I have seen only one case of even semi-intoxication, that of a man who had that afternoon received a decree of divorce and was either drowning his sorrows or celebrating his luck, I never knew which. Over the Whitsuntide holiday, I might[Pg 269] add, some two hundred and fifty thousand persons went to Blackpool, and there was not a single instance of drunkenness or disorderly conduct. II Certainly if we judge the degree of civilization by the completeness with which a people governs itself, combined with the completeness with which it retains all possible liberty of individual action, I know no other leading country of European civilization which can compete with England. As for liberty of speech, thought, and action in America, it is notorious that in many ways they are being maintained only by a direct disobeying of or winking at innumerable laws. To some extent we may attribute some of our difficulties of this sort to the extremely heterogeneous population we now have, but that is due to the “native” American’s dislike of physical work and his desire to get rich as quickly as possible by exploiting with the greatest speed and with alien labor the resources of the continent. At home there is no use blinking the fact any longer that we are not an Anglo-Saxon country. Our language may be English, the framework of our government may be mainly derived from English precedents, and the old stock may still give the leaders, for the most part, in culture, but the population figures tell another story. In New York City alone there are two million foreign born and two hundred thousand negroes, to say nothing of foreigners of the second generation. In all England there are only three hundred thousand aliens, and this racial solidarity gives one a sense of being at home and among one’s own kind. [Pg 270]