The first and very natural objection of such readers would probably be: ‘You are cut off from the life to which you belong.’ But is this really true? It would be true of, say, an Italian coming to America. He is indeed cut off, and unless he has a very strong personality his character suffers for it. A certain looseness comes. But it is not equally true of an American who emigrates to Italy. The Italian has strong bonds, roots that go down and down and link him to an incalculable past. (Which is both valuable and harmful). The American lives like some drifting rootless water-plant. Family for him is something to get away from; at least it does not postulate the obligations it does abroad. And he has seldom ties of place. So few Americans live at maturity in the house or even in the town where they were born that those who do are made the subject of quaint, rather emasculated, dialect stories in our more expensive monthly magazines. There is an appearance of national life because so many thousands are doing the same thing at the same time--reading the same advertisements, wearing the same kind of clothes, going to the same movies; but they are not consciously performing the same duties. In existence we are a gregarious nation, but existence is nothing; in real life we are intensely lonely, isolated individuals--as much so as if we lived in Europe. Perhaps this would be as it should be, a foundation for individual achievement, if we would recognize it and rejoice in it. But no nation in the world is so wistfully desirous of a unity that, despite appearances, it has not got. All sorts of judgments, mostly idiotic, have been passed on Americans by Europeans, but there is at least one which is profoundly true: that Americans want pathetically to be liked. This is at once a sign of weakness in us and a proof of frustration; it reveals the fact that we have not the unity we crave. We huddle together for comfort, but, because we are doing childish insignificant things, we get no closer for that. It is true that individuals can never get very close to one another. Still, two men even at opposite ends of the earth may exchange a few lines of writing that can profoundly influence the life of each. But two men side by side, brushing their teeth ...?