IV

Britain has been too forgetful of the past, America, perhaps, too

mindful; and in the everyday relations of life Britain has often been

tactless and unsympathetic, America suspicious and supersensitive. There

is every prospect, I think, that such errors will become, in the future,

rarer and ever rarer; and it behoves us, on our side, to be careful in

guarding against them. We have not hitherto sufficiently respected

America,--that is the whole story. We have taken no pains to know and

understand her. We have too often regarded her with a careless and

supercilious good feeling, which she has not unnaturally mistaken for

ill feeling, and repaid in kind. The events of the past year seem to

have brought the two countries almost physically closer to each other,

and to have made them more real, more clearly visible, each to each.

America has won the respectful consideration of even the most

thoughtless and insular among us. She has come home to us, so to speak,

as a vast and vital factor in the problem of the future.

Superciliousness towards her is a mere anachronism.

Many Englishmen, however, are still guilty of a thoughtless captiousness

towards America, which is none the less galling because it manifests

itself in the most trifling matters. A friend of my own returned a few

years ago from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he

heartily disliked the country, and would never go back again. Inquiry as

to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or

damning charge than that "they" (a collective pronoun presumed to cover

the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding

them--or _vice versâ_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is

the orthodox process. Doubtless he had other, and possibly weightier,

causes of complaint; but this was the head and front of America's

offending. Another Englishman of education and position, being asked why

he had never crossed the Atlantic, gravely replied that he could not

endure to travel in a country where you had to black your own boots!

Such instances of ignorance and pettiness may seem absurdly trivial, but

they are quite sufficient to act as grits in the machinery of social

intercourse. Americans are very fond of citing as an example of English

manners the legend of a great lady who, at an American breakfast, saw

her husband declining a dish which was offered to him, and called across

the table, "Take some, my dear--it isn't half as nasty as it looks."

Three different people have vouched to me for the truth of this

anecdote, each naming the heroine, and each giving her a different name.

True or false, it is held in America to be typical; and it would

scarcely be so popular as it is unless people had suffered a good deal

from the tactlessness which it exemplifies. The same vice, in a more

insidious form, appears in a remark made to me the other day by an

Englishman of very high intelligence, who had just returned from a long

tour in America, and was, in the main, far from unsympathetic. "What I

felt," he said, "was the suburbanism of everything. It was all Clapham

or Camberwell on a gigantic scale." Some justice of observation may

possibly have lain behind this remark, though I certainly failed to

recognise it. But in the form of its expression it exemplified that

illusion of metropolitanism which is to my mind the veriest cockneyism

in disguise, and which cannot but strike Americans as either ridiculous

or offensive.

Englishmen who, as individuals, wish to promote and not impede an

international understanding, will do well to take some little thought to

avoid wounding, even in trifles, the just and inevitable

susceptibilities of their American acquaintances. Our own national

self-esteem is cased in oak and triple brass,[M] and we are apt to

regard American sensitiveness as a ridiculous foible. It is nothing of

the sort: it is a psychological necessity, deep-rooted in history and

social conditions.

Again, there are certain misunderstandings which Englishmen, not as

individual human beings but as citizens of the British Empire, ought

carefully to guard against. Let us beware of speaking or thinking as

though friendship for England involved on the part of America any

acceptance of English political ideas or imitation of English methods.

In especial, let us carefully guard against the idea that an

Anglo-American understanding, however cordial, implies the adoption of

an "expansionist" policy by the United States, or must necessarily

strengthen the hands of the "expansionist" party. If America chooses to

"take up the white man's burden" in the Kiplingesque sense, it would ill

become England to object; but her doing so is by no means a condition of

England's sympathy. It might seem, indeed, that she had plenty of "white

man's burden" to shoulder within her own continental boundaries; but

that is a matter which she is entirely competent to determine for

herself.

Most of all must we beware of anything that can encourage an impression,

already too prevalent in America, that we find the "white man's burden"

too heavy for us, and are anxious to share it with the United States.

This suspicion is very generally felt and very openly expressed. Take,

for instance, this paragraph from an editorial in one of the leading

Chicago papers:

"It would be a strange thing to see Continental Europe take up arms

against Great Britain alone.... That it is a very reasonable

possibility, however, is generally recognised in Europe, and it

was doubtless a knowledge of this fact that induced Great Britain

to make such unusual exertions to ally itself with the United

States."

Here, again, is another journalistic straw floating on the stream:

"Referring to the fact that English and American officers had

fallen side by side in Samoa while promoting commercial interests,

Lord [Charles] Beresford expressed the hope that the two nations

would 'always be found working and fighting in unison.' This might

keep us pretty busy, your lordship."

In a rather low-class farce which I saw in a Chicago theatre, two men

wandered through the action, with the charming irrelevance

characteristic of American popular drama, attired, one as John Bull, the

other as Brother Jonathan. There came a point in the action where some

one had to be kicked out of the house. "You do it, Jonathan," said John

Bull; whereupon Jonathan retorted: "I know your game; you want me to do

your fighting for you, but _I don't do it_! See?" These are ridiculous

trifles, no doubt, but they might be indefinitely multiplied; and they

show the set of a certain current in American feeling. Let us beware of

lending added strength to this current by any appearance of

self-interested eagerness in our advances towards America.

One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the true

American clings above everything to his Americanism. The status of an

American citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that although he

may clearly enough recognise the abuses of American political life, and

the dangers which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling (which is

not to be confounded with an ignorant chauvinism, though in some cases

it may take that form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation;

and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon it, or compete with it

in any way, would have the least chance of taking a permanent place in

the American mind. The feeling which, as one may reasonably hope, is now

growing up between the two nations must be based on the mutual admission

of absolute independence and equality. The relation is new to history,

and must beget a new emotion. Strong as is the bond of mutual interest,

it must have a large idealism to reinforce it--a sentiment (shall we

say?) of mutual admiration--if the English-speaking peoples are to play

the great part in the drama of the future which Destiny seems to be

urging upon them. In order to stand together in perfect freedom and

dignity, it is essential that each of the brother-nations should be

incontestably able to stand alone. If we want to cement the

Anglo-American understanding, the first thing we have to do is to cement

the British Empire.

There is no more typical and probably no more widely respected American

at the present moment than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even those

who dissent from his "strenuous" ideal and his expansionist opinions,

admit him to be a model of political integrity and public spirit. In an

article on "The Monroe Doctrine," published in 1896, Mr. Roosevelt wrote

as follows:

"No English colony now stands on a footing of genuine equality with

the parent State. As long as the Canadian remains a colonist, he

remains in a position which is distinctly inferior to that of his

cousins, both in England and in the United States. The Englishman

at bottom looks down on the Canadian, as he does on any one who

admits his inferiority, and quite properly too. The American, on

the other hand, with equal propriety, regards the Canadian with the

good-natured condescension always felt by the freeman for the man

who is not free. A funny instance of the English attitude towards

Canada was shown after Lord Dunraven's inglorious fiasco last

September, when the Canadian yachtsman Rose challenged for the

America Cup. The English journals repudiated him on the express

ground that a Canadian was not an Englishman, and not entitled to

the privileges of an Englishman. In their comments, many of them

showed a dislike for Americans which almost rose to hatred. The

feeling they displayed for Canadians was not one of dislike. It was

one of contempt."

There are several contestable points in this statement, and I quote it,

though it is but three years old, as a historical rather than a

contemporary utterance. At the same time it expresses an almost

universal American point of view, and indicates errors to be corrected,

dangers to be avoided. It is absurd, of course, that the American should

look down upon the Canadian as a "man who is not free"; but every shadow

of an excuse for such an attitude ought to be removed, and the citizen

of the British Empire ought to have as clearly defined a status as the

citizen of the American Republic.

Even if such unpleasant incidents should recur as those to which Mr.

Roosevelt alludes, we may trust with tolerable confidence that he would

now find no "hatred" for America, or "contempt" for Canada, in the tone

of the British Press. The years which have passed since 1896 have not

only created a new feeling between England and America, but have drawn

the Empire together. In this respect--in every respect--much remains to

be done.

But at least we can say with assurance that a good beginning has been

made towards that consolidation of the English-speaking countries on

which the well-being of the world so largely depends.

POSTSCRIPT.--The notion of inevitable hostility between a constitutional

Monarchy and a Republic has been fostered by American writers in whom

one would have expected greater clearness of perception. We find Lowell,

for instance, writing in his well-known essay _On a Certain

Condescension in Foreigners_: "I never blamed her (England) for not

wishing well to democracy--how should she?" The more obvious question

is, How should not one democracy wish another well? There may have been

at the time when Lowell wrote, and there may even be to-day, a handful

of royalty-worshippers in England who regard a Republic as a vulgar,

unpicturesque form of government; but this is not a political opinion,

or even prejudice, but mere stolid snobbery. Whatever were England's

misdemeanours towards America at the time of the Civil War, they were

not prompted by any hatred of democracy.

I find the same misconception insisted on in a document much later than

Lowell's essay: a leaflet by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, contributed

to a _Good Citizenship Series_ especially designed for the enlightenment

of the more ignorant class of American voters. The tract is called _The

Ruler of America_, and sets forth that the Ruler of America is "The

People with a very large P." Now, according to Dr. Hale, we benighted

Europeans are absolutely incapable of grasping this truth. He says:

"This is at bottom the trouble with the diplomatists of Europe, with

prime ministers, and with leaders of ''Er Majesty's Hopposition.'...

Even men of intelligence.... can make nothing of the central truth of

our system.... In my house, once, an English gentleman of great

intelligence told me that he had visited the White House, and was most

glad to pay his respects to 'the Ruler of our Great Nation.' Poor man!

he thought he would please me! But he saw his mistake soon enough. I

stormed out, 'Ruler of America? Who told you he was the ruler of

America? He never told you so. He is the First Servant of America.' And

I hope the poor traveller learned his lesson."

It is true that the poor traveller used a pompous and rather absurd

expression, but if he had had his wits about him he might have reminded

Dr. Hale that the President is much more effectively the Ruler of

America than the Queen is the Ruler of England. He rules by the direct

mandate of the People, but he rules none the less. It would greatly

conduce to a just understanding between America and England if the

political instructors of the American people would correct instead of

confirming the prevalent impression that they have a monopoly of

democracy.