I look very eagerly and watchfully to America in many ways. After the war she will be more emphatically than ever, in material things, the most important and powerful nation of the earth. We British have a legitimate and somewhat breathless interest in the use she will make of her strength, and in the course of her national life, for this will greatly influence the course of our own. But power for real light and leading in America will depend, not so much on her material wealth, or her armed force, as on what her attitude towards life, and what the ideals of her citizens are going to be. Americans have a certain eagerness for knowledge; they have also, for all their absorption in success, the aspiring eye. They do want the good thing. They don’t always know when they see it, but they want it. These qualities, in combination with material strength, give America her chance. Yet, if she does not set her face against “Gadarening,” we are all bound for downhill. If she goes in for spreadeagleism, if her aspirations are towards quantity, not quality, we shall all go on being commonised. If she should get that purse-and-power-proud fever which comes from national success, we are all bound for another world flare-up. The burden of proving that democracy can be real and yet live up to an ideal of health and beauty will be on America’s shoulders, and on ours. What are we and Americans going to make of our inner life, of our individual habits of thought? What are we going to reverence, and what despise? Do we mean to lead, in spirit and in truth, not in mere money and guns? Britain is an old country, though still in her prime, I hope; America is yet on the threshold. Is she to step out into the sight of the world as a great leader? That is for America the long decision, to be worked out, not so much in her Senate and her Congress, as in her homes and schools. On America, now that the war is over, the destiny of civilisation may hang for the next century. If she mislays, indeed if she does not improve the power of self-criticism――that special dry American humour which the great Lincoln had――she might soon develop the intolerant provincialism which has so often been the bane of the earth and the undoing of nations. Above all, if she does not solve the problems of town life, of Capital and Labour, of the distribution of wealth, of national health, and attain to a mastery over inventions and machinery――she is in for a cycle of mere anarchy, disruption, and dictatorships, into which we shall all follow. The motto “noblesse oblige” applies as much to democracy as ever it did to the old-time aristocrat. It applies with terrific vividness to America. Ancestry and Nature have bestowed on her great gifts. Behind her stand Conscience, Enterprise, Independence, and Ability――such were the companions of the first Americans, and are the comrades of American citizens to this day. She has abounding energy, an unequalled spirit of discovery, a vast