er unfounded, that the
Americans talk about dollars. But for the moment I am merely anxious to
avoid a similar misunderstanding when I talk about Americans. About the
dogmas of democracy, about the right of a people to its own symbols,
whether they be coins or customs, I am convinced, and no longer to be
shaken. But about the meaning of those symbols, in silver or other
substances, I am always open to correction. That error is the price we
pay for the great glory of nationality. And in this sense I am quite
ready, at the start, to warn my own readers against my own opinions.

The fact without the truth is futile; indeed the fact without the truth
is false. I have already noted that this is especially true touching our
observations of a strange country; and it is certainly true touching one
small fact which has swelled into a large fable. I mean the fable about
America commonly summed up in the phrase about the Almighty Dollar. I do
not think the dollar is almighty in America; I fancy many things are
mightier, including many ideals and some rather insane ideals. But I
think it might be maintained that the dollar has another of the
attributes of deity. If it is not omnipotent it is in a sense
omnipresent. Whatever Americans think about dollars, it is, I think,
relatively true that they talk about dollars. If a mere mechanical
record could be taken by the modern machinery of dictaphones and
stenography, I do not think it probable that the mere word 'dollars'
would occur more often in any given number of American conversations
than the mere word 'pounds' or 'shillings' in a similar number of
English conversations. And these statistics, like nearly all statistics,
would be utterly useless and even fundamentally false. It is as if we
should calculate that the word 'elephant' had been mentioned a certain
number of times in a particular London street, or so many times more
often than the word 'thunderbolt' had been used in Stoke Poges.
Doubtless there are statisticians capable of carefully collecting those
statistics also; and doubtless there are scientific social reformers
capable of legislating on the basis of them. They would probably argue
from the elephantine imagery of the London street that such and such a
percentage of the householders were megalomaniacs and required medical
care and police coercion. And doubtless their calculations, like nearly
all such calculations, would leave out the only important point; as that
th