Barrie's "Admirable Crichton" was not due to any legal prohibition of his conversion in England, as on the tropic island, into a veritable chief, but that on English soil he did not in his own soul want any such elevation and distinction.

His very loyalty to the forms and fabric of English life kept him fatuously content with the mean truckling and meaner domineering of his position of butler.

On the other hand, the loyalty of an American to the American idea would tend to make him aggressive and self-confident.

Our democratic prohibition of any but occasional social distinctions and our democratic dislike to any suggestion of authentic social inferiority have contributed as essentially to the fluid and elastic substance of American life as have its abundant and accessible economic opportunities.
The increased momentum of American life, both in its particles and its mass, unquestionably has a considerable moral and social value.

It is the beginning, the only possible beginning, of a better life for the people as individuals and for society.