Of course it is only fair to say at the outset that this little series
of impressions, or sketches, as one may say, of Civilization as I have
seen it since arriving in England are of such a nature that I need not
have come over to England to observe them. I would be the last to deny
that the same conveniences for being disagreeable and for getting in the
way and for making a general muss of Life can be offered almost any
time in my own hopeful and blundering country.

What more immediately concerns me in these things is that, having
happened, there can be no doubt that they have some valuable and worthy
meaning for me and for other people that I ought to get out of them.

One cannot stand by and see a great civilization like our
English-speaking civilization, with its ocean liners, cathedrals, and
aeroplanes, being undignified and inefficient before one's eyes and even
a little ridiculous, without trying to see if it does not serve some
purpose. There must be something beyond, something further and deeper,
something newborn about it, which shall be worth our while. Strikes seem
to be common people's way of thinking things out. If they had more
imagination, they would know what they were going to think beforehand,
without so much trouble perhaps; but so long as they have not, and so
long as it is really true perhaps that all these millions of levers and
wheels and engines will have to be stopped, so that the rich
mechanical-minded people who own them and the poor mechanical-minded
people who work with them can think better, we will have to be glad at
least that they are thinking, and we will have to hope that they are
thinking fast, and will soon have it over with. In the meantime, while
they are thinking, we can think too.

It is never fair to lump people together, and there are always