Memory Hold-The-Door by John Buchan — Read

The title of this chapter exactly defines its contents. It presents the American scene as it appears to one observer -- a point of view which does not claim to be that mysterious thing, objective truth. There will be no attempt to portray the "typical" American, for I have never known one. I have met a multitude of individuals, but I should not dare to take any one of them as representing his country -- of being that other mysterious thing, the average man. You can point to certain qualities which are more widely distributed in America than elsewhere, but you will scarcely find human beings who possess all these qualities. One good American will have most of them; another, equally good and not less representative, may have few or none. So I shall eschew generalities. If you cannot indict a nation, no more can you label it like a museum piece.

Half the misunderstandings between Britain and America are due to the fact that neither will regard the other as what it is -- in an important sense of the word -- a foreign country. Each thinks of the other as a part of itself which has somehow gone off the lines. An Englishman is always inclined to resent the unfamiliar when it is found under conditions for which he thinks he has some responsibility. He can appreciate complete and utter strangeness, and indeed show himself highly sympathetic towards it; but for variations upon his own ways -- divergencies in speech, food, clothes, social habits -- he has little tolerance. He is not very happy even in his own colonies and dominions, and in America he can be uncommonly ill at ease.