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Foreign Opinions About America

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Is There an American Art? (Current Opinion, 1922)

Prior to the establishment of the New York School in the 1940s, there has always been a popular belief among Europeans (and a few Americans) that the art produced in the U.S. was purely derivative and lacked true originality in conception and style. In this 1922 one page article some of these Europeans and Americans step forward and identify themselves while continuing to crack wise on the topic; however, the editors of 'Art News' will not suffer this abuse and they return fire offering plenty of evidence to the contrary.

 

French Amazement at American Esteem for Lafayette (Current Opinion, 1922)

"France has discovered Lafayette in this age only because America never forgot him"

This article reports that the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, 1757-1834), who seemed heaven-sent when he appeared in Philadelphia in order to aid the Americans in their revolt against the British, had been largely forgotten by the French in the Twentieth Century. Indeed, the French were baffled to hear his name invoked as often as it was during the period of America's participation in the Great War. It was said that some disgruntled wit in the A.E.F. woke up one morning in the trenches and mumbled: "Alright, we paid Lafayette back; now what other Frog son-of-a-bitch do we owe?" Oddly, there is no mention made whatever of that unique trait so common to the Homo Americanus- "selective memory": during the 1870 German invasion of France there seemed to have been no one who recalled Lafayette's name at all.

 

Bertrand Russell on American Idealism (The Literary Digest, 1922)

British thinker Bertrand Russell (1872-1970; Nobel Prize for Literature, 1950) used to get mighty hot under the collar when the topic of 1922 American society came up and this report is just one example. On a speaking tour in the United States, the Cambridge Professor opined that

"love of truth [is] obscured in America by commercialism of which pragmatism is the philosophical expression; and love of our neighbor kept in fetters by Puritan morality."

He would have none of the thinking that America's main concern for jumping into the meat grinder of 1914-1918 was entirely inspired by "wounded France" and "poor little Belgium" but was rather an exercise in American self-interest.

 

The British and the Americans: How do They Differ? (The Literary Digest, 1919)

The author of this piece interviews the poet Robert Nichols (1893-1944) and finds the writer was convinced that the differences between the two peoples rests in their understanding of the idea of freedom.

 

As Europe Sees Us (The Smart Set, 1921)

George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) and H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) surmised that as the Europeans bury their many dead among the damp, depressing ruins of World War One, America is neither admired or liked very much: "the English owe us money", "the Germans smart under their defeat", "the French lament that they are no longer able to rob and debauch our infantry".

-Read an Article About the First World War and the Gratitude of France-

 

The United States and Spanish Speaking Unity (Review of Reviews, 1910)

Proud Spaniard Pio Ballesteros wrote this editorial in a 1910 issue of ESPANNA MODERNA in which he lamented the long favored practice of viewing the United States as the "elder sister of the Latin-American republics" and ignoring that sensation

"deep down in the hearts of both Spaniards and Spanish Americans, [that] there is a strong though undefined consciousness of the brotherhood of the Spanish race".

 


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