And Primble of the International Films Distributing Agency drawled, “Just about once a year I certainly got to get back to the Ozark Mountains and go fishing.”
But except for half a dozen homesick souls, each of them admitted that he was going to go on loving, boosting, and admiring America, and remain in Europe as long as he could.
Their confessions could have been summed up in the ruminations of Doblin, proconsul of sewing-machines, doyen of the American business-colony, old and thread-thin and gentle, who murmured (while the others listened, nodding, nervously shaking ashes from cigarettes, or holding their cigars cocked in the corners of their mouths):
“Well, I’ll tell you the way I look at it personally. Strikes me that one-half or maybe two-thirds of the American people are the best fellows on earth—the friendliest and the most interested in everything and the jolliest. And I guess the remaining third are just about the worst crabs, the worst Meddlesome Matties, the most ignorant and pretentious fools, that God ever made. Male and female! I’d be tickled to death to live in America if. If we got rid of Prohibition, so a man could get a glass of beer instead of being compelled to drink gin and hootch. If we got rid of taking seriously a lot of self-advertising, half-educated preachers and editors and politicians, so that folks would develop a little real thinking instead of being pushed along by a lot of mental and moral policemen. If our streets weren’t so God-awfully noisy. If there were a lot more cafés and a lot less autos—sorry, Mr. Dodsworth, you being a motor-manufacturer, but that slipped out and I guess I’ll just have to stand by it.
“But the whole thing, the fundamental thing, is a lot harder to express than that. Nothing like so simple as just Prohibition. … Golly, the number of people who think they are getting profound when they talk about that one question! … The whole thing—Oh, there’s more ease in living here! Your neighbors don’t spy on you and gossip and feel it’s their business to tell you how to live, way we do at home. Not that I’ve got anything to hide. I haven’t been drunk for thirty years. I’ve been true to my wife—unless you count one time when I kissed a little widow on the Baltic, and by golly that’s as far as it went! But if there’s one thing that would make me go out for all the vices I ever heard of, it would be the thought of a lot of morality hounds sneaking after me all the time, the way they do in the States. And you get better servants here—yes, and the servants themselves like their work a deuce of a sight better than our redneck hired girls in America, because they’re skilled, they’re respected here, they’re secure, they don’t have the womenfolks nosing into their iceboxes and love-letters all day long! And business—Our greatest American myth is that we’re so much more efficient than these Britishers and the folks on the Continent. All this high-pressure salesmanship bunk! Why say, I’ll bet that stuff antagonizes more customers than it ever catches. And over here, they simply won’t stand for it! An Englishman knows what he wants to buy, and he don’t intend to be bullied into buying something else. And a Scotsman knows what he doesn’t want to buy! Half our efficiency is just running around and making a lot of show and wasting time. I always picture the ideal ‘peppy’ American business man as a fellow who spends half his time having his letters filed away and the other half trying to find ’em again. And then—Englishman don’t feel he’s virtuous because he spends a lot of extra time in his office not doing anything special. He goes home early and gets in some golf or tennis or some gardening. Might even read a book! And he’s got a hobby, so that when he retires he has something to do; doesn’t just waste away from being bored to death when he’s old, the way we do.
“The Englishman will work, and work hard, but he doesn’t fall for the nonsense that work—any kind of work, for any purpose—is noble in itself. Why, when I go home—Well, there’s old Emmanuel White, president of my company. He’s seventy-two years old, and he’s never taken a vacation. He’s worth two million dollars, and he gets to the office at eight, and sometimes he stays there till eleven at night and goes snooping around to see if anybody’s left a light turned on. Maybe he gets some fun out of it, but he sure doesn’t look like it. He looks like he lived on vinegar, and to have a conference with him is just about as pleasant as tending a sick tiger. And the fellows of forty and forty-five that never relax even when they do take an afternoon off—they drive like hell out to a golf course. Greatest myth in the world!
“But we’re beginning to learn a little bit about leisure at home, I guess. That makes me hopeful that some day we may even get cured of optimism and oratory. But I don’t expect it in my time, and you bet your sweet life I’m going to stay on here in England, even after I retire. Say! I’ve got a little place in Surrey, with an acre of ground and a rose garden. But I’m American, just’s American as I ever was. And, thank God, there’s enough Americans here so I can see a lot of ’em. I admire the English, but they make me feel kind of roughneck. But live here—you bet! Say, that’s one of the best proofs that America is the greatest country in the world: Paris and London have become two of the nicest of American cities! Yes sir!”
Sam was rather bewildered. Doblin was the old-fashioned, Yankee, suramerican sort whom he preferred
