Chapter I: Preface

All of the chapters included in this volume have appeared in various magazines, although in their present form many of them have been altered and several of them have been greatly enlarged. The author wishes emphatically to state that the volume is not intended to give a fair and complete presentation of the contemporary American scene and its tendencies. The essays deal only with certain aspects, as the title of the book indicates, and those the more sinister ones now to be noted in what is, in many respects, the vigorous growth of our national life. If a doctor pronounces a patient to have a bad circulation and a dangerous local infection in his leg, it cannot be complained of him that he has failed to speak the whole truth because he has said nothing of what a good husband, loyal friend and able executive the patient happens to be. Those are not aspects with which the doctor has, at the moment, concerned himself. To change the metaphor, much of the criticism that these essays have encountered when in magazine form, and much of what I confidently anticipate they will now encounter in their new and more elaborate presentation, is based on no more logical ground of attack than that instead of saying what a dull dish prunes make or how unhealthful cucumbers may be, I should have performed a much more useful, patriotic and agreeable service by saying how delicious strawberries are. My only answer to that sort of criticism is that at the moment I am talking about prunes and cucumbers, not strawberries, though some time I may discuss those. Sufficient unto the day....

My thanks are due to the editors of _Harper’s Monthly_, the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Forum_, the _Saturday Review of Literature_, and _McNaught’s Monthly_, who enabled me first to discuss my unpopular topics in their pages.

JAMES TRUSLOW ADAMS.

London, 1929.

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