A STRAIGHT DEAL

OR

THE ANCIENT GRUDGE

By Owen Wister

 To Edward and Anna Martin who give help in time of trouble

Chapter I: Concerning One's Letter Box

Publish any sort of conviction related to these morose days throughwhich we are living and letters will shower upon you like leaves inOctober. No matter what your conviction be, it will shake both yeas andnays loose from various minds where they were hanging ready to fall. Never was a time when so many brains rustled with hates and panaceasthat would sail wide into the air at the lightest jar. Try it and see. Say that you believe in God, or do not; say that Democracy is the keyto the millennium, or the survival of the unfittest; that Labor isworse than the Kaiser, or better; that drink is a demon, or that wineministers to the health and the cheer of man--say what you please, andthe yeas and nays will pelt you. So insecurely do the plainest, oldesttruths dangle in a mob of disheveled brains, that it is likely, did youassert twice two continues to equal four and we had best stick tothe multiplication table, anonymous letters would come to you full ofpassionate abuse. Thinking comes hard to all of us. To some it nevercomes at all, because their heads lack the machinery. How many of suchare there among us, and how can we find them out before they do us harm?Science has a test for this. It has been applied to the army recruit, but to the civilian voter not yet. The voting moron still runs amuck inour Democracy. Our native American air is infected with alien breath. Itis so thick with opinions that the light is obscured. Will the sane oneseventually prevail and heal the sick atmosphere? We must at least assumeso. Else, how could we go on?

Chapter II: What the Postman Brought

During the winter of 1915 I came to think that Germany had gonedangerously but methodically mad, and that the European War vitallyconcerned ourselves. This conviction I put in a book. Yeas and nayspelted me. Time seems to show the yeas had it. 

During May, 1918, I thought we made a mistake to hate England. I said soat the earliest opportunity. Again came the yeas and nays. You shall seesome of these. They are of help. Time has not settled this question. It is as alive as ever--more alive than ever. What if the Armistice waspremature? What if Germany absorb Russia and join Japan? What if theLeague of Nations break like a toy?

Yeas and nays are put here without the consent of their writers, whosenames, of course, do not appear, and who, should they ever see this, arebegged to take no offense. None is intended. 

There is no intention except to persuade, if possible, a few readers, atleast, that hatred of England is not wise, is not justified to-day, and has never been more than partly justified. It is based upon threefoundations fairly distinct yet meeting and merging on occasions: firstand worst, our school histories of the Revolution; second, certainpolicies and actions of England since then, generally distorted orfalsified by our politicians; and lastly certain national traits in eachcountry that the other does not share and which have hitherto producedperennial personal friction between thousands of English and Americanindividuals of every station in life. These shall in due time beillustrated by two sets of anecdotes: one, disclosing the Englishtraits, the other the American. I say English, and not British, advisedly, because both the Scotch and the Irish seem to be withoutthose traits which especially grate upon us and upon which we especiallygrate. And now for the letters. 

The first is from a soldier, an enlisted man, writing from France. 

"Allow me to thank you for your article entitled 'The Ancient Grudge. '... Like many other young Americans there was instilled in me from earlychildhood a feeling of resentment against our democratic cousins acrossthe Atlantic and I was only too ready to accept as true those stories Iheard of England shirking her duty and hiding behind her colonies, etc. It was not until I came over here and saw what she was really doing thatmy opinion began to change. 

"When first my division arrived in France it was brigaded with andreceived its initial experience with the British, who proved to us howlittle we really knew of the war as it was and that we had yet much tolearn. Soon my opinion began to change and I was regarding England asthe backbone of the Allies. Yet there remained a certain something Icould not forgive them. What it was you know, and have proved to methat it is not our place to judge and that we have much for which to bethankful to our great Ally. 

"Assuring you that your... Article has succeeded in converting one whoneeded conversion badly I beg to remain.... "

How many American soldiers in Europe, I wonder, have looked about them, have used their sensible independent American brains (our very bestcharacteristic), have left school histories and hearsay behind them andjudged the English for themselves? A good many, it is to be hoped. Whatthat judgment finally becomes must depend not alone upon the personalexperience of each man. It must also come from that liberality ofoutlook which is attained only by getting outside your own place andseeing a lot of customs and people that differ from your own. A mindthus seasoned and balanced no longer leaps to an opinion about a wholenation from the sporadic conduct of individual members of it. It is tobe feared that some of our soldiers may never forget or make allowancefor a certain insult they received in the streets of London. But of thislater. The following sentence is from a letter written by an Americansailor:

"I have read... 'The Ancient Grudge' and I wish it could be read byevery man on our big ship as I know it would change a lot of theirattitude toward England. I have argued with lots of them and have shownsome of them where they are wrong but the Catholics and descendants ofIreland have a different argument and as my education isn't very great, I know very little about what England did to the Catholics in Ireland. "

Ireland I shall discuss later. Ireland is no more our business to-daythan the South was England's business in 1861. That the Irish questionshould defeat an understanding between ourselves and England would be, to quote what a gentleman who is at once a loyal Catholic and a loyalmember of the British Government said to me, "wrecking the ship for aha'pennyworth of tar. "

The following is selected from the nays, and was written by a businessman. I must not omit to say that the writers of all these letters arestrangers to me. 

"As one American citizen to another... Permit me to give my personalview on your subject of 'The Ancient Grudge'... 

"To begin with, I think that you start with a false idea of ourkinship--with the idea that America, because she speaks the language ofEngland, because our laws and customs are to a great extent of the sameorigin, because much that is good among us came from there also, isessentially of English character, bound up in some way with the successor failure of England. 

"Nothing, in my opinion, could be further from the truth. We are adistinctive race--no more English, nationally, than the present KingGeorge is German--as closely related and as alike as a celluloid comband a stick of dynamite. 

"We are bound up in the success of America only. The English arebound up in the success of England only. We are as friendly as rivalcorporations. We can unite in a common cause, as we have, but, once thatis over, we will go our own way--which way, owing to the increase ofour shipping and foreign trade, is likely to become more and moreantagonistic to England's. 

"England has been a commercially unscrupulous nation for generationsand it is idle to throw the blame for this or that act of a nation on anindividual. Such arguments might be kept up indefinitely as regards anact of any country. A responsible nation must bear the praise or odiumthat attaches to any national action. If England has experienced achange of heart it has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic--aswanton a steal as Belgium, with even less excuse, and attended withsufficient brutality for all practical purposes.... 

"She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously and not a single goodturn that was not dictated by selfish policy or jealousy of others. She has shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping andunscrupulous. She is no worse than the others probably--possibly evenbetter--but it would be doing our country an ill turn to persuade itscitizens that England was anything less than an active, dangerous, competitor, especially in the infancy of our foreign trade. Whena business rival gives you the glad hand and asks fondly after thechildren, beware lest the ensuing emotions cost you money. 

"No: our distrust for England has not its life and being inpernicious textbooks. To really believe that would be an insult to ourintelligence--even grudges cannot live without real food. ShouldEngland become helpless tomorrow, our animosity and distrust would dieto-morrow, because we would know that she had it no longer in her powerto injure us. Therein lies the feeling--the textbooks merely echo it.... 

"In my opinion, a navy somewhat larger than England's would practicallyeliminate from America that 'Ancient Grudge' you deplore. It isEngland's navy--her boasted and actual control of the seas--whichthreatens and irritates every nation on the face of the globe that hasmaritime aspirations. She may use it with discretion, as she has foryears. It may even be at times a source of protection to others, as ithas--but so long as it exists as a supreme power it is a constant sourceof danger and food for grudges. 

"We will never be a free nation until our navy surpasses England's. Theworld will never be a free world until the seas and trade routes arefree to all, at all times, and without any menace, however benevolent. 

"In conclusion... Allow me to again state that I write as one Americancitizen to another with not the slightest desire to say anything thatmay be personally obnoxious. My own ancestors were from England. My personal relations with the Englishmen I have met have been verypleasant. I can readily believe that there are no better people living, but I feel so strongly on the subject, nationally--so bitterly opposedto a continuance of England's sea control--so fearful that our peoplemay be lulled into a feeling of false security, that I cannot helptrying to combat, with every small means in my power, anything thatseems to propagate a dangerous friendship. "

I received no dissenting letter superior to this. To the writer of itI replied that I agreed with much that he said, but that even so it didnot in my opinion outweigh the reasons I had given (and shall nowgive more abundantly) in favor of dropping our hostile feeling towardEngland. 

My correspondent says that we differ as a race from the English as muchas a celluloid comb from a stick of dynamite. Did our soldiers find thedifference as great as that? I doubt if our difference from anybody isquite as great as that. Again, my correspondent says that we are boundup in our own success only, and England is bound up in hers only. Iagree. But suppose the two successes succeed better through friendshipthan through enmity? We are as friendly, my correspondent says, as tworival corporations. Again I agree. Has it not been proved this longwhile that competing corporations prosper through friendship? Did notthe Northern Pacific and the Great Northern form a combination calledthe Northern Securities, for the sake of mutual benefit? Under theSherman Act the Northern Securities was dissolved; but no Sherman actforbids a Liberty Securities. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, isEngland's gift to the modern world. Liberty, defined and assured by Law, is the central purpose of our Constitution. Just as identically as theNorthern Pacific and Great Northern run from St. Paul to Seattle doEngland and the United States aim at Liberty, defined and assured byLaw. As friends, the two nations can swing the world towards worldstability. My correspondent would hardly have instanced the Boers inhis reference to England's misdeeds, had he reflected upon the part theBoers have played in England's struggle with Germany. 

I will point out no more of the latent weaknesses that underlie variouspassages in this letter, but proceed to the remaining letters that Ihave selected. I gave one from an enlisted man and one from a sailor;this is from a commissioned officer, in France. 

"I cannot refrain from sending you a line of appreciation and thanks forgiving the people at home a few facts that I am sure some do not knowand throwing a light upon a much discussed topic, which I am sure willhelp to remove from some of their minds a foolish bigoted antipathy. "

Upon the single point of our school histories of the Revolution, someof which I had named as being guilty of distorting the facts, acorrespondent writes from Nebraska:

"Some months ago... The question came to me, what about our Montgomery'sHistory now.... I find that everywhere it is the King who is representedas taking these measures against the American people. On page 134 is theheading, American Commerce; the new King George III; how he interferedwith trade; page 135, The King proposes to tax the Colonies; page136, 'The best men in Parliament--such men as William Pitt and EdmundBurke--took the side of the colonies. ' On page 138, 'William Pitt saidin Parliament, "in my opinion, this kingdom has no right to lay a taxon the colonies... I rejoice that America has resisted"'; page 150, 'TheEnglish people would not volunteer to fight the Americans and the Kinghad to hire nearly 30, 000 Hessians to help do the work.... The Americanshad not sought separation; the King--not the English people--had forcedit on them.... '

"I am writing this... Because, as I was glad to see, you did not mincewords in naming several of the worse offenders. " (He means certainschool histories that I mentioned and shall mention later again. )

An official from Pittsburgh wrote thus:

"In common with many other people, I have had the same idea that Englandwas not doing all she could in the war, that while her colonies were inthe thick of it, she, herself, seemed to be sparing herself, but afterreading this article... I will frankly and candidly confess to you thatit has changed my opinion, made me a strong supporter of England, andabove all made me a better American. "

From Massachusetts:

"It is well to remind your readers of the errors--or worse--in Americanschool text books and to recount Britain's achievements in the presentwar. But of what practical avail are these things when a man so highlyplaced as the present Secretary of the Navy asks a Boston audience(Tremont Temple, October 30, 1918) to believe that it was the Americannavy which made possible the transportation of over 2, 000, 000 Americansto France without the loss of a single transport on the way over? Didhe not know that the greater part of those troops were not onlytransported, but convoyed, by British vessels, largely withdrawn forthat purpose from such vital service as the supply of food to Britain'scivil population?"

The omission on the part of our Secretary of the Navy was later quietlyrectified by an official publication of the British Government, whereinit appeared that some sixty per cent of our troops were transported inBritish ships. Our Secretary's regrettable slight to our British allieswas immediately set right by Admiral Sims, who forthwith, both in publicand in private, paid full and appreciative tribute to what had beendone. It is, nevertheless, very likely that some Americans will learnhere for the first time that more than half of our troops were nottransported by ourselves, and could not have been transported at all butfor British assistance. There are many persons who still believe whatour politicians and newspapers tell them. No incident that I shallrelate further on serves better to point the chief international moralat which I am driving throughout these pages, and at which I havealready hinted: Never to generalize the character of a whole nationby the acts of individual members of it. That is what everybody does, ourselves, the English, the French, everybody. You can form no validopinion of any nation's characteristics, not even your own, untilyou have met hundreds of its people, men and women, and had ampleopportunity to observe and know them beneath the surface. Here on theone hand we had our Secretary of the Navy. He gave our Navy the wholecredit for getting our soldiers overseas. 

He justified the British opinion that we are a nation of braggarts. On the other hand, in London, we had Admiral Sims, another American, asplendid antidote. He corrected the Secretary's brag. What is the moral?Look out how you generalize. Since we entered the war that tribe ofEnglish has increased who judge us with an open mind, discriminatebetween us, draw close to a just appraisal of our qualities and defects, and possibly even discern that those who fill our public positions aremostly on a lower level than those who elect them. 

I proceed with two more letters, both dissenting, and both givingvery typically, as it seems to me, the American feeling aboutEngland--partially justified by instances mentioned by my correspondent, but equally mentioned by me in passages which he seems to have skipped. 

"Lately I read and did not admire your article... 'The Ancient Grudge. 'Many of your statements are absolutely true, and I recognize the factthat England's help in this war has been invaluable. Let it go at thatand hush!

"I do not defend our own Indian policy.... Wounded and disabled in ourIndian wars... I know all about them and how indefensible they are..... 

"England has been always our only legitimate enemy. 1776? Yes, call itancient history and forget it if possible. 1812? That may go in thesame category. But the causes of that misunderstanding were identicallyrepeated in 1914 and '15. 

"1861? Is that also ancient? Perhaps--but very bitter in the memory ofmany of us now living. The Alabama. The Confederate Commissioners(I know you will say we were wrong there--and so we may have beentechnically--but John Bull bullied us into compliance when our handswere tied). Lincoln told his Cabinet 'one war at a time, Gentlemen' andsubmitted.... 

"In 1898 we were a strong and powerful nation and a dangerous enemyto provoke. England recognized the fact and acted accordingly. Englandentered the present war to protect small nations! Heaven save the mark!You surely read your history. Pray tell me something of England's policyin South Africa, India, the Soudan, Persia, Abyssinia, Ireland, Egypt. The lost provinces of Denmark. The United States when she was young andhelpless. And thus, almost to--infinitum. 

"Do you not know that the foundations of ninety per cent of the greatBritish fortunes came from the loot of India? upheld and fostered by thegreat and unscrupulous East India Company?

"Come down to later times: to-day for instance. Here in California... I meet and associate with hundreds of Britishers. Are they Americancitizens? I had almost said, 'No, not one. ' Sneering and contemptuousof America and American institutions. Continually finding fault with ourgovernment and our people. Comparing these things with England, alwaysto our disadvantage...... 

"Now do you wonder we do not like England? Am I pro-German? I shouldlaugh and so would you if you knew me. "

To this correspondent I did not reply that I wished I knew him--whichI do--that, even as he, so I had frequently been galled by the rudenessand the patronizing of various specimens, high and low, of the Englishrace. But something I did reply, to the effect that I asked nobody toconsider England flawless, or any nation a charitable institution, butmerely to be fair, and to consider a cordial understanding betweenus greatly to our future advantage. To this he answered, in part, asfollows:

"I wish to thank you for your kindly reply.... Your argument is that asa matter of policy we should conciliate Great Britain. Have we fallenso low, this great and powerful nation?... Truckling to some other powerbecause its backing, moral or physical, may some day be of use to us, even tho' we know that in so doing we are surrendering our dearestrights, principles, and dignity!... Oh! my dear Sir, you surely do notadvocate this? I inclose an editorial clipping.... Is it no shock to youwhen Winston Churchill shouts to High Heaven that under no circumstanceswill Great Britain surrender its supreme control of the seas? This inreply to President Wilson's plea for freedom of the seas and curtailmentof armaments.... But as you see, our President and our Mr. Daniels havealready said, 'Very well, we will outbuild you. ' Never again shall GreatBritain stop our mail ships and search our private mails. Already hasEngland declared an embargo against our exports in many essential linesand already are we expressing our dissatisfaction and taking means toretaliate. "

Of the editorial clipping inclosed with the above, the following is apart:

"John Bull is our associate in the contest with the Kaiser. There is nodoubt as to his position on that proposition. He went after the Dutch ingreat shape. Next to France he led the way and said, 'Come on, Yanks;we need your help. We will put you in the first line of trenches wherethere will be good gunning. Yes, we will do all of that and at the sametime we will borrow your money, raised by Liberty Loans, and use it forthe purchase of American wheat, pork, and beef. '

"Mr. Bull kept his word. He never flinched or attempted to dodge theissue. He kept strictly in the middle of the road. His determinationto down the Kaiser with American men, American money, and American foodnever abated for a single day during the conflict. "

This editorial has many twins throughout the country. I quote it for itsvalue as a specimen of that sort of journalistic and political utteranceamongst us, which is as seriously embarrassed by facts as a skunk by itstail. Had its author said: "The Declaration of Independence was signedby Christopher Columbus on Washington's birthday during the siege ofVicksburg in the presence of Queen Elizabeth and Judas Iscariot, " hisstatement would have been equally veracious, and more striking. 

As to Winston Churchill's declaration that Great Britain will notsurrender her control of the seas, I am as little shocked by that asI should be were our Secretary of the Navy to declare that in nocircumstances would we give up control of the Panama Canal. The PanamaCanal is our carotid artery, Great Britain's navy is her jugular vein. It is her jugular vein in the mind of her people, regardless of that newapparition, the submarine. I was not shocked that Great Britain shoulddecline Mr. Wilson's invitation that she cut her jugular vein; it wasthe invitation which kindled my emotions; but these were of a lessserious kind. 

The last letter that I shall give is from an American citizen of Englishbirth. 

"As a boy at school in England, I was taught the history of the AmericanRevolution as J. R. Green presents it in his Short History of theEnglish People. The gist of this record, as you doubtless recollect, isthat George III being engaged in the attempt to destroy what there thenwas of political freedom and representative government in England, usedthe American situation as a means to that end; that the English people, in so far as their voice could make itself heard, were solidly againstboth his English and American policy, and that the triumph of Americacontributed in no small measure to the salvation of those institutionsby which the evolution of England towards complete democracy was madepossible. Washington was held up to us in England not merely as a greatand good man, but as an heroic leader, to whose courage and wisdom theEnglish as well as the American people were eternally indebted.... 

"Pray forgive so long a letter from a stranger. It is prompted... By asense of the illimitable importance, not only for America and Britain, but for the entire world, of these two great democratic peoples knowingeach other as they really are and cooperating as only they can cooperateto establish and maintain peace on just and permanent foundations. "

Chapter III: In Front of a Bulletin Board

There, then, are ten letters of the fifty which came to me inconsequence of what I wrote in May, 1918, which was published in theAmerican Magazine for the following November. Ten will do. To read theother forty would change no impression conveyed already by the ten, butwould merely repeat it. With varying phraseology their writers eitherthink we have hitherto misjudged England and that my facts are to thepoint, or they express the stereotyped American antipathy to Englandand treat my facts as we mortals mostly do when facts areembarrassing--side-step them. What best pleased me was to find thatsoldiers and sailors agreed with me, and not "high-brows" only. 

May, 1918, as you will remember, was a very dark hour. We had come intothe war, had been in for a year; but events had not yet taken us out ofthe well-nigh total eclipse flung upon our character by those blightingwords, "there is such a thing as being too proud to fight. " The Britishhad been told by their General that they were fighting with their backsto the wall. Since March 23rd the tread of the Hun had been comingsteadily nearer to Paris. Belleau Wood and Chateau-Thierry had not yetstruck the true ring from our metal and put into the hands of Foch theone further weapon that he needed. French morale was burning very lowand blue. Yet even in such an hour, people apparently American andapparently grown up, were talking against England, our ally. Then andthereafter, even as to-day, they talked against her as they had beentalking since August, 1914, as I had heard them again and again, indoorsand out, as I heard a man one forenoon in a crowd during the earlieryears of the war, the miserable years before we waked from our trance ofneutrality, while our chosen leaders were still misleading us. 

Do you remember those unearthly years? The explosions, the plots, thespies, the Lucitania, the notes, Mr. Bryan, von Bernstorff, half ourcountry--oh, more than half!--in different or incredulous, nothingprepared, nothing done, no step taken, Theodore Roosevelt's and LeonardWood's almost the only voices warning us what was bound to happen, andto get ready for it? Do you remember the bulletin boards? Did you grow, as I did, so restless that you would step out of your office to see ifanything new had happened during the last sixty minutes--would stop asyou went to lunch and stop as you came back? We knew from the facesof our friends what our own faces were like. In company we pumped upliveliness, but in the street, alone with our apprehensions--do youremember? For our future's sake may everybody remember, may nobodyforget!

What the news was upon a certain forenoon memorable to me, I do notrecall, and this is of no consequence; good or bad, the stream ofby-passers clotted thickly to read it as the man chalked it line uponline across the bulletin board. Citizens who were in haste stepped offthe curb to pass round since they could not pass through this crowd ofgazers. Thus this on the sidewalk stood some fifty of us, staringat names we had never known until a little while ago, Bethincourt, Malancourt, perhaps, or Montfaucon, or Roisel; French names of smallplaces, among whose crumbled, featureless dust I have walked since, where lived peacefully a few hundred or a few thousand that are nowa thousand butchered or broken-hearted. Through me ran once again thewonder that had often chilled me since the abdication of the Czar whichmade certain the crumbling of Russia: after France, was our turn coming?Should our fields, too, be sown with bones, should our little townsamong the orchards and the corn fall in ashes amongst which brokenhearts would wander in search of some surviving stick of property? I hadlearned to know that a long while before the war the eyes of the Hun, the bird of prey, had been fixed upon us as a juicy morsel. He hadwritten it, he had said it. Since August, 1914, these Pan-German schemeshad been leaking out for all who chose to understand them. A great manydid not so choose. The Hun had wanted us and planned to get us, and nowmore than ever before, because he intended that we should pay his warbills. Let him once get by England, and his sword would cut through ourfat, defenseless carcass like a knife through cheese. 

A voice arrested my reverie, a voice close by in the crowd. It said, "Well, I like the French. But I'll not cry much if England gets hers. What's England done in this war, anyway?"

"Her fleet's keeping the Kaiser out of your front yard, for one thing, "retorted another voice. 

With assurance slightly wobbling and a touch of the nasal whine, thefirst speaker protested, "Well, look what George III done to us. Bad asany Kaiser. "

"Aw, get your facts straight!" It was said with scornful force. "Don't you know George III was a German? Don't you know it wasHessians--they're Germans--he hired to come over here and kill Americansand do his dirty work for him? And his Germans did the same dirty workthe Kaiser's are doing now. We've got a letter written after the battleof Long Island by a member of our family they took prisoner there. Andthey stripped him and they stole his things and they beat him down withthe butts of their guns--after he had surrendered, mind--when he wassurrendered and naked, and when he was down they beat him some more. That's Germans for you. Only they've been getting worse while the restof the world's been getting better. Get your facts straight, man. "

A number of us were now listening to this, and I envied the historianhis ingenious promptness--I have none--and I hoped for more of thistimely debate. But debate was over. The anti-Englishman faded tosilence. Either he was out of facts to get straight, or lacked whatis so pithily termed "come-back. " The latter, I incline to think; forcome-back needs no facts, it is a self-feeder, and its entire absencein the anti-Englishman looks as if he had been a German. Germans donot come back when it goes against them, they bleat "Kamerad!"--ordisappear. Perhaps this man was a spy--a poor one, to be sure--yet doinghis best for his Kaiser: slinking about, peeping, listening, tryingto wedge the Allies apart, doing his little bit towards making friendsenemies, just as his breed has worked to set enmity between ourselvesand Japan, ourselves and Mexico, France and England, France and Italy, England and Russia, between everybody and everybody else all the worldover, in the sacred name and for the sacred sake of the Kaiser. Thus hashis breed, since we occupied Coblenz, run to the French soldiers withlies about us and then run to us with lies about the French soldiers, overlooking in its providential stupidity the fact that we and theFrench would inevitably compare notes. Thus too is his breed, at themoment I write these words, infesting and poisoning the earth with apropaganda that remains as coherent and as systematically directed asever it was before the papers began to assure us that there was nothingleft of the Hohenzollern government. 

Chapter IV: "My Army of Spies"

"You will desire to know, " said the Kaiser to his council at Potsdam inJune, 1908, after the successful testing of the first Zeppelin, "how thehostilities will be brought about. My army of spies scattered over GreatBritain and France, as it is over North and South America, will takegood care of that. Even now I rule supreme in the United States, wherethree million voters do my bidding at the Presidential elections. "

Yes, they did his bidding; there, and elsewhere too. They did it atother elections as well. Do you remember the mayor they tried to electin Chicago? and certain members of Congress? and certain manufacturersand bankers? They did his bidding in our newspapers, our public schools, and from the pulpit. Certain localities in one of the river counties ofIowa (for instance) were spots of German treason to the United States. The "exchange professors" that came from Berlin to Harvard and otheruniversities were so many camouflaged spies. Certain prominent Americancitizens, dined and wined and flattered by the Kaiser for his purpose, women as well as men, came back here mere Kaiser-puppets, hypnotizedby royalty. His bidding was done in as many ways as would fill a book. Shopkeepers did it, servants did it, Americans among us were decoratedby him for doing it. Even after the Armistice, a school textbook "gotby" the Board of Education in a western state, wherein our boys andgirls were to be taught a German version--a Kaiser version--of Germany. Somebody protested, and the board explained that it "hadn't noticed, "and the book was held up. 

We cannot, I fear, order the school histories in Germany to be editedby the Allies. German school children will grow up believing, in allprob-ability, that bombs were dropped near Nurnberg in July, 1914, thatGerman soil was invaded, that the Fatherland fought a war of defense;they will certainly be nourished by lies in the future as they werenourished by lies in the past. But we can prevent Germans or pro-Germanswriting our own school histories; we can prevent that "army of spies" ofwhich the Kaiser boasted to his council at Potsdam in June, 1908, from continuing its activities among us now and henceforth; and wecan prevent our school textbooks from playing into Germany's hand byteaching hate of England to our boys and girls. Beside the sickeningsilliness which still asks, "What has England done in the war?" is asilliness still more sickening which says, "Germany is beaten. Letus forgive and forget. " That is not Christianity. There is nothingChristian about it. It is merely sentimental slush, sloppy shirking ofanything that compels national alertness, or effort, or self-discipline, or self-denial; a moral cowardice that pushes away any fact whichdisturbs a shallow, torpid, irresponsible, self-indulgent optimism. 

Our golden age of isolation is over. To attempt to return to it wouldbe a mere pernicious day-dream. To hark back to Washington's warningagainst entangling alliances is as sensible as to go by a map of theworld made in 1796. We are coupled to the company of nations like a carin the middle of a train, only more inevitably and permanently, for wecannot uncouple; and if we tried to do so, we might not wreck the train, but we should assuredly wreck ourselves. I think the war has brought usone benefit certainly: that many young men return from Europe knowingthis, who had no idea of it before they went, and who know also thatGermany is at heart an untamed, unchanged wild beast, never to betrusted again. We must not, and shall not, boycott her in trade; butlet us not go to sleep at the switch! Just as busily as she is bakingpottery opposite Coblenz, labelled "made in St. Louis, " "made in KansasCity, " her "army of spies" is at work here and everywhere to underminethose nations who have for the moment delayed her plans for worlddominion. I think the number of Americans who know this has increased;but no American, wherever he lives, need travel far from home tomeet fellow Americans who sing the song of slush about forgiving andforgetting. 

Perhaps the man I heard talking in front of the bulletin board wasone of the "army of spies, " as I like to infer from his absence of"come-back. " But perhaps he was merely an innocent American who atschool had studied, for instance, Eggleston's history; thoughtless--butby no means harmless; for his school-taught "slant" against England, inthe days we were living through then, amounted to a "slant" forGermany. He would be sorry if Germany beat France, but not if she beatEngland--when France and England were joined in keeping the wolf notonly from their door but from ours! It matters not in the least thatthey were fighting our battle, not because they wanted to, but becausethey couldn't help it: they were fighting it just the same. That theywere compelled doesn't matter, any more than it matters that in going towar when Belgium was invaded, England's duty and England's self-interesthappened to coincide. Our duty and our interest also coincided when weentered the war and joined England and France. Have we seemed to thinkthat this diminished our glory? Have they seemed to think that itabsolved them from gratitude?

Such talk as that man's in front of the bulletin board helped Germanythen, whether he meant to or not, just as much as if a spy had saidit--just as much as similar talk against England to-day, whether byspies or unheeding Americans, helps the Germany of to-morrow. TheGermany of yesterday had her spies all over France and Italy, busilysuggesting to rustic uninformed peasants that we had gone to France forconquest of France, and intended to keep some of her land. What is shetelling them now? I don't know. Something to her advantage and theirdisadvantage, you may be sure, just as she is busy suggesting to usthings to her advantage and our disadvantage--jealousy and fear of theBritish navy, or pro-German school histories for our children, or thatwe can't make dyes, or whatever you please: the only sure thing is, that the Germany of yesterday is the Germany of to-morrow. She is notchanged. She will not change. The steady stream of her propagandaall over the world proves it. No matter how often her masqueradinggovernment changes costumes, that costume is merely her device toconceal the same cunning, treacherous wild beast that in 1914, afterforty years of preparation, sprang at the throat of the world. Of allthe nations in the late war, she alone is pulling herself together. Sheis hard at work. She means to spring again just as soon as she can. 

Did you read the letter written in April of 1919 by her Vice-Chancellor, Mathias Erzberger, also her minister of finance? A very able, compactmasterpiece of malignant voracity, good enough to do credit to Satan. Through that lucky flaw of stupidity which runs through apparently everyGerman brain, and to which we chiefly owe our victory and temporaryrespite from the fangs of the wolf, Mathias Erzberger posted his letter. It went wrong in the mails. If you desire to read the whole of it, theInternational News Bureau can either furnish it or put you on the trackof it. One sentence from it shall be quoted here:

"We will undertake the restoration of Russia, and in possession of suchsupport will be ready, within ten or fifteen years, to bring France, without any difficulty, into our power. The march towards Paris will beeasier than in 1914. The last step but one towards the world dominionwill then be reached. The continent is ours. Afterwards will followthe last stage, the closing struggle, between the continent and theover-seas. "

Who is meant by "overseas"? Is there left any honest American brain sofond and so feeble as to suppose that we are not included in that highlysuggestive and significant term? I fear that some such brains are left. 

Germans remain German. I was talking with an American officer justreturned from Coblenz. He described the surprise of the Germans whenthey saw our troops march in to occupy that region of their country. They said to him: "But this is extraordinary. Where do these soldiers ofyours come from? You have only 150, 000 troops in Europe. All the othertransports were sunk by our submarines. " "We have two million troops inEurope, " replied the officer, "and lost by explosion a very few hundred. No transport was sunk. " "But that is impossible, " returned the burgher, "we know from our Government at Berlin that you have only 150, 000 troopsin Europe. "

Germans remain German. At Coblenz they were servile, cringing, fawning, ready to lick the boots of the Americans, loading them with offers ofevery food and drink and joy they had. Thus they began. Soon, findingthat the Americans did not cut their throats, burn their houses, rape their daughters, or bayonet their babies, but were quiet, civil, disciplined, and apparently harmless, they changed. Their fawning fadedaway, they scowled and muttered. One day the Burgomaster at a certainplace replied to some ordinary requisitions with an arrogant refusal. It was quite out of the question, he said, to comply with any suchridiculous demands. Then the Americans ceased to seem harmless. Certainsteps were taken by the commanding officer, some leading citizenswere collected and enlightened through the only channel whereby lightpenetrates a German skull. Thus, by a very slight taste of the methodsby which they thought they would cow the rest of the world, theseburghers were cowed instantly. They had thought the Americans afraid ofthem. They had taken civility for fear. Suddenly they encountered whatwe call the swift kick. It educated them. It always will. Nothing elsewill. 

Mathias Erzberger will, of course, disclaim his letter. He will say itis a forgery. He will point to the protestations of German repentanceand reform with which he sweated during April, 1919, and throughout theweeks preceding the delivery of the Treaty at Versailles. Perhaps he hasdone this already. All Germans will believe him--and some Americans. 

The German method, the German madness--what a mixture! The method justgrazed making Germany owner of the earth, the madness saved the earth. With perfect recognition of Belgium's share, of Russia's share, ofFrance's, Italy's, England's, our own, in winning the war, I believethat the greatest and mast efficient Ally of all who contributed toGermany's defeat was her own constant blundering madness. Americans mustnever forget either the one or the other, and too many are trying toforget both. 

Germans remain German. An American lady of my acquaintance was aboutto climb from Amalfi to Ravello in company with a German lady of heracquaintance. The German lady had a German Baedeker, the American aBaedeker in English, published several years apart. The Baedeker inGerman recommended a path that went straight up the ascent, the Baedekerin English a path that went up more gradually around it. "Mine saysthis is the best way, " said the American. "Mine says straight up isthe best, " said the German. "But mine is a later edition, " said theAmerican. "That is not it, " explained the German. "It is that we Germansare so much more clever and agile, that to us is recommended the moredangerous way while Americans are shown the safe path. "

That happened in 1910. That is Kultur. This too is Kultur:

 "If Silesia become Polish Then, oh God, may children perish, like beasts, in their mothers' womb. Then lame their Polish feet and their hands, oh God! Let them be crippled and blind their eyes. Smite them with dumbness and madness, both men and women. "

 From a Hymn of German hate for the Poles. 

Germany remains German; but when next she springs, she will make noblunders. 

Chapter V: The Ancient Grudge

It was in Broad Street, Philadelphia, before we went to war, that Ioverheard the foolish--or propagandist--slur upon England in front ofthe bulletin board. After we were fighting by England's side for ourexistence, you might have supposed such talk would cease. It did not. And after the Armistice, it continued. On the day we celebrated as"British Day, " a man went through the crowd in Wanamaker's shop, asking, What had England done in the War, anyhow? Was he a German, oran Irishman, or an American in pay of Berlin? I do not know. But this Iknow: perfectly good Americans still talk like that. Cowboys in camp doit. Men and women in Eastern cities, persons with at least the externaltrappings of educated intelligence, play into the hands of the Germanyof to-morrow, do their unconscious little bit of harm to the future offreedom and civilization, by repeating that England "has always been ourenemy. " Then they mention the Revolution, the War of 1812, and England'sattitude during our Civil War, just as they invariably mentioned thesethings in 1917 and 1918, when England was our ally in a struggle (orlife, and as they will be mentioning them in 1940, I presume, if theyare still alive at that time). 

Now, the Civil War ended fifty-five years ago, the War of 1812 onehundred and five, and the Revolution one hundred and thirty-seven. Suppose, while the Kaiser was butchering Belgium because she barred hisway to that dinner he was going to eat in Paris in October, 1914, thatFrance had said, "England is my hereditary enemy. Henry the Fifth andthe Duke of Wellington and sundry Plantagenets fought me"; and supposeEngland had said, "I don't care much for France. Joan of Arc andNapoleon and sundry other French fought me"--suppose they had satnursing their ancient grudges like that? Well, the Kaiser would havedined in Paris according to his plan. And next, according to his plan, with the Channel ports taken he would have dined in London. Andfinally, according to his plan, and with the help of his "army of spies"overseas, he would have dined in New York and the White House. ForGerman madness could not have defeated Germany's plan of World dominion, if various nations had not got together and assisted. Other Americansthere are, who do not resort to the Revolution for their grudge, butare in a commercial rage over this or that: wool, for instance. Let suchAmericans reflect that commercial grievances against England can be morereadily adjusted than an absorption of all commerce by Germany can beadjusted. Wool and everything else will belong to Mathias Erzbergerand his breed, if they carry out their intention. And the way to insuretheir carrying it out is to let them split us and England and all theircompetitors asunder by their ceaseless and ingenious propaganda, whichplays upon every international prejudice, historic, commercial, orother, which is available. After August, 1914, England barred theKaiser's way to New York, and in 1917, we found it useful to forgetabout George the Third and the Alabama. In 1853 Prussia possessed oneship of war--her first. 

In 1918 her submarines were prowling along our coast. For the momentthey are no longer there. For a while they may not be. But do you thinkGermany intends that scraps of paper shall be abolished by any Treaty, even though it contain 80, 000 words and a League of Nations? She willmake of that Treaty a whole basket of scraps, if she can, and as soonas she can. She has said so. Her workingmen are at work, industrious andcontent with a quarter the pay for a longer day than anywhere else. Let those persons who cannot get over George the Third and the Alabamaponder upon this for a minute or two. 

Chapter VI: Who Is Without Sin?

Much else is there that it were well they should ponder, and I am comingto it presently; but first, one suggestion. Most of us, if we dig backonly fifty or sixty or seventy years, can disinter various relativesover whose doings we should prefer to glide lightly and in silence. 

Do you mean to say that you have none? Nobody stained with any shadeof dishonor? No grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-etc. Grandfather or grandmother who ever made a scandal, broke a heart, orbetrayed a trust? Every man Jack and woman Jill of the lot right back toAdam and Eve wholly good, honorable, and courageous? How fortunate tobe sprung exclusively from the loins of centuries of angels--and to knowall about them! Consider the hoard of virtue to which you have fallenheir!

But you know very well that this is not so; that every one of us hasevery kind of person for an ancestor; that all sorts of virtue andvice, of heroism and disgrace, are mingled in our blood; that inevitablyamidst the huge herd of our grandsires black sheep as well as white areto be found. 

As it is with men, so it is with nations. Do you imagine that any nationhas a spotless history? Do you think that you can peer into our past, turn over the back pages of our record, and never come upon a singleblot? Indeed you cannot. And it is better--a great deal better--that youshould be aware of these blots. Such knowledge may enlighten you, maymake you a better American. What we need is to be critics of ourselves, and this is exactly what we have been taught not to be. 

We are quite good enough to look straight at ourselves. Owing to onething and another we are cleaner, honester, humaner, and whiter thanany people on the continent of Europe. If any nation on the continent ofEurope has ever behaved with the generosity and magnanimity that we haveshown to Cuba, I have yet to learn of it. They jeered at us about Cuba, did the Europeans of the continent. Their papers stuck their tongues intheir cheeks. Of course our fine sentiments were all sham, they said. Of course we intended to swallow Cuba, and never had intended anythingelse. And when General Leonard Wood came away from Cuba, having madeHavana healthy, having brought order out of chaos on the island, and weleft Cuba independent, Europe jeered on. That dear old Europe!

Again, in 1909, it was not any European nation that returned to Chinatheir share of the indemnity exacted in consequence of the Boxertroubles; we alone returned our share to China--sixteen millions. It waswe who prevented levying a punitive indemnity on China. Read the wholestory; there is much more. We played the gentleman, Europe played thebully. But Europe calls us "dollar chasers. " That dear old Europe!Again, if any conquering General on the continent of Europe ever behavedas Grant did to Lee at Appomattox, his name has escaped me. 

Again, and lastly--though I am not attempting to tell you here the wholetale of our decencies: Whose hands came away cleanest from that PeaceConference in Paris lately? What did we ask for ourselves? Everythingwe asked, save some repairs of damage, was for other people. Oh, yes! weare quite good enough to keep quiet about these things. No need whateverto brag. Bragging, moreover, inclines the listener to suspect you're notso remarkable as you sound. 

But all this virtue doesn't in the least alter the fact that we're likeeverybody else in having some dirty pages in our History. These pages itis a foolish mistake to conceal. I suppose that the school historiesof every nation are partly bad. I imagine that most of them implant thegerm of international hatred in the boys and girls who have to studythem. Nations do not like each other, never have liked each other;and it may very well be that school textbooks help this inclination todislike. Certainly we know what contempt and hatred for other nationsthe Germans have been sedulously taught in their schools, and howutterly they believed their teaching. How much better and wiser for thewhole world if all the boys and girls in all the schools everywherewere henceforth to be started in life with a just and true notion of allflags and the peoples over whom they fly! The League of Nations mightnot then rest upon the quicksand of distrust and antagonism which itrests upon today. But it is our own school histories that are my presentconcern, and I repeat my opinion--or rather my conviction--that the wayin which they have concealed the truth from us is worse than silly, it is harmful. I am not going to take up the whole list of theirmisrepresentations, I will put but one or two questions to you. 

When you finished school, what idea had you about the War of 1812?I will tell you what mine was. I thought we had gone to war becauseEngland was stopping American ships and taking American sailors out ofthem for her own service. I could refer to Perry's victory on Lake Erieand Jackson's smashing of the British at New Orleans; the name of thefrigate Constitution sent thrills through me. And we had pounded oldJohn Bull and sent him to the right about a second time! Such was myglorious idea, and there it stopped. Did you know much more than thatabout it when your schooling was done? Did you know that our reasons fordeclaring war against Great Britain in 1812 were not so strong as theyhad been three and four years earlier? That during those years Englandhad moderated her arrogance, was ready to moderate further, had placatedus for her brutal performance concerning the Chesapeake, wanted peace;while we, who had been nearly unanimous for war, and with a fullerpurse in 1808, were now, by our own congressional fuddling and messing, without any adequate army, and so divided in counsel that only onenorthern state was wholly in favor of war? Did you know that our GeneralHull began by invading Canada from Detroit and surrendered his wholearmy without firing a shot? That the British overran Michigan and partsof Ohio, and western New York, while we retreated disgracefully? Thatthough we shone in victories of single combat on the sea and showed theEnglish that we too knew how to sail and fight on the waves as hardilyas Britannia (we won eleven out of thirteen of the frigate and sloopactions), nevertheless she caught us or blocked us up, and riotedunchecked along our coasts? You probably did know that the Britishburned Washington, and you accordingly hated them for this barbarousvandalism--but did you know that we had burned Toronto a year earlier?

I left school knowing none of this--it wasn't in my school book, andI learned it in mature years with amazement. I then learned also thatEngland, while she was fighting with us, had her hands full fightingBonaparte, that her war with us was a sideshow, and that this wasuncommonly lucky for us--as lucky quite as those ships from France underAdmiral de Grasse, without whose help Washington could never have caughtCornwallis and compelled his surrender at Yorktown, October 19, 1781. Did you know that there were more French soldiers and sailors thanAmericans at Yorktown? Is it well to keep these things from the young?I have not done with the War of 1812. There is a political aspect ofit that I shall later touch upon--something that my school books nevermentioned. 

My next question is, what did you know about the Mexican War of1846-1847, when you came out of school? The names of our victories, I presume, and of Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott; and possibly thetreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whereby Mexico ceded to us the wholeof Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, and we paid her fifteenmillions. No doubt you know that Santa Anna, the Mexican General, hada wooden leg. Well, there is more to know than that, and I found it outmuch later. I found out that General Grant, who had fought withcredit as a lieutenant in the Mexican War, briefly summarized it as"iniquitous. " I gradually, through my reading as a man, learned thetruth about the Mexican War which had not been taught me as a boy--thatin that war we bullied a weaker power, that we made her our victim, thatthe whole discreditable business had the extension of slavery at thebottom of it, and that more Americans were against it than had beenagainst the War of 1812. But how many Americans ever learn these things?Do not most of them, upon leaving school, leave history also behindthem, and become farmers, or merchants, or plumbers, or firemen, orcarpenters, or whatever, and read little but the morning paper for therest of their lives?

The blackest page in our history would take a long while to read. Not aword of it did I ever see in my school textbooks. They were written onthe plan that America could do no wrong. I repeat that, just as we loveour friends in spite of their faults, and all the more intelligentlybecause we know these faults, so our love of our country would be justas strong, and far more intelligent, were we honestly and wisely taughtin our early years those acts and policies of hers wherein she fellbelow her lofty and humane ideals. Her character and her record on thewhole from the beginning are fine enough to allow the shadows to throwthe sunlight into relief. To have produced at three stages of ourgrowth three such men as Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, is quitesufficient justification for our existence

Chapter VII: Tarred with the Same Stick

The blackest page in our history is our treatment of the Indian. Tospeak of it is a thankless task--thankless, and necessary. 

This land was the Indian's house, not ours. He was here first, nobodyknows how many centuries first. We arrived, and we shoved him, andshoved him, and shoved him, back, and back, and back. Treaty aftertreaty we made with him, and broke. We drew circles round his freedom, smaller and smaller. We allowed him such and such territory, then tookit away and gave him less and worse in exchange. Throughout a centuryour promises to him were a whole basket of scraps of paper. The otherday I saw some Indians in California. It had once been their place. Allover that region they had hunted and fished and lived according to theirdesires, enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We came. To-day the hunting and fishing are restricted by our laws--not theIndian's--because we wasted and almost exterminated in a very shortwhile what had amply provided the Indian with sport and food for a verylong while. 

In that region we have taken, as usual, the fertile land and the runningwater, and have allotted land to the Indian where neither wood nor waterexist, no crops will grow, no human life can be supported. I have seenthe land. I have seen the Indian begging at the back door. Oh, yes, theywere an "inferior race. " Oh, yes, they didn't and couldn't use the landto the best advantage, couldn't build Broadway and the Union PacificRailroad, couldn't improve real estate. If you choose to call the wholething "manifest destiny, " I am with you. I'll not dispute that whatwe have made this continent is of greater service to mankind than thewilderness of the Indian ever could possibly have been--once conceding, as you have to concede, the inevitableness of civilization. Neither you, nor I, nor any man, can remold the sorry scheme of things entire. But wecould have behaved better to the Indian. That was in our power. And wegave him a raw deal instead, not once, but again and again. We did itbecause we could do it without risk, because he was weaker and we couldalways beat him in the end. And all the while we were doing it, therewas our Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, founded ona new thing in the world, proclaiming to mankind the fairest hopeyet born, that "All men are endowed by their Creator with certaininalienable rights, " and that these were now to be protected by law. Ah, no, look at it as you will, it is a black page, a raw deal. The officersof our frontier army know all about it, because they saw it happen. Theysaw the treaties broken, the thieving agents, the trespassing settlers, the outrages that goaded the deceived Indian to despair and violence, and when they were ordered out to kill him, they knew that he had struckin self-defense and was the real victim. 

It is too late to do much about it now. The good people of the IndianRights Association try to do something; but in spite of them, whatlittle harm can still be done is being done through dishonest Indianagents and the mean machinery of politics. If you care to know more ofthe long, bad story, there is a book by Helen Hunt Jackson, A Centuryof Dishonor; it is not new. It assembles and sets forth what had beenperpetrated up to the time when it was written. A second volume could beadded now. 

I have dwelt upon this matter here for a very definite reason, closely connected with my main purpose. It's a favorite trick of ouranti-British friends to call England a "land-grabber. " The way in whichEngland has grabbed land right along, all over the world, is monstrous, they say. England has stolen what belonged to whites, and blacks, andbronzes, and yellows, wherever she could lay her hands upon it, theysay. England is a criminal. They repeat this with great satisfaction, this land-grabbing indictment. Most of them know little or nothing ofthe facts, couldn't tell you the history of a single case. But whatare the facts to the man who asks, "What has England done in this war, anyway?" The word "land-grabber" has been passed to him by Germanand Sinn Fein propaganda, and he merely parrots it forth. He couldn'tdiscuss it at all. "Look at the Boers, " he may know enough to reply, ifyou remind him that England's land-grabbing was done a good while ago. Well, we shall certainly look at the Boers in due time, but just nowwe must look at ourselves. I suppose that the American who denouncesEngland for her land-grabbing has forgotten, or else has never known, how we grabbed Florida from Spain. The pittance that we paid Spain inone of the Florida transactions never went to her. The story is a plaintale of land-grabbing; and there are several other plain tales that showus to have been land-grabbers, if you will read the facts with an honestmind. I shall not tell them here. The case of the Indian is enough inthe way of an instance. Our own hands are by no means clean. It is notfor us to denounce England as a land-grabber. 

You cannot hate statistics more than I do. But at times there is nododging them, and this is one of the times. In 1803 we paid NapoleonBonaparte fifteen millions for what was then called Louisiana. Napoleonhad his title to this land from Spain. Spain had it from France. Francehad it--how? She had it because La Salle, a Frenchman, sailed down theMississippi River. This gave him title to the land. There were people onthe bank already, long before La Salle came by. 

It would have surprised them to be told that the land was no longertheirs because a man had come by on the water. But nobody did tell them. They were Indians. They had wives and children and wigwams and otherpossessions in the land where they had always lived; but they were red, and the man in the boat was white, and therefore they were turned intotrespassers because he had sailed by in a boat. That was the title toLouisiana which we bought from Napoleon Bonaparte. 

The Louisiana Purchase was a piece of land running up the Mississippi, up the Missouri, over the Divide, and down the Columbia to the Pacific. Before we acquired it, our area was over a quarter, but not half, amillion square miles. This added nearly a million square miles more. Butwhat had we really bought? Nothing but stolen goods. The Indians werethere before La Salle, from whose boat-sailing the title we bought wasderived. "But, " you may object, "when whites rob reds or blacks, we callit Discovery; land-grabbing is when whites rob whites--and that is whereI blame England. " For the sake of argument I concede this, and refer youto our acquisition of Texas. This operation followed some years afterthe Florida operation. "By request" we "annexed" most of presentTexas--in 1845. That was a trick of our slaveholders. They sent peopleinto Texas and these people swung the deal. It was virtually a theftfrom Mexico. A little while later, in 1848, we "paid" Mexico forCalifornia, Arizona, and Nevada. But if you read the true story ofFremont in California, and of the American plots there before theMexican War, to undermine the government of a friendly nation, plotsconnived at in Washington with a view to getting California forourselves, upon my word you will find it hard to talk of England being aland-grabber and keep a straight face. And, were a certain book to fallinto your hands, the narrative of the Alcalde of Monterey, wherein hesets down what of Fremont's doings in California went on before hiseyes, you would learn a story of treachery, brutality, and greed. Allthis acquisition of territory, together with the Gadsden Purchase a fewyears later, brought our continent to its present area--not countingAlaska or some islands later acquired--2, 970, 230 square miles. 

Please understand me very clearly: I am not saying that it has not beenfar better for the world and for civilization that we should have becomethe rulers of all this land, instead of its being ruled by the Indiansor by Spain, or by Mexico. That is not at all the point. I am merelyreminding you of the means whereby we got the land. We got it mostly byforce and fraud, by driving out of it through firearms and plots peoplewho certainly were there first and who were weaker than ourselves. Ourreason was simply that we wanted it and intended to have it. That isprecisely what England has done. She has by various means not one whitbetter or worse than ours, acquired her possessions in various parts ofthe world because they were necessary to her safety and welfare, justas this continent was necessary to our safety and welfare. Moreover, the pressure upon her, her necessity for self-preservation, was far moreurgent than was the pressure upon us. To make you see this, I must onceagain resort to some statistics. 

England's area--herself and adjacent islands--is 120, 832 square miles. Her population in 1811 was eighteen and one half millions. At thatsame time our area was 408, 895 square miles, not counting the recentLouisiana Purchase. And our population was 7, 239, 881. With an area lessthan one third of ours (excluding the huge Louisiana) England had apopulation more than twice as great. Therefore she was more crowded thanwe were--how much more I leave you to figure out for yourself. I appealto the fair-minded American reader who only "wants to be shown, " and Isay to him, when some German or anti-British American talks to himabout what a land-grabber England has been in her time to think of thesethings and to remember that our own past is tarred with the same stick. Let every one of us bear in mind that little sentence of the Kaiser's, "Even now I rule supreme in the United States;" let us remember that theArmistice and the Peace Treaty do not seem to have altered German natureor German plans very noticeably, and don't let us muddle our brains overthe question of the land grabbed by the great-grandfathers of presentEngland. 

Any American who is anti-British to-day is by just so much pro-German, is helping the trouble of the world, is keeping discord alight, is doinghis bit against human peace and human happiness. 

There are some other little sentences of the Kaiser and his Huns ofwhich I shall speak before I finish: we must now take up the controversyof those men in front of the bulletin board; we must investigate whatlies behind that controversy. Those two men are types. One had learnednothing since he left school, the other had. 

Chapter VIII: History Astigmatic

So far as I know, it was Mr. Sydney Gent Fisher, an American, who wasthe first to go back to the original documents, and to write from studyof these documents the complete truth about England and ourselves duringthe Revolution. His admirable book tore off the cloak which our schoolhistories had wrapped round the fables. He lays bare the politicalstate of Britain at that time. What did you learn at your school of thatpolitical state? Did you ever wonder able General Howe and his mannerof fighting us? Did it ever strike you that, although we were more oftendefeated than victorious in those engagements with him (and sometimes heeven seemed to avoid pitched battles with us when the odds were allin his favor), yet somehow England did seem to reap the advantage sheshould be reaped from those contests, didn't follow them, let us getaway, didn't in short make any progress to speak of in really conqueringus? Perhaps you attributed this to our brave troops and our greatWashington. Well, our troops were brave and Washington was great; butthere was more behind--more than your school teaching ever led you tosuspect, if your schooling was like mine. I imagined England asbeing just one whole unit of fury and tyranny directed against us anddetermined to stamp out the spark of liberty we had kindled. No suchthing! England was violently divided in sentiment about us. Two parties, almost as opposed as our North and South have been--only it was notsectional in England--held very different views about liberty andthe rights of Englishmen. The King's party, George the Third and hisupholders, were fighting to saddle autocracy upon England; the otherparty, that of Pitt and Burke, were resisting this, and their sentimentsand political beliefs led them to sympathize with our revolt againstGeorge III. "I rejoice, " writes Horace Walpole, Dec. 5, 1777, to theCountess of Upper Ossory, "that the Americans are to be free, as theyhad a right to be, and as I am sure they have shown they deserve tobe.... I own there are very able Englishmen left, but they happen tobe on t'other side of the Atlantic. " It was through Whig influencethat General Howe did not follow up his victories over us, because theydidn't wish us to be conquered, they wished us to be able to vindicatethe rights to which they held all Englishmen were entitled. These menconsidered us the champions of that British liberty which George III wasattempting to crush. They disputed the rightfulness of the Stamp Act. When we refused to submit to the Stamp Tax in 1766, it was then thatPitt exclaimed in Parliament: "I rejoice that America has resisted.... If ever this nation should have a tyrant for a King, six millions offreemen, so dead to all the feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submitto be slaves, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest. " Butthey were not willing. When the hour struck and the war came, so manyEnglishmen were on our side that they would not enlist against us, refused to fight us, and George III had to go to Germany and obtainHessians to help him out. His war against us was lost at home, onEnglish soil, through English disapproval of his course, almost as muchas it was lost here through the indomitable Washington and the help ofFrance. That is the actual state of the case, there is the truth. Didyou hear much about this at school? Did you ever learn there that GeorgeIII had a fake Parliament, largely elected by fake votes, which did notrepresent the English people; that this fake Parliament was autocracy'slast ditch in England; that it choked for a time the English democracywhich, after the setback given it by the excesses of the FrenchRevolution, went forward again until to-day the King of England has lesspower than the President of the United States? I suppose everybody inthe world who knows the important steps of history knows this--exceptthe average American. From him it has been concealed by his schoolhistories; and generally he never learns anything about it at all, because once out of school, he seldom studies any history again. Butwhy, you may possibly wonder, have our school histories done this? Ithink their various authors may consciously or unconsciously have feltthat our case against England was not in truth very strong, that in factshe had been very easy with us, far easier than any other country wasbeing with its colonies at that time. The King of France taxed hiscolonies, the King of Spain filled his purse, unhampered, from thepockets of Mexico and Peru and Cuba and Porto Rico--from whatever pocketinto which he could put his hand, and the Dutch were doing the samewithout the slightest question of their right to do it. Our quarrelwith the mother country and our breaking away from her in spite of theextremely light rein she was driving us with, rested in reality uponvery slender justification. If ever our authors read of the meetingbetween Franklin, Rutledge, and Adams with General Howe, after theBattle of Long Island, I think they may have felt that we had almost nogrievance at all. The plain truth of it was, we had been allowed forso long to be so nearly free that we determined to be free entirely, no matter what England conceded. Therefore these authors of our schooltextbooks felt that they needed to bolster our cause up for the benefitof the young. Accordingly our boys' and girls' sense of independenceand patriotism must be nourished by making England out a far greateroppressor than ever she really had been. These historians dwelt asheavily as they could upon George III and his un-English autocracy, andas lightly as they could upon the English Pitt and upon all the Englishsympathy we had. Indeed, about this most of them didn't say a word. 

Now that policy may possibly have been desirable once--if it can everbe desirable to suppress historic truth from a whole nation. But to-day, when we have long stood on our own powerful legs and need no bolsteringup of such a kind, that policy is not only silly, it is pernicious. Itis pernicious because the world is heaving with frightful menaces toall the good that man knows. They would strip life of every resourcegathered through centuries of struggle. Mad mobs, whole races of peoplewho have never thought at all, or who have now hurled away all pretenseof thought, aim at mere destruction of everything that is. Theydon't attempt to offer any substitute. Down with religion, down witheducation, down with marriage, down with law, down with property: Suchis their cry. Wipe the slate blank, they say, and then we'll see whatwe'll write on it. Amid this stands Germany with her unchanged purposeto own the earth; and Japan is doing some thinking. Amid this also isthe Anglo-Saxon race, the race that has brought our law, our order, oursafety, our freedom into the modern world. That any school historiesshould hinder the members of this race from understanding each othertruly and being friends, should not be tolerated. 

Many years later than Mr. Sydney George Fisher's analysis of Englandunder George III, Mr. Charles Altschul has made an examination and givenan analysis of a great number of those school textbooks wherein ourboys and girls have been and are still being taught a history of ourRevolution in the distorted form that I have briefly summarized. Hisbook was published in 1917, by the George H. Doran Company, New York, and is entitled The American Revolution in our School Textbooks. Herefollowing are some of his discoveries:

Of forty school histories used twenty years ago in sixty-eight cities, and in many more unreported, four tell the truth about King George'spocket Parliament, and thirty-two suppress it. To-day our books are notquite so bad, but it is not very much better; and-to-day, be it added, any reforming of these textbooks by Boards of Education is likely to beprevented, wherever obstruction is possible, by every influence visibleand invisible that pro-German and pro-Irish propaganda can exert. Thousands of our American school children all over our country arestill being given a version of our Revolution and the political stateof England then, which is as faulty as was George III's government, withits fake parliament, its "rotten boroughs, " its Little Sarum. Meanwhilethat "army of spies" through which the Kaiser boasted that he ruled"supreme" here, and which, though he is gone, is by no means ademobilized army, but a very busy and well-drilled and well-conductedarmy, is very glad that our boys and girls should be taught falsehistory, and will do its best to see that they are not taught truehistory. 

Mr. Charles Altschul, in his admirable enterprise, addressed himselfto those who preside over our school world all over the country;he received answers from every state in the Union, and he examinedninety-three history textbooks in those passages and pages which theydevoted to our Revolution. These books he grouped according to theamount of information they gave about Pitt and Burke and Englishsympathy with us in our quarrel with George III. These groups are fivein number, and dwindle down from group one, "Textbooks which dealfully with the grievances of the colonists, give an account of generalpolitical conditions in England prior to the American Revolution, andgive credit to prominent Englishmen for the services they renderedthe Americans, " to group five, "Textbooks which deal fully with thegrievances of the colonists, make no reference to general politicalconditions in England prior to the American Revolution, nor to anyprominent Englishmen who devoted themselves to the cause of theAmericans. " Of course, what dwindles is the amount said about ourEnglish sympathizers. In groups three and four this is so scanty as todistort the truth and send any boy or girl who studied books of thesegroups out of school into life with a very imperfect idea indeed of thesize and importance of English opposition to the policy of George III;in group five nothing is said about this at all. The boys and girls whostudied books in group five would grow up believing that England wasundividedly autocratic, tyrannical, and hostile to our liberty. In hiscareful and conscientious classification, Mr. Altschul gives us thebooks in use twenty years ago (and hence responsible for the opinionof Americans now between thirty and forty years old) and books in useto-day, and hence responsible for the opinion of those American menand women who will presently be grown up and will prolong for anothergeneration the school-taught ignorance and prejudice of their fathersand mothers. I select from Mr. Altschul's catalogue only those books inuse in 1917, when he published his volume, and of these only group five, where the facts about English sympathy with us are totally suppressed. Barnes' School History of the United States, by Steele. Chandler andChitword's Makers of American History. Chambers' (Hansell's) A SchoolHistory of the United States. Eggleston's A First Book in AmericanHistory. Eggleston's History of the United States and Its People. Eg-gleston's New Century History of the United States. Evans' FirstLessons in Georgia History. Evans' The Essential Facts of AmericanHistory. Estill's Beginner's History of Our Country. Forman's Historyof the United States. Montgomery's An Elementary American History. Montgomery's The Beginner's American History. White's Beginner's Historyof the United States. 

If the reader has followed me from the beginning, he will recollecta letter, parts of which I quoted, from a correspondent who spoke ofMontgomery's history, giving passages in which a fair and adequaterecognition of Pitt and our English sympathizers and their opposition toGeorge III is made. This would seem to indicate a revision of the worksince Mr. Altschul published his lists, and to substantiate the hope Iexpressed in my original article, and which I here repeat. Surelythe publishers of these books will revise them! Surely any patrioticAmerican publisher and any patriotic board of education, schoolprincipal, or educator, will watch and resist all propaganda and othersinister influence tending to perpetuate this error of these schoolhistories! Whatever excuse they once had, be it the explanation I haveoffered above, or some other, there is no excuse to-day. These bookshave laid the foundation from which has sprung the popular prejudiceagainst England. It has descended from father to son. It has beenfurther solidified by many tales for boys and girls, written by men andwomen who acquired their inaccurate knowledge at our schools. And itplays straight into the hands of our enemies. 

Chapter IX: Concerning a Complex

All of these books, history and fiction, drop into the American mindduring its early springtime the seed of antagonism, establish in factan anti-English "complex. " It is as pretty a case of complex on thewholesale as could well be found by either historian or psychologist. It is not so violent as the complex which has been planted in the Germanpeople by forty years of very adroitly and carefully planned training:they were taught to distrust and hate everybody and to considerthemselves so superior to anybody that their sacred duty as they saw itin 1914 was to enslave the world in order to force upon the world thepriceless benefits of their Kultur. Under the shock of war that complexdilated into a form of real hysteria or insanity. Our anti-Englishcom-plex is fortunately milder than that; but none the less does itsavor slightly, as any nerve specialist or psychological doctor wouldtell you---it savors slightly of hysteria, that hundreds of thousands ofAmerican men and women of every grade of education and ignorance shouldautomatically exclaim whenever the right button is pressed, "England isa land-grabber, " and "What has England done in the War?"

The word complex has been in our dictionary for a long while. Thisfamiliar adjective has been made by certain scientific people into anoun, and for brevity and convenience employed to denote something thatalmost all of us harbor in some form or other. These complexes, theselumps of ideas or impressions that match each other, that are of thesame pattern, and that are also invariably tinctured with either apleasurable or painful emotion, lie buried in our minds, unthought-ofbut alive, and lurk always ready to set up a ferment, whenever some newthing from outside that matches them enters the mind and hence startsthem off. The "suppressed complex" I need not describe, as our Englishcomplex is by no means suppressed. Known to us all, probably, is thepolitical complex. Year after year we have been excited about electionsand candidates and policies, preferring one party to the other. Ifthis preference has been very marked, or even violent, you know howdisinclined we are to give credit to the other party for any act orpolicy, no matter how excellent in itself, which, had our own party beenits sponsor, we should have been heart and soul for. You know howeasily we forget the good deeds of the opposite party and how easilywe remember its bad deeds. That's a good simple ordinary example of acomplex. Its workings can be discerned in the experience of us all. Inour present discussion it is very much to the point. 

Established in the soft young minds of our school boys and girls bya series of reiterated statements about the tyranny and hostility ofEngland towards us in the Revolution, statements which they have toremember and master by study from day to day, tinctured by the anxietyabout the examination ahead, when the students must know them or fail, these incidents of school work being also tinctured by another emotion, that of patriotism, enthusiasm for Washington, for the Declaration ofIndependence, for Valley Forge--thus established in the regular way ofall complexes, this anti-English complex is fed and watered by what welearn of the War of 1812, by what we learn of the Civil War of 1861, andby many lesser events in our history thus far. And just as a Republicanwill admit nothing good of a Democrat and a Democrat nothing good ofa Republican because of the political complex, so does the great--thevast--majority of Americans automatically and easily remember everythingagainst England and forget everything in her favor. Just try it any dayyou like. Ask any average American you are sitting next to in a trainwhat he knows about England; and if he does remember anything and cantell it to you, it will be unfavorable nine times in ten. The mere word"England" starts his complex off, and out comes every fact it has seizedthat matches his school-implanted prejudice, just as it has rejectedevery fact that does not match it. There is absolutely no other wayto explain the American habit of speaking ill of England and well ofFrance. Several times in the past, France has been flagrantly hostile tous. But there was Lafayette, there was Rochambeau, and the great serviceFrance did us then against England. Hence from our school histories wehave a pro-French complex. Under its workings we automatically rememberevery good turn France has done us and automatically forget the evilturns. Again try the experiment yourself. How many Americans do youthink that you will find who can recall, or who even know when yourecall to them the insolent and meddlesome Citizen Genet, envoy of theFrench Republic, and how Washington requested his recall? Or the Frenchprivateers that a little later, about 1797-98, preyed upon our commerce?And the hatred of France which many Americans felt and expressed at thattime? How many remember that the King of France, directly our Revolutionwas over, was more hostile to us than England?

Chapter X: Jackstraws

Jackstraws is a game which most of us have played in our youth. Youempty on a table a box of miniature toy rakes, shovels, picks, axes, allsorts of tools and implements. These lie under each other and aboveeach other in intricate confusion, not unlike cross timber in a westernforest, only instead of being logs, they are about two inches long andvery light. The players sit round the table and with little hooks tryin turn to lift one jackstraw out of the heap, without moving any of theothers. You go on until you do move one of the others, and this losesyou your turn. European diplomacy at any moment of any year reminds you, if you inspect it closely, of a game of jackstraws. Every sort and shapeof intrigue is in the general heap and tangle, and the jealous nationssit round, each trying to lift out its own jackstraw. Luckily for us, we have not often been involved in these games of jackstraw hitherto;unluckily for us, we must be henceforth involved. If we kept out, ourluck would be still worse. 

Immediately after our Revolution, there was one of these heaps ofintrigue, in which we were concerned. This was at the time of thenegotiations leading to the Treaty of Paris, to which I made referenceat the close of the last section. This was in 1783. Twenty years later, in 1803, occurred the heap of jackstraws that led to the LouisianaPurchase. Twenty years later, in 1823, occurred the heap of jackstrawsfrom which emerged the Monroe Doctrine. Each of these dates, dottedalong through our early decades, marks a very important crisis inour history. It is well that they should be grouped together, becausetogether they disclose, so to speak, a coherent pattern. This coherentpattern is England's attitude towards ourselves. It is to be perceived, faintly yet distinctly, in 1783, and it grows clearer and ever moreclear until in 1898, in the game of jackstraws played when we declaredwar upon Spain, the pattern is so clear that it could not be mistaken byany one who was not willfully blinded by an anti-English complex. Thispattern represents a preference on England's part for ourselves to othernations. I do not ask you to think England's reason for this preferenceis that she has loved us so much; that she has loved others so muchless--there is her reason. She has loved herself better than anybody. Somust every nation. So does every nation. 

Let me briefly speak of the first game of jackstraws, played at Parisin 1783. Our Revolution was over. The terms of peace had to be drawn. Franklin, Jay, Adams, and Laurens were our negotiators. The variousimportant points were acknowledgment of our independence, settlementof boundaries, freedom of fishing in the neighborhood of the Canadiancoast. We had agreed to reach no settlement with England separatelyfrom France and Spain. They were our recent friends. England, our recentenemy, sent Richard Oswald as her peace commissioner. This privategentleman had placed his fortune at our disposal during the war, and wasFranklin's friend. Lord Shelburne wrote Franklin that if this was notsatisfactory, to say so, and name any one he preferred. But Oswald wassatisfactory; and David Hartley, another friend of Franklin's and alsoa sympathizer with our Revolution, was added; and in these circumstancesand by these men the Treaty was made. To France we broke our promise toreach no separate agreement with England. We negotiated directly withthe British, and the Articles were signed without consultation with theFrench Government. When Vergennes, the French Minister, saw the terms, he remarked in disgust that England would seem to have bought a peacerather than made one. By the treaty we got the Northwest Territory andthe basin of the Ohio River to the Mississippi. Our recent friend, theFrench King, was much opposed to our having so much territory. It wasour recent enemy, England, who agreed that we should have it. This wasthe result of that game of jackstraws. 

Let us remember several things: in our Revolution, France had befriendedus, not because she loved us so much, but because she loved England solittle. In the Treaty of Paris, England stood with us, not becauseshe loved us so much, but because she loved France so little. We mustcherish no illusions. Every nation must love itself more than it lovesits neighbor. Nevertheless, in this pattern of England's policy in 1783, where she takes her stand with us and against other nations, there is adeep significance. Our notions of law, our notions of life, our notionsof religion, our notions of liberty, our notions of what a man should beand what a woman should be, are so much more akin to her notions thanto those of any other nation, that they draw her toward us ratherthan toward any other nation. That is the lesson of the first game ofjackstraws. 

Next comes 1803. Upon the Louisiana Purchase, I have already touched;but not upon its diplomatic side. In those years the European game ofdiplomacy was truly portentous. Bonaparte had appeared, and Bonapartewas the storm centre. From the heap of jackstraws I shall lift out onlythat which directly concerns us and our acquisition of that enormousterritory, then called Louisiana. Bonaparte had dreamed and plannedan empire over here. Certain vicissitudes disenchanted him. A plan toinvade England also helped to deflect his mind from establishing anoutpost of his empire upon our continent. For us he had no love. Ourprinciples were democratic, he was a colossal autocrat. He called us"the reign of chatter, " and he would have liked dearly to put outour light. Addington was then the British Prime Minister. Robert R. Livingston was our minister in Paris. In the history of Henry Adams, inVolume II at pages 52 and 53, you may find more concerning Bonaparte'sdislike of the United States. You may also find that Talleyrandexpressed the view that socially and economically England and Americawere one and indivisible. In Volume I of the same history, at page439, you will see the mention which Pichon made to Talleyrand of theovertures which England was incessantly making to us. At some timeduring all this, rumor got abroad of Bonaparte's projects regardingLouisiana. In the second volume of Henry Adams, at pages 23 and 24, youwill find Addington remarking to our minister to Great Britain, RufusKing, that it would not do to let Bonaparte establish himself inLouisiana. Addington very plainly hints that Great Britain would backus in any such event. This backing of us by Great Britain found verycordial acceptance in the mind of Thomas Jefferson. A year before theLouisiana Purchase was consummated, and when the threat of Bonapartewas in the air, Thomas Jefferson wrote to Livingston, on April 18, 1802, that "the day France takes possession of New Orleans, we must marryourselves to the British fleet and nation. " In one of his many memorandato Talleyrand, Livingston alludes to the British fleet. He also pointsout that France may by taking a certain course estrange the UnitedStates for ever and bind it closely to France's great enemy. Thisparticular address to Talleyrand is dated February 1, 1803, and may befound in the Annals of Congress, 1802-1803, at pages 1078 to 1083. Iquote a sentence: "The critical moment has arrived which rivets theconnexion of the United States to France, or binds a young and growingpeople for ages hereafter to her mortal and inveterate enemy. " Afterthis, hints follow concerning the relative maritime power of Franceand Great Britain. Livingston suggests that if Great Britain invadeLouisiana, who can oppose her? Once more he refers to Great Britain'ssuperior fleet. This interesting address concludes with the followingexordium to France: "She will cheaply purchase the esteem of men andthe favor of Heaven by the surrender of a distant wilderness, whichcan neither add to her wealth nor to her strength. " This, as you willperceive, is quite a pointed remark. Throughout the Louisiana diplomacy, and negotiations to which this diplomacy led, Livingston's would seem tobe the master American mind and prophetic vision. But I must keep to myjackstraws. On April 17, 1803, Bonaparte's brother, Lucien, reportsa conversation held with him by Bonaparte. What purposes, whatoscillations, may have been going on deep in Bonaparte's secret mind, no one can tell. We may guess that he did not relinquish his plan aboutLouisiana definitely for some time after the thought had dawned upon himthat it would be better if he did relinquish it. But unless he was lyingto his brother Lucien on April 17, 1803, we get no mere glimpse, buta perfectly clear sight of what he had come finally to think. It wascertainly worth while, he said to Lucien, to sell when you could whatyou were certain to lose; "for the English... Are aching for a chanceto capture it.... Our navy, so inferior to our neighbor's across theChannel, will always cause our colonies to be exposed to great risks.... As to the sea, my dear fellow, you must know that there we have to lowerthe flag.... The English navy is, and long will be, too dominant. "

That was on April 17. On May 2, the Treaty of Cession was signed by theexultant Livingston. Bonaparte, instead of establishing an outpost ofautocracy at New Orleans, sold to us not only the small piece of landwhich we had originally in mind, but the huge piece of land whosedimensions I have given above. We paid him fifteen millions for nearlya million square miles. The formal transfer was made on December 17 ofthat same year, 1803. There is my second jackstraw. 

Thus, twenty years after the first time in 1783, Great Britain stoodbetween us and the designs of another nation. To that other nation herfleet was the deciding obstacle. England did not love us so much, but she loved France so much less. For the same reasons which I havesuggested before, self-interest, behind which lay her democratic kinshipwith our ideals, ranged her with us. 

To place my third jackstraw, which follows twenty years after thesecond, uninterruptedly in this group, I pass over for the moment ourWar of 1812. To that I will return after I have dealt with the thirdjackstraw, namely, the Monroe Doctrine. It was England that suggestedthe Monroe Doctrine to us. From the origin of this in the mind ofCanning to its public announcement upon our side of the water, thepattern to which I have alluded is for the third time very clearly to beseen. 

How much did your school histories tell you about the Monroe Doctrine? Iconfess that my notion of it came to this: President Monroe informed thekings of Europe that they must keep away from this hemisphere. Whereuponthe kings obeyed him and have remained obedient ever since. Of GeorgeCanning I knew nothing. Another large game of jackstraws was beingplayed in Europe in 1823. Certain people there had formed the HolyAlliance. Among these, Prince Metternich the Austrian was undoubtedlythe master mind. He saw that by England's victory at Waterloo a threatto all monarchical and dynastic systems of government had been created. He also saw that our steady growth was a part of the same threat. Withthis in mind, in 1822, he brought about the Holy Alliance. The firstArticle of the Holy Alliance reads: "The high contracting Powers, beingconvinced that the system of representative government is as equallyincompatible with the monarchical principle as the maxim of sovereigntyof the people with the Divine right, engage mutually, in the mostsolemn manner, to use all their efforts to put an end to the system ofrepresentative governments, in whatever country it may exist in Europe, and to prevent its being introduced in those countries where it is notyet known. "

Behind these words lay a design, hardly veiled, not only against SouthAmerica, but against ourselves. In a volume entitled With the Fathers, by John Bach McMaster, and also in the fifth volume of Mr. McMaster'shistory, chapter 41, you will find more amply what I abbreviate here. Canning understood the threat to us contained in the Holy Alliance. He made a suggestion to Richard Rush, our minister to England. Thesuggestion was of such moment, and the ultimate danger to us from theHoly Alliance was of such moment, that Rush made haste to put the matterinto the hands of President Monroe. President Monroe likewise found thematter very grave, and he therefore consulted Thomas Jefferson. At thattime Jefferson had retired from public life and was living quietly athis place in Virginia. That President Monroe's communication deeplystirred him is to be seen in his reply, written October 24, 1823. Jefferson says in part: "The question presented by the letters youhave sent me is the most momentous which has ever been offered to mycontemplation since that of independence.... One nation most of allcould disturb us.... She now offers to lead, aid and accompany us.... With her on our side we need not fear the whole world. With her, then, we should most seriously cherish a cordial friendship, and nothing wouldtend more to unite our affections than to be fighting once more, side byside, in the same cause. "

Thus for the second time, Thomas Jefferson advises a friendship withGreat Britain. He realizes as fully as did Bonaparte the power of hernavy, and its value to us. It is striking and strange to find ThomasJefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776, writing in1823 about uniting our affections and about fighting once more side byside with England. 

It was the revolt of the Spanish Colonies from Spain in South America, and Canning's fear that France might obtain dominion in America, whichled him to make his suggestion to Rush. The gist of the suggestion was, that we should join with Great Britain in saying that both countrieswere opposed to any intervention by Europe in the western hemisphere. Over our announcement there was much delight in England. In the LondonCourier occurs a sentence, "The South American Republics--protected bythe two nations that possess the institutions and speak the language offreedom. " In this fragment from the London Courier, the kinship atwhich I have hinted as being felt by England in 1783, and in 1803, isdefinitely expressed. From the Holy Alliance, from the general Europeandiplomatic game, and from England's preference for us who spoke herlanguage and thought her thoughts about liberty, law, what a man shouldbe, what a woman should be, issued the Monroe Doctrine. And you willfind that no matter what dynastic or ministerial interruptions haveoccurred to obscure this recognition of kinship with us and preferencefor us upon the part of the English people, such interruptions arealways temporary and lie always upon the surface of English sentiment. Beneath the surface the recognition of kinship persists unchanged andinvariably reasserts itself. 

That is my third jackstraw. Canning spoke to Rush, Rush consultedMonroe, Monroe consulted Jefferson, and Jefferson wrote what we haveseen. That, stripped of every encumbering circumstance, is the story ofthe Monroe Doctrine. Ever since that day the Monroe Doctrine has restedupon the broad back of the British Navy. This has been no secret toour leading historians, our authoritative writers on diplomacy, and oureducated and thinking public men. But they have not generally beeneager to mention it; and as to our school textbooks, none that I studiedmentioned it at all. 

Chapter XI: Some Family Scraps

Do not suppose because I am reminding you of these things and shallremind you of some more, that I am trying to make you hate France. I amonly trying to persuade you to stop hating England. I wish to show youhow much reason you have not to hate her, which your school historiespass lightly over, or pass wholly by. I want to make it plain that youranti-English complex and your pro-French complex entice your memory intoretaining only evil about England and only good about France. That iswhy I pull out from the recorded, certified, and perfectly ascertainablepast, these few large facts. They amply justify, as it seems to me, andas I think it must seem to any reader with an open mind, what I saidabout the pattern. 

We must now touch upon the War of 1812. There is a political aspect ofthis war which casts upon it a light not generally shed by our schoolhistories. Bonaparte is again the point. Nine years after our LouisianaPurchase from him, we declared war upon England. At that moment Englandwas heavily absorbed in her struggle with Bonaparte. It is true that wehad a genuine grievance against her. In searching for British sailorsupon our ships, she impressed our own. This was our justification. 

We made a pretty lame showing, in spite of the victories of our frigatesand sloops. Our one signal triumph on land came after the Treaty ofPeace had been signed at Ghent. During the years of war, it was luckyfor us that England had Bonaparte upon her hands. She could not giveus much attention. She was battling with the great Autocrat. We, bydeclaring war upon her at such a time, played into Bonaparte's hands, and virtually, by embarrassing England, struck a blow on the side ofautocracy and against our own political faith. It was a feeble blow, itdid but slight harm. And regardless of it England struck Bonaparte down. His hope that we might damage and lessen the power of her fleet that heso much respected and feared, was not realized. We made the Treaty ofGhent. The impressing of sailors from our vessels was tacitly abandoned. The next time that people were removed from vessels, it was not Englandwho removed them, it was we ourselves, who had declared war on Englandfor doing so, we ourselves who removed them from Canadian vessels in theBehring Sea, and from the British ship Trent. These incidents we shallreach in their proper place. As a result of the War of 1812, someEnglish felt justified in taking from us a large slice of land, butWellington said, "I think you have no right, from the state of the war, to demand any concession of territory from America. " This is all thatneed be said about our War of 1812. 

Because I am trying to give only the large incidents, I haveintentionally made but a mere allusion to Florida and our acquisition ofthat territory. It was a case again of England's siding with us againsta third power, Spain, in this instance. I have also omitted any accountof our acquisition of Texas, when England was not friendly--I am notsure why: probably because of the friction between us over Oregon. But certain other minor events there are, which do require a briefreference--the boundaries of Maine, of Oregon, the Isthmian Canal, Cleveland and Venezuela, Roosevelt and Alaska; and these disputes weshall now take up together, before we deal with the very large matterof our trouble with England during the Civil War. Chronologically, ofcourse, Venezuela and Alaska fall after the Civil War; but they belongto the same class to which Maine and Oregon belong. Together, all ofthese incidents and controversies form a group in which the underlyingpermanence of British good-will towards us is distinctly to bediscerned. Sometimes, as I have said before, British anger with usobscures the friendly sentiment. But this was on the surface, and italways passed. As usual, it is only the anger that has stuck in ourminds. Of the outcome of these controversies and the British temperanceand restraint which brought about such outcome the popular mind retainsno impression. 

The boundary of Maine was found to be undefined to the extent of 12, 000square miles. Both Maine and New Brunswick claimed this, of course. Maine took her coat off to fight, so did New Brunswick. Now, we backedMaine, and voted supplies and men to her. Not so England. More soberly, she said, "Let us arbitrate. " We agreed, it was done. By the umpireMaine was awarded more than half what she claimed. And then we disputedthe umpire's decision on the ground he hadn't given us the whole thing!Does not this remind you of some of our baseball bad manners? It wassettled later, and we got, differently located, about the originalaward. 

Did you learn in school about "fifty-four forty, or fight"? We wereready to take off our coat again. Or at least, that was the platform in1844 on which President Polk was elected. At that time, what lay betweenthe north line of California and the south line of Alaska, which thenbelonged to Russia, was called Oregon. We said it was ours. Englanddisputed this. Each nation based its title on discovery. It wasn'treally far from an even claim. So Polk was elected, which apparentlymeant war; his words were bellicose. We blustered rudely. Feeling ranhigh in England; but she didn't take off her coat. Her ambassador, Pakenham, stiff at first, unbent later. Under sundry missionaryimpulses, more Americans than British had recently settled along theColumbia River and in the Willamette Valley. People from Missourifollowed. You may read of our impatient violence in Professor Dunning'sbook, The British Empire and the United States. Indeed, this volumetells at length everything I am telling you briefly about these boundarydisputes. The settlers wished to be under our Government. Virtually upontheir preference the matter was finally adjusted. England met us with acompromise, advantageous to us and reasonable for herself. Thus, again, was her conduct moderate and pacific. If you think that this was throughfear of us, I can only leave you to our western blow-hards of 1845, orto your anti-British complex. What I see in it, is another sign of thatfundamental sense of kinship, that persisting unwillingness to havea real scrap with us, that stares plainly out of our whole firstcentury--the same feeling which prevented so many English from enlistingagainst us in the Revolution that George III was obliged to getHessians. 

Nicaragua comes next. There again they were quite angry with us on top, but controlled in the end by the persisting disposition of kinship. Theyhad land in Nicaragua with the idea of an Isthmian Canal. This we didnot like. They thought we should mind our own business. But they agreedwith us in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty that both should build and run thecanal. Vagueness about territory near by raised further trouble, andthere we were in the right. England yielded. The years went on and wegrew, until the time came when we decided that if there was to be anycanal, no one but ourselves should have it. We asked to be let offthe old treaty. England let us off, stipulating the canal should beunfortified, and an "open door" to all. Our representative agreed tothis, much to our displeasure. Indeed, I do not think he should haveagreed to it. Did England hold us to it? All this happened in thelifetime of many of us, and we know that she did not hold us to it. Shegave us what we asked, and she did so because she felt its justice, andthat it in no way menaced her with injury. All this began in 1850 andended, as we know, in the time of Roosevelt. 

About 1887 our seal-fishing in the Behring Sea brought on an acutesituation. Into the many and intricate details of this, I need notgo; you can find them in any good encyclopedia, and also in Harper'sMagazine for April, 1891, and in other places. Our fishing clashed withCanada's. We assumed jurisdiction over the whole of the sea, which is athird as big as the Mediterranean, on the quite fantastic ground that itwas an inland sea. Ignoring the law that nobody has jurisdiction outsidethe three-mile limit from their shores, we seized Canadian vessels sixtymiles from land. In fact, we did virtually what we had gone to war withEngland for doing in 1812. But England did not go to war. She asked forarbitration. Throughout this, our tone was raw and indiscreet, whilehers was conspicuously the opposite; we had done an unwarrantable andhigh-handed thing; our claim that Behring Sea was an "inclosed" sea wasabandoned; the arbitration went against us, and we paid damages for theCanadian vessels. 

In 1895, in the course of a century's dispute over the boundary betweenVenezuela and British Guiana, Venezuela took prisoner some Britishsubjects, and asked us to protect her from the consequences. RichardOlney, Grover Cleveland's Secretary of State, informed Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister of England, that "in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, the United States must insist on arbitration"--that is, of the disputedboundary. It was an abrupt extension of the Monroe Doctrine. It wasdictating to England the manner in which she should settle a differencewith another country. Salisbury declined. On December 17th Clevelandannounced to England that the Monroe Doctrine applied to every stage ofour national Life, and that as Great Britain had for many years refusedto submit the dispute to impartial arbitration, nothing remained to usbut to accept the situation. Moreover, if the disputed territory wasfound to belong to Venezuela, it would be the duty of the UnitedStates to resist, by every means in its power, the aggressions of GreatBritain. This was, in effect, an ultimatum. The stock market went topieces. In general American opinion, war was coming. The situation wasindeed grave. First, we owed the Monroe Doctrine's very existence toEnglish backing. Second, the Doctrine itself had been a declarationagainst autocracy in the shape of the Holy Alliance, and England was notautocracy. Lastly, as a nation, Venezuela seldom conducted herself orher government on the steady plan of democracy. England was exasperated. And yet England yielded. It took a little time, but arbitration settledit in the end--at about the same time that we flatly declined toarbitrate our quarrel with Spain. History will not acquit us ofgroundless meddling and arrogance in this matter, while England comesout of it having again shown in the end both forbearance and goodmanners. Before another Venezuelan incident in 1902, I take up a burningdispute of 1903. 

As Oregon had formerly been, so Alaska had later become, a grave sourceof friction between England and ourselves. Canada claimed boundaries inAlaska which we disputed. This had smouldered along through a number ofyears until the discovery of gold in the Klondike region fanned it toa somewhat menacing flame. In this instance, history is as unlikelyto approve the conduct of the Canadians as to approve our bad mannerstowards them upon many other occasions. The matter came to a head inRoosevelt's first administration. You will find it all in the Life ofJohn Hay by William R. Thayer, Volume II. A commission to settlethe matter had dawdled and failed. Roosevelt was tired of delays. Commissioners again were appointed, three Americans, two Canadians, and Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice, to represent England. To his friendJustice Oliver Wendell Holmes, about to sail for an English holiday, Roosevelt wrote a private letter privately to be shown to Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, and certain other Englishmen of mark. He said: "Theclaim of the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of theAlaskan coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should nowsuddenly claim the Island of Nantucket. " Canada had objected to ourCommissioners as being not "impartial jurists of repute. " As to this, Roosevelt's letter to Holmes ran on: "I believe that no three men inthe United States could be found who would be more anxious than our owndelegates to do justice to the British claim on all points where thereis even a color of right on the British side. But the objection raisedby certain British authorities to Lodge, Root, and Turner, especiallyto Lodge and Root, was that they had committed themselves on the generalproposition. No man in public life in any position of prominence couldhave possibly avoided committing himself on the proposition, any morethan Mr. Chamberlain could avoid committing himself on the ownership ofthe Orkneys if some Scandinavian country suddenly claimed them. If thisembodied other points to which there was legitimate doubt, I believe Mr. Chamberlain would act fairly and squarely in deciding the matter; but ifhe appointed a commission to settle up all these questions, I certainlyshould not expect him to appoint three men, if he could find them, whobelieved that as to the Orkneys the question was an open one. I wishto make one last effort to bring about an agreement through theCom-mission.... But if there is a disagreement... I shall take aposition which will prevent any possibility of arbitration hereafter;... Will render it necessary for Congress to give me the authority to runthe line as we claim it, by our own people, without any further regardto the attitude of England and Canada. If I paid attention to mereabstract rights, that is the position I ought to take anyhow. I havenot taken it because I wish to exhaust every effort to have the affairsettled peacefully and with due regard to England's honor. "

That is the way to do these things: not by a peremptory public letter, like Olney's to Salisbury, which enrages a whole people and makestemperate action doubly difficult, but thus, by a private letter tothe proper persons, very plain, very unmistakable, but which remainsprivate, a sufficient word to the wise, and not a red rag to the mob. "To have the affair settled peacefully and with due regard to England'shonor. " Thus Roosevelt. England desired no war with us this time, anymore than at the other time. The Commission went to work, and, afterinvestigating the facts, decided in our favor. 

Our list of boundary episodes finished, I must touch upon the affairwith the Kaiser regarding Venezuela's debts. She owed money to Germany, Italy, and England. The Kaiser got the ear of the Tory government underSalisbury, and between the three countries a secret pact was madeto repay themselves. Venezuela is not seldom reluctant to settle herobligations, and she was slow upon this occasion. It was the Kaiser'schance--he had been trying it already at other points--to slide into afoothold over here under the camouflage of collecting from Venezuela herjust debt to him. So with warships he and his allies established what hecalled a pacific blockade on Venezuelan ports. 

I must skip the comedy that now went on in Washington (you will find iton pages 287-288 of Mr. Thayer's John Hay, Volume II) and come at onceto Mr. Roosevelt's final word to the Kaiser, that if there was not anoffer to arbitrate within forty-eight hours, Admiral Dewey would sailfor Venezuela. In thirty-six hours arbitration was agreed to. Englandwithdrew from her share in the secret pact. Had she wanted war with us, her fleet and the Kaiser's could have outmatched our own. She did not;and the Kaiser had still very clearly and sorely in remembrance whatchoice she had made between standing with him and standing with us a fewyears before this, upon an occasion that was also connected with AdmiralDewey. This I shall fully consider after summarizing those internationalepisodes of our Civil War wherein England was concerned. 

This completes my list of minor troubles with England that we have hadsince Canning suggested our Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Minor troubles, Icall them, because they are all smaller than those during our Civil War. The full record of each is an open page of history for you to read atleisure in any good library. You will find that the anti-Englishcomplex has its influence sometimes in the pages of our historians, butProfessor Dunning is free from it. You will find, whatever transitorygusts of anger, jealousy, hostility, or petulance may have swept overthe English people in their relations with us, these gusts end in acalm; and this calm is due to the common-sense of the race. It revealeditself in the treaty at the close of our Revolution, and it has been theultimate controlling factor in English dealings with us ever since. Andnow I reach the last of my large historic matters, the Civil War, andour war with Spain. 

Chapter XII: On the Ragged Edge

On November 6, 1860, Lincoln, nominee of the Republican party, which wasopposed to the extension of slavery, was elected President of theUnited States. Forty-one days later, the legislature of South Carolina, determined to perpetuate slavery, met at Columbia, but, on account of alocal epidemic, moved to Charleston. There, about noon, December 20th, it unanimously declared "that the Union now subsisting between SouthCarolina and other States, under the name of the United States ofAmerica, is hereby dissolved. " Soon other slave states followed thislead, and among them all, during those final months of Buchanan'spresidency, preparedness went on, unchecked by the half-feeble, half-treacherous Federal Government. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, March 4, 1861, declared that he had no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states whereit existed. To the seceded slave states he said: "In your hands, mydissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue ofcivil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflictwithout being yourselves the aggressors. You can have no oath registeredin heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemnone to preserve, protect and defend it. " This changed nothing in theslave states. It was not enough for them that slavery could keep onwhere it was. To spread it where it was not, had been their aim for avery long while. The next day, March 5th, Lincoln had letters from FortSumter, in Charleston harbor. Major Anderson was besieged there by thebatteries of secession, was being starved out, might hold on amonth longer, needed help. Through staggering complications andembarrassments, which were presently to be outstaggered by worse ones, Lincoln by the end of March saw his path clear. "In your hands, mydissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not mine, is the momentous issue ofcivil war. " The clew to the path had been in those words from the first. The flag of the Union, the little island of loyalty amid the waters ofsecession, was covered by the Charleston batteries. "Batteries readyto open Wednesday or Thursday. What instructions?" Thus, on April 1st, General Beauregard, at Charleston, telegraphed to Jefferson Davis. Theyhad all been hoping that Lincoln would give Fort Sumter to them and sosave their having to take it. Not at all. The President of the UnitedStates was not going to give away property of the United States. Instead, the Governor of South Caro-lina received a polite message thatan attempt would be made to supply Fort Sumter with food only, and thatif this were not interfered with, no arms or ammunition should be sentthere without further notice, or in case the fort were attacked. Lincoln was leaning backwards, you might say, in his patient effortto conciliate. And accordingly our transports sailed from New York forCharleston with instructions to supply Sumter with food alone, unlessthey should be opposed in attempting to carry out their errand. Thisdid not suit Jefferson Davis at all; and, to cut it short, at half-pastfour, on the morning of April 12, 1861, there arose into the air fromthe mortar battery near old Fort Johnson, on the south side of theharbor, a bomb-shell, which curved high and slow through the dawn, andfell upon Fort Sumter, thus starting four years of civil war. One weeklater the Union proclaimed a blockade on the ports of Slave Land. 

Bear each and all of these facts in mind, I beg, bear them in mind well, for in the light of them you can see England clearly, and will have notrouble in following the different threads of her conduct towards usduring this struggle. What she did then gave to our ancient grudgeagainst her the reddest coat of fresh paint which it had receivedyet--the reddest and the most enduring since George III. 

England ran true to form. It is very interesting to mark this; veryinteresting to watch in her government and her people the persistent andconflicting currents of sympathy and antipathy boil up again, just asthey had boiled in 1776. It is equally interesting to watch our ancientgrudge at work, causing us to remember and hug all the ill will shebore us, all the harm she did us, and to forget all the good. Roughlycomparing 1776 with 1861, it was once more the Tories, the aristocrats, the Lord Norths, who hoped for our overthrow, while the people ofEngland, with certain liberal leaders in Parliament, stood our friends. Just as Pitt and Burke had spoken for us in our Revolution, so Brightand Cobden befriended us now. The parallel ceases when you come to theSovereign. Queen Victoria declined to support or recognize Slave Land. She stopped the Government and aristocratic England from forcingwar upon us, she prevented the French Emperor, Napoleon III, fromrecognizing the Southern Confederacy. We shall come to this in its turn. Our Civil War set up in England a huge vibration, subjected England toa searching test of herself. Nothing describes this better than a letterof Henry Ward Beecher's, written during the War, after his return fromaddressing the people of England. 

"My own feelings and judgment underwent a great change while I was inEngland... I was chilled and shocked at the coldness towards the Northwhich I everywhere met, and the sympathetic prejudices in favor ofthe South. And yet everybody was alike condemning slavery and praisingliberty!"

How could England do this, how with the same breath blow cold and hot, how be against the North that was fighting the extension of slavery andyet be against slavery too? Confusing at the time, it is clear to-day. Imbedded in Lincoln's first inaugural address lies the clew: he said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with theinstitution of slavery where it exists. I believe I have no lawful rightto do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who elected medid so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similardeclarations, and had never recanted them. " Thus Lincoln, March 4, 1861. Six weeks later, when we went-to war, we went, not "to interferewith the institution of slavery, " but (again in Lincoln's words) "topreserve, protect, and defend" the Union. This was our slogan, this ourfight, this was repeated again and again by our soldiers and civilians, by our public men and our private citizens. Can you see the position ofthose Englishmen who condemned slavery and praised liberty? We ourselvessaid we were not out to abolish slavery, we disclaimed any such object, by our own words we cut the ground away from them. 

Not until September 22d of 1862, to take effect upon January 1, 1863, did Lincoln proclaim emancipation--thus doing what he had saidtwenty-two months before "I believe I have no lawful right to do. "

That interim of anguish and meditation had cleared his sight. Slowly hehad felt his way, slowly he had come to perceive that the preservationof the Union and the abolition of slavery were so tightly wrappedtogether as to merge and be one and the same thing. But even had heknown this from the start, known that the North's bottom cause, theending of slavery, rested on moral ground, and that moral groundoutweighs and must forever outweigh whatever of legal argument may be onthe other side, he could have done nothing. "I believe I have no lawfulright. " There were thousands in the North who also thus believed. Itwas only an extremist minority who disregarded the Constitution'sacquiescence in slavery and wanted emancipation proclaimed at once. HadLincoln proclaimed it, the North would have split in pieces, the Southwould have won, the Union would have perished, and slavery would haveremained. Lincoln had to wait until the season of anguish and meditationhad unblinded thousands besides himself, and thus had placed behind himenough of the North to struggle on to that saving of the Union and thatfreeing of the slave which was consummated more than two years later byLee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. 

But it was during that interim of anguish and meditation that Englanddid us most of the harm which our memories vaguely but violentlytreasure. Until the Emancipation, we gave our English friends no public, official grounds for their sympathy, and consequently their influenceover our English enemies was hampered. Instantly after January 1, 1863, that sympathy became the deciding voice. Our enemies could no longersay to it, "but Lincoln says himself that he doesn't intend to abolishslavery. "

Here are examples of what occurred: To William Lloyd Garrison, theAbolitionist, an English sympathizer wrote that three thousand men ofManchester had met there and adopted by acclamation an enthusiasticmessage to Lincoln. These men said that they would rather remainunemployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at theexpense of the slave. A month later Cobden writes to Charles Sumner:"I know nothing in my political experience so striking, an a display ofspontaneous public action, as that of the vast gathering at ExeterHall (in London), when, without one attraction in the form of a popularorator, the vast building, its minor rooms and passages, and the streetsadjoining, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience. That meeting hashad a powerful effect on our newspapers and politicians. It has closedthe mouths of those who have been advocating the side of the South. AndI now write to assure you that any unfriendly act on the part ofour Government--no matter which of our aristocratic parties is inpower--towards your cause is not to be apprehended. If an attempt weremade by the Government in any way to commit us to the South, a spiritwould be instantly aroused which would drive that Government frompower. "

I lay emphasis at this point upon these instances (many more couldbe given) because it has been the habit of most Americans to say thatEngland stopped being hostile to the North as soon as the North beganto win. In January, 1863, the North had not visibly begun to win. It hadsuffered almost unvaried defeat so far; and the battles of Gettysburgand Vicksburg, where the tide turned at last our way, were still sixmonths ahead. It was from January 1, 1863, when Lincoln planted ourcause firmly and openly on abolition ground, that the undercurrentof British sympathy surged to the top. The true wonder is, that thisundercurrent should have been so strong all along, that those Englishsympathizers somehow in their hearts should have known what we werefighting for more clearly than we had been able to see it; ourselves. The key to this is given in Beecher's letter--it is nowhere bettergiven--and to it I must now return. 

"I soon perceived that my first error was in supposing that GreatBritain was an impartial spectator. In fact, she was morally an actor inthe conflict. Such were the antagonistic influences at work in her ownmidst, and the division of parties, that, in judging American affairsshe could not help lending sanction to one or the other side of her owninternal conflicts. England was not, then, a judge, sitting calmly onthe bench to decide without bias; the case brought before her was herown, in principle, and in interest. In taking sides with the North, thecommon people of Great Britain and the laboring class took sides withthemselves in their struggle for reformation; while the wealthy and theprivileged classes found a reason in their own political partiesand philosophies why they should not be too eager for the legitimategovernment and nation of the United States. 

"All classes who, at home, were seeking the elevation and politicalenfranchisement of the common people, were with us. All who studiedthe preservation of the state in its present unequal distribution ofpolitical privileges, sided with that section in America that were doingthe same thing. 

"We ought not to be surprised nor angry that men should maintainaristocratic doctrines which they believe in fully as sincerely, and more consistently, than we, or many amongst us do, in democraticdoctrines. 

"We of all people ought to understand how a government can be cold orsemi-hostile, while the people are friendly with us. For thirty yearsthe American Government, in the hands, or under the influence ofSouthern statesmen, has been in a threatening attitude to Europe, andactually in disgraceful conflict with all the weak neighboring Powers. Texas, Mexico, Central Generics, and Cuba are witnesses. Yet the greatbody of our people in the Middle and Northern States are stronglyopposed to all such tendencies. "

It was in a very brief visit that Beecher managed to see England as shewas: a remarkable letter for its insight, and more remarkable still forits moderation, when you consider that it was written in the midst ofour Civil War, while loyal Americans were not only enraged with England, but wounded to the quick as well. When a man can do this--can havepassionate convictions in passionate times, and yet keep his judgmentunclouded, wise, and calm, he serves his country well. 

I can remember the rage and the wound. In that atmosphere I began myexistence. My childhood was steeped in it. In our house the London Punchwas stopped, because of its hostile ridicule. I grew to boyhood hearingfrom my elders how England had for years taunted us with our toleranceof slavery while we boasted of being the Land of the Free--and then, when we arose to abolish slavery, how she "jack-knived" and gave aid andcomfort to the slave power when it had its fingers upon our throat. Manyof that generation of my elders never wholly got over the rage and thewound. They hated all England for the sake of less than half England. They counted their enemies but never their friends. There's nothingunnatural about this, nothing rare. On the contrary, it's the usual, natural, unjust thing that human nature does in times of agony. It's theHenry Ward Beechers that are rare. In times of agony the average man andwoman see nothing but their agony. When I look over some of the lettersthat I received from England in 1915--letters from strangers evoked bya book called The Pentecost of Calamity, wherein I had published myconviction that the cause of England was righteous, the cause of Germanyhideous, and our own persistent neutrality unworthy--I'm glad I lost mytemper only once, and replied caustically only once. How dreadful (wroteone of my correspondents) must it be to belong to a nation that wasbehaving like mine! I retorted (I'm sorry for it now) that I couldall the more readily comprehend English feeling about our neutrality, because I had known what we had felt when Gladstone spoke at Newcastleand when England let the Alabama loose upon us in 1862. Where was thegood in replying at all? Silence is almost always the best reply inthese cases. Next came a letter from another English stranger, in whichthe writer announced having just read The Pentecost of Calamity. Nota word of friendliness for what I had said about the righteousness ofEngland's cause or my expressed unhappiness over the course which ourGovernment had taken--nothing but scorn for us all and the hope that weshould reap our deserts when Germany defeated England and invaded us. Well? What of it? Here was a stricken person, writing in stress, in aland of desolation, mourning for the dead already, waiting for the nextwho should die, a poor, unstrung average person, who had not long beforeread that remark of our President's made on the morrow of the Lusitania:that there is such a thing as being too proud to fight; had read duringthe ensuing weeks those notes wherein we stood committed by our ChiefMagistrate to a verbal slinking away and sitting down under it. Can youwonder? If the mere memory of those days of our humiliation stabsme even now, I need no one to tell me (though I have been told) whatEngland, what France, felt about us then, what it must have been likefor Americans who were in England and France at that time. No: theaverage person in great trouble cannot rise above the trouble and surveythe truth and be just. In English eyes our Government--and therefore allof us--failed in 1914--1915--1916--failed again and again--insulted thecause of humanity when we said through our President in 1916, the thirdsummer of the war, that we were not concerned with either the causesor the aims of that conflict. How could they remember Hoover, or RobertBacon, or Leonard Wood, or Theodore Roosevelt then, any more than wecould remember John Bright, or Richard Cobden, or the Manchester men inthe days when the Alabama was sinking the merchant vessels of the Union?

We remembered Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in the BritishGovernment, and their fellow aristocrats in British society; weremembered the aristocratic British press--The Times notably, becausethe most powerful--these are what we saw, felt, and remembered, becausethey were not with us, and were able to hurt us in the days when ourfriends were not yet able to help us. They made welcome the Southernerswho came over in the interests of the South, they listened to theSouthern propaganda. Why? Because the South was the American version oftheir aristocratic creed. To those who came over in the interests ofthe North and of the Union they turned a cold shoulder, because theyrepresented Democracy; moreover, a Dis-United States would prove incommerce a less formidable competitor. To Captain Bullock, the ableand energetic Southerner who put through in England the buildingand launching of those Confederate cruisers which sank our ships anddestroyed our merchant marine, and to Mason and Slidell, the doors ofdukes opened pleasantly; Beecher and our other emissaries mostly had todine beneath uncoroneted roofs. 

In the pages of Henry Adams, and of Charles Francis Adams his brother, you can read of what they, as young men, encountered in London, andwhat they saw their father have to put up with there, both from Englishsociety and the English Government. Their father was our new minister toEngland, appointed by Lincoln. He arrived just after our Civil War hadbegun. I have heard his sons talk about it familiarly, and it is all tobe found in their writings. 

Nobody knows how to be disagreeable quite so well as the Englishgentleman, except the English lady. They can do it with the nicety of amedicine dropper. They can administer the precise quantum suff. In everycase. In the society of English gentlemen and ladies Mr. Adams by hisofficial position was obliged to move. They left him out as much asthey could, but, being the American Minister, he couldn't be leftout altogether. At their dinners and functions he had to hear openexpressions of joy at the news of Southern victories, he had to receiveslights both veiled and unveiled, and all this he had to bear withequanimity. Sometimes he did leave the room; but with dignity anddiscretion. A false step, a "break, " might have led to a request forhis recall. He knew that his constant presence, close to the EnglishGovernment, was vital to our cause. Russell and Palmerston were byturns insolent and shifty, and once on the very brink of recognizing theSouthern Confederacy as an independent nation. Gladstone, Chancellor ofthe Exchequer, in a speech at Newcastle, virtually did recognize it. Youwill be proud of Mr. Adams if you read how he bore himself and fulfilledhis appallingly delicate and difficult mission. He was an American whoknew how to behave himself, and he behaved himself all the time; whilethe English had a way of turning their behavior on and off, like thehot water. Mr. Adams was no admirer of "shirt-sleeves" diplomacy. Hisdiplomacy wore a coat. Our experiments in "shirt-sleeves" diplomacy failto show that it accomplishes anything which diplomacy decently dressedwould not accomplish more satisfactorily. Upon Mr. Adams fell someconsequences of previous American crudities, of which I shall speaklater. 

Lincoln had declared a blockade on Southern ports before Mr. Adamsarrived in London. Upon his arrival he found England had proclaimed herneutrality and recognized the belligerency of the South. This dismayedMr. Adams and excited the whole North, because feeling ran too high toperceive this first act on England's part to be really favorable to us;she could not recognize our blockade, which stopped her getting Southerncotton, unless she recognized that the South was in a state of war withus. Looked at quietly, this act of England's helped us and hurt herself, for it deprived her of cotton. 

It was not with this, but with the reception and treatment of Mr. Adamsthat the true hostility began. Slights to him were slaps at us, sympathywith the South was an active moral injury to our cause, even if it wasmostly an undertone, politically. Then all of a sudden, something thatwe did ourselves changed the undertone to a loud overtone, and we justgrazed England's declaring war on us. Had she done so, then indeed ithad been all up with us. This incident is the comic going-back on ourown doctrine of 1812, to which I have alluded above. 

On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the American steam sloopSan Jacinto, fired a shot across the bow of the British vessel Trent, stopped her on the high seas, and took four passengers off her, andbrought them prisoners to Fort Warren, in Boston harbor. Mason andSlidell are the two we remember, Confederate envoys to France andGreat Britain. Over this the whole North burst into glorious joy. OurSecretary of the Navy wrote to Wilkes his congratulations, Congressvoted its thanks to him, governors and judges laureled him with oratoryat banquets, he was feasted with meat and drink all over the place, and, though his years were sixty-three, ardent females probably rushed forthfrom throngs and kissed him with the purest intentions: heroes have noage. But presently the Trent arrived in England, and the British lionwas aroused. We had violated international law, and insulted the Britishflag. Palmerston wrote us a letter--or Russell, I forget which wroteit--a letter that would have left us no choice but to fight. But QueenVictoria had to sign it before it went. "My lord, " she said, "youmust know that I will agree to no paper that means war with the UnitedStates. " So this didn't go, but another in its stead, pretty stiff, naturally, yet still possible for us to swallow. Some didn't want toswallow even this; but Lincoln, humorous and wise, said, "Gentlemen, onewar at a time;" and so we made due restitution, and Messrs. Mason andSlidell went their way to France and England, free to bring about actionagainst us there if they could manage it. Captain Wilkes must have beena good fellow. His picture suggests this. England, in her Englishheart, really liked what he had done, it was in its gallant flagrancy soremarkably like her own doings--though she couldn't, naturally, permitsuch a performance to pass; and a few years afterwards, for his servicesin the cause of exploration, her Royal Geographical Society gave him agold medal! Yes; the whole thing is comic--to-day; for us, to-day, thepoint of it is, that the English Queen saved us from a war with England. 

Within a year, something happened that was not comic. Lord John Russell, though warned and warned, let the Alabama slip away to sea, where sheproceeded to send our merchant ships to the bottom, until the Kearsargesent her herself to the bottom. She had been built at Liverpool in theface of an English law which no quibbling could disguise to anybodyexcept to Lord John Russell and to those who, like him, leaned tothe South. Ten years later, this leaning cost England fifteen milliondollars in damages. 

Let us now listen to what our British friends were saying in those yearsbefore Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation. His blockade hadbrought immediate and heavy distress upon many English workmen and theirfamilies. That had been April 19, 1861. By September, five sixths of theLancashire cotton-spinners were out of work, or working half time. Theirstarvation and that of their wives and children could be stemmed bycharity alone. I have talked with people who saw those thousands intheir suffering. Yet those thousands bore it. They somehow lookedthrough Lincoln's express disavowal of any intention to interfere withslavery, and saw that at bottom our war was indeed against slavery, that slavery was behind the Southern camouflage about independence, andbehind the Northern slogan about preserving the Union. They saw andthey stuck. "Rarely, " writes Charles Francis Adams, "in the history ofmankind, has there been a more creditable exhibition of human sympathy. "France was likewise damaged by our blockade; and Napoleon III would haveliked to recognize the South. He established, through Maximilian, anempire in Mexico, behind which lay hostility to our Democracy. He wishedus defeat; but he was afraid to move without England, to whom he madea succession of indirect approaches. These nearly came to somethingtowards the close of 1862. It was on October 7th that Gladstone spokeat Newcastle about Jefferson Davis having made a nation. Yet, after all, England didn't budge, and thus held Napoleon back. From France inthe end the South got neither ships nor recognition, in spite of hisdeceitful connivance and desire; Napoleon flirted a while with Slidell, but grew cold when he saw no chance of English cooperation. 

Besides John Bright and Cobden, we had other English friends ofinfluence and celebrity: John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hughes, Goldwin Smith, Leslie Stephen, Robert Gladstone, Frederic Harrison are some of them. All from the first supported us. All from the first worked and spoke forus. The Union and Emancipation Society was founded. "Your Committee, "says its final report when the war was ended, "have issued andcirculated upwards of four hundred thousand books, pamphlets, andtracts... And nearly five hundred official and public meetings havebeen held... " The president of this Society, Mr. Potter, spent thirtythousand dollars in the cause, and at a time when times were hard andfortunes as well as cotton-spinners in distress through our blockade. Another member of the Society, Mr. Thompson, writes of one of the publicmeetings: "... I addressed a crowded assembly of unemployed operativesin the town of Heywood, near Manchester, and spoke to them for two hoursabout the Slaveholders' Rebellion. They were united and vociferous inthe expression of their willingness to suffer all hardships consequentupon a want of cotton, if thereby the liberty of the victims of Southerndespotism might be promoted. All honor to the half million of ourworking population in Lancashire, Cheshire, and elsewhere, who arebearing with heroic fortitude the privation which your war has entailedupon them!... Their sublime resignation, their self-forgetfulness, their observance of law, their whole-souled love of the cause of humanfreedom, their quick and clear perception of the merits of the questionbetween the North and the South... Are extorting the admiration of allclasses of the community ... "

How much of all this do you ever hear from the people who remember theAlabama?

Strictly in accord with Beecher's vivid summary of the true England inour Civil War, are some passages of a letter from Mr. John Bigelow, whowas at that time our Consul-General at Paris, and whose impressions, written to our Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, on February 6, 1863, areinteresting to compare with what Beecher says in that letter, from whichI have already given extracts. 

"The anti-slavery meetings in England are having their effect upon theGovernment already... The Paris correspondent of the London Post alsocame to my house on Wednesday evening... He says... That there are abouta dozen persons who by their position and influence over the organsof public opinion have produced all the bad feeling and treacherouscon-duct of England towards America. They are people who, as members ofthe Government in times past, have been bullied by the U. S.... They arenot entirely ignorant that the class who are now trying to overthrow theGovernment were mainly responsible for the brutality, but they think weas a nation are disposed to bully, and they are disposed to assist inany policy that may dismember and weaken us. These scars of woundedpride, however, have been carefully concealed from the public, whotherefore cannot be readily made to see why, when the President hasdistinctly made the issue between slave labor and free labor, thatEngland should not go with the North. He says these dozen people whorule England hate us cordially... "

There were more than a dozen, a good many more, as we know from Charlesand Henry Adams. But read once again the last paragraph of Beecher'sletter, and note how it corresponds with what Mr. Bigelow says about thefeeling which our Government (for thirty years "in the hands or underthe influence of Southern statesmen") had raised against us by its badmanners to European governments. This was the harvest sown by shirtsleeves diplomacy and reaped by Mr. Adams in 1861. Only seven yearsbefore, we had gratuitously offended four countries at once. Three ofour foreign ministers (two of them from the South) had met at Ostendand later at Aix in the interests of extending slavery, and there, ina joint manifesto, had ordered Spain to sell us Cuba, or we would takeCuba by force. One of the three was our minister to Spain. Spain hadreceived him courteously as the representative of a nation with whom shewas at peace. It was like ringing the doorbell of an acquaintance, beingshown into the parlor and telling him he must sell you his spoons or youwould snatch them. This doesn't incline your neighbor to like you. But, as has been said, Mr. Adams was an American who did know how to behave, and thereby served us well in our hour of need. 

We remember the Alabama and our English enemies, we forget Bright, andCobden, and all our English friends; but Lincoln did not forget them. When a young man, a friend of Bright's, an Englishman, had been caughthere in a plot to seize a vessel and make her into another Alabama, JohnBright asked mercy for him; and here are Lincoln's words in consequence:"whereas one Rubery was convicted on or about the twelfth day ofOctober, 1863, in the Circuit Court of the United States for theDistrict of California, of engaging in, and giving aid and comfortto the existing rebellion against the Government of this Country, andsentenced to ten years' imprisonment, and to pay a fine of ten thousanddollars;

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is of the immature age of twentyyears, and of highly respectable parentage;

"And whereas, the said Alfred Rubery is a subject of Great Britain, andhis pardon is desired by John Bright, of England;

"Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President ofthe United States of America, these and divers other considerations methereunto moving, and especially as a public mark of the esteem heldby the United States of America for the high character and steadyfriendship of the said John Bright, do hereby grant a pardon to the saidAlfred Rubery, the same to begin and take effect on the twentieth day ofJanuary 1864, on condition that he leave the country within thirty daysfrom and after that date. "

Thus Lincoln, because of Bright; and because of a word from Bright toCharles Sumner about the starving cotton-spinners, Americans sent fromNew York three ships with flour for those faithful English friends ofours. 

And then, at Geneva in 1872, England paid us for what the Alabama haddone. This Court of Arbitration grew slowly; suggested first by Mr. Thomas Batch to Lincoln, who thought the millennium wasn't quite at handbut favored "airing the idea. " The idea was not aired easily. Cobdenwould have brought it up in Parliament, but illness and death overtookhim. The idea found but few other friends. At last Horace Greeley"aired" it in his paper. On October 23, 1863, Mr. Adams said to LordJohn Russell, "I am directed to say that there is no fair and equitableform of conventional arbitrament or reference to which the United Stateswill not be willing to submit. " This, some two years later, Russellrecalled, saying in reply to a statement of our grievances by Adams: "Itappears to Her Majesty's Government that there are but two questions bywhich the claim of compensation could be tested; the one is, Have theBritish Government acted with due diligence, or, in other words, in goodfaith and honesty, in the maintenance of the neutrality they proclaimed?The other is, Have the law officers of the Crown properly understood theforeign enlistment act, when they declined, in June 1862, to advise thedetention and seizure of the Alabama, and on other occasions when theywere asked to detain other ships, building or fitting in British ports?It appears to Her Majesty's Government that neither of these questionscould be put to a foreign government with any regard to the dignity andcharacter of the British Crown and the British Nation. Her Majesty'sGovernment are the sole guardians of their own honor. They cannot admitthat they have acted with bad faith in maintaining the neutrality theyprofessed. The law officers of the Crown must be held to be betterinterpreters of a British statute than any foreign Government can bepresumed to be... " He consented to a commission, but drew the line atany probing of England's good faith. 

We persisted. In 1868, Lord Westbury, Lord High Chancellor, declared inthe House of Lords that "the animus with which the neutral powers actedwas the only true criterion. "

This is the test which we asked should be applied. We quoted Britishremarks about us, Gladstone, for example, as evidence of unfriendlyand insincere animus on the part of those at the head of the BritishGovernment. 

Replying to our pressing the point of animus, the British Governmentreasserted Russell's refusal to recognize or entertain any question ofEngland's good faith: "first, because it would be inconsistent with theself-respect which every government is bound to feel.... " In Mr. JohnBassett Moore's History of International Arbitration, Vol. I, pages496-497, or in papers relating to the Treaty of Washington, Vol. II, Geneva Arbitration, page 204... Part I, Introductory Statement, you willfind the whole of this. What I give here suffices to show the positionwe ourselves and England took about the Alabama case. She backed down. Her good faith was put in issue, and she paid our direct claims. She ate"humble pie. " We had to eat humble pie in the affair of the Trent. Ithas been done since. It is not pleasant, but it may be beneficial. 

Such is the story of the true England and the true America in 1861; thedivided North with which Lincoln had to deal, the divided England whereour many friends could do little to check our influential enemies, untilLincoln came out plainly against slavery. I have had to compress much, but I have omitted nothing material, of which I am aware. The factswould embarrass those who determine to assert that England was ourundivided enemy during our Civil War, if facts ever embarrassed acomplex. Those afflicted with the complex can keep their eyes upon theAlabama and the London Times, and avert them from Bright, and Cobden, and the cotton-spinners, and the Union and Emancipation Society, and Queen Victoria. But to any reader of this whose complex is notincurable, or who has none, I will put this question: What opinion ofthe brains of any Englishman would you have if he formed his idea ofthe United States exclusively from the newspapers of William RandolphHearst. 

Chapter XIII: Benefits Forgot

In our next war, our war with Spain in 1898, England saved us fromGermany. She did it from first to last; her position was unmistakable, and every determining act of hers was as our friend. The service thatshe rendered us in warning Germany to keep out of it, was even greaterthan her suggestion of our Monroe doctrine in 1823; for in 1823 she putus on guard against meditated, but remote, assault from Europe, while in1898 she actively averted a serious and imminent peril. As the threatof her fleet had obstructed Napoleon in 1803, and the Holy Alliance in1823, so in 1898 it blocked the Kaiser. Late in that year, when itwas all over, the disappointed and baffled Kaiser wrote to a friendof Joseph Chamberlain, "If I had had a larger fleet I would have takenUncle Sam by the scruff of the neck. " Have you ever read what our ownfleet was like in those days? Or our Army? Lucky it was for us that wehad to deal only with Spain. And even the Spanish fleet would have beena much graver opponent in Manila Bay, but for Lord Cromer. On its wayfrom Spain through the Suez Canal a formidable part of Spain's navystopped to coal at Port Said. There is a law about the coaling ofbelligerent warships in neutral ports. Lord Cromer could have construedthat law just as well against us. His construction brought it aboutthat those Spanish ships couldn't get to Manila Bay in time to take partagainst Admiral Dewey. The Spanish War revealed that our Navy could hiteight times out of a hundred, and was in other respects unprepared andutterly inadequate to cope with a first-class power. In consequence ofthis, and the criticisms of our Navy Department, which Admiral Sims asa young man had written, Roosevelt took the steps he did in his firstterm. Three ticklish times in that Spanish War England stood ourfriend against Germany. When it broke out, German agents approachedMr. Balfour, proposing that England join in a European combination inSpain's favor. Mr. Balfour's refusal is common knowledge, except to themonomaniac with his complex. Next came the action of Lord Cromer, andfinally that moment in Manila Bay when England took her stand by ourside and Germany saw she would have to fight us both, if she fought atall. 

If you saw any German or French papers at the time of our troubleswith Spain, you saw undisguised hostility. If you have talked with anyAmerican who was in Paris during that April of 1898, your impressionwill be more vivid still. There was an outburst of European hate forus. Germany, France, and Austria all looked expectantly to England--andEngland disappointed their expectations. The British Press was as muchfor us as the French and German press were hostile; the London Spectatorsaid: "We are not, and we do not pretend to be, an agreeable people, butwhen there is trouble in the family, we know where our hearts are. "

In those same days (somewhere about the third week in April, 1898), atthe British Embassy in Washington, occurred a scene of significance andinterest, which has probably been told less often than that interviewbetween Mr. Balfour and the Kaiser's emissary in London. The BritishAmbassador was standing at his window, looking out at the GermanEmbassy, across the street. With him was a member of his diplomatichousehold. The two watched what was happening. One by one, therepresentatives of various European nations were entering the door ofthe German Embassy. "Do you see them?" said the Ambassador's companion;"they'll all be in there soon. There. That's the last of them. " "Ididn't notice the French Ambassador. " "Yes, he's gone in, too. " "I'msurprised at that. I'm sorry for that. I didn't think he would be oneof them, " said the British ambassador. "Now, I'll tell you what. They'llall be coming over here in a little while. I want you to wait and bepresent. " Shortly this prediction was verified. Over from the GermanEmbassy came the whole company on a visit to the British Ambassador, that he might add his signature to a document to which they had affixedtheirs. He read it quietly. We may easily imagine its purport, since weknow of the meditated European coalition against us at she time of ourwar with Spain. Then the British Ambassador remarked: "I have no ordersfrom my Government to sign any such document as that. And if I did have, I should resign my post rather than sign it. " A pause: The company fellsilent. "Then what will your Excellency do?" inquired one visitor. "Ifyou will all do me the honor of coming back to-morrow, I shall haveanother document ready which all of us can sign. " That is what happenedto the European coalition at this end. 

Some few years later, that British Ambassador came to die; and to theBritish Embassy repaired Theodore Roosevelt. "Would it be possible forus to arrange, " he said, "a funeral more honored and marked than theUnited States has ever accorded to any one not a citizen? I should likeit. And, " he suddenly added, shaking his fist at the German Embassy overthe way, "I'd like to grind all their noses in the dirt. "

Confronted with the awkward fact that Britain was almost unanimouslywith us, from Mr. Balfour down through the British press to the Britishpeople, those nations whose ambassadors had paid so unsuccessful a callat the British Embassy had to give it up. Their coalition never cameoff. Such a thing couldn't come off without England, and England saidNo. 

Next, Lord Cromer, at Port Said, stretched out the arm of internationallaw, and laid it upon the Spanish fleet. Belligerents may legally takecoal enough at neutral ports to reach their nearest "home port. " ThatSpanish fleet was on its way from Spain to Manila through the SuezCanal. It could have reached there, had Lord Cromer allowed it coalenough to make the nearest home port ahead of it--Manila. But there wasa home port behind it, still nearer, namely, Barcelona. He let it takecoal enough to get back to Barcelona. Thus, England again stepped in. 

The third time was in Manila Bay itself, after Dewey's victory, andwhile he was in occupation of the place. Once more the Kaiser triedit, not discouraged by his failure with Mr. Balfour and the BritishGovernment. He desired the Philippines for himself; we had not yetacquired them; we were policing them, superintending the harbor, administering whatever had fallen to us from Spain's defeat. The Kaisersent, under Admiral Diedrich, a squadron stronger than Dewey's. 

Dewey indicated where the German was to anchor. "I am here by the orderof his Majesty the German Emperor, " said Diedrich, and chose his ownplace to anchor. He made it quite plain in other ways that he was takingno orders from America. Dewey, so report has it, at last told him that"if he wanted a fight he could have it at the drop of the hat. " Then itwas that the German called on the English Admiral, Chichester, who waslikewise at hand, anchored in Manila Bay. "What would you do, " inquiredDiedrich, "in the event of trouble between Admiral Dewey and myself?""That is a secret known only to Admiral Dewey and me, " said theEnglishman. Plainer talk could hardly be. Diedrich, though a German, understood it. He returned to his flagship. What he saw next morningwas the British cruiser in a new place, interposed between Dewey andhimself. Once more, he understood; and he and his squadron sailed off;and it was soon after this incident that the disappointed Kaiser wrotethat, if only his fleet had been larger, he would have taken us by thescruff of the neck. 

Tell these things to the next man you hear talking about George IIIor the Alabama. You may meet him in front of a bulletin board, or ina drawing-room. He is amongst us everywhere, in the street and in thehouse. He may be a paid propagandist or merely a silly ignorant puppet. But whatever he is, he will not find much to say in response, unless itbe vain, sterile chatter. True come-back will fail him as it failed thatman by the bulletin board who asked, "What is England doing, anyhow?"and his neighbor answered, "Her fleet's keeping the Kaiser out of yourfront yard. "

Chapter XIV: England the Slacker!

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

Let us have these disregarded facts also. From the shelves of history Ihave pulled down and displayed the facts which our school textbooks havesuppressed; I have told the events wherein England has stood our timelyfriend throughout a century; events which our implanted prejudice leadsus to ignore, or to forget; events which show that any one who saysEngland is our hereditary enemy might just about as well say twice twois five. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

They go on asking it. The propagandists, the prompted puppets, the paidparrots of the press, go on saying these eight senseless words becausethey are easy to say, since the man who can answer them is generally notthere: to every man who is a responsible master of facts we have--well, how many?--irresponsible shouters in this country. What is yourexperience? How often is it your luck--as it was mine in front of thebulletin board--to see a fraud or a fool promptly and satisfactorilyput in his place? Make up your mind that wherever you hear any personwhatsoever, male or female, clean or unclean, dressed in jeans, ordressed in silks and laces, inquire what England "did in the war, anyhow?" such person either shirks knowledge, or else is a fraud or afool. Tell them what the man said in the street about the Kaiser and ourfront yard, but don't stop there. Tell them that in May, 1918, Englandwas sending men of fifty and boys of eighteen and a half to the front;that in August, 1918, every third male available between those yearswas fighting, that eight and a half million men for army and navy wereraised by the British Empire, of which Ireland's share was two and threetenths per cent, Wales three and seven tenths, Scotland's eight andthree tenths, and England's more than sixty per cent; and that this, taken proportionately to our greater population would have amountedto about thirteen million Americans, When the war started, the BritishEmpire maintained three soldiers out of every 2600 of the population;her entire army, regular establishment, reserve and territorial forces, amounted to seven hundred thousand men. Our casualties were threehundred and twenty-two thousand, one hundred and eighty-two. Thecasualties in the British Army were three million, forty-nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy-one--a million more than we sent--and of thesesix hundred and fifty-eight thousand, seven hundred and four, werekilled. Of her Navy, thirty-three thousand three hundred and sixty-onewere killed, six thousand four hundred and five wounded and missing;of her merchant marine fourteen thousand six hundred and sixty-one werekilled; a total of forty-eight thousand killed--or ten per cent of allin active service. Some of those of the merchant marine who escapeddrowning through torpedoes and mines went back to sea after beingtorpedoed five, six, and seven times. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

Through four frightful years she fought with splendor, she suffered withsplendor, she held on with splendor. The second battle of Ypres is butone drop in the sea of her epic courage; yet it would fill full a cantoof a poem. So spent was Britain's single line, so worn and thin, that after all the men available were brought, gaps remained. No moreammunition was coming to these men, the last rounds had been served. Wet through, heavy with mud, they were shelled for three days to preventsleep. Many came at last to sleep standing; and being jogged awakewhen officers of the line passed down the trenches, would salute andinstantly be asleep again. On the fourth day, with the Kaiser come towatch them crumble, three lines of Huns, wave after wave of Germany'spicked troops, fell and broke upon this single line of British--andit held. The Kaiser, had he known of the exhausted ammunition and themounded dead, could have walked unarmed to the Channel. But he neverknew. 

Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one with a compound fractureof the thigh had himself propped up, and thus all day worked on thewounded at the front. He knew it meant death for him. The day over, he let them carry him to the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, hedied. Thus through four frightful years, the British met their duty andtheir death. 

There is the great story of the little penny steamers of the Thames--astory lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? Who willmake this drop of perfect valor shine in prose or verse for future eyesto see? Imagine a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country needed her, starting for San Francisco around Cape Horn, and getting there. Some tenor eleven penny steamers under their own steam started from the Thamesdown the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and throughthe submarined Mediterranean for the River Tigris. Boats of shallowdraught were urgently needed on the River Tigris. Four or five reachedtheir destination. Where are the rest?

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

During 1917-1918 Britain's armies held the enemy in three continents andon six fronts, and cooperated with her Allies on two more fronts. Her dead, those six hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead, lay by theTigris, the Zambesi, the AEgean, and across the world to Flanders'fields. Between March 21st and April 17th, 1918, the Huns in theirdrive used 127 divisions, and of these 102 were concentrated againstthe British. That was in Flanders. Britain, at the same time she wasfighting in Flanders, had also at various times shared in the fightingin Russia, Kiaochau, New Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Cameroons, Togoland, East Africa, South West Africa, Saloniki, Aden, Persia, and the northwest frontier of India. Britaincleared twelve hundred thousand square miles of the enemy inGerman colonies. While fighting in Mesopotamia, her soldiers werereconstructing at the same time. They reclaimed and cultivated more than1100 square miles of land there, which produced in consequence enoughfood to save two million tons of shipping annually for the Allies. InPalestine and Mesopotamia alone, British troops in 1917 took 23, 590prisoners. In 1918, in Palestine from September 18th to October 7th, they took 79, 000 prisoners. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

With "French's contemptible little army" she saved France at thestart--but I'll skip that--except to mention that one division lost10, 000 out of 12, 000 men, and 350 out of 400 officers. At Zeebrugge andOstend--do not forget the Vindictive--she dealt with submarines in Apriland May, 1918--but I'll skip that; I cannot set down all that she did, either at the start, or nearing the finish, or at any particular momentduring those four years and three months that she was helping to holdGermany off from the throat of the world; it would make a very thickbook. But I am giving you enough, I think, wherewith to answer theignorant, and the frauds, and the fools. Tell them that from 1916 to1918 Great Britain increased her tillage area by four million acres:wheat 39 per cent, barley 11, oats 35, potatoes 50--in spite of theshortage of labor. She used wounded soldiers, college boys and girls, boy scouts, refugees, and she produced the biggest grain crop in fiftyyears. She started fourteen hundred thousand new war gardens; mostof those who worked them had worked already a long day in a munitionfactory. These devoted workers increased the potato crop in 1917 bythree million tons--and thus released British provision ships tocarry our soldiers across. In that Boston speech which one of mycorrespondents referred to, our Secretary of the Navy did not mentionthis. Mention it yourself. And tell them about the boy scouts and thewomen. Fifteen thousand of the boy scouts joined the colors, and overfifty thousand of the younger members served in various ways at home. 

Of England's women seven million were engaged in work on munitions andother necessaries and apparatus of war. The terrible test of that secondbattle of Ypres, to which I have made brief allusion above, wroughtan industrial revolution in the manufacture of shells. The energyof production rose at a rate which may be indicated by two or threecomparisons: In 1917 as many heavy howitzer shells were turned out in asingle day as in the whole first year of the war, as many medium shellsin five days, and as many field-gun shells in eight days. Or in otherwords, 45 times as many field-gun shells, 73 times as many medium, and365 times as many heavy howitzer shells, were turned out in 1917 as inthe first year of the war. These shells were manufactured in buildingstotaling fifteen miles in length, forty feet in breadth, with more thanten thousand machine tools driven by seventeen miles of shafting with anenergy of twenty-five thousand horse-power and a weekly output of overten thousand tons' weight of projectiles--all this largely worked bythe women of England. While the fleet had increased its personnelfrom 136, 000 to about 400, 000, and 2, 000, 000 men by July, 1915, hadvoluntarily enlisted in the army before England gave up her birthrightand accepted compulsory service, the women of England left theirordinary lives to fabricate the necessaries of war. They worked at homewhile their husbands, brothers, and sons fought and died on six battlefronts abroad--six hundred and fifty-eight thousand died, remember;do you remember the number of Americans killed in action?--less thanthirty-six thousand;--those English women worked on, seven millions ofthem at least, on milk carts, motor-busses, elevators, steam engines, and in making ammunition. Never before had any woman worked on more than150 of the 500 different processes that go to the making of munitions. They now handled T. N. T. , and fulminate of mercury, more deadly still;helped build guns, gun carriages, and three-and-a-half ton army cannons;worked overhead traveling cranes for moving the boilers of battleships:turned lathes, made every part of an aeroplane. And who were theseseven million women? The eldest daughter of a duke and the daughter of ageneral won distinction in advanced munition work. The only daughter ofan old Army family broke down after a year's work in a base hospitalin France, was ordered six months' rest at home, but after two monthsentered a munition factory as an ordinary employee and after ninemonths' work had lost but five minutes working time. The mother ofseven enlisted sons went into munitions not to be behind them in servingEngland, and one of them wrote her she was probably killing more Germansthan any of the family. The stewardess of a torpedoed passenger shipwas among the few survivors. Reaching land, she got a job at a capstanlathe. Those were the seven million women of England--daughters ofdukes, torpedoed stewardesses, and everything between. 

Seven hundred thousand of these were engaged on munition work proper. They did from 60 to 70 per cent of all the machine work on shells, fuses, and trench warfare supplies, and 1450 of them were trainedmechanics to the Royal Flying Corps. They were employed upon practicallyevery operation in factory, in foundry, in laboratory, and chemicalworks, of which they were physically capable; in making of gauges, forging billets, making fuses, cartridges, bullets--"look what they cando, " said a foreman, "ladies from homes where they sat about and werewaited upon. " They also made optical glass; drilled and tapped inthe shipyards; renewed electric wires and fittings, wound armatures;lacquered guards for lamps and radiator fronts; repaired junction andsection boxes, fire control instruments, automatic searchlights. "We canhardly believe our eyes, " said another foreman, "when we see the heavystuff brought to and from the shops in motor lorries driven by girls. Before the war it was all carted by horses and men. The girls do the joball right, though, and the only thing they ever complain about is thattheir toes get cold. " They worked without hesitation from twelve tofourteen hours a day, or a night, for seven days a week, and with thevoluntary sacrifice of public holidays. 

That is not all, or nearly all, that the women of England did--I skiptheir welfare work, recreation work, nursing--but it is enough wherewithto answer the ignorant, or the fraud, or the fool. 

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

On August 8, 1914, Lord Kitchener asked for 100, 000 volunteers. He hadthem within fourteen days. In the first week of September 170, 000 menenrolled, 30, 000 in a single day. Eleven months later, two million hadenlisted. Ten months later, five million and forty-one thousand hadvoluntarily enrolled in the Army and Navy. 

In 1914 Britain had in her Royal Naval Air Service 64 aeroplanes and 800airmen. In 1917 she had many thousand aeroplanes and 42, 000 airmen. Inher Royal Flying Corps she had in 1914, 66 planes and 100 men; in 1917, several thousand planes and men by tens of thousands. In the first ninemonths of 1917 British airmen brought down 876 enemy machines and drovedown 759 out of control. From July, 1917, to June, 1918, 4102 enemymachines were destroyed or brought down with a loss of 1213 machines. 

Besides financing her own war costs she had by October, 1917, loanedeight hundred million dollars to the Dominions and five billion fivehundred million to the Allies. She raised five billion in thirty days. In the first eight months of 1918 she contributed to the various formsof war loan at the average rate of one hundred and twenty-four million, eight hundred thousand a week. 

Is that enough? Enough to show what England did in the War? No, it isnot enough for such people as continue to ask what she did. Nothingwould suffice these persons. During the earlier stages of the War itwas possible that the question could be asked honestly--though neverintelligently--because the facts and figures were not at that timealways accessible. They were still piling up, they were scattered about, mention of them was incidental and fugitive, they could be missed byanybody who was not diligently alert to find them. To-day it is quiteotherwise. The facts and figures have been compiled, arranged, publishedin accessible and convenient form; therefore to-day, the man or womanwho persists in asking what England did in the war is not honest butdishonest or mentally spotted, and does not want to be answered. Theydon't want to know. The question is merely a camouflage of their spite, and were every item given of the gigantic and magnificent contributionthat England made to the defeat of the Kaiser and all his works, itwould not stop their evil mouths. Not for them am I here setting fortha part of what England did; it is for the convenience of the honestAmerican, who does want to know, that my collection of facts is madefrom the various sources which he may not have the time or the means tolook up for himself. For his benefit I add some particulars concerningthe British Navy which kept the Kaiser out of our front yard. 

Admiral Mahan said in his book--and he was an American of whoseknowledge and wisdom Congress seems to have known nothing andcared less--"Why do English innate political conceptions of popularrepresentative government, of the balance of law and liberty, prevailin North America from the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of Mexico, from theAtlantic to the Pacific? Because the command of the sea at the decisiveera belonged to Great Britain. " We have seen that the decisive era waswhen Napoleon's mouth watered for Louisiana, and when England took herstand behind the Monroe Doctrine. 

Admiral Sims said in the second installment of his narrative The Victoryat Sea, published in The World's Work for October, 1919, at page 619:"... Let us suppose for a moment that an earthquake, or some other greatnatural disturbance, had engulfed the British fleet at Scapa Flow. Theworld would then have been at Germany's mercy and all the destroyers theAllies could have put upon the sea would have availed them nothing, for the German battleships and battle cruisers could have sunk them ordriven them into their ports. Then Allied commerce would have been theprey, not only of the submarines, which could have operated with theutmost freedom, but of the German surface craft as well. In a few weeksthe British food supplies would have been exhausted. There would havebeen an early end to the soldiers and munitions which Britain wasconstantly sending to France. The United States could have sentno forces to the Western front, and the result would have been thesurrender which the Allies themselves, in the spring of 1917, regardedas a not remote possibility. America would then have been compelled toface the German power alone, and to face it long before we had had anopportunity to assemble our resources and equip our armies. The worldwas preserved from all these calamities because the destroyer and theconvoy solved the problem of the submarines, and because back of theseagencies of victory lay Admiral Beatty's squadrons, holding at arm'slength the German surface ships while these comparatively fragile craftwere saving the liberties of the world. "

Yes. The High Seas Fleet of Germany, costing her one billion fivehundred million dollars, was bottled up. Five million five hundredthousand tons of German shipping and one million tons of Austrianshipping were driven off the seas or captured; oversea trade and overseacolonies were cut off. Two million oversea Huns of fighting age werehindered from joining the enemy. Ocean commerce and communication werestopped for the Huns and secured to the Allies. In 1916, 2100 mines wereswept up and 89 mine sweepers lost. These mine sweepers and patrol boatsnumbered 12 in 1914, and 3300 by 1918. To patrol the seas British shipshad to steam eight million miles in a single month. During the fouryears of the war they transported oversea more than thirteen millionmen (losing but 2700 through enemy action) as well as transporting twomillion horses and mules, five hundred thousand vehicles, twenty-fivemillion tons of explosives, fifty-one million tons of oil and fuel, onehundred and thirty million tons of food and other materials for the useof the Allies. In one month three hundred and fifty-five thousand menwere carried from England to France. 

It was after our present Secretary of the Navy, in his speech in Bostonto which allusion has been made, had given our navy all and the Britishnavy none of the credit of conveying our soldiers overseas, that AdmiralSims repaired the singular oblivion of the Secretary. We Americansshould know the truth, he said. We had not been too accurately informed. We did not seem to have been told by anybody, for instance, that ofthe five thousand anti-submarine craft operating day and night in theinfested waters, we had 160, or 3 per cent; that of the million and ahalf troops which had gone over from here in a few months, Great Britainbrought over two thirds and escorted half. 

"I would like American papers to pay particular attention to the factthat there are about 5000 anti-submarine craft in the ocean to-day, cutting out mines, escorting troop ships, and making it possible for usto go ahead and win this war. They can do this because the British GrandFleet is so powerful that the German High Seas Fleet has to stay athome. The British Grand Fleet is the foundation stone of the cause ofthe whole of the Allies. "

Thus Admiral Sims. 

That is part of what England did in the war. 

Note. --The author expresses thanks and acknowledgment to Pearson'sMagazine for permission to use the passages quoted from the articles byAdmiral Sims. 

Chapter XV: Rude Britannia, Crude Columbia

It may have been ten years ago, it may have been fifteen--and justhow long it was before the war makes no matter--that I receivedan invitation to join a society for the promotion of more friendlyrelations between the United States and England. 

"No, indeed, " I said to myself. 

Even as I read the note, hostility rose in me. Refusal sprang to my lipsbefore my reason had acted at all. I remembered George III. I rememberedthe Civil War. The ancient grudge, the anti-English complex, had beeninstantly set fermenting in me. Nothing could better disclose itslurking persistence than my virtually automatic exclamation, "No, indeed!" I knew something about England's friendly acts, aboutVenezuela, and Manila Bay, and Edmund Burke, and John Bright, and theQueen, and the Lancashire cotton spinners. And more than this historicknowledge, I knew living English people, men and women, among whom Icounted dear and even beloved friends. I knew also, just as well asAdmiral Mahan knew, and other Americans by the hundreds of thousandshave known and know at this moment, that all the best we have andare--law, ethics, love of liberty--all of it came from England, grew inEngland first, ripened from the seed of which we are merely one greatharvest, planted here by England. And yet I instantly exclaimed, "No, indeed!"

Well, having been inflicted with the anti-English complex myself, I understand it all the better in others, and am begging them tocounteract it as I have done. You will recollect that I said at theoutset of these observations that, as I saw it, our prejudice wasfounded upon three causes fairly separate, although they often meltedtogether. With two of these causes I have now dealt--the schoolhistories, and certain acts and policies of England's throughout ourrelations with her. The third cause, I said, was certain traits of theEnglish and ourselves which have produced personal friction. An Americandoes or says something which angers an Englishman, who thereupon goesabout thinking and saying, "Those insufferable Yankees!" An Englishmandoes or says something which angers an American, who thereupon goesabout thinking and saying, "To Hell with England!" Each makes thewell-nigh universal--but none the less perfectly ridiculous--blunder ofdamning a whole people because one of them has rubbed him the wrong way. Nothing could show up more forcibly and vividly this human weakness forgeneralizing from insufficient data, than the incident in London streetswhich I promised to tell you in full when we should reach the time forit. The time is now. 

In a hospital at no great distance from San Francisco, a woundedAmerican soldier said to one who sat beside him, that never would he goto Europe to fight anybody again--except the English. Them he wouldlike to fight; and to the astonished visitor he told his reason. He, itappeared, was one of our Americans who marched through London streetson that day when the eyes of London looked for the first time upon theYankees at last arrived to bear a hand to England and her Allies. Fromthe mob came a certain taunt: "You silly ass. "

It was, as you will observe, an unflattering interpretation of ournational initials, U. S. A. Of course it was enough to make a properAmerican doughboy entirely "hot under the collar. " To this reading ofour national initials our national readiness retorted in kind at anearly date: A. E. F. Meant After England Failed. But why, months andmonths afterwards, when everything was over, did that foolish doughboyin the hospital hug this lone thing to his memory? It was the act of anunthinking few. Didn't he notice what the rest of London was doing thatday? Didn't he remember that she flew the Union Jack and the Stars andStripes together from every symbolic pinnacle of creed and governmentthat rose above her continent of streets and dwellings to the sky?Couldn't he feel that England, his old enemy and old mother, bowedand stricken and struggling, was opening her arms to him wide? She's aperson who hides her tears even from herself; but it seems to me that, with a drop of imagination and half a drop of thought, he might havediscovered a year and a half after a few street roughs had insulted him, that they were not all England. With two drops of thought it might evenhave ultimately struck him that here we came, late, very late, indeed, only just in time, from a country untouched, unafflicted, unbombed, safe, because of England's ships, to tired, broken, bleeding England;and that the sight of us, so jaunty, so fresh, so innocent of sufferingand bereavement, should have been for a thoughtless moment galling tounthinking brains?

I am perfectly sure that if such considerations as these were laidbefore any American soldier who still smarted under that taunt in Londonstreets, his good American sense, which is our best possession, wouldgrasp and accept the thing in its true proportions. He wouldn't wantto blot an Empire out because a handful of muckers called him names. Ofthis I am perfectly sure, because in Paris streets it was my happy lotfour months after the Armistice to talk with many American soldiers, among whom some felt sore about the French. Not one of these but sawwith his good American sense, directly I pointed certain facts out tohim, that his hostile generalization had been unjust. But, to quote theoft-quoted Mr. Kipling, that is another story. 

An American regiment just arrived in France was encamped for purposes oftraining and experience next a British regiment come back from the frontto rest. The streets of the two camps were adjacent, and the Tommieswalked out to watch the Yankees pegging down their tents. 

"Aw, " they said, "wot a shyme you've brought nobody along to tuck youin. "

They made other similar remarks; commented unfavorably upon thealignment; "You were a bit late in coming, " they said. Of course ourboys had answers, and to these the Tommies had further answers, andthis encounter of wits very naturally led to a result which could notpossibly have been happier. I don't know what the Tommies expected theYankees to do. I suppose they were as ignorant of our nature as we oftheirs, and that they entertained preconceived notions. They suddenlyfound that we were, once again to quote Mr. Kipling, "bachelors inbarricks most remarkable like" themselves. An American first sergeanthit a British first sergeant. Instantly a thousand men were milling. Forthirty minutes they kept at it. Warriors reeled together and fell androse and got it in the neck and the jaw and the eye and the nose--andall the while the British and American officers, splendidly discreet, saw none of it. British soldiers were carried back to their streets, still fighting, bunged Yankees staggered everywhere--but not an officersaw any of it. Black eyes the next day, and other tokens, very plainlyshowed who had been at this party. Thereafter a much better feelingprevailed between Tommies and Yanks. 

A more peaceful contact produced excellent consequences at an encampmentof Americans in England. The Americans had brought over an idea, apparently, that the English were "easy. " They tried it on in sundryways, but ended by the discovery that, while engaged upon thisenterprise, they had been in sundry ways quite completely "done"themselves. This gave them a respect for their English cousins whichthey had never felt before. 

Here is another tale, similar in moral. This occurred at Brest, inFrance. In the Y hut sat an English lady, one of the hostesses. Toher came a young American marine with whom she already had someacquaintance. This led him to ask for her advice. He said to her thatas his permission was of only seventy-two hours, he wanted to be aseconomical of his time as he could and see everything best worth whilefor him to see during his leave. Would she, therefore, tell him whatthings in Paris were the most interesting and in what order he had besttake them? She replied with another suggestion; why not, she said, askfor permission for England? This would give him two weeks instead ofseventy-two hours. At this he burst out violently that he would notset foot in England; that he never wanted to have anything to do withEngland or with the English: "Why, I am a marine!" he exclaimed, "and wemarines would sooner knock down any English sailor than speak to him. "

The English lady, naturally, did not then tell him her nationality. Shenow realized that he had supposed her to be American, because she hadfrequently been in America and had talked to him as no stranger to thecountry could. She, of course, did not urge his going to England; sheadvised him what to see in France. He took his leave of seventy-twohours and when he returned was very grateful for the advice she hadgiven him. 

She saw him often after this, and he grew to rely very much upon herfriendly counsel. Finally, when the time came for her to go away fromBrest, she told him that she was English. And then she said somethinglike this to him:

"Now, you told me you had never been in England and had never known anEnglish person in your life, and yet you had all these ideas against usbecause somebody had taught you wrong. It is not at all your fault. Youare only nineteen years old and you cannot read about us, because youhave no chance; but at least you do know one English person now, andthat English person begs you, when you do have a chance to read andinform yourself of the truth, to find out what England really has been, and what she has really done in this war. "

The end of the story is that the boy, who had become devoted to her, didas she suggested. To-day she receives letters from him which show thatnothing is left of his anti-English complex. It is another instance ofhow clearly our native American mind, if only the facts are given it, thinks, judges, and concludes. 

It is for those of my countrymen who will never have this chance, never meet some one who can "guide them to the facts", that I tellthese things. Let them "cut out the dope. " At this very moment that Iwrite--November 24, 1919--the dope is being fed freely to all who areready, whether through ignorance or through interested motives, toswallow it. The ancient grudge is being played up strong over the wholecountry in the interest of Irish independence. 

Ian Hay in his two books so timely and so excellent, Getting Togetherand The Oppressed English, could not be as unreserved, naturally, as Ican be about those traits in my own countrymen which have, in the pastat any rate, retarded English cordiality towards Americans. Of these Ishall speak as plainly as I know how. But also, being an Americanand therefore by birth more indiscreet than Ian Hay, I shall speak asplainly as I know how of those traits in the English which have helpedto keep warm our ancient grudge. Thus I may render both countriesforever uninhabitable to me, but shall at least take with me into exilea character for strict, if disastrous, impartiality. 

I begin with an American who was traveling in an English train. Itstopped somewhere, and out of the window he saw some buildings whichinterested him. 

"Can you tell me what those are?" he asked an Englishman, a stranger, who sat in the other corner of the compartment. 

"Better ask the guard, " said the Englishman. 

Since that brief dialogue, this American does not think well of theEnglish. 

Now, two interpretations of the Englishman's answer are possible. Oneis, that he didn't himself know, and said so in his English way. Englishtalk is often very short, much shorter than ours. That is because theyall understand each other, are much closer knit than we are. Behind themare generations of "doing it" in the same established way, a waythat their long experience of life has hammered out for their ownconvenience, and which they like. We're not nearly so closely knittogether here, save in certain spots, especially the old spots. InBoston they understand each other with very few words said. So they doin Charleston. But these spots of condensed and hoarded understandinglie far apart, are never confluent, and also differ in their details;while the whole of England is confluent, and the details have beenslowly worked out through centuries of getting on together, and areaccepted and observed exactly like the rules of a game. 

In America, if the American didn't know, he would have answered, "Idon't know. I think you'll have to ask the conductor, " or at any rate, his reply would have been longer than the Englishman's. But I am notgoing to accept the idea that the Englishman didn't know and said so inhis brief usual way. It's equally possible that he did know. Then, younaturally ask, why in the name of common civility did he give such ananswer to the American?

I believe that I can tell you. He didn't know that my friend was anAmerican, he thought he was an Englishman who had broken the rules ofthe game. We do have some rules here in America, only we have not nearlyso many, they're much more stretchable, and it's not all of us who havelearned them. But nevertheless a good many have. 

Suppose you were traveling in a train here, and the man next you, whoseface you had never seen before, and with whom you had not yet exchangeda syllable, said: "What's your pet name for your wife?"

Wouldn't your immediate inclination be to say, "What damned business isthat of yours?" or words to that general effect?

But again, you most naturally object, there was nothing personal in myfriend's question about the buildings. No; but that is not it. Atthe bottom, both questions are an invasion of the same deep-seatedthing--the right to privacy. In America, what with the newspaperreporters and this and that and the other, the territory of a man'sprivacy has been lessened and lessened until very little of it remains;but most of us still do draw the line somewhere; we may not all draw itat the same place, but we do draw a line. The difference, then, betweenourselves and the English in this respect is simply, that with them theterritory of a man's privacy covers more ground, and different ground aswell. An Englishman doesn't expect strangers to ask him questions ofa guide-book sort. For all such questions his English system providesperfectly definite persons to answer. If you want to know where theticket office is, or where to take your baggage, or what time the traingoes, or what platform it starts from, or what towns it stops at, andwhat churches or other buildings of interest are to be seen in thosetowns, there are porters and guards and Bradshaws and guidebooks totell you, and it's they whom you are expected to consult, not anyfellow-traveler who happens to be at hand. If you ask him, you break therules. Had my friend said: "I am an American. Would you mind tellingme what those buildings are?" all would have gone well. The Englishmanwould have recognized (not fifty years ago, but certainly to-day) thatit wasn't a question of rules between them, and would have at onceexplained--either that he didn't know, or that the buildings were suchand such. 

Do not, I beg, suppose for a moment that I am holding up the Englishway as better than our own--or worse. I am not making comparisons; I amtrying to show differences. Very likely there are many points whereinwe think the English might do well to borrow from us; and it is quite aslikely that the English think we might here and there take a leaf fromtheir book to our advantage. But I am not theorizing, I am not seekingto show that we manage life better or that they manage life better; theonly moral that I seek to draw from these anecdotes is, that we shouldeach understand and hence make allowance for the other fellow's way. Youwill admit, I am sure, be you American or English, that everybody hasa right to his own way? The proverb "When in Rome you must do as Romedoes" covers it, and would save trouble if we always obeyed it. Thepeople who forget it most are they that go to Rome for the firsttime; and I shall give you both English and American examples of thispresently. It is good to ascertain before you go to Rome, if you can, what Rome does do. 

Have you never been mistaken for a waiter, or something of that sort?Perhaps you will have heard the anecdote about one of our ambassadorsto England. All ambassadors, save ours, wear on formal occasions adistinguishing uniform, just as our army and navy officers do; itis convenient, practical, and saves trouble. But we have declared itmenial, or despotic, or un-American, or something equally silly, andhence our ambassadors must wear evening dress resembling closely theattire of those who are handing the supper or answering the door-bell. An Englishman saw Mr. Choate at some diplomatic function, standing aboutin this evening costume, and said:

"Call me a cab. "

"You are a cab, " said Mr. Choate, obediently. 

Thus did he make known to the Englishman that he was not a waiter. Similarly in crowded hotel dining-rooms or crowded railroad stationshave agitated ladies clutched my arm and said:

"I want a table for three, " or "When does the train go to Poughkeepsie?"

Just as we in America have regular people to attend to these things, so do they in England; and as the English respect each other's right toprivacy very much more than we do, they resent invasions of it very muchmore than we do. But, let me say again, they are likely to mind it onlyin somebody they think knows the rules. With those who don't know themit is different. I say this with all the more certainty because of afairly recent afternoon spent in an English garden with English friends. The question of pronunciation came up. Now you will readily see thatwith them and their compactness, their great public schools, their twogreat Universities, and their great London, the one eternal focusof them all, both the chance of diversity in social customs and thetolerance of it must be far less than in our huge unfocused country. With us, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, is eacha centre. Here you can pronounce the word calm, for example, in one wayor another, and it merely indicates where you come from. Departure inEngland from certain established pronunciations has another effect. 

"Of course, " said one of my friends, "one knows where to place anybodywho says 'girl'" (pronouncing it as it is spelled). 

"That's frightful, " said I, "because I say 'girl'. "

"Oh, but you are an American. It doesn't apply. "

But had I been English, it would have been something like coming todinner without your collar. 

That is why I think that, had my friend in the train begun his questionabout the buildings by saying that he was an American, the answer wouldhave been different. Not all the English yet, but many more than therewere fifty or even twenty years ago, have ceased to apply their rules tous. 

About 1874 a friend of mine from New York was taken to a London Club. Into the room where he was came the Prince of Wales, who took out acigar, felt for and found no matches, looked about, and there was asilence. My friend thereupon produced matches, struck one, and offeredit to the Prince, who bowed, thanked him, lighted his cigar, andpresently went away. 

Then an Englishman observed to my friend: "It's not the thing for acommoner to offer a light to the Prince. "

"I'm not a commoner, I'm an American, " said my friend with perfect goodnature. 

Whatever their rule may be to-day about the Prince and matches, as to usthey have come to accept my friend's pertinent distinction: they don'texpect us to keep or even to know their own set of rules. 

Indeed, they surpass us in this, they make more allowances for us thanwe for them. They don't criticize Americans for not being English. Americans still constantly do criticize the English for not beingAmericans. Now, the measure in which you don't allow for the customs ofanother country is the measure of your own provincialism. I have heardsome of our own soldiers express dislike of the English because oftheir coldness. The English are not cold; they are silent upon certainmatters. But it is all there. Do you remember that sailor at Zeebruggecarrying the unconscious body of a comrade to safety, not sure yet if hewere alive or dead, and stroking that comrade's head as he went, saying over and over, "Did you think I would leave yer?" We are moredemonstrative, we spell things out which it is the way of the English toleave between the lines. But it is all there! Behind that unconciliatingwall of shyness and reserve, beats and hides the warm, loyal Britishheart, the most constant heart in the world. 

"It isn't done. "

That phrase applies to many things in England besides offering a lightto the Prince, or asking a fellow traveler what those buildings are; andI think that the Englishman's notion of his right to privacy lies at thebottom of quite a number of these things. You may lay some of them tosnobbishness, to caste, to shyness, they may have various secondaryorigins; but I prefer to cover them all with the broader term, the rightto privacy, because it seems philosophically to account for them andexplain them. 

In May, 1915, an Oxford professor was in New York. A few years beforethis I had read a book of his which had delighted me. I met him atlunch, I had not known him before. Even as we shook hands, I blurted outto him my admiration for his book. 

"Oh. "

That was the whole of his reply. It made me laugh at myself, for Ishould have known better. I had often been in England and could havetold anybody that you mustn't too abruptly or obviously refer to whatthe other fellow does, still less to what you do yourself. "It isn'tdone. " It's a sort of indecent exposure. It's one of the invasions ofthe right to privacy. 

In America, not everywhere but in many places, a man upon entering aclub and seeing a friend across the room, will not hesitate to call outto him, "Hullo, Jack!" or "Hullo, George!" or whatever. In England "itisn't done. " The greeting would be conveyed by a short nod or a glance. To call out a man's name across a room full of people, some of whom maybe total strangers, invades his privacy and theirs. Have you noticedhow, in our Pullman parlor cars, a party sitting together, generallyyoung women, will shriek their conversation in a voice that bores likea gimlet through the whole place? That is an invasion of privacy. InEngland "it isn't done. " We shouldn't stand it in a theatre, but inparlor cars we do stand it. It is a good instance to show that theEnglishman's right to privacy is larger than ours, and thus that hisliberty is larger than ours. 

Before leaving this point, which to my thinking is the cause of manyfrictions and misunderstandings between ourselves and the English, Imustn't omit to give instances of divergence, where an Englishman willspeak of matters upon which we are silent, and is silent upon subjectsof which we will speak. 

You may present a letter of introduction to an Englishman, and he wishesto be civil, to help you to have a good time. It is quite possible hemay say something like this:

"I think you had better know my sister Sophy. You mayn't like her. Buther dinners are rather amusing. Of course the food's ghastly becauseshe's the stingiest woman in London. "

On the other hand, many Americans (though less willing than the French)are willing to discuss creed, immortality, faith. There is nothing fromwhich the Englishman more peremptorily recoils, although he hates wellnigh as deeply all abstract discussion, or to be clever, or to have yoube clever. An American friend of mine had grown tired of an Englishmanwho had been finding fault with one American thing after another. So hesuddenly said:

"Will you tell me why you English when you enter your pews on Sundayalways immediately smell your hats?"

The Englishman stiffened. "I refuse to discuss religious subjects withyou, " he said. 

To be ponderous over this anecdote grieves me--but you may not know thatorthodox Englishmen usually don't kneel, as we do, after reachingtheir pews; they stand for a moment, covering their faces with theirwell-brushed hats: with each nation the observance is the same, it is inthe manner of the observing that we differ. 

Much is said about our "common language, " and its being a reason for ourunderstanding each other. Yes; but it is also almost as much a causefor our misunderstanding each other. It is both a help and a trap. If weAmericans spoke something so wholly different from English as French is, comparisons couldn't be made; and somebody has remarked that comparisonsare odious. 

"Why do you call your luggage baggage?" says the Englishman--or used tosay. 

"Why do you call your baggage luggage?" says the American--or used tosay. 

"Why don't you say treacle?" inquires the Englishman. 

"Because we call it molasses, " answers the American. 

"How absurd to speak of a car when you mean a carriage!" exclaims theEnglishman. 

"We don't mean a carriage, we mean a car, " retorts the American. 

You, my reader, may have heard (or perhaps even held) foolishconversations like that; and you will readily perceive that if we didn'tsay "car" when we spoke of the vehicle you get into when you board atrain, but called it a voiture, or something else quite "foreign, " theEnglishman would not feel that we had taken a sort of liberty with hismother-tongue. A deep point lies here: for most English the world isdivided into three peoples, English, foreigners, and Americans; andfor most of us likewise it is divided into Americans, foreigners, andEnglish. Now a "foreigner" can call molasses whatever he pleases; wedo not feel that he has taken any liberty with our mother-tongue;his tongue has a different mother; he can't help that; he's not to becriticized for that. But we and the English speak a tongue that hasthe same mother. This identity in pedigree has led and still leadsto countless family discords. I've not a doubt that divergences invocabulary and in accent were the fount and origin of some swollennoses, some battered eyes, when our Yankees mixed with the Tommies. Eachwould be certain to think that the other couldn't "talk straight"--andeach would be certain to say so. I shall not here spin out a list ofdifferent names for the same things now current in English and Americanusage: molasses and treacle will suffice for an example; you will beable easily to think of others, and there are many such that occur ineveryday speech. Almost more tricky are those words which both peoplesuse alike, but with different meanings. I shall spin no list ofthese either; one example there is which I cannot name, of two wordsconstantly used in both countries, each word quite proper in onecountry, while in the other it is more than improper. Thirty years agoI explained this one evening to a young Englishman who was here for awhile. Two or three days later, he thanked me fervently for the warning:it had saved him, during a game of tennis, from a frightful shock, whenhis partner, a charming girl, meaning to tell him to cheer up, had usedthe word that is so harmless with us and in England so far beyond thepale of polite society. 

Quite as much as words, accent also leads to dissension. I have heardmany an American speak of the English accent as "affected"; and ouraccent displeases the English. Now what Englishman, or what American, ever criticizes a Frenchman for not pronouncing our language as we do?His tongue has a different mother!

I know not how in the course of the years all these divergences shouldhave come about, and none of us need care. There they are. As a matterof fact, both England and America are mottled with varying accentsliterate and illiterate; equally true it is that each nation has itsnotion of the other's way of speaking--we're known by our shrill nasaltwang, they by their broad vowels and hesitation; and quite as true isit that not all Americans and not all English do in their enunciationconform to these types. 

One May afternoon in 1919 I stopped at Salisbury to see that beautifulcathedral and its serene and gracious close. "Star-scattered on thegrass, " and beneath the noble trees, lay New Zealand soldiers, solitaryor in little groups, gazing, drowsing, talking at ease. Later, at theinn I was shown to a small table, where sat already a young Englishmanin evening dress, at his dinner. As I sat down opposite him, I bowed, and he returned it. Presently we were talking. When I said that I wasstopping expressly to see the cathedral, and how like a trance it was tofind a scene so utterly English full of New Zealanders lying all about, he looked puzzled. It was at this, or immediately after this, that Iexplained to him my nationality. 

"I shouldn't have known it, " he remarked, after an instant's pause. 

I pressed him for his reason, which he gave; somewhat reluctantly, I think, but with excellent good-will. Of course it was the same oldmother-tongue!

"You mean, " I said, "that I haven't happened to say 'I guess, ' and thatI don't, perhaps, talk through my nose? But we don't all do that. We doall sorts of things. "

He stuck to it. "You talk like us. "

"Well, I'm sure I don't mean to talk like anybody!" I sighed. 

This diverted him, and brought us closer. 

"And see here, " I continued, "I knew you were English, although you'venot dropped a single h. "

"Oh, but, " he said, "dropping h's--that's--that's not--"

"I know it isn't, " I said. "Neither is talking through your nose. And wedon't all say 'Amurrican. '"

But he stuck to it. "All the same there is an American voice. The trainyesterday was full of it. Officers. Unmistakable. " And he shook hishead. 

After this we got on better than ever; and as he went his way, he gaveme some advice about the hotel. I should do well to avoid the readingroom. The hotel went in rather too much for being old-fashioned. Ran itinto the ground. Tiresome. Good-night. 

Presently I shall disclose more plainly to you the moral of my Salisburyanecdote. 

Is it their discretion, do you think, that closes the lips of the Frenchwhen they visit our shores? Not from the French do you hear promptaspersions as to our differences from them. They observe that proverbabout being in Rome: they may not be able to do as Rome does, but theydo not inquire why Rome isn't like Paris. If you ask them how they likeour hotels or our trains, they may possibly reply that they prefer theirown, but they will hardly volunteer this opinion. But the American inEngland and the Englishman in America go about volunteering opinions. Are the French more discreet? I believe that they are; but I wonder ifthere is not also something else at the bottom of it. You and I will saythings about our cousins to our aunt. Our aunt would not allow outsidersto say those things. Is it this, the-members-of-the-family principle, which makes us less discreet than the French? Is it this, too, whichleads us by a seeming paradox to resent criticism more when it comesfrom England? I know not how it may be with you; but with me, when Ipick up the paper and read that the Germans are calling us pig-dogsagain, I am merely amused. When I read French or Italian abuse of us, I am sorry, to be sure; but when some English paper jumps on us, I hateit, even when I know that what it says isn't true. So here, if I amright in my members-of-the-family hypothesis, you have the English andourselves feeling free to be disagreeable to each other because we arerelations, and yet feeling especially resentful because it's a relationwho is being disagreeable. I merely put the point to you, I lay no dogmadown concerning members of the family; but I am perfectly sure thatdiscretion is a quality more common to the French than to ourselves orour relations: I mean something a little more than discretion, I meanesprit de conduits, for which it is hard to find a translation. 

Upon my first two points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, Ihave lingered long, feeling these to be not only of prime importance andwide application, but also to be quite beyond my power to make lucid inshort compass. I trust that they have been made lucid. I must now geton to further anecdotes, illustrating other and less subtle causes ofmisunderstanding; and I feel somewhat like the author of Don Juanwhen he exclaims that he almost wishes he had ne'er begun that veryremarkable poem. I renounce all pretense to the French virtue ofdiscretion. 

Evening dress has been the source of many irritations. Englishmen didnot appear to think that they need wear it at American dinner parties. There was a good deal of this at one time. During that period anEnglishman, who had brought letters to a gentleman in Boston and inconsequence had been asked to dinner, entered the house of his host in atweed suit. His host, in evening dress of course, met him in the hall. 

"Oh, I see, " said the Bostonian, "that you haven't your dress suit withyou. The man will take you upstairs and one of mine will fit you wellenough. We'll wait. "

In England, a cricketer from Philadelphia, after the match at Lord's, had been invited to dine at a great house with the rest of his eleven. They were to go there on a coach. The American discovered after arrivalthat he alone of the eleven had not brought a dress suit with him. Heasked his host what he was to do. 

"I advise you to go home, " said the host. 

The moral here is not that all hosts in England would have treated aguest so, or that all American hosts would have met the situation sowell as that Boston gentleman: but too many English used to be sociallybrutal--quite as much so to each other as to us, or any one. One shouldbear that in mind. I know of nothing more English in its way than whatEton answered to Beaumont (I think) when Beaumont sent a challenge toplay cricket: "Harrow we know, and Rugby we have heard of. But who areyou?"

That sort of thing belongs rather to the Palmerston days than to these;belongs to days that were nearer in spirit to the Waterloo of 1815, which a haughty England won, than to the Waterloo of 1914-18, which ahumbler England so nearly lost. 

Turn we next the other way for a look at ourselves. An American lady whohad brought a letter of introduction to an Englishman in London was inconsequence asked to lunch. He naturally and hospitably gathered tomeet her various distinguished guests. Afterwards she wrote him thatshe wished him to invite her to lunch again, as she had matters ofimportance to tell him. Why, then, didn't she ask him to lunch with her?Can you see? I think I do. 

An American lady was at a house party in Scotland at which she met agentleman of old and famous Scotch blood. He was wearing the kilt ofhis clan. While she talked with him she stared, and finally burst outlaughing. "I declare, " she said, "that's positively the most ridiculousthing I ever saw a man dressed in. "

At the Savoy hotel in August, 1914, when England declared war uponGermany, many American women made scenes of confusion and vociferation. About England and the blast of Fate which had struck her they hadnothing to say, but crowded and wailed of their own discomforts, meals, rooms, every paltry personal inconvenience to which they were subjected, or feared that they were going to be subjected. Under the unprecedentedstress this was, perhaps, not unnatural; but it would have seemed lessdispleasing had they also occasionally showed concern for England'splight and peril. 

An American, this time a man (our crudities are not limited to the sex)stood up in a theatre, disputing the sixpence which you always have topay for your program in the London theatres. He disputed so long thatmany people had to stand waiting to be shown their seats. 

During deals at a game of bridge on a Cunard steamer, the talk hadturned upon a certain historic house in an English county. The talk wasfriendly, everything had been friendly each day. 

"Well, " said a very rich American to his English partner in the game, "those big estates will all be ours pretty soon. We're going to buythem up and turn your island into our summer resort. " No doubt thismillionaire intended to be playfully humorous. 

At a table where several British and one American--an officer--satduring another ocean voyage between Liverpool and Halifax in June, 1919, the officer expressed satisfaction to be getting home again. He had goneover, he said, to "clean up the mess the British had made. "

To a company of Americans who had never heard it before, was told thewell-known exploit of an American girl in Europe. In an ancient churchshe was shown the tomb of a soldier who had been killed in battle threecenturies ago. In his honor and memory, because he lost his life bravelyin a great cause, his family had kept a little glimmering lamp alightever since. It hung there, beside the tomb. 

"And that's never gone out in all this time?" asked the American girl. 

"Never, " she was told. 

"Well, it's out now, anyway, " and she blew it out. 

All the Americans who heard this were shocked all but one, who said:

"Well, I think she was right. "

There you are! There you have us at our very worst! And with this plumpspecimen of the American in Europe at his very worst, I turn back to theEnglish: only, pray do not fail to give those other Americans who wereshocked by the outrage of the lamp their due. How wide of the mark wouldyou be if you judged us all by the one who approved of that horriblevandal girl's act! It cannot be too often repeated that we must nevercondemn a whole people for what some of the people do. 

In the two-and-a-half anecdotes which follow, you must watch out forsomething which lies beneath their very obvious surface. 

An American sat at lunch with a great English lady in her country-house. Although she had seen him but once before, she began a conversation likethis:

Did the American know the van Squibbers?

He did not. 

Well, the van Squibbers, his hostess explained, were Americans who livedin London and went everywhere. One certainly did see them everywhere. They were almost too extraordinary. 

Now the American knew quite all about these van Squibbers. He knew alsothat in New York, and Boston, and Philadelphia, and in many other placeswhere existed a society with still some ragged remnants of decencyand decorum left, one would not meet this highly star-spangled family"everywhere. "

The hostess kept it up. Did the American know the Butteredbuns? No?Well, one met the Butteredbuns everywhere too. They were rather moreextraordinary than the van Squibbers. And then there were the Cakewalks, and the Smith-Trapezes' Mrs. Smith-Trapeze wasn't as extraordinary asher daughter--the one that put the live frog in Lord Meldon's soup--andof course neither of them were "talked about" in the same way thatthe eldest Cakewalk girl was talked about. Everybody went to them, ofcourse, because one really never knew what one might miss if one didn'tgo. At length the American said:

"You must correct me if I am wrong in an impression I have received. Vulgar Americans seem to me to get on very well in London. "

The hostess paused for a moment, and then she said:

"That is perfectly true. "

This acknowledgment was complete, and perfectly friendly, and after thatall went better than it had gone before. 

The half anecdote is a part of this one, and happened a few weeks laterat table--dinner this time. 

Sitting next to the same American was an English lady whose conversationled him to repeat to her what he had said to his hostess at lunch:"Vulgar Americans seem to get on very well in London society. "

"They do, " said the lady, "and I will tell you why. We English--I meanthat set of English--are blase. We see each other too much, we areall alike in our ways, and we are awfully tired of it. Therefore itrefreshes us and amuses us to see something new and different. "

"Then, " said the American, "you accept these hideous people'sinvitations, and go to their houses, and eat their food, and drink theirchampagne, and it's just like going to see the monkeys at the Zoo?"

"It is, " returned the lady. 

"But, " the American asked, "isn't that awfully low down of you?" (Hesmiled as he said it. )

Immediately the English lady assented; and grew more cordial. Whennext day the party came to break up, she contrived in the manner ofher farewell to make the American understand that because of theirconversation she bore him not ill will but good will. 

Once more, the scene of my anecdote is at table, a long table in a club, where men came to lunch. All were Englishmen, except a single stranger. He was an American, who through the kindness of one beloved member ofthat club, no longer living now, had received a card to the club. TheAmerican, upon sitting down alone in this company, felt what I supposethat many of us feel in like circumstances: he wished there weresomebody there who knew him and could nod to him. Nevertheless, he wasspoken to, asked questions about various of his fellow countrymen, andmade at home. Presently, however, an elderly member who had been silentand whom I will designate as being of the Dr. Samuel Johnson type, said:"You seem to be having trouble in your packing houses over in America?"

We were. 

"Very disgraceful, those exposures. "

They were. It was May, 1906. 

"Your Government seems to be doing something about it. It's certainlyscandalous. Such abuses should never have been possible in the firstplace. It oughtn't to require your Government to stop it. It shouldn'thave started. "

"I fancy the facts aren't quite so bad as that sensational novel aboutChicago makes them out, " said the American. "At least I have been toldso. "

"It all sounds characteristic to me, " said the Sam Johnson. "It's quitethe sort of thing one expects to hear from the States. "

"It is characteristic, " said the American. "In spite of all the yearsthat the sea has separated us, we're still inveterately like you, abullying, dishonest lot--though we've had nothing quite so bad yet asyour opium trade with China. "

The Sam Johnson said no more. 

At a ranch in Wyoming were a number of Americans and one Englishman, aman of note, bearing a celebrated name. He was telling the company whatone could do in the way of amusement in the evening in London. 

"And if there's nothing at the theatres and everything else fails, youcan always go to one of the restaurants and hear the Americans eat. "

There you have them, my anecdotes. They are chosen from many. I hopeand believe that, between them all, they cover the ground; that, takentogether as I want you to take them after you have taken them singly, they make my several points clear. As I see it, they reveal the chiefwhys and wherefores of friction between English and Americans. It isalso my hope that I have been equally disagreeable to everybody. If I amto be banished from both countries, I shall try not to pass my exile inSwitzerland, which is indeed a lovely place, but just now too full ofcelebrated Germans. 

Beyond my two early points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, what are the generalizations to be drawn from my data? I should liketo dodge spelling them out, I should immensely prefer to leave it here. Some readers know it already, knew it before I began; while for others, what has been said will be enough. These, if they have the willto friendship instead of the will to hate, will get rid of theiranti-English complex, supposing that they had one, and understand betterin future what has not been clear to them before. But I seem to feelthat some readers there may be who will wish me to be more explicit. 

First, then. England has a thousand years of greatness to her credit. Who would not be proud of that? Arrogance is the seamy side of pride. That is what has rubbed us Americans the wrong way. We are recent. Ourthousand years of greatness are to come. Such is our passionate belief. Crudity is the seamy side of youth. Our crudity rubs the English thewrong way. Compare the American who said we were going to buy Englandfor a summer resort with the Englishman who said that when all otherentertainment in London failed, you could always listen to the Americanseat. Crudity, "freshness" on our side, arrogance, toploftiness ontheirs: such is one generalization I would have you disengage from myanecdotes. 

Second. The English are blunter than we. They talk to us as they wouldtalk to themselves. The way we take it reveals that we are toooften thin-skinned. Recent people are apt to be thin-skinned andself-conscious and self-assertive, while those with a thousand years oftradition would have thicker hides and would never feel it necessary toassert themselves. Give an Englishman as good as he gives you, andyou are certain to win his respect, and probably his regard. In thisconnection see my anecdote about the Tommies and Yankees who physicallyfought it out, and compare it with the Salisbury, the van Squibber, andthe opium trade anecdotes. "Treat 'em rough, " when they treat you rough:they like it. Only, be sure you do it in the right way. 

Third. We differ because we are alike. That American who stood in thetheatre complaining about the sixpence he didn't have to pay at homeis exactly like Englishmen I have seen complaining about the unexpectedhere. We share not only the same mother-tongue, we share every otherfundamental thing upon which our welfare rests and our lives are carriedon. We like the same things, we hate the same things. We have the samenotions about justice, law, conduct; about what a man should be, aboutwhat a woman should be. It is like the mother-tongue we share, yet speakwith a difference. Take the mother-tongue for a parable and symbol ofall the rest. Just as the word "girl" is identical to our sight but notto our hearing, and means oh! quite the same thing throughout us all inall its meanings, so that identity of nature which we share comesoften to the surface in different guise. Our loquacity estranges theEnglishman, his silence estranges us. Behind that silence beats theEnglish heart, warm, constant, and true; none other like it on earth, except our own at its best, beating behind our loquacity. 

Thus far my anecdotes carry me. May they help some reader to a betterunderstanding of what he has misunderstood heretofore!

No anecdotes that I can find (though I am sure that they are to befound) will illustrate one difference between the two peoples, verynoticeable to-day. It is increasing. An Englishman not only stickscloser than a brother to his own rights, he respects the rights of hisneighbor just as strictly. We Americans are losing our grip on this. Itis the bottom of the whole thing. It is the moral keystone of democracy. Howsoever we may talk about our own rights to-day, we pay less and lessrespect to those of our neighbors. The result is that to-day there ismore liberty in England than here. Liberty consists and depends uponrespecting your neighbor's rights every bit as fairly and squarely asyour own. 

On the other hand, I wonder if the English are as good losers as we are?Hardly anything that they could do would rub us more the wrong way thanto deny to us that fair play in sport which they accord each other. Ishall not more than mention the match between our Benicia Boy andtheir Tom Sayers. Of this the English version is as defective as ourschool-book account of the Revolution. I shall also pass over variousother international events that are somewhat well known, and I willillustrate the point with an anecdote known to but a few. 

Crossing the ocean were some young English and Americans, who got up aninternational tug-of-war. A friend of mine was anchor of our team. Wehappened to win. They didn't take it very well. One of them said to theanchor:

"Do you know why you pulled us over the line?"

"No. "

"Because you had all the blackguards on your side of the line. "

"Do you know why we had all the blackguards on our side of the line?"inquired the American. 

"No. "

"Because we pulled you over the line. "

In one of my anecdotes I used the term Sam Johnson to describe anEnglishman of a certain type. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a very markedspecimen of the type, and almost the only illustrious Englishman ofletters during our Revolutionary troubles who was not our friend. Rightdown through the years ever since, there have been Sam Johnsons writingand saying unfavorable things about us. The Tory must be eternal, asmuch as the Whig or Liberal; and both are always needed. There willprobably always be Sam Johnsons in England, just like the one who wasscandalized by our Chicago packing-house disclosures. No longer ago thanJune 1, 1919, a Sam Johnson, who was discussing the Peace Treaty, saidin my hearing, in London:

"The Yankees shouldn't have been brought into any consultation. Theyaided and abetted Germany. "

In Littell's Living Age of July 20, 1918, pages 151-160, you may read aninteresting account of British writers on the United States. The bygoneones were pretty preposterous. They satirized the newness of a newcountry. It was like visiting the Esquimaux and complaining that theygrew no pineapples and wore skins. In Littell you will find how few arethe recent Sam Johnsons as compared with the recent friendly writers. You will also be reminded that our anti-English complex was discernedgenerations ago by Washington Irving. He said in his Sketch Book thatwriters in this country were "instilling anger and resentment into thebosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth and to strengthenwith its strength. "

And he quotes from the English Quarterly Review, which in that early dayalready wrote of America and England:

"There is a sacred bond between us by blood and by language which nocircumstances can break.... Nations are too ready to admit that theyhave natural enemies; why should they be less willing to believe thatthey have natural friends?"

It is we ourselves to-day, not England, that are pushing friendshipaway. It is our politicians, papers, and propagandists who are makingthe trouble and the noise. In England the will to friendship rules, hasruled for a long while. Does the will to hate rule with us? Do we preferGermany? Do we prefer the independence of Ireland to the peace of theworld?

Chapter XVI: An International Imposture

A part of the Irish is asking our voice and our gold to helpindependence for the whole of the Irish. Independence is not desiredby the whole of the Irish. Irishmen of Ulster have plainly said so. Everybody knows this. Roman Catholics themselves are not unanimous. Onlysome of them desire independence. These, known as Sinn Fein, appeal tous for deliverance from their conqueror and oppressor; they dwell uponthe oppression of England beneath which Ireland is now crushed. Theyrefer to England's brutal and unjustifiable conquest of the Irish nationseven hundred and forty-eight years ago. 

What is the truth, what are the facts?

By his bull "Laudabiliter, " in 1155, Pope Adrian the Fourth invited theKing of England to take charge of Ireland. In 1172 Pope Alexander theThird confirmed this by several letters, at present preserved in theBlack Book of the Exchequer. Accordingly, Henry the Second wentto Ireland. All the archbishops and bishops of Ireland met him atWaterford, received him as king and lord of Ireland, vowing loyalobedience to him and his successors, and acknowledging fealty to themforever. These prelates were followed by the kings of Cork, Limerick, Ossory, Meath, and by Reginald of Waterford. Roderick O'Connor, King ofConnaught, joined them in 1175. All these accepted Henry the Secondof England as their Lord and King, swearing to be loyal to him and hissuccessors forever. 

Such was England's brutal and unjustifiable conquest of Ireland. 

Ireland was not a nation, it was a tribal chaos. The Irish nation ofthat day is a legend, a myth, built by poetic imagination. During thecenturies succeeding Henry the Second, were many eras of violence andbloodshed. In reading the story, it is hard to say which side committedthe most crimes. During those same centuries, violence and bloodshed andoppression existed everywhere in Europe. Undoubtedly England was veryoppressive to Ireland at times; but since the days of Gladstone she hassteadily endeavored to relieve Ireland, with the result that todayshe is oppressing Ireland rather less than our Federal Governmentis oppressing Massachusetts, or South Carolina, or any State. Bythe Wyndham Land Act of 1903, Ireland was placed in a position soadvantageous, so utterly the reverse of oppression, that Dillon, thepresent leader, hastened to obstruct the operation of the Act, lestthe Irish genius for grievance might perish from starvation. Examine thestate of things for yourself, I cannot swell this book with the details;they are as accessible to you as the few facts about the conquest whichI have just narrated. Examine the facts, but even without examiningthem, ask yourself this question: With Canada, Australia, and all thoseother colonies that I have named above, satisfied with England's rule, hastening to her assistance, and with only Ireland selling herselfto Germany, is it not just possible that something is the matter withIreland rather than with England? Sinn Fein will hear of no Home Rule. Sinn Fein demands independence. Independence Sinn Fein will not get. Not only because of the outrage to unconsenting Ulster, but also becauseBritain, having just got rid of one Heligoland to the East, will notpermit another to start up on the West. As early as August 25th, 1914, mention in German papers was made of the presence in Berlin of Casementand of his mission to invite Germany to step into Ireland when Englandwas fighting Germany. The traffic went steadily on from that time, andbroke out in the revolution and the crimes in Dublin in 1916. Englanddiscovered the plan of the revolution just in time to foil the landingin Ireland of Germany, whom Ireland had invited there. Were Englandseeking to break loose from Ireland, she could sue Ireland for a divorceand name the Kaiser as co-respondent. Any court would grant it. 

The part of Ireland which does not desire independence, which desires itso little that it was ready to resist Home Rule by force in 1914, is thesteady, thrifty, clean, coherent, prosperous part of Ireland. It is theother, the unstable part of Ireland, which has declared Ireland to be aRepublic. For convenience I will designate this part as Green Ireland, and the thrifty, stable part as Orange Ireland. So when our politicianssympathize with an "Irish" Republic, they befriend merely Green Ireland;they offend Orange Ireland. 

Americans are being told in these days that they owe a debt of supportto Irish independence, because the "Irish" fought with us in our ownstruggle for Independence. Yes, the Irish did, and we do owe them a debtof support. But it was the Orange Irish who fought in our Revolution, not the Green Irish. Therefore in paying the debt to the Green Irish andclamoring for "Irish" independence, we are double crossing the OrangeIrish. 

"It is a curious fact that in the Revolutionary War the Germans andCatholic Irish should have furnished the bulk of the auxiliaries to theregular English soldiers;... The fiercest and most ardent Americansof all, however, were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and theirdescendants. " History of New York, p. 133, by Theodore Roosevelt. 

Next, in what manner have the Green Irish incurred our thanks?

They made the ancient and honorable association of Tammany their own. Once it was American. Now Tammany is Green Irish. I do not believe thatI need pause to tell you much about Tammany. It defeated Mitchel, aloyal but honest Catholic, and the best Mayor of Near York in thirtyyears. It is a despotism built on corruption and fear. 

During our Civil War, it was the Green Irish that resisted the draft inNew York. They would not fight. You have heard of the draft riots in NewYork in 1862. They would not fight for the Confederacy either. 

During the following decade, in Pennsylvania, an association, calledthe Molly Maguires, terrorized the coal regions until their reign ofassassination was brought to an end by the detection, conviction, andexecution of their ringleaders. These were Green Irish. 

In Cork and Queenstown during the recent war, our American sailors wereassaulted and stoned by the Green Irish, because they had come to helpfight Germany. These assaults, and the retaliations to which they led, became so serious that no naval men under the rank of Commander werepermitted to go to Cork. Leading citizens of Cork came to beg that thisorder be rescinded. But, upon being cross-examined, it was found thatthe Green Irish who had made the trouble had never been punished. Ofthis many of us had news before Admiral Sims in The World's Work forNovember, pages 63-64, gave it his authoritative confirmation. 

Taking one consideration with another, it hardly seems to me that ourdebt to the Green Irish is sufficiently heavy for us to hinder Englandfor the sake of helping them and Germany. 

Not all the Green Irish were guilty of the attacks upon our sailors; notall by any means were pro-German; and I know personally of loyal RomanCatholics who are wholly on England's side, and are wholly opposed toSinn Fein. Many such are here, many in Ireland: them I do not mean. Itis Sinn Fein that I mean. 

In 1918, when England with her back to the wall was fighting Germany, the Green Irish killed the draft. Here following, I give some specificinstances of what the Roman Catholic priests said. 

April 21st. After mass at Castletown, Bear Haven, Father Brennan orderedhis flock to resist conscription, take the sacrament, and to be ready toresist to the death; such death insuring the full benediction of Godand his Church. If the police resort to force, let the people killthe police as they would kill any one who threatened their lives. Ifsoldiers came in support of the draft, let them be treated like thepolice. Policemen and soldiers dying in their attempt to carry out thedraft law, would die the enemies of God, while the people who resistedthem would die in peace with God and under the benediction of hisChurch. 

Father Lynch said in church at Ryehill: "Resist the draft by every meansin your power. Any minion of the English Government who fires upon you, above all if he is a Catholic, commits a mortal sin and God will punishhim. "

In the chapel at Kilgarvan Father Murphy said: "Every Irishman who helpsto apply the draft in Ireland is not only a traitor to his country, butcommits a mortal sin against God's law. "

At mass in Scariff the Rev. James MacInerney said: "No Irish Catholic, whatever his station be, can help the draft in this country withoutdenying his faith. "

April 28th. After having given the communion to three hundred men in thechurch at Eyries, County Cork, Father Gerald Dennehy said: "Any Catholicwho either as policeman or as agent of the government shall assist inapplying the draft, shall be excommunicated and cursed by the RomanCatholic Church. The curse of God will follow him in every land. You cankill him at sight, God will bless you and it will be the most acceptablesacrifice that you can offer. "

Referring to any policeman who should attempt to enforce the draft, Father Murphy said at mass in Killenna, "Any policeman who is killed insuch attempt will be damned in hell, even if he was in a state of gracethat very morning. "

Ninety-five percent of those Irish policemen were Catholics and had torespect the commands of those priests. 

Ireland is England's business, not ours. But the word"self-determination" appears to hypnotize some Americans. We must notbe hypnotized by this word. It is upon the "principle" expressed inthis word that our sympathies with the Irish Republic are asked. Thesix northeastern counties of Ulster, on the "principle" ofself-determination, should be separated from the Irish Republic. But theGreen Irish will not listen to that. Protestants in Ulster had to listenin their own chief city to Sinn Fein rejoicings over German victories. The rebellion of 1916, when Sinn Fein opened the back door thatEngland's enemies might enter and destroy her--this dastardly treasonwas made bloody by cowardly violence. The unarmed and the unsuspectingwere shot down and stabbed in cold blood. Later, soldiers who came homefrom the front, wounded soldiers too, were persecuted and assaulted. Themen of Ulster don't wish to fall under the power of the Green Irish. 

"We do not know whether the British statesmen are right in asserting aconnection between Irish revolutionary feeling and German propaganda. But in such a connection we should see no sign of a bad German policy. "Thus wrote a Prussian deputy in Das Grossere Deutschland. That was overthere. This was over here:--

"The fraternal understanding which unites the Ancient Order ofHibernians and the German-American Alliance receives our unqualifiedendorsement. This unity of effort in all matters of a publicnature intended to circumvent the efforts of England to secure anAnglo-American alliance have been productive of very successful results. The congratulations of those of us who live under the flag of the UnitedStates are extended to our German-American fellow citizens upon theconquests won by the fatherland, and we assure them of our unshakenconfidence that the German Empire will crush England and aid in theliberation of Ireland, and be a real defender of small nations. " See theBoston Herald of July 22, 1916. 

During our Civil War, in 1862, a resolution of sympathy with the Southwas stifled in Parliament. 

On June 6, 1919, our Senate passed, with one dissenting voice, thefollowing, offered by Senator Walsh, democrat, of Massachusetts:

"Resolved, that the Senate of the United States express its sympathywith the aspirations of the Irish people for a government of its ownchoice. "

What England would not do for the South in 1862, we now do againstEngland our ally, against Ulster, our friend in our Revolution, and insupport of England's enemies, Sinn Fein and Germany. 

Ireland has less than 4, 500, 000 inhabitants; Ulster's share is about onethird, and its Protestants outnumber its Catholics by more than threefourths. Besides such reprisals as they saw wrought upon woundedsoldiers, they know that the Green Irish who insist that Ulster belongto their Republic, do so because they plan to make prosperous andthrifty Ulster their milch cow. 

Let every fair-minded American pause, then, before giving his sympathyto an independent Irish Republic on the principle of self-determination, or out of gratitude to the Green Irish. Let him remember that it was theOrange Irish who helped us in our Revolution, and that the Orange Irishdo not want an independent Irish Republic. There will be none; ourinterference merely makes Germany happy and possibly prolongs theexisting chaos; but there will be none. Before such loyal and thinkingCatholics as the gentleman who said to me that word about "spoiling theship for a ha'pennyworth of tar, " and before a firm and coherent policyon England's part, Sinn Fein will fade like a poisonous mist. 

Chapter XVII: Paint

Soldiers of ours--many soldiers, I am sorry to say--have come back fromCoblenz and other places in the black spot, saying that they found theinhabitants of the black spot kind and agreeable. They give this reasonfor liking the Germans better than they do the English. They found theGermans agreeable, the English not agreeable. Well, this amounts tosomething as far as it goes: but how far does it go, and how much doesit amount to? Have you ever seen an automobile painted up to look likenew, and it broke down before it had run ten miles, and you found itsinsides were wrong? Would you buy an automobile on the strength of thepaint? England often needs paint, but her insides are all right. If oursoldiers look no deeper than the paint, if our voters look no furtherthan the paint, if our democracy never looks at anything but the paint, God help our democracy! Of course the Germans were agreeable to oursoldiers after the armistice!

Agreeable Germany!--who sank the Lusitania; who sank five thousandBritish merchant ships with the loss of fifteen thousand men, women, and children, all murdered at sea, without a chance for their lives; whofired on boat-loads of the shipwrecked, who stood on her submarine andlaughed at the drowning passengers of the torpedoed Falaba. 

Disagreeable England!--who sank five hundred German ships withoutpermitting a single life to be lost, who never fired a shot untilprovision had been made for the safety of passengers and crews. 

Agreeable Germany!--who, as she retreated, poisoned wells and gassedthe citizens from whose village she was running away; who wrecked thechurches and the homes of the helpless living, and bombed the tombsof the helpless dead; who wrenched families apart in the night, takingtheir boys to slavery and their girls to wholesale violation, leavingthe old people to wander in loneliness and die; who in her raids uponEngland slaughtered three hundred and forty-two women, and killed orinjured seven hundred and fifty-seven children, and made in all a listof four thousand five hundred and sixty-eight, bombed by her airmen;whose trained nurses met our wounded and captured men at the railroadtrains and held out cups of water for them to see, and then poured themon the ground or spat in them. 

Disagreeable England!--whose colonies rushed to help her: Canada, whowithin eight weeks after war had been declared, came with a voluntaryarmy of thirty-three thousand men; who stood her ground against thatfirst meeting with the poison gas and saved not only the day, butpossibly the whole cause; who by 1917 had sent over four hundredthousand men to help disagreeable England; who gave her wealth, herfood, her substance; who poured every symbol of aid and love intodisagreeable England's lap to help her beat agreeable Germany. Thusdid all England's colonies offer and bring both themselves and theirresources, from the smallest to the greatest; little Newfoundland, whoseregiment gave such heroic account of itself at Gallipoli; Australia whocame with her cruisers, and with also her armies to the West Front andin South Africa; New Zealand who came from the other side of the worldwith men and money--three million pounds in gift, not loan, from onemillion people. And the Boers? The Boers, who latest of all, not twentyyears before, had been at war with England, and conquered by her, andthen by her had been given a Boer Government. What did the Boers do? Inspite of the Kaiser's telegram of sympathy, in spite of his plans andhis hopes, they too, like Canada and New Zealand and all the rest, sided of their own free will with disagreeable England against agreeableGermany. They first stamped out a German rebellion, instigated in theirmidst, and then these Boers left their farms, and came to England's aid, and drove German power from Southwest Africa. And do you remember thewire that came from India to London? "What orders from the King-Emperorfor me and my men?" These were the words of the Maharajah of Rewa;and thus spoke the rest of India. The troops she sent captured NeueChapelle. From first to last they fought in many places for the Cause ofEngland. 

What do words, or propaganda, what does anything count in the face ofsuch facts as these?

Agreeable Germany!--who addresses her God, "Thou who dwellest high abovethe Cherubim, Seraphim and Zeppelin"--Parson Diedrich Vorwerck in hisvolume Hurrah and Hallelujah. Germany, who says, "It is better to let ahundred women and children belonging to the enemy die of hunger than tolet a single German soldier suffer"--General von der Goltz in his TenIron Commandments of the German Soldier; Germany, whose soldier obeysthose commandments thus: "I am sending you a ring made out of a pieceof shell.... During the battle of Budonviller I did away with four womenand seven young girls in five minutes. The Captain had told me toshoot these French sows, but I preferred to run my bayonet throughthem"--private Johann Wenger to his German sweetheart, dated Peronne, March 16, 1915. Germany, whose newspaper the Cologne Volkszettungdeplored the doings of her Kultur on land and sea thus: "Much as wedetest it as human beings and as Christians, yet we exult in it asGermans. "

Agreeable Germany!--whose Kaiser, if his fleet had been larger, wouldhave taken us by the scruff of the neck. 

 "Then Thou, Almighty One, send Thy lightnings!Let dwellings and cottages become ashes in the heat of fire. Let thepeople in hordes burn and drown with wife and child. May their seed betrampled under our feet; May we kill great and small in the lust of joy. May we plunge our daggers into their bodies, May Poland reek in the glowof fire and ashes. "

That is another verse of Germany's hymn, hate for Poland; that is herway of taking people by the scruff of the neck; and that is what SenatorWalsh's resolution of sympathy with Ireland, Germany's contemplatedHeligoland, implies for the United States, if Germany's deferred dayshould come. 

Chapter XVIII: The Will to Friendship--or the Will to Hate?

Nations do not like each other. No plainer fact stares at us from thepages of history since the beginning. Are we to sit down under thisforever? Why should we make no attempt to change this for the better inthe pages of history that are yet to be written? Other evils have beenmade better. In this very war, the outcry against Germany has beenbecause she deliberately brought back into war the cruelties andthe horrors of more barbarous times, and with cold calculations ofpremeditated science made these horrors worse. Our recoil from this deedof hers and what it has brought upon the world is seen in our wish for aLeague of Nations. The thought of any more battles, tenches, submarines, air-raids, starvation, misery, is so unbearable to our bruised andstricken minds, that we have put it into words whose import is, Letus have no more of this! We have at least put it into words. That suchwords, that such a League, can now grow into something more than words, is the hope of many, the doubt of many, the belief of a few. It is thebelief of Mr. Wilson; of Mr. Taft; Lord Bryce; and of Lord Grey, a quietEnglishman, whose statesmanship during those last ten murky days ofJuly, 1914, when he strove to avert the dreadful years that followed, will shine bright and permanent. We must not be chilled by the doubters. Especially is the scheme doubted in dear old Europe. Dear old Europeis so old; we are so young; we cause her to smile. Yet it is not such acontemptible thing to be young and innocent. Only, your innocence, whileit makes you an idealist, must not blind you to the facts. Your ideamust not rest upon sand. It must have a little rock to start with. Thenearest rock in sight is friendship between England and ourselves. 

The will to friendship--or the will to hate? Which do you choose? Whichdo you think is the best foundation for the League of Nations? Do youimagine that so long as nations do not like each other, that mere wordsof good intention, written on mere paper, are going to be enough? Writedown the words by all means, but see to it that behind your words thereshall exist actual good will. Discourage histories for children (and forgrown-ups too) which breed international dislike. Such exist among usall. There is a recent one, written in England, that needs some changes. 

Should an Englishman say to me:

"I have the will to friendship. Is there any particular thing which Ican do to help?" I should answer him:

"Just now, or in any days to come, should you be tempted to remind usthat we did not protest against the martyrdom of Belgium, that we were abit slow in coming into the war, --oh, don't utter that reproach! Go backto your own past; look, for instance, at your guarantee to Denmark, atLord John Russell's words: 'Her Majesty could not see with indifferencea military occupation of Holstein'--and then see what England shirked;and read that scathing sentence spoken to her ambassador in Russia:'Then we may dismiss any idea that England will fight on a point ofhonor. ' We had made you no such guarantee. We were three thousand milesaway--how far was Denmark?

"And another thing. On August 6, 1919, when Britain's thanks to her landand sea forces were moved in both houses of Parliament, the gentlemanwho moved them in the House of Lords said something which, as it seemsto me, adds nothing to the tribute he had already paid so eloquently. He had spoken of the greater incentive to courage which the French andBelgians had, because their homes and soil were invaded, while England'ssoldiers had suffered no invasion of their island. They had not thestimulus of the knowledge that the frontier of their country had beenviolated, their homes broken up, their families enslaved, or worse. Andthen he added: 'I have sometimes wondered in my own mind, though I havehardly dared confess the sentiment, whether the gallant troops of ourAllies would have fought with equal spirit and so long a time as theydid, had they been engaged in the Highlands of Scotland or on themarches of the Welsh border. ' Why express that wonder? Is there not herean instance of that needless overlooking of the feelings of others, bywhich, in times past, you have chilled those others? Look out for that. "

And should an American say to me:

"I have the will to friendship. What can I personally do?" I should say:

"Play fair! Look over our history from that Treaty of Paris in 1783, down through the Louisiana Purchase, the Monroe Doctrine, and ManilaBay; look at the facts. You will see that no matter how acrimoniouslyEngland has quarreled with us, these were always family scraps, in whichshe held out for her own interests just as we did for ours. But wheneverthe question lay between ourselves and Spain, or France, or Germany, orany foreign power, England stood with us against them. 

"And another thing. Not all Americans boast, but we have a reputationfor boasting. Our Secretary of the Navy gave our navy the whole creditfor transporting our soldiers to Europe when England did more than halfof it. At Annapolis there has been a poster, showing a big Americansailor with a doughboy on his back, and underneath the words, 'We putthem across. ' A brigadier general has written a book entitled, How theMarines Saved Paris. Beside the marines there were some engineers. Andhow about M Company of the 23rd regiment of the 2nd Division? It lostin one day at Chateau-Thierry all its men but seven. And did the generalforget the 3rd Division between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans? Don't belike that brigadier general, and don't be like that American officerreturning on the Lapland who told the British at his table he was gladto get home after cleaning up the mess which the British had made. Resemble as little as possible our present Secretary of the Navy. Avoidboasting. Our contribution to victory was quite enough without boasting. The head-master of one of our great schools has put it thus to hisschoolboys who fought: Some people had to raise a hundred dollars. Afterstruggling for years they could only raise seventy-five. Then a man camealong and furnished the remaining necessary twenty-five dollars. That isa good way to put it. What good would our twenty-five dollars have been, and where should we have been, if the other fellows hadn't raised theseventy-five dollars first?"

Chapter XIX: Lion and Cub

My task is done. I have discussed with as much brevity as I could thethree foundations of our ancient grudge against England: our schooltextbooks, our various controversies from the Revolution to the Alaskanboundary dispute, and certain differences in customs and manners. Someof our historians to whom I refer are themselves affected by the ancientgrudge. You will see this if you read them; you will find the facts, which they give faithfully, and you will also find that they often (andI think unconsciously) color such facts as are to England's discreditand leave pale such as are to her credit, just as we remember theAlabama, and forget the Lancashire cotton-spinners. You cannot fail tofind, unless your anti-English complex tilts your judgment incurably, that England has been to us, on the whole, very much more friendlythan unfriendly--if not at the beginning, certainly at the end of eachcontroversy. What an anti-English complex can do in the face of 1914, ishard to imagine: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, the Boers, allGreat Britain's colonies, coming across the world to pour their gold andtheir blood out for her! She did not ask them; she could not force them;of their own free will they did it. In the whole story of mankind such asplendid tribute of confidence and loyalty has never before been paid toany nation. 

In this many-peopled world England is our nearest relation. FromBonaparte to the Kaiser, never has she allowed any outsider to harmus. We are her cub. She has often clawed us, and we have clawed her inreturn. This will probably go on. Once earlier in these pages, I askedthe reader not to misinterpret me, and now at the end I make the samerequest. I have not sought to persuade him that Great Britain is acharitable institution. What nation is, or could be, given the nature ofman? Her good treatment of us has been to her own interest. She is wise, farseeing, less of an opportunist in her statesmanship than any othernation. She has seen clearly and ever more clearly that our good willwas to her advantage. And beneath her wisdom, at the bottom of all, isher sense of our kinship through liberty defined and assured by law. Ifwe were so far-seeing as she is, we also should know that her good willis equally important to us: not alone for material reasons, or for thesake of our safety, but also for those few deep, ultimate ideals of law, liberty, life, manhood and womanhood, which we share with her, which wegot from her, because she is our nearest relation in this many-peopledworld.