第 15 页

"Well, I think she was right."

There you are! There you have us at our very worst! And with this plump specimen of the American in Europe at his very worst, I turn back to the English: only, pray do not fail to give those other Americans who were shocked by the outrage of the lamp their due. How wide of the mark would you be if you judged us all by the one who approved of that horrible vandal girl's act! It cannot be too often repeated that we must never condemn a whole people for what some of the people do.

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

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

Did the American know the van Squibbers?

He did not.

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

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

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

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

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

"That is perfectly true."

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

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

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

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

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

"It is," returned the lady.

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

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

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

We were.

"Very disgraceful, those exposures."

They were. It was May, 1906.

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

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

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

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

The Sam Johnson said no more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No."

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

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

"No."

"Because we pulled you over the line."

In one of my anecdotes I used the term Sam Johnson to describe an Englishman of a certain type. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a very marked specimen of the type, and almost the only illustrious Englishman of letters during our Revolutionary troubles who was not our friend. Right down through the years ever since, there have been Sam Johnsons writing and saying unfavorable things about us. The Tory must be eternal, as much as the Whig or Liberal; and both are always needed. There will probably always be Sam Johnsons in England, just like the one who was scandalized by our Chicago packing-house disclosures. No longer ago than June 1, 1919, a Sam Johnson, who was discussing the Peace Treaty, said in my hearing, in London:

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

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

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

"There is a sacred bond between us by blood and by language which no circumstances can break.... Nations are too ready to admit that they have natural enemies; why should they be less willing to believe that they have natural friends?"

It is we ourselves to-day, not England, that are pushing friendship away. It is our politicians, papers, and propagandists who are making the trouble and the noise. In England the will to friendship rules, has ruled for a long while. Does the will to hate rule with us? Do we prefer Germany? Do we prefer the independence of Ireland to the peace of the world?

Chapter XVI: An International Imposture

A part of the Irish is asking our voice and our gold to help independence for the whole of the Irish. Independence is not desired by the whole of the Irish. Irishmen of Ulster have plainly said so. Everybody knows this. Roman Catholics themselves are not unanimous. Only some of them desire independence. These, known as Sinn Fein, appeal to us for deliverance from their conqueror and oppressor; they dwell upon the oppression of England beneath which Ireland is now crushed. They refer to England's brutal and unjustifiable conquest of the Irish nation seven hundred and forty-eight years ago.

What is the truth, what are the facts?

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