III FROM A SPEECH AT THE LOTUS CLUB, NEW YORK I wonder whether you in America can realise what an entrancing voyage of discovery you represent to us primeval Anglo-Britons. I prefer that term to Anglo-Saxon, for even if we English glory in the thought that our seaborne ancestors were extremely bloodthirsty, we have no evidence that they brought their own women to Britain in any quantities, or had the power of reproducing themselves without aid from the other sex! Can you, I say, realise how much more enticing to my English mind America is, than the Arabian Nights were to your fascinating fabulist, O. Henry? One longs to unriddle to oneself the significance and sense of America. In the English-speaking world to-day we need understanding of each others’ natures, aims, sympathies, and dislikes. For without understanding we become doctrinaire and partizan, building our ship in compartments very watertight, and getting into them and shutting the doors when the ship threatens to go down. We English have a reputation for self-sufficiency. But speaking for myself, who find no name that is not English in my genealogy, I never can get up quite the interest in my own race that I can in others. We English are so set and made, you Americans are yet in the making. We at most experience modification of type; you are in process of creating one. I have often asked Americans: What is now the American type? and have been answered by――a smile. When I go back home my countrymen will ask me the same question. I would I could sit down and listen to you telling me what it is.