HUMANISM AND AMERICA ESSAYS ON THE OUTLOOK OF MODERN CIVILISATION _Edited by_ NORMAN FOERSTER FARRAR AND RINEHART INCORPORATED PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1930, BY FARRAR AND RINEHART PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Preface_ “Life’s a long headache in a noisy street,” sang the poet Masefield in _The Widow in the Bye Street_ seventeen years ago. Since then, we have all come to live in Main rather than Bye Street, and our headache has grown apace despite the best efforts of the physicians of the age. The noise and whirl increase, the disillusion and depression deepen, the nightmare of Futility stalks before us in the inevitable intervals when activity flags. Heroically or mock-heroically we distrust or reject such stimulants and anodynes as religion, moral conventions, the dignity of manners, the passion for beauty, and even our recent faith in democracy, in liberalism, in progress, in science, in efficiency, in machinery. At length revolt and scepticism themselves have ceased to be interesting. The modern temper has produced a terrible headache. In vain does our Chief Executive assure us that “we have reached a higher degree of comfort and security than ever existed before in the history of the world.” Like Mr. Punch when it was announced that the government would soon be broadcasting intelligence by radio, we wonder “Where will the government get it?” All governments, all nations, are to-day in this predicament. The alleged Americanisation of Europe appears to signify, at bottom, that tendencies native to Europe are being worked out most thoroughly in the United States and are therefore making the United States the model of twentieth-century Europe. At the same time Europe knows that the model is, to speak very gently, inadequate. For a good many years our own writers have deplored the condition of civilisation in the United States, with exaggeration but essential truth. But they have generally made of revolt and scepticism ends rather than beginnings of wisdom. For materialistic complacency they have substituted a smart superiority resting on the most dubious foundations. Their feebleness in constructive power is very patent. They are part of the disease--symptoms not remedies.