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terrible succession, thronged with stabbings and rapes, robberies and assaults, acts of lunatic spite or repellent perversion. ‘Well,’ you say as casually as you can, a little shaken by this vast superfluity of Sunday journalism, ‘Well, and how many weeks of crime do these pages represent?’ The police sergeant smiles tolerantly. ‘That’s today’s register,’ he says.
    *
    America is the land acquisitive, and few Americans abandon the search for wealth, or lose their admiration for those who find it. Unassimilated New Yorkers, the millions of un-Americans in this city, however poor or desolate they seem, however disappointed in their dreams, still loyally respect the American idea – the chance for every man to achieve opulence. Sometimes the sentiment has great pathos. An old man I once met in a cheap coffee-shop near the East River boasted gently, without arrogance, of the fabulous wealth of New York, for all the world as if its coffers were his, and all its luxuries, instead of a grey bed-sitting room and a coat with frayed sleeves. He said: ‘Why, the garbage thrown away in this city every morning – every morning – would feed the whole of Europe for a week.’ He said it without envy and with a genuine pride of possession, and a number of dusty demolition men sitting near by nodded their heads in proud and wondering agreement.
    All the same, it is sometimes difficult to keep one’s social conscience in order among the discrepancies of Manhattan. The gulf between rich and poor is so particularly poignant in this capital of opportunity. There is fun and vigour and stimulation in New York’s symphony of capitalism – the blazing neon lights, the huge bright office blocks, the fine stores and friendly shop assistants – and yet there is something distasteful about a pleasure-drome so firmly based upon personal advantage. Everywhere there are nagging signs that the life of the place is inspired by a self-interest not scrupulously enlightened. ‘Learn to take care of others’, says a poster urging women to become nurses, ‘and you will know how to take care of yourself’. ‘The life you save may be your own’, says a road-safety advertisement. ‘Let us know if you can’t keep this reservation’, you are told on the railway ticket, ‘it may be required by a friend or a business associate of yours’. Faced with such constant reminders, the foreign visitor begins to doubt the altruism even of his benefactors. Is the party really to give him pleasure, or is the host to gain some obscure credit from it? The surprise present is very welcome, but what does its giver expect in return? Soon he is tempted to believe that any perversion of will or mind, any ideologicalwandering, any crankiness, any jingoism is preferable to so constant an obsession with the advancement of self.
    But there, Manhattan is a haven for the ambitious, and you must not expect its bustling rivalries to be too saintly. Indeed you may as well admit that the whole place is built on greed, in one degree or another; even the city churches, grotesquely Gothic or Anglican beyond belief, have their thrusting social aspirations. What is wonderful is that so much that is good and beautiful has sprung from such second-rate motives. There are palaces of great pictures in New York, and millions go each year to see them. Each week a whole page of the New York Times is filled with concert announcements. There are incomparable museums, a lively theatre, great publishing houses, a famous university. The Times itself (‘All the News that’s Fit to Print’) is a splendid civic ornament, sometimes mistaken, often dull, but never bitter, cheap or malicious.
    And the city itself, with its sharp edges and fiery colours, is a thing of beauty; especially seen from above, with Central Park startlingly green among the skyscrapers, with the tall towers of Wall Street hazy in the distance, with the two waterways blue and sunny and the long line of an