PROBLEMS AND PEOPLE 9

above rules will not relieve us of our difficulties.
There is one phrase in particular which the writer
of a book like this cannot avoid the frequent use
of, but which, every time he uses it, becomes a pit-
fall waiting to receive him—" the American
people." Who are they ? To be sure they are
the people inhabiting the United States of America
and there are 125 million of them. But you
soon discover that the quality which makes them
"American" exists in very various degrees; a
fact which they themselves, or at least some of
them, proclaim by setting up one variety as " a
hundred per cent " American, with the implica-
tion, I suppose, that the American quality exists
in all degrees from zero up to the full hundred of
perfection. This, at first sight, might seem to
simplify your task. Find the " hundred per-
center " and you have got the characteristic
American type and, with that type before you, can
indulge as freely as you like in statements about
" the American people." But the " hundred
percenter " is not so easily found; in a subsequent
chapter my own difficulties in finding him will be
described. The Americans themselves are not
agreed among themselves as to who he is, or as
to what kind of a person he is likely to be; or
indeed as to whether he exists at all. I have my
own notions on the subject and will disclose them
in due course; but I have no warrant for saying
that a single* American would agree with me.
This state of things, strange as it may appear to

B