Vol. 17 No. 3 1950 - page 291

N
IE
WIN N 0 C EN TS A BR0 A D
291
possessed by Puritanism, has discovered the life of the senses, into
which it flings itself with all of its traditional practical energies. Thus
the American invert abroad hardly resembles
his
lukewarm British
cousin. Having spent some time during the War with British Army
officers, I gave up after a while the game of guessing who was and
was not an invert, for the final difference did not seem to be very
great after all. The American in his energetic naivete seems to know,
what the jaded Briton ignores, that when the attraction to the other
sex is so tepid, the game is not worth the candle, and one might as
well "switch" and have fun. The Paris police may well be alarmed,
for these young Americans in all the innocent pragmatism of their
race are determined to take ancient Sodom by storm.
Here is a new chapter in the history of that traditionally corrupt
image that Europe has always represented for the American. In
Henry James'
The Ambassadors
the dreadful thing-too awful for
James to come out and state it flatly-that chains young Newsome
to Europe is an affair with a European woman. The wheel has turned,
even if it has not yet come full circle. The American mother who
fears that her son, drifting about Europe on the G.!. Bill, may be
seduced by some European hussy,
is
no longer up-to-date. Mother,
that boy of yours loitering along the European dockside at evening,
gazing out at the water and apparently lost in reflection, has his eye
peeled, not for the poor drab who winks vainly at him from the quay,
but for the pretty young sailor boy of his dreams who just at this
moment may be descending from the boat out there in the twilit
harbor.
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