Its appetite for variety is insatiable, but its
appreciation, when given, is full-handed and whole-hearted. The
American public never holds back from the man to whom it gives; it
never bestows in a niggardly way; it gives all or nothing.
What is not generally understood of the American people is their
wonderful idealism. Nothing so completely surprises the foreign-born
as the discovery of this trait in the American character. The
impression is current in European countries--perhaps less generally
since the war--that America is given over solely to a worship of the
American dollar. While between nations as between individuals,
comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to say, from personal
knowledge, that the Dutch worship the gulden infinitely more than do
the Americans the dollar.
I do not claim that the American is always conscious of this idealism;
often he is not. But let a great convulsion touching moral questions
occur, and the result always shows how close to the surface is his
idealism. And the fact that so frequently he puts over it a thick
veneer of materialism does not affect its quality.
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