‘Well,’ I said, ‘they would be very safe in Kentucky.’ ‘And what happens when the Englishmen visit America?’ demanded Lysis. ‘Why,’ I answered, ‘they are surprised it is not more like England, and at once complain; and many are offended that the Americans are not more like the English, and say so, for they are subjected to torture to make them say what they think.’ ‘What is the torture?’ cried Phaelon. ‘They call it the Third Degree, and it consists in endless interrogation.’ ‘Could you not get such a post as torturer in America, Socrates?’ asked Lysis. ‘There was talk of it,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘but I cast the proposal from me as cruel. Anyway the Americans question their visitors day and night, saying: “What do you think of us?” till in the end the visitors confess.’ ‘And then there is a war?’ asked Phaelon. ‘No,’ I said, ‘they just stop the mouths of such visitors with pie.’ ‘Remember,’ I resumed, ‘that to visit America is the most expensive thing an Englishman can do, and so it is only rich and leisured Englishmen who travel there. And these men do not admire commerce, for though their fathers or perhaps themselves have grown rich by it, yet it has always been rated at its proper value in England. It has always been the means to the leisured life. Furthermore the Englishman is not impressed by the very things that the American thinks will impress him. For the English do not admire size or reverence bigness. They were not used to admire the Spaniards or the French or the Germans in the past for being twice as many as they, and for having splendid courts and great armies and public works. Nor is there any sight in England more comical than to behold the rich and vulgar cosmopolitans, who have bought a share in their government, attempting to arouse an audience of Englishmen to enthusiasm for their own British Empire just because it is so very big. But the Americans will point to a crowd of offices or cars and feel happy in the knowledge that their country is shouting for itself. Now the English discover in the Americans most excellent hosts, for they are the most generous of all the barbarians, but the more grateful the English are, the more criticisms do they express, finding it intolerable that the hosts they like so much should go on pouring out admiration on useless things and prostrating the soul before number and quantity.’ ‘And what happens when the Americans come to England?’ asked Phaelon.