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CHAPTER XVI
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
A New Way of Making Friends—The Desirability of an Alliance— For the Sake of Both Peoples—And of All the World—The Family Resemblance—Mutual Misunderstandings—American Conception of the British Character—English Misapprehension of Americans— Foreign Influences in the United States—Why Politicians Hesitate—An Appeal to the People—And to Caesar.
At first sight it may not seem the likeliest way to make two people care for each other to go laboriously about to tell each how the other underestimates his virtues. Don Pedro's wile would appear to be the more direct—to tell Benedick how Beatrice doted on him, and Beatrice how Benedick was dying for her love. I have always had my doubts, however, about the success of that alliance.
In the case of two peoples so much alike as the English and the American, between whom friendship and alliance would be so entirely in accord with eternal fitness, who are yet held apart by misunderstanding on the part of each of the other's character, there seems no better way than to face the misunderstandings frankly and to endeavour to make each see how unjustly it undervalues the other's good qualities or overestimates its faults. At present neither Americans nor Englishmen understand what good fellows the others are. Least of all do they understand how essentially they are the same kind of good fellows.
In summarising the contents of the foregoing pages, there is no need here to rehearse, except in barest outline, the arguments in favour of alliance between the countries. The fact that war between them is an ever-present possibility ought in itself to suffice—war which could hardly fail to be more sanguinary and destructive than any war that the world has known. The danger of such a war is greater, perhaps, than the people of either country recognises, certainly greater than most Englishmen imagine. The people of England do not understand the warlike—though so peace-loving—character of the American nation. It is just as warlike as, though no less peace-loving than, the English, without the restraint of that good-will which the English feel for the United States; without, moreover, the check, to which every European country is always subjected, of the fear of complications with other Powers. The American people, as a whole, it cannot be too earnestly impressed on Englishmen, have no such good-will towards Great Britain as Englishmen feel for them; and not even English reluctance to draw the sword, nor the protests of the better informed and the more well-to-do people in the United States would be able to restrain what Mr. Cleveland calls "the plain people of the land" if they once made up their mind to fight.
Apart from the possibility of war between the two nations themselves, there is the constant peril, to which both are exposed, of conflict forced upon them by the aggressions of other Powers. That peril is always present to both, to the United States now no less—perhaps even more—than to Great Britain. The fact that neither need fear a trial of strength with any other Power or any union of Powers, is beside the question. Consciousness of its own strength is no guarantee to any nation that it will not be forced into conflict. Rather, by making it certain that it, at least, will not draw back, does it close up one possible avenue of escape from catastrophe when a crisis threatens.
But beyond all this—apart from, and vastly greater than, the considerations of the interest or the security of either Great Britain or the United States—is the claim of humanity. The two peoples have it in their hands to give to the whole world no less a gift than that of Universal and Perpetual Peace. It involves no self-sacrifice, the giving of this wonderful boon, for the two peoples themselves would share in the benefit no less than other peoples, and they would be the richer by the giving. It involves hardly any effort, for they have but to hold out their hands together and give. It matters not that the world has not appealed to them. The fact remains that they can do this thing and they alone; and it is for them to ask their own consciences whether any considerations of pride, any prejudice, any absorption in their own affairs—any consideration actual or conceivable—can justify them in holding back. Still more does it rest with the American people—usually so quick to respond to high ideals—to ask its conscience whether any consideration, actual or conceivable, can justify it in refusal when Great Britain is willing—anxious—to do her share.
That such an alliance must some day come is, I believe, not questionable. That it has not already come is due only to the misunderstanding by each people of the character of the other. Primarily, the two peoples do not understand how closely akin—how of one kind—they are, how alike they are in their virtues, and how their failings are but the defects of the same inherited qualities, even though shaped to somewhat diverse manifestations by differences of environment. Two brothers seldom recognise their likeness one to the other, until either looks at the other beside a stranger. Members of one family do not easily perceive the family resemblance which they share; rather are they aware only of the individual differences. But strangers see the likeness, and in their eyes the differences often disappear. So Englishmen and Americans only come to a realisation of their resemblance when either compares the other critically with a foreign people. Foreigners, however, see the likeness when they look at the two together. And those foreigners who know only one of the peoples will sketch the character of that people so that it might be taken for a portrait of the other. In all essentials the characters are the same; in minor attributes only, such as exist between the individual members of any family, do they differ.
Not only does neither people understand with any clearness how like it is to the other, but each is under many misapprehensions—some trivial, some vital—in regard to the other's temperament and ways of life. These misapprehensions are the result chiefly of the geographical remoteness of the lands, so that intimate contact between anything like an appreciable portion of the two peoples has been impossible; and, when thus separated by so wide a sea, Great Britain has been too consumedly engrossed in the affairs of the world to be able to give much time or thought to the United States, while America has been too isolated from that world, too absorbed in her own affairs, to be able to look at England in anything like true perspective.
Arising thus from different causes, the errors of the two peoples in regard to each other have taken different forms. Great Britain, always at passes with a more or less hostile Europe, has never lost her original feeling of kinship with, or good-will towards, the United States. There has been no time when she would not gladly have improved her knowledge of, and friendship with, the other, had she at any time been free from the anxieties of the peril of war with one Power or another, from the burden of concern for her Empire in India, from the weight of her responsibilities in regard to Australia, South Africa, Egypt, and the various other parts of Britain over seas. Engrossed as she has been with things of immediate moment to her existence, she has been perforce compelled to take the good-will of the remote United States for granted, and to assume that there was no need to voice her own. Until at last she was awakened with a rudeness of awakening that shocked and staggered her.
For the United States had had no such constant burden of anxiety, no perpetual friction with other peoples, to keep her occupied. Rather, sitting aloof in her isolation she had looked upon all the Powers of Europe as actors in a great drama with which she had no other than a spectacular concern. Only of all the Powers, by the very accident of common origin, by the mere circumstances of the joint occupation of the continent, Great Britain alone has been constantly near enough to the United States to impinge at times upon her sphere of development, to rub against her, to stand in her way. Great Britain herself has hardly known that this was so. But it has had the effect to make Great Britain in the mind of the United States the one foreign Power most potentially hostile.
In aloofness and silence, ignorant of the world, the American people nursed its wrath and brooded over the causes of offence which have seemed so large to it, though so trivial or so unintentional on the part of England, till the minds of the majority of the people held nothing but ill-feeling and contempt in response to England's good-will towards them. And always the United States has had those at her elbow who were willing—nay, for their own interests, eager—to play upon her wounded feelings and to exaggerate every wrong and every slight, however small or imaginary, placed upon her by Great Britain.
Thus the two peoples not only misunderstand each other but they misunderstand each other in different ways. They look at each other from widely sundered points of view and in diverse spirits. The people of the United States dislike and distrust Great Britain. They cannot believe that Great Britain's good-will for them is sincere. The expressions of that good-will, neglected while the American people was comparatively weak and finding expression now when it is strong, the majority of Americans imagine to be no more than the voice of fear. That alone shows their ignorance of England—their obliviousness of the kinship of the peoples. The two are of one origin and each may take it for granted that neither will ever be afraid of the other—or of any other earthly Power. That is not one of the failings of the stock.
The American people has thus never attained to any right view of the British Empire. By the accident of the war which gave the nation birth, the name "British" became a name of reproach in American ears. They have never since been able to look at Great Britain save through the cross-lights of their own interests, which have distorted their vision, while there have always been those at hand poisoning the national mind against the English. So they think of the British Empire as a bloody and brutal thing: of her rule of India in particular as a rule of barbarity and cruel force. Of late years American writers have come to tell Americans the truth; namely, that if the power of Great Britain were to be wiped out to-morrow and all her monuments were to perish except only those that she has built in India, the historians of future generations, looking only to those monuments in India, would pronounce Great Britain to have been, of all the Powers that have held great Empire since the beginning of time, the largest benefactor to the human race. But of this the American people as a whole knows nothing. It only knows that sepoys were blown from the mouths of British guns. So Englishmen, know that negroes in the South are lynched.
And as the American people has formed no comprehension of the British Empire as a whole and is without any understanding of its spirit, so it has drawn for itself a caricature of the British character. As the Empire is brutal and sanguinary, so is the individual bullying and overbearing and coarse. The idea was originally inherited from England's old enemies in Europe. It was a reflection of the opinion of the French; but it has been confirmed by the frankness of criticism of English travellers of all things in the United States. Americans do not recognise that by their own sensitiveness and anxiety for the judgment of others—a necessary, if morbid, result of their isolation and self-absorption—they invited the criticism, even if they did not excuse its occasional ill-breeding; nor has it occurred to them that the habit of outspoken criticism of all foreign things is a common inheritance of the two peoples and that they themselves are even more garrulously, if less bluntly—even more vaingloriously, if less arrogantly—frank in their habit of comment even than the English.
The same isolation and self-absorption as bred in them their sensitiveness to the opinions of others, made the Americans also unduly proud of such traits or accomplishments as strangers found to praise in them. This in itself might be good for a nation; but, so far as their understanding of Englishmen is concerned, it has unfortunately led them to suppose that those characteristics which they possess in so eminent a degree are proportionately lacking in the English character, which thereby incurs their contempt. Having been over-complimented on their own humour, they have determined that the Englishman is slow-witted, with no sense of fun—an opinion in itself so lacking in appreciation of its own absurdity as to be self-confounding. Too well assured of their own chivalrousness (a foible which they share with all peoples) they know the Englishman to be a domestic tyrant, incapable of true reverence of womanhood. Proud, not without reason, of their own form of government, wherein there is no room for a titled aristocracy, they delight in holding the peerage of Great Britain up to contempt (withal that there is a curious unconfessed strain of jealousy mingling therewith), and piecing together, like a child playing with bricks, the not too infrequent appearances of individual peers in the divorce or bankruptcy courts, they have constructed a fantastic image of the British aristocracy as a whole, wherein every member appears as either a roue or a spendthrift. Because they are—and have been so much told that they are—so full of push and energy themselves, they believe Englishmen to be ponderous and without enterprise; whereas if, instead of keeping their eyes and minds permanently intent on their own achievements, they had looked more abroad, they would have seen that, magnificent as has been the work which they have done in the upbuilding of their own nation and wonderful as is the fabric of their greatness, there has simultaneously been evoked out of chaos a British Empire, vaster than their own estate, and which is only not so near completion as their own structure in proportion as it is on a larger ground plan, inspired by larger ideas and involving greater (as well as infinitely more diffused) labour in its uprearing.
The statement of these facts involves no impugnment of American urbanity, American wit, American chivalry, or American enterprise. Only they are not so unique as Americans, in their isolation, conceive them to be. There are, in fact, others. It might not even be worth saying so much, if it were not that the belief in their uniqueness has necessarily resulted in American minds in a depreciation of the English character, which by so much helps to keep the two peoples estranged. Americans will be vastly more ready to believe in their English kinship, to like the English people, and to welcome a British alliance if they once get it into their heads that the English, as a nation, are just as fearless, just as chivalrous, no less fond of a joke or more depraved, nor much less enterprising or more careless of the feelings of others than themselves. That they think of Englishmen as they do to-day is not to be wondered at, and no blame attaches to them; for it is but a necessary result of causes which are easily seen. But the time has come when some effort to correct the errors in their vision is possible and desirable—not merely because they are unfair to Englishmen, which might be immaterial, and is no more than a fair exchange of discourtesies, but because the misunderstandings obstruct that good-will which would be such an untellable blessing, not only to the two peoples themselves, but to all the human race.
I am well aware that many American readers will say: "What is the man talking of? I do not think of Englishmen like that!" Of course you do not, excellent and educated reader—especially if you have travelled much in Great Britain or if you are a member of those refined and cultured classes (what certain American democrats would call the "silk-stocking element") which constitute the select and entirely charming society of most of the older cities of the Atlantic seaboard as well as of some of the larger communities throughout the country. If, belonging to those classes, you do not happen to have made it your business, either as a politician or a newspaper man, to be in close touch with the real sentiments of the masses of the country as a whole, you scarcely believe that anybody in America—except a few Irishmen and Germans—does think like that. If, however, you happen to be a good "mixer" in politics or have enjoyed the austerities of an apprenticeship in journalism,—if in fact you know the sentiments of your countrymen, I need not argue with you. Nor perhaps are very many Americans of any class conscious of holding all these views at once. None the less, if a composite photograph could be made of the typical Englishman as he is figured in the minds of, let us say, twenty millions of the American people—excluding negroes, Indians, and foreigners—the resultant figure would be little dissimilar from the sketch which I have made.
And I have said that, in holding these ideas, the Americans do but make a fair exchange of discourtesies; for the Englishman has likewise queer notions of the typical American. There is always this vast difference, however, that the Englishman is predisposed to like the American. In spite of his ignorance he feels a great—and, in view of that ignorance, an almost inexplicable—good-will for him. But it is not inexplicable, for once more the causes of his misapprehensions are easily traced.
First, there has been the eternal pre-occupation of the English people with the affairs of other parts of the world. When Great Britain has been so inextricably involved with the policies of all the earth that almost any day news might come from Calcutta, from Berlin, from St. Petersburg, from Pekin, or Teheran, or from almost any point in Asia, Africa, or Australia, which would shake the Empire to its foundation, how could the people spare time to become intimately acquainted with the United States? Of coarse Englishmen talk of the "State of Chicago," and—as I heard an English peasant not long ago—of "Yankee earls."
During all these years individual Americans have come to England in large numbers and have been duly noted and observed; but what the people of any nation notices in the casually arriving representatives of any other is not the points wherein the visitors resemble themselves, but the points of difference. In the case of Americans coming to England the fundamental traits are all resemblances and therefore escape notice, while only the differences—which by that very fact stand proclaimed as non-essentials—attract attention. So it is that the English people, having had acquaintance with a number of typical New Englanders, have drawn their conclusion as to the universality of one strong nasal American accent; they think the American people garrulously outspoken in criticism, with a rather offensive boastfulness, without any consciousness that precisely that same trait in themselves, in a slightly different form, is one of the chief causes why Englishmen are not conspicuously popular in any European country. From peculiarities of dress and manner which are not familiar to him in the product of his own public schools and universities, the Englishman has been inclined to think that the American people is not, even in its "better classes," a population of gentlemen.
Moreover, many Englishmen go to the United States—the vast majority for a stay of a few days or weeks, or a month or two—and they tell their friends, or the public at large in print, all about America and its people. It is not given to every one to be able, in the course of a few weeks or a month or two, to see below the surface indications down to the root-traits of a people—a feat which becomes of necessity the more difficult when those root-traits are one's own root-traits and the fundamental traits of one's own people at home, while on the surface are all manner of queer, confusing dazzlements of local peculiarities which jump to the stranger's vision and set him blinking. Yet more difficult does the feat appear when it is realised that the American people is scattered over a continent some three thousand miles across—so that San Francisco is little nearer to New York than is Liverpool—and that the section of the people with whom the Englishman necessarily comes first and, unless he penetrates both far and deep into the people, most closely in contact is precisely that class from which it is least safe to draw conclusions as to the thoughts, manners, or politics of the people as a whole. Therefore it is that one of the most acute observers informed Europe that in America "a gentleman had only to take to politics to become immediately declasse"—which, speaking of the politics of the country as a whole, is purely absurd. The visiting Englishman has generally found the whole sphere of municipal and local politics a novel field to him and has naturally been interested. Probing it, he comes upon all manner of tales of corruption and wickedness. He does not see that the body of American "politics," as the word is understood in England, is moderately free from these taints, but he tells the world of the corruption in that sphere of politics which he has studied merely because it does not exist at home and is new to him; and all the world knows that American politics are indescribably corrupt.
Similarly the visiting European goes into polite society and is amazed at the peculiar qualities of some of the persons whom he meets there. He tells stories about those peculiar people, but the background of the society, against which these people stood out so clearly, a background which is so much like his own at home, almost escapes his notice or is too uninteresting and familiar to talk about. There is no one to explain fully to the English people that while in England educated society keeps pretty well to itself, there are in America no hurdles—or none that a lively animal may not easily leap—to keep the black sheep away from the white, or the white from straying off anywhere among the black, so that a large part of the English people has imbibed the notion that there are really no refined or cultured circles in the United States.
Whenever a financial fraud of a large size is discovered in America, the world is told of it, just as certainly as it is told when an English peer finds his way to the divorce court; but nobody expounds to the nations the excellence of the honourable lives which are led by most American millionaires, any more than the world is kept informed of the drab virtue of the majority of the British aristocracy. Wherefore the English people have come to think of American business ethics as being too often of the shadiest; whereas they ought on reflection to be aware that only in most exceptional cases can great or permanent individual commercial success be won by fraud, and that nothing but fundamental honesty will serve as the basis for a great national trade such as the United States has built up.
Visiting Englishmen are bewildered by the strange types of peoples whom they see upon the streets and by the talk which they hear of "German elements" and "French elements" and "Scandinavian elements" in the population. But they do not as a rule see that these various "elements," when in the first generation of citizenship, are but a fringe upon the fabric of society, and when in the second or third generation they have a tendency to become entirely swallowed up and to merge all their national characteristics by absorption in the Anglo-Saxon stock; and that apart from and unheeding all these irrelevant appendages, the great American people goes on its way, homogeneous, unruffled, and English at bottom.
Finally Englishmen read American newspapers and, not understanding the different relation in which those newspapers stand to the people, they compare with them the normal English papers and draw inferences which are quite unjust. Similar inferences no less unjust may be drawn from hearing the speech of a certain number of well-to-do Americans, belonging, as Englishmen opine, to the class of "gentlemen."
These misunderstandings do less harm to the Englishman than to the American, inasmuch as the Englishman has that predisposition to national cordiality which the American has not. But, though the Englishman's mistakes do not influence his good-will to the United States, though he himself attaches no serious importance to them, his utterance of them is taken seriously by the Americans themselves and does not tend to the promotion of international good feeling. Therefore it is that it is no less desirable that English misconceptions of the United States should be corrected than it is that the American people should be brought to a juster appreciation of the British character and Empire.
It is in America, doubtless, that missionary work is most needed, inasmuch as all England would at any minute welcome an American alliance with enthusiasm; while in the United States any public suggestion of such an alliance never fails to provoke immediate and vehement protest. It is true that that protest issues primarily from the Irish and German elements; and it may seem absurd that the American people as a whole should suffer itself to be swayed in a matter of so national a character by a minority which is not only comparatively unimportant in numbers, but which the true American majority regards with some irritability as distinctly alien.
There are a large number of constituencies in the United States, however, where the Irish and German votes, individually or in combination, hold the balance of power in the electorate, and not only must many individual members of Congress hesitate to antagonise so influential a section of their constituents, but it is even questionable whether the united and harmonious action of those two elements might not, under certain conditions, be able to unseat a sufficient number of such individual members as to change the political complexion of one or both of the Houses of Congress, and even, in a close election, of the Administration itself. Nor is it necessary to repeat again that when the anti-British outcry is raised, though primarily by a minority and an alien minority, it finds a response in the breasts of a vast number of good Americans in whom the traditional dislike of England, though latent, still persists solely by reason of misapprehension and misunderstandings. Therefore it is that so many of the best Americans, who in their hearts know well how desirable an alliance with England would be, are content to deprecate its discussion and to say that things are well enough as they are; though again I say that things are never well enough so long as they might be better. However desirable such an alliance may be, however much to the benefit of the nation, it would, they say, be bad politics to bring it forward as a party question. And to bring it forward without its becoming from the outset a party question would be plainly impossible.
* * * * *
But would it be bad politics? Can it ever, in the long run, be bad politics to champion any cause which is great and good? It might be that it would be difficult for an individual member of Congress to come forward as the active advocate of a British alliance and not lose his seat; but in the end, the man who did it, or the party which did it, would surely win. When two peoples have a dislike of each other based on intimate knowledge by each of the other's character, to rise as the champion of their alliance might be hopeless; but when two peoples are held apart only by misunderstanding and by lack of perception of the boons that alliance between them would bring, it can need but courage and earnestness to carry conviction to the people and to bring success.
In such a cause there is one man in America to whom one's thoughts of necessity turn; and he is hampered by being President of the United States. Perhaps when his present term of office is over Mr. Roosevelt, instead of seeking the honourable seclusion which so often engulfs ex-Presidents, will find ready to his hand a task more than worthy of the man who was instrumental in bringing peace to Russia and Japan,—a task in the execution of which it would be far from being a disadvantage that he is as cordially regarded in Germany as he is in England and has himself great good-will towards the German Empire. Any movement on the part of Great Britain in company with any European nation could only be regarded by Germany as a conspiracy against herself: nothing that England or France or Japan—or any Englishman, Frenchman, or Japanese—could say or do would be received otherwise than with suspicion and resentment. But, after all, the good of humanity must come before any aspirations on the part of the German Empire, and it is the American people which must speak, though it speaks through the mouth of its President. If the American people makes up its mind that its interest and its duty alike dictate that it should join hands with England in the cause of peace, neither Germany nor any Power can do otherwise than acquiesce.
It is no novelty, either in the United States or in other countries, for considerations of temporary political expediency to stand in the way of the welfare of the people, nor is there any particular reason why an American politician should attach any importance to the desires of England. But we find ourselves again confronted with the same old question, whether the American people as a whole, who have often shown an ability to rise above party politics, can find any excuse for setting any consideration, either of individual or partisan interest, above the welfare of all the world. Yet once more: It is for Americans individually to ask their consciences whether any considerations whatever, actual or conceivable, justify them in withholding from all humanity the boon which it is in their power, and theirs alone, to give,—the blessing of Universal and Perpetual Peace.
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And yet, when this much has been said, it seems that so little has been told. It was pointed out, in one of the earlier chapters, how the people of each country in looking at the people of the other are apt to see only the provoking little peculiarities of speech or manner on the surface, overlooking the strength of the characteristics which underlie them. So, in these pages, it seems that we, in analysing the individual traits, have failed to get any vision of the character of either people as a whole. It is the trees again which obscure the view of the forest.
We have arrived at no general impression of the British Empire or of the British people. We have shown nothing of the majesty of that Empire; of its dignity in the eyes of a vast variety of peoples; of the high ambitions (unspoken, after the way of the English, but none the less earnest), which have inspired and still inspire it; of its maintenance of the standards of justice and fair dealing; of its tolerance or the patience with which it strives to guide the darkened peoples towards the light. Nothing has been said of the splendid service which the Empire receives from the sons of the Sea Wife; yet certainly the world has seen nothing comparable to the Colonial services of Great Britain, of which the Indian Civil Service stands as the type.
Nor have we said anything of the British people, with its steadfastness, in spite of occasional frenzies, its sanity, and its silent acceptance, and almost automatic practice, of a high level of personal and political morality. Above all we have seen nothing of the sweetness of the home life of the English country people, whereof the more well-to-do lead lives of wide sympathies, much refinement, and great goodness; while the poor under difficult conditions, hold fast to a self-respecting decency, little changed since the days when from among them, there went out the early settlers to the New England over seas, which never fails, notwithstanding individual weaknesses, to win the regard of one who lives among them.
So of the American people; we have conveyed no adequate impression of the manly optimism, the courageous confidence in the ultimate virtue of goodness and sound principles, on which the belief in the destiny of their own country is based. The nation has prospered by its virtues. Every page of their history preaches to the people that it is honesty and faith and loyalty which succeed, and they believe in their future greatness because they believe themselves to possess, and hope to hold to, those virtues as in the past.
It may be that, living in the silences and solitudes of the frontier and the wilderness, they have found the greater need of ready speech when communication has offered. It may be that the mere necessity of planning together the framework of their society and of building up their State out of chaos has imposed on them the necessity of more outspokenness. Certainly they have discarded, or have not assumed, the reticence of the modern English of England; and much of this freedom of utterance Europeans misinterpret, much (because the fashion of it is strange to themselves) they believe to be insincere. In which judgments they are quite wrong. The American people are profoundly sincere and intensely in earnest.
Since the establishment of the Republic, in the necessity of civilizing a continent, in the breathless struggle of the Civil War, in the rapidity with which society has been compelled to organize itself, in the absorption and assimilation of the continuous stream of foreign immigrants, the people have always been at grips with problems of immediate, almost desperate urgency; and they have never lost, or come near to losing, heart or courage. They have learned above all things the lesson of the efficacy of work. They have acquired the habit of action. Self-reliance has been bred in them. They know that in the haste of the days of ferment abuses grew up and went unchecked; and they know that in that same haste they missed some of the elegancies which a more leisurely and easier life might have given opportunity to acquire. But for a generation back, they have been earnestly striving to eradicate those abuses and to lift themselves, their speech, their manners, their art and literature to, at least, a level with the highest. It has been impossible in these pages (it would perhaps be impossible in any pages) to give any unified picture of this national character with its activity, its self-reliance, its belief in the homely virtues and its earnest ambition to make the best of itself. But of the future of a people with such a character there need be no misgivings, and Americans are justified in the confidence in their destiny.
What is needed is that these two peoples holding, with similar steadfastness, to the same high ideals, pushing on such closely parallel lines in advance of all other peoples, should come to see more clearly how near of kin they are and how much the world loses by any lack of unison in their effort.
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Once more let me ask readers to turn back and read again the paragraphs from other pens with which this book is introduced.
APPENDIX. (See Chapter III., pp. 81, sqq.)
This book was almost ready for the press when Dr. Albert Shaw's collection of essays was published under the title of The Outlook for the Average Man. Dr. Shaw is one of America's most lucid thinkers and he contributes what I take to be a new (though once stated an obviously true) explanation of what I have spoken of as the homogeneousness of the American people. The West, as we all know, was largely settled from the East. That is to say that a family or a member of a family in New York moved westward to Illinois, thence in the next generation to Minnesota, thence again to Montana or Oregon. A similar movement went on down the whole depth of the United States, families established in North Carolina migrating first to Kentucky, then to Ohio, so to Texas, and finally on to California. All parts of the country therefore have, as the nucleus of their population, people of precisely the same stock, habits, and ways of thought. The West was settled "not by radiation of influence from the older centres, but by the actual transplantation of the men and women." Dr. Shaw proceeds:
"England is not large in area and the people are generally regarded as homogeneous in their insularity. But as a matter of fact the populations of the different parts of England are scarcely at all acquainted in any other part. Thus the Yorkshireman would only by the rarest chance have relatives living in Kent or Cornwall. The intimacy between North Carolina and Missouri, for example, is incomparably greater than that between one part of England and another part. In like manner, the people of the North of France know very little of those of the South of France, or even of those living in districts not at all remote. Exactly the same thing is true of Italy and Germany, and is characteristic of almost every other European land. As compared with other countries, we in America are literally a band of brothers."—The Outlook for the Average Man, pages 104, 105.
INDEX
A
Academy, newspaper, the, 159
Alderman, election of an, 239; "Mike," 252
Alliance, Anglo-American, desirable, 7, 430
Alliances, entangling, what they mean, 5
Amateurs, in sport, 421
American accent, the, 106
American dislike of England, 43, 46, 98 sqq., 112, 430
American journalists in London, 220
"American methods," in business, 328
American people, the, a bellicose people, 8; its fondness for ideal, 10; sensitive to criticism, 34; dislike of subterfuges, 34; an Anglo-Saxon people, 37, 87, 140; and its leading men, 48; foreign elements in, 58, 80, 227, 443; self-reliant, 67; resourceful, 70; homogeneous, 80, 211, 451; quick to move, 87; "sense of the state" in, 89; its ambitions, 90; character of, influenced by the country, 97; likes round numbers, 105; its provincialism, 113; its isolation, 116, 434; effect of criticism on, 115, 157; its attitude toward women, 119 sqq.; its insularity, 146; manners of, 147; pushfulness, 148; did not invent all progress, 151; humour of, 152; its literature, 157; science, 159; art, 160; architecture, 160; its self-confidence, 164; factors in the education of, 171; influence of the Civil War on, 188; its hunger for culture, 189; not superficial, 193, 204; eclecticism, 194; musical knowledge of, 199; drama of, 201; takes culture in paroxysms, 203; looks to the future, 208; political corruption in, 234; great parties in, 256; political sanity of, 284; purifying itself, 300, 324, 336, 353, 364; aristocracy in, 309; shrinks from European commercial conditions, 331; hatred of trusts, 331; misrepresented by its press, 340; contempt for hereditary legislators, 346; commercial integrity, 351; religious feeling in, 353; insistence of an individuality, 382; a character sketch, 448
American speech, uniformity of, 85, 209
Americanisms, in English speech, 209; their origin in America, 216; disappearing, 224
Americans, at home in England, 36; fraternise with English abroad, 38; and "foreigners," 39; as sailors, 62; their ambitions, 90; in London, 106; ignorant of foreign affairs, 113; treatment of women, 119 sqq.; their insularity, 146; energy, 148; humour, 152; what they think of English universities, 169; pride of family in, 181; know no "betters," 194; ambitious of versatility, 205; as linguists, 206; purists in speech, 219; cannot lie, 352; as story-tellers, 366; non-litigious, 394; do not build for posterity, 396; dislike stamps, 398; as sportsmen, 409
Anglais, l', 2, 37, 141
Anglomania, 163
Anglo-Saxon, family likeness, the, 35, 432; particularist spirit, 37; versatility, 74; spirit in America, 87, 244; superiority, 118; attitude towards women, 140; ideals in education, 170; a fighting race, 187; ambition to be versatile, 205; and Celt in politics, 254; superior morality of, 349; pluck and energy, 381; the sporting instinct, 426
Anstey, F. L., his German professor, 156
Archer, Wm., on the Anglo-Saxon type, 38; on the American's outlook on the world, 97; on pressing clothes, 214
Architecture, American, 160
Aristocracy, in the U. S., 309; the British disreputable, 338, 442
Arnold, Matthew, his judgment of Americans, 108; his clothes, 108; on American colleges, 167; on American newspapers, 177; on generals as booksellers, 185
Art, American, 160; feminine knowledge of, 182
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, the, 363
Athletics in England and America, 420
Atlantis, a new, 94
B
Baldwin, W. H., 305
Banks, American and English, 383
Barnard College, 142
Bears, bickering with, 381
Bell-cord, divination by the, 363
Benedick and Beatrice, 429
Bonds, recoiling from, 236
Books, advantage of reading, 172; ease of buying, in America, 174; prices of, 175; publishing American, in England, 221
Booksellers as soldiers, 185
Bosses in politics, 239, 252, 274
Boston, culture of, 195, 219
Botticelli, 185
Brewers as gentlemen, 315
Bribery in American politics, 234
"British," hatred of the name, 57
British bondholders, 52
British commerce, 52
British Empire, American misunderstanding of, 20, 112, 151, 435; its size, 437; its beauty, 447
Bryan, W. J., first nomination of, 234, 273; and W. R. Hearst, 283
Bryce, James, on American electoral system, 247; on State sovereignty, 262; on political corruption, 279; on the U. S. Senate, 287
Buffalo in New York, 416
Buildings, tall, built in sections, 368
Burke, Edward, in Ireland, 101; indictment against a whole people, 101
Business, as a career, 317; its effect on mentality, 318; the romance of American, 319; frauds in, 324; the tendency of modern, to consolidations, 330; speculation in America, 386; less ruthless in America, 388; slipshod, 395; principles of modern, 404
C
California, the Japanese in, 263, 287
Cambon, M. Paul, 139
Campbell, Wilfred, in England, 92
Canada, American investments in, 379
Canadian opinion of England, 92; resemblance to Americans, 379
Carlyle, Thomas, 190
Caruso, Signor, 384
Celts, non-Anglo-Saxon, 254
Century Club, the, 103
Champagne Standard, The, 147
Chaperons, 381, 393
Chatham and American manufactures, 375
Cheques, cashing, 383
Chicago, pride in itself, 163; pigs in, 177
Civil War, the navy in the, 64; causes of, 11; magnitude of, 186; its value to the people, 188, 218
Classics, American reprints of English, 174
Cleveland, Grover, on Venezuela, 43, 109
Climate, the English, 121, 350
Co-education, its effect on the sexes, 127; in America, 142
Colonies, destiny of British, 94
Colquhoun, A. R., 113
Commercial morality, 308
Concord school, the, 157
Congress, corruption in, 244; compared with Parliament, 246, 249; more honest than supposed, 252; powers of, 289; best men excluded from, 345
Congressmen, how influenced, 247, 251; how elected, 247; log-rolling among, 249; hampered by the Constitution, 402
Conkling, Roscoe, 148
Constitution, U. S., growth of, 6; interpretation of, 288; and Congress, 402
Consular service, the American, 78
Contract, a proposed international, 338
Convention, a National Liberal, 270
Copyright laws, English, faulty, 221
Corporations, Mr. Roosevelt and the, 296; persecuted by individual States, 403
Corruption, in municipal affairs, 232, 239, 242; in national affairs, 234; in State legislatures, 235; in English counties, 237; in Congress, 244; in the railway service, 361
Court, U. S. Supreme, 400
Criticism, English, of America, 116, 157; American, of England, 117
Croker, Richard, 278
Cromwell as a fertiliser, 190
Crooks, William, elected Premier, 271
Crosland, W. H., 88
Cuba as a cause of war, 12
Cyrano de Bergerac, 196, 202
D
Debtors favoured by laws, 403
Democrats correspond to Liberals, 256
Demolins, Edmond, on Anglo-Saxon superiority, 2; on l'Anglais, 37
Doctor, the making of a, 69
"Dog eat dog," 388
Domestic and imported goods, 163
Drama, the, in England and America, 201
Drunkenness, in London, 131
Dunne, F. P., 154
E
Education, in England and America, 166; object of American, 193
Elections, purity of, 229 (note); municipal, 239; to Congress, 241; of a Prime Minister, 265; the last English general, 274; virulence of American, 281
Electric light, towns lighted by, 367
Embalmed beef scandals, 341
Emerson, R. W., on the Civil War, 188; the apostle of the individual, 382
English-made goods, 365, 373
English society, changes in, 314
English "style" in printing, 221
Englishmen, local varieties of, 85; effect of expansion on, 95; feeling of, toward Americans, 99, 434; as specialists, 105; dropping their H's, 106; check-suited, 108; their cosmopolitanism, 114; as husbands, 123; insularity of, 145; as grumblers, 149; lecturing, 195; as linguists, 206; study of antiquity, 208; careless of speech, 220; in American politics, 226; in English politics, 231; political integrity of, 238, 278; and business, 321; misunderstand American people, 347; the world's admiration of, 349; religious feeling in, 353; sense of honour in, 359; commercial morality of, 365; distrust American industrial stability, 371; as investors in U. S. and Canada, 379; slowness of, 380; as sportsmen, 415; admirable qualities of, 448
European plan, the, 104
Exhibition, an American, in London, 161
F
Federal Government, the, and Illinois, 262; and Louisiana, 262; and California, 263; powers of, 288
Federalism, progress of, in America, 217
Feminism, 139
Ferguson, 133
Fliegende Blaetter, 153
Football in England, 412
Foreign elements in the American people, 58, 80, 82, 138, 226
Forty-fourth Regiment, the, 40
France, England's entente with, 8; and American commerce, 378
Franklin, Benjamin, his Autobiography, 157; and English political morality, 280
Frauds in American business, 324
Free silver, poison, the, 235; campaign of 1896, 280
Freeman, E. A., on the Englishman of America, 42
Frenchmen, opinions of, 2, 36, 37, 92, 139, 177, 378; attitude towards women, 120; towards learning, 205
Frontier life, as a discipline, 72, 381
G
Gentleman, Bismarck's parole de, 234
Gentlemen, brewers as, 315; and business men, 316; in sport, 420
Gentlemen's agreement, the, 354
George, Lloyd, 334
Germans, outnumber Irish in N. Y., 58; attitude toward women, 120, 140; humour of, 153; laboriousness of, 205; in politics, 226, 255; as judges of honesty, 351 (note); in sport, 426
Germany, ambitions of, 29; Monroe Doctrine aimed at, 46
Gibson, C. D., 160
Girl, the American, 130
Gladstone, W. E., American admiration for, 167; on Japan, 205
Golf, the power of, 409
Granger agitation, the, 298
Gravel-pit, politics in a, 282
Great Britain, peaceful disposition of, 8, 23; pride of, 14, 61; desires alliance with U. S., 19; American hostility to, in 1895, 46; its nearness to America geographically, 50; commercially, 52; historically, 54; America's only enemy, 55; its army in S. Africa, 75; diversity of tongues in, 85; Norman influence in, 87; Canadian opinion of, 92; miraculously enlarged, 94; insularity of, 145; luck of, 149; cannot be judged from London, 150; class distinctions disappearing, 212; politics in, 231; municipal bosses in, 232; American conditions transplanted to, 237, 266; electing a Prime Minister in, 270; municipal politics in, 279; becoming democratised, 314; a creditor nation, 323; trust-ridden, 329; wealth of, 386; solicitor-cursed, 393; as the mother of sports, 414; preoccupation of, 433
"Grieg, the American," 200
H
Hague, Conference at The, 17
Hanotaux, Gabriel, on American commerce, 378
Harrison, Benjamin, 47
Hays, C. M., 310
Hearst, W. R., and England, 46; bad influence of, 282; inventor of the yellow press, 342 (note)
Hell-box, the, 281
Helleu, Paul, 196
Higginson, T. W., on American temperament, 2
Hill, James J., 310
Hoar, U. S. Senator, on England, 1; on the hatred of the British, 57
Homer as a Tory, 257
Homogeneousness of the American people, 83, 211, 451
Hotel, the Fifth Avenue, 122
Hotels, ladies' entrances to, 120
Howells, W. D., 147
Hughitt, Marvin, 311, 359
Humour, American and English, 152
I
Ideals, American devotion to, 10
Illinois and the Federal Government, 262
Immigration problem, the, 81
India, 112
Indians, red, regard of, for Englishmen, 349; in the war of Independence, 350 (note); Turkish baths of, 363
Individuality, American insistence on, 382, 391
Insularity, English and American, 145
International sentiments, how formed, 291
Ireland, Burke's feeling for, 101
Irish, the influence of, against England, 58, 444; attitude towards women, 140; vote in politics, 227; as a corrupting influence, 252; non-Anglo-Saxon, 254; lack independence, 255; in New York, 277
Irving, Washington, on frontiersmen, 381
Italians, in municipal politics, 241, 253; lynched in New Orleans, 262
J
James, Henry, 155
Japan, England's alliance with, 8; its eclectic method, 193; Mr. Gladstone on, 205; and California, 263, 287; tin-tacks for, 375
Japanese, in California, 263; British admiration of, 351; watering their horses, 367; as "John," 376
Johnson, Samuel, 132
Joint purses, 332
Jonson, Ben, 215
Justice in American courts, 400
K
King George men, 349
Kipling, Rudyard, his "type-writer girl," 132; "The Sea Wife," 187; "The Monkey-Puzzler," 380; "An Error in the Fourth Dimension," 408
L
La Farge, John, 103, 161
Lang, Andrew, on Americanisms, 221
Law, Bonar, 334
Legislators must read and write, 71
Legislatures, quality of American State, 79, 401
Letters, two, 389
Lewis, Alfred Henry, 154
Liberals, English, and Democrats, 256; influence of, on American thought, 346
"Liberty, that damned absurd word," 10
Life, New York, 129, 162
Literature, English ignorance of American, 157
Litigation, American dislike of, 394
"Live and let live," 388
Lobbyists, 244
Locomotives, temporary and permanent, 396
Log-rolling, 249
London, foreign affairs in, 114; Strand improvements, 151; "raining in," 163; a Tammany Hall in, 232
Lord, Englishmen's love of a, 309
Lords, the House of, and the U. S. Senate, 313; a defence of, 342
Louisiana and the Federal Government, 262
Loyal Legion, the, 187, 189
Luck, English belief in, 108
Lying, American ability in, 352
Lynchings, 302
M
MacDowell, Edward, 200
Mafia in New Orleans, 263
Magazines, American, 160, 171, 180
Mansfield, Richard, 202
Max O'Rell, on John Bull and Jonathan, 36, 92; on American newspapers, 177
Merchant marine, the American, 63
Mexico, possible annexation of, 27
Mining camp life, 70, 132
"Molly-be-damned," 134
Monopolies, artificial and natural, 407
Moore, Zeluco, 119
Morality, of the two people, sexual, 120; political, see under Corruption; commercial, 308, 400; sporting, 426
Morgan, Pierpont, 358
Mormons and ants, 214
Morris, Clara, 201
Mount Stephen, Lord, 310
Municipal politics, 231, 239, 242
Muensterberg, Hugo, on England, 36; on American commercial ethics, 351; on sport, 426
Music in England and America, 198
N
N—— G——, 125
Navarro, Madame de, 201
Navigating, how to learn, 70
Navy, the American, 62
Negro problem, the, 301
New Orleans, battle of, 41; the Mafia in, 263
New York, not typically American, 72; proud of London, 163; culture of, 219; Irish influence in, 256; in national politics, 277
Newspapers, American and English, 177; sensationalism in, 326; peculiarities of American, 340
Norman influence in England, 87
Northern Pacific Railroad, the, 361
Norton, James, 163
O
Operas, American knowledge of, 198
Opportunity, America and, 387
Oxenstiern, Count, 149
Oxford, value of, 169
P
Packing-house scandals, 326
Panic, financial, the, of 1907, 325, 402
Parliament, railway influence in, 246; compared with Congress, 249, 344
Parsnips, 102
Parties, the two great, in America, 256; interdependence of national and local organisations, 264
Patronage, party, 265
Peace, universal, the possibility of, 13, 32, 431
Peerage, an American, 310; democracy of the British, 316; morals of, 338
Pheasants in London, 416
Philadelphia, corruption in, 252
Philistinism in England and America, 185
Pigs, in Chicago, 177; how to roast, 372
Pilgrims, the Society of, 47
Platform in American sense, 215
Poet's Corner, 132
Police, corruption through the, 232
Politics, American, the foreign vote in, 227, 443; the "best people" in, 228, 441; what it means in America, 230; municipal, 231; Republican and Democrat, meaning of, 256; national and municipal, 264; President Roosevelt in, 300
Polo, American, 412
Pooling, railway, 332, 357
Poppycock, 426
Postal laws, 171
Posters, American humour and, 155
Presidency, Mr. Roosevelt and the, 293
Protection, policy of, 65, 245, 253
Publishers, American and English, 222
Punch, London, 152, 198
Putnam, Herbert, and H. G. Wells, 93
R
Railways, oppression of, by States, 297, 403; pooling by, 332; working agreements in English, 333; English and American attitude towards, contrasted, 334; morality on American, 355; and English, 359; peculation on, 361; and the Standard Oil Co., 392
Reed, E. T., 154
Reich, Dr. Emil, 126
Religious feeling of the two peoples, 353
Re-mount scandal, 341
Representative system, the, 247
Republican party, the, in Philadelphia, 252; corresponds to English conservatives, 256
Reverence, American lack of, 48, 76
Rhodes, Cecil, 319
Rhodes scholarships, 166
River and harbour bills, 249
Robin, the American, 215
Robinson, Philip, on Chicago, 177
Rodin, A., 196
Roman Catholic Church in relation to women, 140
Roosevelt, imaginary telegram from, 16; and the merchant marine, 66; and purity of elections, 229 (note); and post-route doctrine, 290; his influence for good, 293; his commonplace virtues, 293 (note); inventor of the "'fraid strap," 294; "Teddy" or "Theodore," 295; an aristocrat, 295; and the corporations, 296; misrepresentation of, 298; as a politician, 300; his imperiousness, 301; and the negro problem, 305; and wealth, 336; as peacemaker, 445
Rostand, M. E., 196
Ruskin, John, price of his books, 175; on America's lack of castles, 191; on Tories, 257
Russia, England's agreement with, 8
S
S—— B——, the Hon., 108
Sailors, British and American, fraternise, 39; Americans as, 63
Schools, American, 170; English, 176
Schurz, Carl, on American intelligence, 2
Schuyler, Montgomery, 103
Scotland, religious feeling in, 354
Sea-wife's sons, the, 187
Senate, the, its place in the Constitution, 286; treaty-making power of, 287; and the House of Lords, 313
Sepoys, blown from cannon, 112
Shakespeare in America, 195
Shaw, Albert, 451
Ship subsidies, 64
Shooting in America, 418
Sky-scrapers, 368
Speculation in America, 387
Smith, Sydney, on women speaking, 79
Society, American, mixed, 182, 442
Soldiers, American and British, in China, 39; compared, 61; material for, in U. S., 75; British, in S. Africa, 75; as farm hands, 186; as Presidents, 187
Solicitors, 393
South, the dying spirit of the, 306
Southerners, in Northern States, 228; lynchings by, 303
Spanish war, the, reasons for, 11; England's feeling in, 60; effect on the American people, 113
Sparks, Edwin E., on frontiersmen, 382
Speech, uniformity of American, 85; American and English compared, 209, 219; purism in, 219
Sport, amateur, in America, 409
Stage, the American, 201
Stamp tax, American dislike of, 398
Stamped paper, 398
Standard Oil Co., 391
State legislatures, corruption in, 235; shortcomings of, 401
States, governments of the, 260; sovereignty of, 261, 285, 290; and English counties, 264 (note); justice in, 401
Steel, American competition in, 375
Steevens, G. W., on Anglo-American alliance, 3; on American feeling for England, 100
Stenographers as hostesses, 132
Stevenson, R. L., on American speech, 85
Strap, the 'fraid, 294
Strathcona and Mount Royal, Lord, 310
Style, American and English literary, 221
Superficiality of Americans, 193, 204
Surveyor, the making of a, 69
T
Table d'hote in America, 104
Tammany Hall, 278
Taxes, corrupt assessment of, 242
Thackeray, W. M., on Anglo-American friendship, 1
Thomas, Miss M. Carey, 143
Thoreau, his Walden, 157
Throne, the British, as a democratic force, 335
Tin-tacks for Japan, 375
Travis, W. J., 408
Treaties, inability of U. S. to enforce, 263, 285; how made in America, 286
Truesdale, W. H., 359
Trusts, Mr. Roosevelt and the, 295; in England and America, 329, 334, 391; beneficial, 406
U
Unit rule, the, 267, 270
United States, the, has become a world-power, 6; in danger of war, 8; power of, 14; expansion of, 24; further from England than England from it, 50; the future of, 90; size of, 94; the equal of Great Britain, 163; unification of, 217; politics in, 227; Congress of, 244; and Italy, 262; and Japan, 263; its treaty relations with other powers, 286; a peerage in, 310; its reckless youth, 323; has sown its wild oats, 324; growth of, 364; commercial power of, 371; a debtor nation, 384
Universities, American and English, 167
Usurpation by the general government, 289
V
Van Horne, Sir William, 310
Venezuelan incident, the, 43, 156
Verestschagin, Vasili, 197, 202
Vigilance Committees, 302, 364
Vote, foreign in America, the, 227
Voting, premature, 227
W
Wall Street methods, 326
War stores scandal, 341
Washington, Booker, 305
Wealth, President Roosevelt and, 296; its diffusion in America, 330; no counterpoise to, in U. S., 335; purchasing power of, in England and America, 335 (note); prejudice against, 403
Wells, H. G., on American "sense of the State," 89; on the lack of an upper class in America, 309 (note); on trade, 404
West, the feeling of, for the East, 73; English ignorance of, 200; Yankee distrust of, 369
West Indies, transfer to the U. S., 32
West Point, incident at, 41
Whiskey and literature, 175
Wild-fowling, 418
Winter, E. W., 359
Woman, an American, in England, 103; in Westminster Abbey, 132; in a mining camp, 133; on a train, 134
Women, American attitude toward, 119 sqq.; in the streets of cities, 120; English, in America, 122; English treatment of, 123; the morality of married, 129; adaptability of American, 137; their share in civic life, 137; Anglo-Saxon attitude toward, 140; effect of co-education on, 143; culture of American, 182; musical knowledge of American, 198
World, the N. Y., 342 (note)
Y
Yankee, the real, 369; earls, 440
Yellow press, the, 327, 340, 342 (note)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The following words use an oe ligature in the original:
manoeuvres phoenixes
The following corrections have been made to the text:
Page 85: the Americans homogeneous[original has homoeogeneous] over a much larger
Page 101: Americans will protest against being called[original has call] a homogeneous
Page 118: It is less offensive than[original has that] the mature
Page 153: Englishmen do not know the meaning of a joke.[153:1][Footnote anchor is missing in original]
Page 153: the clubs of Great Britain[original has Britian]
Page 208: he has not entire right to the best wherever[original has where-ever hyphenated across a line break] he may find it
Page 252: a stranger is[original has as] likely to get the idea
Page 321: conditions of business are widely different.[period is missing in original]
Page 354: copies of the famous "Gentleman's Agreement,"[original has single quote]
Page 389: "[quotation mark missing in original]DEAR A.:
Page 453, under the entry for American people, eclecticism,[comma missing in original] 194
Page 457: Helleu[original has Hellen], Paul, 196
Footnote 287-1: The American Commonwealth, vol. 1[original has extraneous period], page 110
On page 193, the original reads "... be able to remember when the Daily Telegraph created, by appealing...." There should be a word of explanation after "created".
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