Here is a book review from the mid-war period covering The American by historian James Truslow Adams (1878 – 1949). Adams attempts to tackle the age old question as to why Americans are different from everyone else. The reviewer quotes the observations of Crèvecoeur, among others, before delving into the meat of Adams study.
“A very angry Canadian firebrand hurls some painful truths at the smug belief we have in our own greatness.”
This gag concerns itself with another kind of American Expeditionary Force; when Pershing’s Doughboys left, they were replaced by the American tourists. The U.S. had had invented a new category of tourist that the world had never seen before, and they must have been a site to behold: middle class tourists.
There is another article on this site (click here) that states a popular belief held by the Europeans of 1919 that American men were all clean shaven, tended to sport gold teeth, and were most easily recognized by their big tortoise shell glasses (a strikingly accurate description of this site’s editor!); however, this is the first visual manifestation of this caricature that we could find. This Punch cartoonist did not simply believe that this was a fitting description of the white guys, but black guys, too -and the white women as well; an entire nation resembling Harold Lloyd.
Click here to read about Punch Magazine.
This article was penned in 1912 by a Mexican editorial writer who shared his countryman’s deep distrust of American motives and believed that the United States is the natural enemy of Mexico:
No other people can have less friendship for this hostile neighbor than the Mexicans.
Envy and admiration as well as ridicule and praise are found in the many articles the European press devoted to this country. Our big business astonishes them, our so-called lack of culture inspires thinly veiled contempt, while our homicide records lead some rather irascible English critics to speak of the United States as ‘the Land of Liberty – for the murderer.’
Yet for all their contempt there was one thing they couldn’t live without: click here to read an article about how much the Europeans loved American silent comedies.
The very funny Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869 – 1944) diagnosed many of the character traits that make Americans what they are. Although written eighty years ago, many of these observations are still true to this day:
Americans are a queer people: they can’t read.
They have more schools, and better schools, and spend more money on schools and colleges than all of Europe.
But they can’t read.
They print more books in one year than the French print in ten.
But they can’t read.
They cover their country with 100,000 tons of Sunday newspapers every week.
But they don’t read them.
They’re too busy. They use them for fires and to make more paper with.
They buy eagerly thousands of new novels at two dollars each. But they only read page one…
But that’s all right. The Americans don’t give a damn; don’t need to; never did need to.
That is their salvation.
Pio Ballesteros, Proud Spaniard, wrote this editorial in a 1910 issue of Espanña 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 a strong sensation that all Spanish-speaking people are kin and should be united against the Anglo-Saxons.
H.L. Mencken rarely passed up an opportunity to impugn the sincerity of his fellow Americans; in this small piece he expressed his doubt as to whether they really embraced the concept of full equality as it was written in the constitution.
The United States has always viewed the other American countries…with an invincible disdain – a disdain that could not remain a secret to the Young Latins, since it cannot be readily concealed; or, to speak more exactly it has never regarded the nations of Spanish and Portuguese origin as really it’s equal.
George Jean Nathan (1882 – 1958) and H.L. Mencken 
-Read an Article About the First World War and the Gratitude of France-
