Foreign Opinions About America

American Tourists Lampooned by Punch (Punch Magazine, 1922)

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.

Mexican Hatred of the United States (Literary Digest, 1912)

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.

America Vilified in the European Press (Literary Digest, 1928)

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.

Americans Are A Strange People (Characteristically American, 1932)

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.

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

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.

On Believing in Equality (The Smart Set, 1921)

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.

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.

Critical Thinking from South of the Border (Literary Digest, 1923)

More harsh words for Uncle Sam are found in some Brazilian journals, such as the JOURNAL DO PAIZ, which observes:

Happenings like the Negro massacre at Chicago in 1919 are still fresh in our minds; nor must we forget that at the time mentioned many in this country advocated a boycott on all American goods to serve as a protest and a warning to the Unites States.

Click here if you would like to read about the American race riots of 1919.

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