Americans and Others

MP3 Audio CD. Americans and Others

A Question of Politeness

"La politesse de l'esprit consiste a penser des choses honnetes et
delicates."


A great deal has been said and written during the past few years on
the subject of American manners, and the consensus of opinion is,
on the whole, unfavourable. We have been told, more in sorrow than
in anger, that we are not a polite people; and our critics have cast
about them for causes which may be held responsible for such a
universal and lamentable result. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, for example,
is by way of thinking that the fault lies in the sudden expansion
of wealth, in the intrusion into the social world of people who fail
to understand its requirements, and in the universal "spoiling" of
American children. He contrasts the South of his childhood, that
wonderful "South before the war," which looms vaguely, but very
grandly, through a half-century's haze, with the New York of to-day,
which, alas! has nothing to soften its outlines. A more censorious
critic in the "Atlantic Monthly" has also stated explicitly that for
true consideration and courtliness we must hark back to certain old
gentlewomen of ante-bellum days. "None of us born since the Civil
War approach them in respect to some fine, nameless quality that
gives them charm and atmosphere." It would seem, then, that the war,
with its great emotions and its sustained heroism, imbued us with
national life at the expense of our national manners.

I wonder if this kind of criticism does not err by comparing the many
with the few, the general with the exceptional. I wonder if the
deficiencies of an imperfect civilization can be accounted for along
such obvious lines. The self-absorption of youth which Mrs. Comer
deprecates, the self-