will last; and farming will always last.

The houses may look like gipsy caravans on a heath or common; but they
are not on a heath or common. They are on the most productive and
prosperous land, perhaps, in the modern world. The houses might fall
down like shanties, but the fields would remain; and whoever tills
those fields will count for a great deal in the affairs of humanity.
They are already counting for a great deal, and possibly for too much,
in the affairs of America. The real criticism of the Middle West is
concerned with two facts, neither of which has been yet adequately
appreciated by the educated class in England. The first is that the turn
of the world has come, and the turn of the agricultural countries with
it. That is the meaning of the resurrection of Ireland; that is the
meaning of the practical surrender of the Bolshevist Jews to the Russian
peasants. The other is that in most places these peasant societies carry
on what may be called the Catholic tradition. The Middle West is perhaps
the one considerable place where they still carry on the