Swords and Plowshares/The Anglo-American Alliance
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HAIL to the Anglo-American alliance for the vulgarization of the world!
As we took California from Spain and replaced picturesque ranch and convent and plaza with electric trams and telegraph poles and bare wooden boxes of houses, so let us go on and beautify the earth.
Let us plant innumerable Jersey Cities in the isles of the sea.
Let the foul smoke of Manchester settle down upon the palm-groves.
Let our architects plan twenty-story rookeries of corrugated iron in place of mosque and pagoda.
Let us spot the globe with hideous mining camps from Kimberley to the Klondyke.
Unsated with the defilement of our own lands, with the all-devouring cankers of slumdom and villadom, let our vulgar ambition for conquest of new markets show itself abroad in every out-ward vulgarity.
As we took California from Spain and replaced picturesque ranch and convent and plaza with electric trams and telegraph poles and bare wooden boxes of houses, so let us go on and beautify the earth.
Let us plant innumerable Jersey Cities in the isles of the sea.
Let the foul smoke of Manchester settle down upon the palm-groves.
Let our architects plan twenty-story rookeries of corrugated iron in place of mosque and pagoda.
Let us spot the globe with hideous mining camps from Kimberley to the Klondyke.
Unsated with the defilement of our own lands, with the all-devouring cankers of slumdom and villadom, let our vulgar ambition for conquest of new markets show itself abroad in every out-ward vulgarity.
Is it really so certain that we are the chosen people—
We who are the least artistic of the nations of the earth;
Who have spent our lifetime in busily making our countries uglier;
Who in the century preeminent for its music have not produced one great master;
Who, even in the matter of jingoes and imperialists and expansionists, have brought forth no one worthy to unloose the latchet of Napoleon's shoes?
Verily Mozart and Beethoven, Wagner and Chopin, Grieg and Verdi, shall rise up in the judgment against us, and condemn us.
What shall it profit us if we overrun the whole world, as the rabbits overrun Australia?
In the day of judgment, shall a myriad of bicycles and automobiles be accepted in lieu of a symphony or a great unselfish thought?
Ah, but there was a time when England expressed herself in beauty.
Where are the sous of the men who built Salisbury Steeple and York Minster?
Such might indeed gladden mankind beyond our borders; but as for us, with all our enegetic ugliness, our dismal, anxious money-getting, our stiff unsociability, let us stay at home until we grow beautiful and beautifying.
We who are the least artistic of the nations of the earth;
Who have spent our lifetime in busily making our countries uglier;
Who in the century preeminent for its music have not produced one great master;
Who, even in the matter of jingoes and imperialists and expansionists, have brought forth no one worthy to unloose the latchet of Napoleon's shoes?
Verily Mozart and Beethoven, Wagner and Chopin, Grieg and Verdi, shall rise up in the judgment against us, and condemn us.
What shall it profit us if we overrun the whole world, as the rabbits overrun Australia?
In the day of judgment, shall a myriad of bicycles and automobiles be accepted in lieu of a symphony or a great unselfish thought?
Ah, but there was a time when England expressed herself in beauty.
Where are the sous of the men who built Salisbury Steeple and York Minster?
Such might indeed gladden mankind beyond our borders; but as for us, with all our enegetic ugliness, our dismal, anxious money-getting, our stiff unsociability, let us stay at home until we grow beautiful and beautifying.