But this is to become grave, which is detestable, even in a country which has just been taking its ticket for the Garden of Eden. I believe I shall yet see (unless I perish of public speaking) America taking the long cut to Beauty――for there are no short cuts to Her, no cheap nostrums by which she can be conjured from the blue. Beauty and Simplicity are the natural antidotes to the feverish industrialism of our age. If only America will begin to take them freely she has it in her power to re-inspire in us older peoples, just now rather breathless and exhausted, the belief in Beauty, and a new fervour for the creation of fine and rare things. If on the other hand America turns Beauty down as a dangerous ‘bit of fluff’ and Simplicity as an impecunious alien, we over there, one behind the other, will sink into a soup of utilitarianism so thick that we may never get out. Gentlemen, I long to see established between the English-speaking peoples a fellowship, not only in matters political and commercial, important as these are, but in philosophy and art. For after all those laughing-stocks, philosophy and art――the beautiful expression of our highest thoughts and fancies――are the lanterns of a nation’s life, and we ought to hang them in each others’ houses. IV FROM A SPEECH TO THE SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, NEW YORK I do not know what your chief thought is now; for me the overmastering thought is that of Creation――Re-creation. You know when we look at a bit of moorland where the gorse and heather have been burned――swaled we call it in Devon――how we delight in the green, pushing up among the black shrivelled roots. I long to see the green pushing up, the creative impulse at work in its thousand ways all over the world again; each of us on both continents in his own line doing creative work; and not so much that wealth and comfort, as that health and beauty may be born again. But, confronting as I do to-night, the Arts and Sciences, let me divide my words. You sciences have no need to listen. You have never had such a heyday as this; in engineering, in chemistry, in surgery, in every branch except perhaps ‘star-gazing,’ you have been shooting ahead, earning fresh laurels, putting new discoveries at the service of bewildered Man. Science drags no lame foot, it dances along like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I had better not pursue the simile. But the Arts, with faces muffled to the eyes, stand against the walls of life, and gaze a little enviously, a little mournfully at the passing rout. This is not their time for carnival; their lovers sleep, heavy with war and toil. It is to those poor wallflowers the Arts, that I would speak: Drop your veils, have the courage of your charms; you shall break many a heart yet, make many a lover happy.