Why The British Are So Polite: All the Rude People Left For America

It is printed on cheap newsprint and dates from September 12, 1942. It is apparently a continuing magazine issued in the UK by the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, sensibly titled Current Affairs.

Yet - on the cover appears this curious warning: “Not to be published.” This actually meant “not to be re-published.” The cover states that "the information given in this publication is not to be communicated, either directly or indirectly, to the Press or to any person not holding an official position in His Majesty’s Service."

In other words, for God's sake, don’t show this to a Yank.

This issue is titled Here are the Americans, and here is its lead sentence:

The more we know about the Americans and the more they know about us, the less likely is Goebbels going to succeed in one of his most important jobs - the promoting of ill will between the United States and this country.

Essentially what we have here is a wartime field guide to the Americans – why they are who they are, and why they act in the ways Americans tend to do.

This initial assumption of this curious pamphlet seems to be that Americans coming to England actually represented the return of the rabble.

They say that for three hundred years any Englishman who wished to might have emigrated [to the United States]. Would not the stock left behind tend to be domesticated, conservative, calm in crisis, and polite?

Who knows? This simplistic social Darwinism may contain a grain of truth. Might it not possibly be true that England did get rid of all of its wild-eyed, over-the-top, out-of-bounds crazy people, who all quite naturally emigrated to America, leaving behind a homogenous population of people “domesticated, conservative, calm in crisis and polite?” It's a stunning generalization, and I’m not so sure that I disagree. The theory does explain America's Wall Street types, as well as the car salesmen who purchase TV time in order to yell and wave their arms to attain local celebrity.

Stunning generalizations abound in Here are the Americans. Try this on for size:

The Northern United States have a dry and sparkling climate. The air is full of electricity. This climate dries the flesh, giving the tall, lean, typical American figure. It probably accounts for the American voice. It certainly gives immense and restless energy to all who breathe it.

One suspects that the research which led to such a conclusion was conducted in its entirety during the viewing of a Gary Cooper movie on a Sunday afternoon. And if the authors hadn’t stated “Northern United States,” one would suspect that the Cooper movie in question was a Western, for after noting that...

[The] red Indians, were tall, lean, handsome people…

The authors go on to suggest that...

Strangely enough, these new American stocks [created in the ‘melting pot’] soon began to share the native American characteristics; they grew tall and lean, and became great fighters and great scalp-hunters – in the world of business and sport, that is…

Seen any tall, lean Americans lately? Statistically, six times out of ten, the American you meet today is overweight. Nine in ten Americans will tell you they recognize that the country has grown too fat, yet only four out of the six overweight Americans will admit to personal weight issues. America has become fat and delusional. One thing, and one thing only, has not changed in over sixty years:

[While the Americans are living among us] ...it will help us in our job if we remember that in American films, it is always the villain who is courteous, smooth and sleek. The hero is tough and gives as good as he gets, without ever losing his temper at what other people say.

I don't know if Here are the Americans is correct about the influence of Native Americans on the development of our national character. But I would suggest the pamphlet does capture a defining cultural trait that accounts for the most popular TV show ever.