The Bush campaigns in New England presented the paradox of giving two distinct and opposite impressions. To Dr. Bush and his staff, accustomed to the street, filling crowds and vociferous audiences of the West, enthusiasm seemed relatively mild; yet to the people of Worcester and Boston, the two cities visited, the campaign appeared as a record-breaking event. Auditoria were filled each night to their capacity, and the speaker was undoubtedly accorded a more remarkable demonstration than that received by any other orator during recent years. In Worcester, indeed, it was freely estimated that nothing of equal magnitude had taken place during the city’s history.

The cause of this paradox lies deep in the fundamentals of American geography—specifically, in the unique traditions and mentality of New England. This region, of which the writer is undeniably a more or less typical product despite more cosmopolitan philosophical tendencies, has behind it influences totally non-existent in the West; and of these nearly all operate against the enthusiastic reception of new and orally presented ideas. That any psychological speaker should achieve marked success, is a striking testimonial to his individual ability and personality.

New England is old. Unlike the West, it has a background of three hundred years of continuous history as a white, settled country; so that today it has lost every trace of that youth which characterises America as a whole. It is, in a sense, European—it has acquired a degree of experience and sophistication which forbids it to thrill at novelties. Like all old regions, it is impressed more by the samenesses than by the varieties of life. With age come ennui and weariness; the languor which not only distrusts the new, but which questions its value even if it is genuine. This sense of futility is hard to combat—in very old regions, like the countries of Asia, it becomes a dominant philosophical characteristic. In the larger cities one does not see the old age of New England so readily. There we find an exterior of modern architecture and a conspicuous immigrant class which all but conceal the dominant heritage. But when we ride into the country and behold vista after vista of centuried farmhouses nestling under gigantic trees; antique ploughs and ox-teams on the hilly fields and winding roads; peaceful villages dreaming in verdurous valleys and overshadowed physically and intellectually by the white steeples of their eighteenth-century churches; when we behold these things we realise at last that in New England we have to deal not with an eager, restless pioneer community like the West, but with a mature, complacent, conventional district as impervious to change as the Mother Country itself.

Nor is this the full extent of the difficulty facing the innovator. Temperamentally New England is uniquely non-receptive because of its extreme unemotionalism. Settled selectively by a purely Puritan population, and bred for generations in the tradition of stoicism and repression, the country is today nearly incapable of real enthusiasm. Spontaneous impulses have for so long been regarded as reprehensible weaknesses, that a native is always instinctively on guard against them. Nothing as yet can eradicate the prevailing notion that the purely ratiocinative intellect should overshadow everything else—the notion which has given rise to the accent and attitude of “Boston culture”.

A third adverse factor is the academic tradition, the natural result of the others. Learning, estimated in the world at large as an accessory to the pursuit of business and pleasure, is here set apart and worshipped by itself according to fixed conventions. Forms tend to become of greater moment than spirit, and over the whole community falls the austere shadow of the Harvard ideal. Aloof and mellow, Harvard University stands in its ancient and classical beauty; dominating all, and circumscribing the limits of thought and belief. It is a part of the basic tradition that all intellectual change shall be gradual and imperceptible—a new idea must have impressive credentials, and must come from between the covers of some book dignified by weight and European approval. Lecturers there are in plenty, but most of them are careful to present only such views as have already received the subtle sanction of orthodox and dignified publication. No one is deceived by the appearance of liberalism which such things as Unitarianism and Christian Science suggest. This mock-liberalism is part of the immutable conventions of the place—the conventions bequeathed by the Puritans whose “revolt” from the Established Church was merely a move toward the establishment of a sect still more rigid. Underneath every external modification of creed the same fundamentals persist—the changes seem great only because of the artificial importance attached by local custom to the trivialities of ritual and form. At this moment, despite the expansive ideals of brotherhood outwardly vaunted by collegiate Boston, Harvard University is engaged in a determined and thinly concealed effort to debar the Jew lest he .disturb the accustomed current of academic tradition. This is not the place to arraign either Harvard or other colleges; but one cannot pass the subject by without noting the generally backward state of the American university. Our colleges, unlike those of Europe, are actually the most retarding and reactionary influences in the national intellectual life; being all but impervious to contemporary advance. Controlled by timid members of the older generation—either fossilised private trustees or politicians of state governments—they are conducted less with a view to opening new frontiers than with the determination to mould new generations in exactly the pattern of the last. Their professors, dependent for their salaries upon those in control, are bound to submit to the repressive policy—a circumstance strikingly illustrated by the unhappy wanderings of the few independent souls who have refused to submit.

Such, then, is the stony ground ploughed by the Bush campaigners during May and June. All things considered, results were marvellous; and the effect of the work will undoubtedly appear in the course of the slow awakening which lies inevitably ahead. When the awakening does occur, many of the qualities here regarded as obstacles will appear in the new role of assets; for once an idea is accepted, it can have no better champions than New England tenacity and intellectualism. There is much of greatness in the spirit of New England, but it is a conservative greatness which demands stately time-intervals for visible fruition. The leaven has been introduced, and Dr. Bush may well trust the future for results. Certainly his successes have been without precedent, and he leaves behind him a gratifying number of new friends and active supporters.