Nonsense? Of course it is nonsense. But the desirable thing is that Englishmen should be brought to understand that after all it is but an inconsiderable portion of the American business community that is permanently employed in the manufacture of wooden nutmegs, in selling canned horrors for food, or in watering railway shares, and that Americans should believe that there are quite a large number of men of high birth in England who are only infrequently engaged in either beating their own wives or running away with those of other men. The brief confessional clause at the conclusion of the above draft I take to be an important portion of the document. It is not necessary that a similar confession should be incorporated in the behalf of the Party of the Second Part, not because there are no family scandals in America, but because, in the absence of a peerage, it is not easy to tell when a divorce or other scandal occurs among the aristocracy. "Scandal in High Life" is such a tempting heading to a column that the American newspapers are generous in their interpretation of the term and many a man and woman, on getting into trouble, must have been surprised to learn for the first time that their ambitions had been realised, unknown to themselves, and that they did indeed belong to that class which they had for so long yearned to enter. This fact also is worth considering, namely, that whereas in England it is not impossible that there may be more scandals of a financial sort, both in official circles and outside, than the public ever hears of through the press; it is reasonably certain that in America the press publishes full details of a good many more scandals than ever occur. This peculiarity of the American press (for it is still peculiar to America, in degree at least, if not in kind) does not arise from any set purpose of blackening the reputation of the country in the eyes of the outside world, but is entirely the result of "enterprise," of individual ambition, and the extremity of partisan enthusiasm. Other nations may be quite certain that they hear all the worst that is to be told of the people of the United States. Out of the Spanish war arose what came to be known as the "embalmed beef" scandal. American soldiers in Cuba were furnished with a quantity of rations which, by the time they reached the front and an effort was made to serve them out, were entirely unfit for human consumption. Undoubtedly much suffering was thereby caused to the men and probably some disease. But, equally undoubtedly, the catastrophe arose from an error in judgment and not from dishonesty of contractors or of any government official. But, as the incident was handled by a section of the American press, it might well, had the two great parties at the time been more evenly balanced in public favour, have resulted in the ruin of the reputation of an administration and the overthrow of the Republican party at the next election.