A COMMUNICATION
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of the many with the dissatisfactions of the few.
If
men like these can
teach English Composition courses in the junior colleges, review for
newspapen and magazines, produce in the repertory theaters, etc., some–
thing like the hierarchy of values may be maintained and the demo–
cratic mind may be born.
Heaven knows America is discrete, and a mess, but in the mess
it seems to me there are some people-emerging or submerging, I don't
know which-who could become the heart of a democracy. In them there
is the glimpse of a tolerable future. In them one can feel a steadiness
and passionateness, provoked by the rawer realities of American life,
which are just not there in England. In them one can see a world and
a group to which one can want to belong.
That is it, then. England is in the grip of a class, no less than
fifty years ago; more, because the vitalities of the class have failed and
receded, its limiting, characterizing traits now weigh more heavily,
more deadly. Moreover, this class is originally, ineradicably, undemo–
cratic. In these two ways America, which we despise, stands for health,
and we stand for sickness. And there is much more chance, in America,
of national life becoming something significant, something to command
one's loyalties.
Martin Green
Ann ArboT, Michigan
