For several months it has been the pleasant duty of the writer of the
following deliverance to travel around the United States, lecturing
upon sundry War topics to indulgent American audiences. No one--least
of all a parochial Briton--can engage upon such an enterprise for long
without beginning to realize and admire the average American's amazing
instinct for public affairs, and the quickness and vitality with which
he fastens on and investigates every topic of live interest.
Naturally, the overshadowing subject of discussion to-day is the War,
and all the appurtenances thereof. The opening question is always the
same. It lies about your path by day in the form of a newspaper man,
or about your bed by night in the form of telephone call, and is
simply:
"When is the War going to end?"
(One is glad to note that no one ever asks _how_ it is going to end:
that seems to be settled.)
The simplest way of answering this question is to inform your
inquisitor that so far as Great Britain is concerned the War has only
just begun--began, in fact, on the first of July, 1916; when the
British Army, equipped at last, after stupendous exertions, for a
grand and prolonged offensive, went over the parapet, shoulder to
shoulder with the soldiers of France, and captured the hitherto
impregnable chain of fortresses which crowned the ridge overlooking
the Somme Valley, with results now set down in the pages of history.
Having weathered this conversational opening, the stranger from
Britain finds himself, as the days of his sojourn increase in number,
swept gently but irresistibly into an ocean of talk--an ocean
complicated by eddies, cross-currents, and sudden shoals--upon the
subject of Anglo-American relations over the War. Here is the
substance of some of the questions which confront the perplexed
wayfarer:--
1. "Do your people at home appreciate the fact that we are
thoroughly pro-Ally over here?"
2. "How about that Blockade? What are you opening our mails
for--eh?"