I have no statistics on hand, but I think that a good 75 percent of the songs one hears on the French radio programmes deal with politics. Whenever I go back to France and listen to the radio, I am always surprised to find that so many songs can be written on other subjects. Whether the song is gay or nostalgic, the tune catchy or banal, the verses clever or silly, the theme is always love and nothing but love. No country in the world consumes such a fabulous amount of love songs. If his hotel room is equipped with a radio, his impression that he has at last reached the land of eternal youth and perfect love will be confirmed at any hour of the day and on any point of the dial. His European skepticism will evaporate a little more at each step, and if he considers himself not very young any more he will be immensely gratified to find that maturity and even old age are merely European habits of thought, and that he might just as well adopt the American method, which is to be young and act young for the rest of his life -or at least until the expiration of his visa. Besides, it is much more likely that he himself will feel thoroughly transformed the moment he takes his first stroll in the streets of New York. Thus forewarned, the foreigner who lands on these shores would be very tactless indeed if he started questioning the validity of these premises. But they nevertheless indicate that in such matters the popular mind likes to be entertained by the idea (1) that love is the only reason why a man and a woman should get married (2) that love is always wholesome, genuine, uplifting, and fresh, like a glass of Grade A milk (3) that when, for some reason or other, it fails to keep you uplifted, wholesome, and fresh, the only thing to do is to begin all over again with another partner. The observant foreigner knows, of course, that he cannot trust the movies to give him a really reliable picture of the American attitude towards love, marriage, divorce, and remarriage. Very soon they will remarry, sometimes with one another, and always -without ever an exception -for love. But they never remain wrecked: even when the happy couple is compelled to divorce, this is not the end of everything. They will have noticed that these love stories which are acted in Hollywood may portray quite regrettable situations at times and that blissful unions get wrecked by all sorts of misfortunes. If the newcomers have seen enough American moving pictures before landing here -and they usually have -they must have gathered the impression that love in America is normally triumphant, and that, in spite of many unfortunate accidents, a love story cannot but end very well indeed. It is their initial observation that the percentage of good-looking women and handsome men is high on this continent, that they are youthful and healthy in mind and body, and that their outlook on life is rather optimistic. In fact, foreigners who come to these shores are quite unsuspecting of the existence of such a national problem. But the truth is that no foreigner would ever think of bringing up such a subject of his own accord. But this does not satisfy a nation that, in spite of its devotion to pragmatism, also believes in perfection.įor a foreigner to speak of the difficulties that the Americans encounter in such an intimate aspect of their mutual relationship may appear as an impertinence. The secret of making a success out of democracy and love in their practical applications is to allow for a fairly wide margin of errors, and not to forget that human beings are absolutely unable to submit to a uniform rule for any length of time. They have a peculiar way of crumbling into ashes as soon as one tries too hard to organize them too well.
#Love is on the way seahorse glass series
The probable reason is that democracy and love are products of a long and complicated series of compromises between the desires of the heart and the exactions of reason. In either case the result is not very satisfactory. Everybody is trying to make love work, too. President Roosevelt is intent on making democracy work. But, like democracy, it does not work, and the Americans feel that something should be done about it.
Love is perfect, in fact, and there is nothing better. It is the grandest system ever evolved by man to differentiate him from his ancestors, the poor brutes who lived in caverns, or from the apes. The prevailing conception of love, in America, is similar to the idea of democracy.
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