THE DIFFERENCE IN POINT OF VIEW
The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness--How Frenchmen and Germans
View it--Englishmen, Americans, and "Foreigners"--An Echo of
the War of 1812--An Anglo-American Conflict Unthinkable--
American Feeling for England--The Venezuelan Incident--The
Pilgrims and Some Secret History--Why Americans still Hate
England--Great Britain's Nearness to the United States
Geographically--Commercially--Historically--England's Foreign
Ill-wishers in America.
The one thing chiefly needed to make both Englishmen and Americans
desire an alliance is that they should come to know each other better.
They would then be astonished to find not only how much they liked each
other, but how closely each was already in sympathy with the other's
ways of life and thought and how inconsiderable were the differences
between them. Some one (I thought it was Mr. Freeman, but I cannot find
the passage in his writings) has said that it would be a good way of
judging an Englishman's knowledge of the world to notice whether, on
first visiting America, he was most struck by the differences between
the two peoples or by their resemblances. When an intelligent American
has travelled for any time on the Continent of Europe, in contact with
peoples who are truly "foreign" to him, he feels on arriving in London
almost as if he were at home again. The more an Englishman moves among
other peoples, the more he is impressed, on reaching the United States,
with his kinship to those among whom he finds himself. Nor is it in
either case wholly, or even chiefly, a matter of a common speech.
"Jonathan," says Max O'Rell, "is but John Bull expanded--John Bull with
plenty of elbow room." And the same thing is said again and again in
different phraseology by various Continental writers. It is said most
impressively by those who do not put it into words at all, as by
Professor Muensterberg[36:1] who is apparently not familiar with England,
but shows no lack of willingness to dislike her. There is therefore no
intentional comparison between the two peoples, but the writer's point
of view has absorbing interest to an Englishman who knows both
countries. More than once he remarks with admiration or astonishment on
traits of the American character or institutions in the United States
which the Englishman would necessarily take for granted, because they
are precisely the same as those to which he has been accustomed at home.
Writing for a German public, the Professor draws morals from American
life which delight an English reader by their naive and elementary
superfluousness. In all unconsciousness, Professor Muensterberg has
written a most valuable essay on the essential kinship of the British
and American peoples as contrasted with his own.
Two brothers will commonly be aware only of the differences between
them--the unlikeness of their features, the dissimilarities in their
tastes or capabilities,--yet the world at large may have difficulty in
distinguishing them apart. While they are conscious only of their
individual differences, to the neighbours all else disappears in the
family resemblance. So it is that Max O'Rell sees how like the American
is to the Englishman more clearly than Mark Twain: Professor Muensterberg
has involuntarily traced the features of the one in the lineaments of
the other with a surer hand than Matthew Arnold or Mr. Bryce.
When, in his remarkable book, M. Demolins uses the term Anglo-Saxon, he
speaks indifferently at one time of Englishmen and at another of
Americans. The peoples are to him one and indistinguishable. Their
greatness is a common greatness based on qualities which are the
inheritance of their Anglo-Saxon origin. Chief among these qualities,
the foundation-stone of their greatness, is the devotion to what we will
follow him in calling the "Particularistic" form of society,--a society,
that is, in which the individual predominates over the community, and
not the community over the individual; a society which aims at
"establishing each child in its full independence." This is, a Frenchman
sees, eminently characteristic of the English and the Americans, in
contrast with other peoples, with those which hold a republican form of
government no less than those which live under an autocracy. And it is
peculiarly Saxon in its origin,--not derived from the Celt or Norman or
Dane. These latter belonged (as do the peoples sprung from, or allied
to, them to-day) to that class of people which places the community
above the individual, which looks instinctively to the State or the
government for initiative. The Saxons alone (a people of earnest
individual workers, agriculturalists and craftsmen) relied always on the
initiative and impulse of the individual--what M. Demolins calls "the
law of intense personal labour"--and it was by virtue of this quality
that they eventually won social supremacy over the other races in
Britain. It is by virtue of the same quality that the Americans have
been enabled to subdue their continent and build up the fabric of the
United States. It is this quality, says the French writer almost
brutally, which makes the German and Latin races to-day stand to
_L'Anglais_ in about the same relation as the Oriental and the Redskin
stand to the European. And when M. Demolins speaks of _L'Anglais_, he
means the American as much as the "Englishman of Britain." It is a
convenient term and, so essentially one are they in his eyes, there is
no need to distinguish between the peoples. Mr. William Archer's remark
is worth quoting, that "It is amazing how unessential has been the
change produced in the Anglo-Saxon type and temperament [in America] by
the influences of climate or the admixtures of foreign blood."[38:1]
When individual Englishmen and Americans are thrown together in strange
parts of the world, they seldom fail to foregather as members of one
race. There may be four traders living isolated in some remote port; but
though the Russian may speak English with less "accent" than the
American and though the German may have lived for some years in New
York, it is not to the society of the German or the Russian that the
American or the Englishman instinctively turns for companionship. The
two former have but the common terms of speech; the Englishman and the
American use also common terms of thought and feeling.
The people who know this best are the officers and men of the British
and American navies, who are accustomed to find themselves thrown with
the sailors of all nations in all sorts of waters; and wherever they are
thus thrown together, the men who sail under the Stars and Stripes and
those who fly the Union Jack are friends. I have talked with a good many
British sailors (not officers) and it is good to hear the tone of
respect in which they speak of the American navy, as compared with
certain others.
The opportunities for similar companionship among the men of the armies
of the two nations are fewer, but when the allied forces entered China
the comradeship which arose between the American and British troops, to
the exclusion of all others, is notorious. Every night after mess,
British officers sought the American lines and _vice versa_. The
Americans have the credit of having invented that rigorous development
of martial law, by which, as soon as British officers came within their
lines, sentries were posted with orders not to let them pass out again
unless accompanied by an American officer. Thus the guests could not
escape from hospitality till such hour as their hosts pleased.
Some ten years ago military representatives of various nations were
present by invitation at certain manoeuvres of the Indian army, and
one night, when an official entertainment was impending, the United
States officers were guests at the mess of a British regiment. Dinner
being over, the colonel pushed his chair back and, turning to the
American on his right, said in all innocence:
"Well, come along! It's time to go and help to receive these d----d
foreigners."
An incident less obviously _a propos_, but which seems to me to strike
very truly the common chord of kinship of character between the races,
was told me by a well-known American painter of naval and military
subjects. He was the guest of the Forty-fourth (Essex) at, I think,
Gibraltar, when in the course of dinner the British officer on his right
broke a silence with the casual remark:
"I wonder whether we shall ever have another smack at you fellows."
The American was not unnaturally surprised.
"Why? Do you want it?" he asked.
"No; we should hate to fight you of course, but then, you know, the
Forty-fourth was at New Orleans."
It appealed to the American--not merely the pride in the regiment that
still smarted under the blow of ninety years ago, but still more the
feeling towards himself, as an American, that prompted the Englishman to
speak in terms which he knew that he would never have dreamed of using
under similar circumstances to the representative of any "foreign"
nation. The Englishman had no fear that the American would
misunderstand. It appealed to the latter so much that after his return
to the United States, being called upon to speak at some entertainment
or function at West Point, when, besides the cadets, there were many
officers of the United States Army in the room, he told the story.
Instantly, as he finished, a simultaneous cry from several places in the
hall called for "Three cheers for the Forty-fourth!" There was no
Englishman in the company, but, as he told me the story, never had he
heard so instantaneous, so crashing a response to any call, as then when
the whole room leaped to its feet and cheered the old enemies who had
not forgotten.[41:1]
It is not my wish here to discuss even the possibility of war between
Great Britain and the United States. The thing is too horrible to be
considered as even the remotest of contingencies--the "Unpardonable
War," indeed, as Mr. James Barnes has called it. None the less, there is
always greater danger of such a war than any Englishman imagines or than
many Americans would like to confess. However true it may be that it
takes two to make a quarrel, it is none the less true that if one party
be bent upon quarrelling it is always possible for him to go to lengths
of irritation and insult which must ultimately provoke the most
peaceful and reluctant of antagonists. However pacific and reluctant to
fight Great Britain might be at the outset, she is not conspicuously
lacking in national pride or in sensitiveness to encroachments on the
national honour.
Mr. Freeman makes the shrewd remark that "the American feels a greater
distinction between himself and the Englishman of Britain than the
Englishman of Britain feels between himself and the American," which
remains entirely true to-day, in spite of the seemingly paradoxical fact
that the American knows more of English history and English politics
than the Englishman knows of the politics and history of the United
States. This by no means implies that the American knows more of the
English character than the Englishman knows of his. On the contrary, the
Americans have seen infinitely less of the world than Englishmen, and
however many of the bare facts of English history and English politics
they may know, they are strangely ignorant of the atmosphere to which
those facts belong, and have never learned how much more foreign to them
other foreign nations are. The individual American will take the
individual Englishman into his friendship--will even accept him as a
sort of a relative--but as a political entity Great Britain is almost as
much a foreign nation as any.
The casual Englishman visiting the United States for but a short time
will probably not discover this fact. He only knows that he is cordially
received himself--even more cordially, he feels, than he deserves--and
most probably those persons, especially the ladies, whom he meets will
assure him that they are "devoted" to England. He may not have time to
discover that that devotion is not universal. Only after a while, in all
probability, will the fact as stated by Mr. Freeman dawn upon him, and
he will somehow be aware that with all the charming hospitality that he
receives he is in some way treated as more of a foreigner than he is
conscious of being. It is necessary that he should have some extended
residence in the country--unless his visit happens to coincide with such
an incident as the Venezuelan controversy or the outbreak of the Boer
War--before things group themselves in at all their right perspective
before his eyes. The intensity of the feeling displayed at the time of
the Venezuelan incident came as a shock to Englishmen at home; but those
who had lived for any length of time in America (west of New York) were
not surprised. It is probable that the greater number of the American
people at that time wished for war, and believed that it was nothing but
cowardice on the part of Great Britain--her constitutional dislike of
fighting anybody of her own size, as a number of the papers pleasantly
phrased it--that prevented their wish from being gratified.
The concluding paragraphs of ex-President Cleveland's treatise on this
subject are illuminating. In 1895, as I have said, a majority of the
American people unquestionably wished to fight; but that numerical
majority included perhaps a minority of the native-born Americans, a
small minority certainly of the richer or more well-to-do among them,
and an almost infinitesimal proportion of the best educated of the
native-born. This is what Mr. Cleveland says:
"Those among us who most loudly reprehended and bewailed our vigorous
assertion of the Monroe Doctrine were the timid ones who feared personal
financial loss, or those engaged in speculation and stock-gambling, in
buying much beyond their ability to pay, and generally in living by
their wits [_sic_]. The patriotism of such people traverses exclusively
the pocket nerve. . . . But these things are as nothing when weighed
against the sublime patriotism and devotion to their nation's honour
exhibited by the great mass of our countrymen--the plain people of the
land. . . . Not for a moment did their Government know the lack of their
strong and stalwart support. . . . It [the incident] has given us a
better place in the respect and consideration of the people of all
nations, and especially of Great Britain; it has again confirmed our
confidence in the overwhelming prevalence among our citizens of
disinterested devotion to our nation's honour; and last, but by no means
least, it has taught us where to look in the ranks of our countrymen for
the best patriotism."[44:1]
Mr. Cleveland, now that he is no longer in active politics, holds, as he
deserves, a secure place in the affections of the American people. But
at the time when this treatise was published, he was a not impossible
nominee of the Democratic party for another term as President; and the
"plain people of the land" have a surprising number of votes. Mr.
Cleveland knows his own people and knows that with a large portion of
them war with England would in 1895 have been popular. It is significant
also that he still thought it worth while to insist upon this fact at
the time when this treatise was given to the world in a volume; and
that was as late as 1904, very shortly before the Democratic party
selected its nominee for the Presidential contest of that year. It is
possible that if Mr. Cleveland had been that nominee instead of Justice
Parker, one of the leading features of his campaign would have been a
vigorous insistence on the Monroe Doctrine, as interpreted by himself,
with especial reference to Great Britain.
Englishmen are inclined (so far as they think about the matter at all)
to flatter themselves that the ill-feeling which blazed so suddenly into
flame twelve years ago was more or less effectually quenched by Great
Britain's assistance to the United States at the time of the Spanish
War. Those Englishmen who watched the course of opinion in America at
the time of the Boer War must have had some misgivings. It is evident
that so good a judge as Mr. Cleveland believed, as late as 1904, that
hostility to Great Britain was still a policy which would commend itself
to the "plain people of the land."
It is true that the war fever in 1895 was stronger in the West than in
the Eastern States. A traveller crossing the United States at that time
would have found the idea of hostilities with England being treated as
something of a joke in cultivated circles in New York, but among the
people in general to the West of Buffalo and Pittsburg it was terrible
earnest. A curious point, moreover, which I think I have never seen
stated in England, is that many good men in the Democratic Party at that
time stood by President Cleveland, though sincerely friendly to Great
Britain; the truth being that they did not believe that war with
England was seriously to be apprehended, while another Power was at the
moment seeking to obtain a foothold in South America, for whose benefit
a "vigorous assertion of the Monroe Doctrine" was much to be desired.
The thunders of the famous message indeed were, in the minds of many
excellent Americans in the East, directed not against Great Britain but
against Germany.
None the less it should be noted that it was in the hope of influencing
the voters in a local election in New York that Mr. Hearst, as recently
as in November, 1907, thought it worth while to appeal to the
"traditional hatred" of Great Britain. However little else Mr. Hearst
may have to commend him, he cannot be said to be out of touch with the
sentiments of the more ignorant masses of the people of New York. That
he failed did not signify that he was mistaken as to the extent or
intensity of the prejudice to which he appealed, but only that the cry
was raised too late and too obviously as an electioneering trick in a
campaign which was already lost.
In spite of what happened during the Spanish War, in spite of every
effort that England has made to convince America of her friendliness, in
spite of the improvement which has taken place in the feelings of (what,
without offence, I venture to call) the upper classes in America towards
Great Britain, the fact still remains that, with a large portion of the
people, war with England would be popular.
That is, perhaps, to state the case somewhat brutally. Let me rather say
that, if any pretext should arise, the minds of the masses of the
American people could more easily be inflamed to the point of desiring
war with England than they could to the point of desiring war with any
other nation. It is bitter to have to say it--horrible to think it. I
know also that many Americans will not agree with me; but I do not think
that among them will be many of those whose business it is, either as
politicians or as journalists, to be in touch with the sentiments of the
people.
Let me not be suspected of failing to attach sufficient importance to
those public expressions of international amity which we hear so
frequently, couched in such charming phraseology, at the dinners given
by the Pilgrims, either in London or New York, and on similar occasions.
The Pilgrims are doing excellent work, as also are other similar
societies in less conspicuous ways. The fact has, I believe, never been
published, but can be told now without indiscretion, that a movement was
on foot some twelve years ago for the organisation of an Anglo-American
League, on a scale much more ambitious than that of the Pilgrims or any
other of the existing societies. Certain members of the British Ministry
of the time had been approached and had welcomed the movement with
cordiality, and the active support of a number of men of corresponding
public repute in various parts of the United States had been similarly
enlisted. It was expected (though I think the official request had not
been made) that the Prince of Wales (now his Majesty King Edward VII.)
would be the President of the English branch of the League, while
ex-President Harrison was to have acted in a similar capacity in
America. By a grim pleasantry of Fate, the letter from England conveying
final and official information of the approval of the aforesaid
Ministers, and arranging for the publication of the first formal
overture from the United States (for the movement was to be made to
appear to emanate therefrom) arrived in America on the very day of the
appearance--and readers will remember how totally unexpected the
appearance was--of Mr. Cleveland's Venezuelan message. What would have
been the effect upon the crisis which then ensued if the organisation of
the League had been but a few weeks further advanced, is an interesting
subject for speculation. That, after a year or two of preparation, the
movement should have been beaten by so totally unforeseen a complication
at, as it were, the very winning post, was a little absurd. Thereafter,
the right moment for proceeding with the organisation on the same lines
never again presented itself.
Englishmen must not make the mistake of attaching the same value to the
nice things which are said by prominent Americans on public or
semi-public occasions as they attach to similar utterances by
Englishmen. It is not, of course, intended to imply that the American
speakers are not individually sincere; but no American can act as the
spokesman for his people in such a matter with the same authority as can
be assumed by a properly qualified Englishman. One of the chief
manifestations of the characteristic national lack of the sentiment of
reverence is the disregard which the American masses entertain for the
opinions of their "leading" men, whether in public life or not. The
English people is accustomed, within certain limits, to repose
confidence in its leaders and to suffer them in truth to lead; so that a
small handful of men can within limits speak for the English people.
They can voice the public sentiments, or, when they speak, the people
will modify its sentiments to accord with their utterances. There is no
man or set of men who can similarly speak for the American people; and
no one is better aware of that fact than the American, however honoured
by his countrymen, when he gives expression in London to the cordiality
of his own feelings for Great Britain and expresses guardedly his
conviction that a recurrence of trouble between the peoples will never
again be possible. For one thing, public opinion is not centralised in
America as it is in England. If not _tot homines_, at least _tot
civitates_; and each State, each class and community, instinctively
objects to any one presuming to speak for it (a prejudice based
presumably on political tradition) except its own locally elected
representative, and even he must be specifically instructed _ad hoc_.
Only the good-humoured common-sense of British diplomacy prevented war
at the time of the Venezuelan incident; and it may be that the same
influence would be strong enough to prevent it again. But it is
desirable that Englishmen should understand that just as they were
astounded at the bitterness against them which manifested itself then,
so they might be no less astounded again. It is, of course, difficult
for Englishmen to believe. It must necessarily be hard to believe that
one is hated by a person whom one likes. It happens to be just as
difficult for the mass of Americans (again I should like to say the
lower mass) to believe that Englishmen as a whole really like them. In
1895, the American masses believed that England's attitude was the
result of cowardice, pure and simple. Knowing their own feeling towards
Great Britain, they neither could nor would believe that she was then
influenced by a sincere and almost brotherly good-will--that, without
one shadow of fear, Englishmen refused to consider war with the United
States as possible because it had never occurred to them that the United
States was other than a friendly nation--barely by one degree of kinship
farther removed than one of Great Britain's larger colonies.
And this is the first great obstacle that stands in the way of a proper
understanding between the peoples--not merely the fact that the American
nation is so far from having any affection for Great Britain, but the
fact that the two peoples regard each other so differently that neither
understands, or is other than reluctant to believe in, the attitude of
the other. For the benefit of the English reader, rather than the
American, it may be well to explain this at some length.
* * * * *
The essential fact is that America, New York or Washington, has been in
the past, and still is in only a slightly less degree, much farther from
London than London is from New York or Washington. This is true
historically and commercially--and geographically, in everything except
the mere matter of miles. The American for generations looked at the
world through London, whereas when the Englishman turned his vision to
New York almost the whole world intervened.
Geographically, the nearest soil to the United States is British soil.
Along the whole northern border of the country lies the Dominion of
Canada, without, for a distance of some two thousand miles, any visible
line of demarcation, so that the American may walk upon the prairie and
not know at what moment his foot passes from his own soil to the soil of
Great Britain. One of the chief lines of railway from New York to
Chicago passes for half its length over Canadian ground; the effect
being precisely as if the Englishman to go from London to Birmingham
were to run for half the distance over a corner of France. A large
proportion of the produce of the wheat-fields of the North-western
States, of Minnesota and the two Dakotas, finds its way to New York over
the Canadian Pacific Railway and from New York is shipped, probably in
British bottoms, to Liverpool. When the American sails outward from New
York or other eastern port, if he goes north he arrives only at
Newfoundland or Nova Scotia; if he puts out to southward, the first land
that he finds is the Bermudas. If he makes for Europe, it is generally
at Liverpool or Southampton that he disembarks. On his very threshold in
all directions, lies land over which floats the Union Jack and the same
flag flies over half the vessels in the harbours of his own coasts.
It is difficult for the Englishman to understand how near Great Britain
has always been to the citizen of the United States, for to the
Englishman himself the United States is a distant region, which he does
not visit unless of set purpose he makes up his mind to go there. He
must undertake a special journey, and a long one, lying apart from his
ordinary routes of travel. The American cannot, save with difficulty and
by circuitous routes, escape from striking British soil whenever he
leaves his home. It confronts him on all sides and bars his way to all
the world. Is it to be wondered at that he thinks of Englishmen
otherwise than as Englishmen think of him?
Yet this mere matter of geographical proximity is trivial compared to
the nearness of Great Britain in other ways.
Commercially--and it must be remembered how large a part matters of
commerce play in the life and thoughts of the people of the United
States--until recently America traded with the world almost entirely
through Great Britain. It is not the produce of the Western wheat-fields
only that is carried abroad in British bottoms, but the great bulk of
the commerce of the United States must even now find its way to the
outer world in ships which carry the Union Jack, and in doing so must
pay the toll of its freight charges to Great Britain. If a New York
manufacturer sells goods to South America itself, the chances are that
those goods will be shipped to Liverpool and reshipped to their
destination--each time in British vessels--and the payment therefor will
be made by exchange on London, whereby the British banker profits only
in less degree than the British ship-owner. In financial matters, New
York has had contact with the outer world practically only through
London. Until recently, no great corporate enterprise could be floated
in America without the assistance of English capital, so that for years
the "British Bondholder," who, by the interest which he drew (or often
did not draw) upon his bonds, was supposed to be sucking the life-blood
out of the American people, has been, until the trusts arose, the
favourite bogey with which the American demagogue has played upon the
feelings of his audiences. Now, happily, with more wealth at home,
animosity has been diverted to the native trusts.
It is true that of late years the United States has been striking out to
win a world-commerce of her own; that by way of the Pacific she is
building up a trade free, in part at least, from British domination;
that she is making earnest efforts to develop her mercantile marine, so
that her own commerce may in some fair measure be carried under her own
flag; that New York is fast becoming a financial centre powerful enough
to be able to disregard the dictation--and promising ere long to be a
rival--of London; that during the last decade, America has been
relieving England of vast quantities of her bonds and shares, heretofore
held in London, and that the wealth of her people has increased so
rapidly that she can find within herself the capital for her industries
and (except in times like the recent panic) need no longer go abroad to
beg. It is also true that of recent years England has become not a
little uneasy at the growing volume of American trade, even within the
borders of the British Isles themselves; but this newly developed
uneasiness in British minds, however well grounded, can bear no
comparison to the feeling of antagonism towards England--an antagonism
compounded of mingled respect and resentment--which Americans of the
older generation have had borne in upon them from youth up. To
Englishmen, the growing commercial power of the United States is a new
phenomenon, not yet altogether recognised and only half-understood; for
they have been for so long accustomed to consider themselves the rulers
of the sea-borne trade of the world that it is with difficulty that they
comprehend that their supremacy can be seriously threatened. To the
American, on the other hand, British commercial supremacy has, at least
since 1862, been an incontrovertible and disheartening fact. The huge
bulk of British commerce and British wealth has loomed so large as to
shut out his view of all the world; it has hemmed him in on all sides,
obstructed him, towered over him. And all the while, as he grew richer,
he has seen that Great Britain only profited the more, by interest on
his bonds, by her freight charges, by her profit on exchange. How is it
possible that under such conditions the American can think about or feel
towards England as the Englishman has thought about and felt towards
him?
Yet even now not one half has been told. We have seen that the
geographical proximity of Great Britain and the overshadowing bulk of
British commerce could not fail--neither separately could fail--to
create in American minds an attitude towards England different from the
natural attitude of Englishmen towards the United States; but both these
influences together, powerful though each may be, are almost unimportant
compared to the factor which most of all colours, and must colour, the
American's view of Great Britain,--and that is the influence of the
history of his own country.
The history of the United States as an independent nation goes back no
more than one hundred and thirty years, a space to be spanned by two
human lives; so that events of even her very earliest years are still
recent history and the sentiments evoked by those events have not yet
had time to die. In the days of the childhood of fathers of men still
living (the thing is possible, so recent is it) the nation was born out
of the throes of a desperate struggle with Great Britain--a struggle
which left the name "British" a word of loathing and contempt to
American ears. American history proper begins with hatred of England:
nor has there been anything in the course of that history, until the
present decade, calculated to tend to modify that hatred in any material
degree.
During the nineteenth century, the United States, except for the war
with Spain at its close, had little contact with foreign Powers. She
lived isolated, concentrating all her energies on the developing of her
own resources and the work of civilising a continent. Foreign
complications scarcely came within the range of her vision. The Mexican
War was hardly a foreign war. The only war with another nation in the
whole course of the century was that with Great Britain in 1812.
Reference has already been made to the English ignorance of the War of
1812; but to the American it was the chief event in the foreign politics
of his country during the first century and a quarter of its existence,
and the Englishman's ignorance thereof moves him either to irritation or
to amusement according to his temperament. In the American Civil War,
British sympathy with the South was unhappily exaggerated in American
eyes by the _Alabama_ incident. The North speedily forgave the South;
but it has not yet entirely forgiven Great Britain.
The other chief events of American history have nearly all, directly or
indirectly, tended to keep Great Britain before the minds of the people
as the one foreign Power with whom armed conflict was an ever-present
possibility. The cession of her North American territory on the part of
France only served to accentuate England's position as the sole rival of
the United States upon the continent. Alaska was purchased from Russia;
but Russia has long ago been almost forgotten in the transaction while
it was with Great Britain that the troublesome question of the Alaskan
boundary arose. And through all the years there have been recurring at
intervals, not too far apart, various minor causes of friction between
the two peoples,--in the Newfoundland fisheries question on the east and
the seal fisheries on the west, with innumerable difficulties arising
out of the common frontier line on the north or out of British relations
(as in the case of Venezuela) with South American peoples.
If an Englishman were asked what had been the chief events in the
external affairs of England during the nineteenth century he would say:
the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the China,
Ashanti, Afghan, Zulu, Soudan, Burmese, and Boer wars, the occupation of
Egypt, the general expansion of the Empire in Africa--and what not else
besides. He would not mention the United States. To the American the
history of his country has chiefly to do with Great Britain.
Just as geographically British territory surrounds and abuts on the
United States on almost every side; just as commercially Great Britain
has always hemmed in, dominated, and overshadowed the United States, so,
historically, Great Britain has been the one and constant enemy, actual
or potential, and her power a continual menace. How is it possible that
the American should think of England as the Englishman thinks of the
United States?
There have, moreover, been constantly at work in America forces the
chief object of which has been to keep alive hostility to Great Britain.
Of native Americans who trace their family back to colonial days, there
are still some among the older generation in whom the old hatred of the
Revolutionary War yet burns so strongly that they would not, when at
work on the old family farm in, let us say, Vermont, be very seriously
surprised on some fine morning to see a party of red-coated Hessians
come round the angle of the hill. There are those living whose chief
pastime as boys was to fight imaginary battles with the loathed British
in and out among the old farm-buildings--buildings which yet bear upon
them, perhaps, the marks of real British bullets fired in the real
war.[57:1] And those boys, moving West as they came to manhood, carried
the same spirit, the same inherited dislike of the name "British," into
the cities of the Mississippi Valley, across the prairies and over the
mountains to the Pacific slope. But it is not the real American--except
one here and there on the old New England homestead--who talks much of
his anti-British feeling. It is the imported American who has refused to
allow the old hostility to die but has kept pouring contumely on the
British name and insisted on the incorporation of an "anti-British"
plank in his party platform to catch the votes of the citizens of his
own nationality at each succeeding election.
Englishmen are generally aware of the importance in American politics of
the Irish vote. It is probable, indeed, that, particularly as far as the
conditions of the last few years are concerned, the importance of that
vote has been magnified to the English mind. In certain localities, and
more particularly in a few of the larger cities, it is still, of course,
an important factor by its mere numbers; but even in the cities in which
the Irish vote is still most in evidence at elections, the influx during
the past decade from all parts of Europe of immigrants who in the course
of the five-years term become voters has, of necessity, lessened its
relative importance.
In New York City, for instance, through which pass annually some
nineteen twentieths of all the immigrants coming into the country, the
foreign elements other than Irish--German, Italian (mainly from the less
educated portions of the Peninsula), Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Hebrew,
Roumanian, etc.,--now far outnumber the Irish. In New York, indeed, the
Germans are alone more numerous; but the Irish have always shown a
larger interest in, and a greater capacity for, political action, so
that they still retain an influence out of all proportion to their
voting number. On the other hand the Irish, or their leaders, have
maintained so corrupt a standard of political action (so that a large
proportion of the evils from which the affairs of certain of the larger
American cities suffer to-day may be justly charged to their methods and
influence) that it is uncertain whether their abuse of Great Britain
does not, in the minds of certain, and those not the worst, classes of
the people react rather to create good-will towards England than to
increase hostility.
The power of the Irish vote as an anti-British force, then, is
undoubtedly overrated in England; but it must be borne in mind that some
of the other foreign elements in the population which on many questions
may act as a counterpoise to the Irish are not themselves conspicuously
friendly to England. If we hear too much of the Irish in America, we
hear perhaps too little of some of the other peoples. And the point
which I would impress on the English reader is that he cannot expect the
American to feel towards England as he himself feels towards the United
States. The American people came in the first instance justly by its
hatred of the name "British," and there have not since been at work any
forces sufficiently powerful to obliterate that hatred, while there have
been some operating to keep it alive.
FOOTNOTES:
[36:1] _The Americans_, by Hugo Muensterberg, 1905.
[38:1] _America To-day_, by William Archer (1900). Mr. Archer's study of
the American people is in my opinion the most sympathetic and
comprehending which has been written by an Englishman.
[41:1] The battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812, is not one of
those incidents in English history which Englishmen generally insist on
remembering, and it may be as well to explain to English readers that it
was on that occasion that an inferior force of American riflemen (a
"backwoods rabble" a British officer called them before the engagement)
repulsed a British attack, from behind improvised earthworks, with a
loss to the attacking force of 3300 killed and wounded, and at a cost to
themselves of 13 wounded and 8 killed--or 21 casualties in all. Of the
Forty-fourth (Essex) Regiment 816 men went into action, and after less
than thirty minutes 134 were able to line up. The Ninety-third
(Sutherland) Highlanders suffered even more severely. Of 1008 officers
and men only 132 came out unhurt. The battle was fought after peace had
been concluded, so that the lives were thrown away to no purpose. The
British had to deliver a direct frontal attack over level ground, penned
in by a lake on one side and a swamp on the other. It was the same
lesson, in even bloodier characters, as was taught on several occasions
in South Africa.
[44:1] _Presidential Problems_, by Grover Cleveland, p. 281 (New York,
1904).
[57:1] I had written this before reading Senator Hoar's Reminiscences in
which, in speaking of his own youth, he tells how "Every boy imagined
himself a soldier and his highest conception of glory was to 'lick the
British'" (_An Autobiography of Seventy Years_).