t is rather as if somebody said, 'I have risked my life in
fire and pestilence to find my way to the music hall,' or, 'I have
fasted forty days in the wilderness sustained by the hope of seeing
Totty Toddles do her new dance.' And there is something rather more
subtle involved here. There is something in an Englishman which would
make him feel faintly ashamed of saying that he had fasted to hear
Totty Toddles, or risen from a sick-bed to hear Mrs. Asquith. He would
feel that it was undignified to confess that he had wanted mere
amusement so much; and perhaps that he had wanted anything so much. He
would not like, so to speak, to be seen rushing down the street after
Totty Toddles, or after Mrs. Asquith, or perhaps after anybody. But
there is something in it distinct from a mere embarrassment at admitting
enthusiasm. He might admit the enthusiasm if the object seemed to
justify it; he might perfectly well be serious about a serious thing.
But he cannot understand a person being proud of serious sacrifices for
what is not a serious thing. He does not like to admit that a little
thing can excite him; that he can lose his breath in running, or lose
his balance in reaching, after something that might be called silly.

Now that is where the American is fundamentally different. To him the
enthusiasm itself is meritorious. To him the excitement itself is
dignified. He counts it a part of his manhood to fast or fight or rise
from a bed of sickness for something, or possibly for anything. His
ideal is not to be a lock that only a worthy key can open, but a 'live
wire' that anything can touch or anybody can use. In a word, there is a
difference in the very definition of virility and therefore of virtue. A
live wire is not only active, it is also sensitive. Thus sensibility
becomes actually a part of virility. Something more is involved than the
vulgar simplification of the American as the irresistible force and the
Englishman as the immovable post. As a fact, those who speak of such
things nowadays generally mean by something irresistible something
simply immovable, or at least something unalterable, motionless even in
motion, like a cannon ball; for a cannon ball is as dead as a cannon.
Prussian militarism was praised in that way--until it met a French force
of about half its size on the banks of the Marne. But that is not what
an American means by energy; that sort of Prussian energy is only
monotony without repose. American ener