Westward with the Prince of Wales Part 27

III

Thursday, November 14th, was a day of extreme interest for the Prince.

It was the day when he visited the home of the first President of America, and also visited, in his home, the President in power today.

The morning was given over to an invest.i.ture of the American officers and nurses who had won British honours during the war. It was held at Belmont House, and was a ceremony full of colour. Members of all the diplomatic corps in Washington in their various uniforms attended, and these were grouped in the beautiful ballroom full of splendid pictures and wonderful china. The simplicity of the invest.i.ture itself stood out against the colourful setting as generals in khaki, admirals in blue, the rank and file of both services, and the neat and picturesque Red Cross nurses came quietly across the polished floor to receive their decorations and a comradely hand-clasp from the Prince.

It was after lunch that the Prince motored out to Mount Vernon, the home and burial-place of Washington, to pay his tribute to the great leader of the first days of America. It is a serene and beautiful old house, built in the colonial style, with a pillared verandah along its front. The visit here was of the simplest kind.

At the modest tomb of the great general and statesman, which is near the house, the Prince in silence deposited a wreath, and a little distance away he also planted a cedar to commemorate his visit. He showed his usual keen curiosity in the house, whose homely rooms of mellow colonial furniture seemed as though they might be filled at any moment with gentlemen in hessians and brave coats, whose hair was in queues and whose accents would be loud and rich in condemnation of the interference of the Court Circle overseas.

Showing interest in the historic details of the house, the picture of his grandfather abruptly filled him with anxiety. He looked at the picture and asked if "Baron Renfrew" (King Edward) had worn a top hat on _his_ visit, and from his nervousness it seemed that he felt that his own soft felt hat was not quite the thing. He was rea.s.sured, however, on this point, for democracy has altered many things since the old days, including hats.

Both on his way out, and his return journey, the Prince was the object of enthusiasm from small groups who recognized him, most of whom had trusted to luck or their intuition for their chance of seeing him.

About the entrance of the White House, to which he drove, there was a small and ardent crowd, which cheered him when he swept through the gates with his motor-cycle escort, and bought photographs of him from hawkers when he had pa.s.sed. The hawker, in fact, did a brisk trade.

There had been much speculation whether His Royal Highness would be able to see President Wilson at all, for he was yet confined to his bed. The doctors decided for it, and there was a very pleasant meeting which seems to have helped the President to renew his good spirits in the youthful charm of his visitor.

After taking tea with Mrs. Wilson, His Royal Highness went up to the room of the President on the second floor, and Mr. Wilson, propped up in bed, received him. The friendship that had begun in England was quickly renewed, and soon both were laughing over the Prince's experiences on his tour and "swopping" impressions.

Mr. Wilson's instinctive vein of humour came back to him under the pleasure of the reunion, and he pointed out to the Prince that if he was ill in bed, he had taken the trouble to be ill in a bed of some celebrity. It was a bed that made sickness auspicious. King Edward had used it when he had stayed at the White House as "Baron Renfrew,"

and President Lincoln had also slept on it during his term of office, which perhaps accounted for its ma.s.sive and rugged utility.

The visit was certainly a most attractive one for the President, and had an excellent effect; his physician reported the next morning that Mr. Wilson's spirits had risen greatly, and that as a result of the enjoyable twenty minutes he had spent with the Prince. On Friday, November 15th, the Prince went to the United States Naval College at Annapolis, a place set amid delightful surroundings. He inspected the whole of the Academy, and was immensely impressed by the smartness of the students, who, themselves, marked the occasion by treating him to authentic college yells on his departure.

The week-end was spent quietly at the beautiful holiday centre of Sulphur Springs. It was a visit devoted to privacy and golf.

IV

During our stay in Washington the air was thick with politics, for it was the week in which the Senate were dealing with Clause Ten of the Peace Treaty. The whole of Washington, and, in fact, the whole of America, was tingling with politics, and we could not help being affected by the current emotion.

I am not going to attempt to discuss American politics, but I will say that it seemed to me that politics enter more personally into the life of Americans than with the British, and that they feel them more intensely. At the same time I had a definite impression that American politics have a different construction to ours. The Americans speak of "The Political Game," and I had the feeling that it was a game played with a virtuosity of tactics and with a metallic intensity, and the principle of the game was to beat the other fellows. So much so that the aim and end of politics were obscured, and that the battle was fought not about measures but on the advantages one party would gain over another by victory.

That is, the "Political Game" is a game of the "Ins" and "Outs" played for parliamentary success with the habitual keenness and zest of the American.

This is not a judgment but an impression. I do not pretend to know anything of America. I do not think any one can know America well unless he is an American. Those who think that America quickly yields its secrets to the British mind simply because America speaks the English language need the instruction of a visit to America.

America has all the individuality and character of a separate and distinct State. To think that the United States is a sort of Transatlantic Britain is simply to approach the United States with a set of preconceived notions that are bound to suffer considerable jarring. Both races have many things in common, that is obvious from the fact of a common language, and, in a measure, from a common descent; but they have things that are not held in common. It needs a closer student of America than I am to go into this; I merely give my own impression, and perhaps a superficial one at that. It may offer a point of elucidation to those people who find themselves shocked because English-speaking America sometimes does not act in an English manner, or respond to English acts.

America is America first and all the time; it is as complete and as definite in its spirits as the oldest of nations, and in its own way.

Its patriotism is intense, more intense than British patriotism (though not more real), because by nature the American is more intense. The vivid love of Americans for America is the same type of pa.s.sion that the Frenchman has for France.

The character of the American, as I encountered him in Washington, Detroit, and New York--a very limited orbit--suggested differences from the character of the Englishman. The American, as I see him, is more simple, more puritan, and more direct than the Briton. His generosity is a most astonishing thing. He is, as far as I can see, a genuine lover of his brother-man, not theoretically but actively, for he is anxious to get into contact, to "mix," to make the most of even a chance acquaintance. Simply and directly he exposes the whole of himself, says what he means and withholds nothing, so that acquaintance should be made on an equitable and genuine basis. To the more conservative Briton this is alarming; brought up in a land of reticences, the Briton wonders what the American is "getting at," what does he want? What is his game? The American on his side is baffled by the British habit of keeping things back, and he, too, perhaps wonders why this fellow is going slow with me? Doesn't he want to be friends?

Personally, I think that the directness and simplicity of the Americans is the directness and simplicity of the artist, the man who has no use for unessentials. And one gets this sense of artistry in an American's business dealings. He goes directly at his object, and he goes with a concentrated power and a zest that is exhilarating. Here, too, he exposes his hand in a way bewildering to the Britisher, who sometimes finds the American so candid in his transactions that he becomes suspicious of there being something more behind it.

To the American work is something zestful, joyous. He likes to get things done; he likes to do big things with a big gesture--sometimes to the damage of detail, which he has overlooked--for him work is craftsmanship, a thing to be carried through with the delight of a craftsman. He is, in fact, the artist as business man.

Like all artists he has an air of hardness, the ruthlessness to attain an end. But like all artists he is quick and generous, vivid in enthusiasm and hard to daunt. Like the artist he is narrow in his point of view at times and decisive in opinion--simply because his own point of vision is all-absorbing.

This, for example, is apparent in his democracy, which is extraordinarily wide in certain respects, and singularly restricted in others--an example of this is the way the Americans handle offenders against their code; whether they be I.W.W., strikers or the like, their att.i.tude is infinitely more ruthless than the British att.i.tude.

Another example is, having so splendid a freedom, they allow themselves to be "bossed" by policemen, porters and a score of others who exert an authority so drastic on occasions that no Briton would stand it.

But over all I was struck by the vividity of the Americans I met.

Business men, journalists, writers, store girls, clerks, clubmen, railway men--all of them had an air of pa.s.sionate aliveness, an intellectual avidity that made contact with them an affair of delightful excitement.

CHAPTER XXIV

NEW YORK

There was no qualification or reservation in New York's welcome to the Prince of Wales.

In the last year or so I have seen some great crowds, and by that I mean not merely vast aggregations of people, but vast gatherings of people whose ardour carried away the emotions with a tremendous psychic force. During that year I had seen the London crowd that welcomed back the British military leader; the London and Manchester crowds, and vivid and stirring crowds they were, that dogged the footsteps of President Wilson; I had seen the marvellous and poignant crowd at the London Victory March, and I had had a course of crowds, vigorous, affectionate and lively, in Montreal, Toronto and throughout Canada.

I had been toughened to crowds, yet the New York crowd that welcomed the Prince was a fresh experience. It was a crowd that, in spite of writing continuously about crowds for four months, gave me a direct impulse to write yet again about a crowd, that gave me the feeling that here was something fresh, sparkling, human, warm, ardent and provocative. It was a crowd with a flutter of laughter in it, a crowd that had a personality, an _insouciance_, an independence in its friendliness. It was a crowd that I shall always put beside other mental pictures of big crowds, in that gallery of clear vignettes of things impressive that make the memory.

There was a big crowd about the Battery long before the Prince was due to arrive across the river from the Jersey City side. It was a good-humoured crowd that helped the capable New York policemen to keep itself well in hand. It was not only thick about the open gra.s.s s.p.a.ce of the Battery, but it was cl.u.s.tering on the skeleton structure of the Elevated Railway, and mounting to the sky, floor by floor, on the skysc.r.a.pers.

High up on the twenty-second floor of neighbouring buildings we could see a crowd of dolls and windows, and the dolls were waving shreds of cotton. The dolls were women and the cotton shred was "Old Glory."

High up on the tremendous cornice of one building a tiny man stood with all the calm gravity of a statue. He was unconcerned by the height, he was only concerned in obtaining an eagle's eye view.

About the landing-stage itself, the landing-stage where the new Americans and the notabilities land, there was a wide s.p.a.ce, kept clear by the police. Admirable police these, who can handle crowds with any police, who held us up with a wall of adamant until we showed our letters from the New York Reception Committee (our only, and certainly not the official, pa.s.ses), and then not only let us through without fuss but helped us in every possible way to go everywhere and see everything.

In this wide s.p.a.ce were gathered the cars for the procession, and the notabilities who were to meet the Prince, and the camera men who were to snap him. Into it presently marched United States Marines and Seamen. A hefty lot of men, who moved casually, and with a slight sense of slouch as though they wished to convey "We're whales for fighting, but no d.a.m.ned militarists."

Since the Prince was not entering New York by steamer--the most thrilling way--but by means of a railway journey from Sulphur Springs, New York had taken steps to correct this mode of entry. He was not to miss the first impact of the city. He would make a water entry, if only an abbreviated one, and so experience one of the Seven (if there are not more, or less) Sensations of the World, a sight of the profile of Manhattan Island.

The profile of Manhattan (blessed name that O. Henry has rolled so often on the palate) is lyric. It is a _sierra_ of skysc.r.a.pers. It is a flight of perfect rockets, the fire of which has frozen into solidity in mid-soaring. It is a range of tall, narrow, poignant buildings that makes the mind think of giants, or fairies, or, anyhow, of creatures not quite of this world. It is one of the few things the imagination cannot visualize adequately, and so gets from it a satisfaction and not a disappointment.

This sight the Prince saw as he crossed in a launch from the New Jersey side, and "the beauty and dignity of the towering skyline," his own words, so impressed him that he was forced to speak of it time and time again during his visit to the city. And on top of that impression came the second and even greater one, for, and again I use his own words, "men and women appeal to me even more than sights." This second impression was "the most warm and friendly welcome that followed me all through the drive in the city."

When the Prince landed he seemed to me a little anxious; he was at the threshold of a great and important city, and his welcome was yet a matter of speculation. In less than fifteen minutes he was smiling as he had smiled all through Canada, and, as in Canada, he was standing in his car, formality forgotten, waving back to the crowd with a friendliness that matched the friendliness with which he was received.

He faced the city of Splendid Heights with glances of wonder at the line of cornices that crowned the narrow canyon of Broadway, and rose up crescendo in a vista closed by the campanile of the Woolworth Building, raised like a pencil against the sky, fifty-five storeys high. On the beaches beneath these great crags, on the sidewalks, and pinned between the st.u.r.dy policemen--who do not turn backs to the crowd but face it alertly--and the sheer walls was a lively and vast throng.

And rising up by storeys was a lively and vast throng, hanging out of windows and clinging to ledges, perilous but happy in their skysc.r.a.per-eye view.

And from these high-up windows there began at once a characteristic "Down Town" expression of friendliness. Ticker-tape began to shoot downward in long uncoiling snakes to catch in flagpoles and window-ledges in strange festoons. Strips of paper began to descend in artificial snow, and confetti, and basket-loads of torn letter paper.

All manner of bits of paper fluttered and swirled in the air, making a grey nebula in the distance; glittering like spangles of gold against the severe white cliffs of the skysc.r.a.pers when the sun caught them.

On the narrow roadway the long line of automobiles was littered and strung with paper, and the Prince had a mantle of it, and was still cheery. He could not help himself. The reception he was getting would have swept away a man of stone, and he has never even begun to be a man of stone. The pace was slow, because of the marching Marine escort, and people and Prince had full opportunity for sizing up each other.

And both people and Prince were satisfied.

Escorted by the motor-cyclist police, splendid fellows who chew gum and do their duty with an astonishing certainty and nimbleness, the Prince came to the City Hall Square, where the modern Brontosaurs of commerce lift mightily above the low and graceful City Hall, which has the look of a _pet.i.te_ mother perpetually astonished at the size of the brood she has reared.

Inside the hall the Prince became a New Yorker, and received a civic welcome. He expressed his real pride at now being a Freeman of the two greatest cities in the world, New York and London, two cities that were, moreover, so much akin, and upon which depends to an extraordinary degree the financial health and the material as well as spiritual welfare of all continents. As for his welcome, he had learnt to appreciate the quality of American friendship from contact with members of the splendid fighting forces that had come overseas, but even that, he indicated, had not prepared him for the wonder of the greeting he had received.