The Twentieth Century American Part 2

In the first place this idea rests largely on an exaggerated estimate of the power of the Irish politician, a power which happily is coming every day to be more nearly a thing of the past,--"tending," as Carlyle says, "visibly not to be." In the second place, I believe that I understand American susceptibilities; and they will not be hurt by any one who shows that he does understand. What the American resents bitterly is the arrogant and superficial criticism of the foreigner who sums up the characteristics and destiny of the nation after a few weeks of observation. Moreover, Americans do not as a rule like whispering or the attempt to come at things by by-paths--in which they much resemble the English. When they want a thing they commonly ask for it--distinctly.

When they think a thing ought to be done they prefer to say so--unequivocally. They have not much love for the circuitousnesses of diplomacy; and if England desires American co-operation in what is a great and n.o.ble cause she had much better ask for it--bluntly.

Personally I wish that forty million Englishmen would stand up and shout the request all at once.

FOOTNOTES:

[8:1] Since this was written, the Anglo-Russian agreement has been arrived at.

[10:1] Justin H. Smith, _Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony_, Putnams, 1907.

[15:1] _The Bellman_, Minneapolis, Dec. 22, 1906.

[32:1] A point which there is no s.p.a.ce to dwell upon here but which I would commend to the more leisurely consideration of readers--especially American readers--is that under a _regime_ of physical force there can in fact be hardly any transfer of commodities at all. What a man has, he holds, whether his need of it be greater than another's, or whether he needs it not at all. There is no inducement to part with it and pride compels him to hold; so that only the strongest can come by the possession of anything that he desires. If the dollar were subst.i.tuted for the club in the dealings of nations, the transfer of commodities would forthwith become simplified, and such incidents as the purchase of Alaska and the cession of Heligoland, instead of standing as isolated examples of international accommodation, would become customary. To take an example which will bring the matter home at once, many imperialist Englishmen on visiting the West Indies have become convinced that certain of England's possessions in those regions could with advantage to all parties be transferred to the United States. But so long as the military idea reigns--so long as an island must be regarded primarily as an outpost, a possible naval base, a strategic point--so long will the obstacles to such a transfer remain. As soon as war was put outside the range of possibilities, commercial principles would begin to operate and those territories, however much or little they might be worth, would be acquired by the United States. The same thing would happen in all parts of the world. Possessions, instead of being held by those who could hold them, would tend to pa.s.s to those who needed them or to whom they logically belonged by geographical relation, and neither Germany's legitimate aspirations nor those of any other country would need to go unsatisfied.

CHAPTER II

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 pa.s.sage 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 Munsterberg[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 inst.i.tutions 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 nave and elementary superfluousness. In all unconsciousness, Professor Munsterberg has written a most valuable essay on the essential kins.h.i.+p 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 distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 Munsterberg 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 "establis.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s 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 companions.h.i.+p. 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 companions.h.i.+p among the men of the armies of the two nations are fewer, but when the allied forces entered China the comrades.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.s 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 (Ess.e.x) 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 circ.u.mstances 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 friends.h.i.+p--will even accept him as a sort of a relative--but as a political ent.i.ty 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 a.s.sure 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 const.i.tutional 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 a.s.sertion 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 ma.s.s 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 a.s.sistance 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 a.s.sertion 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 ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.sumed 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 ma.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 ma.s.s of Americans (again I should like to say the lower ma.s.s) to believe that Englishmen as a whole really like them. In 1895, the American ma.s.ses believed that England's att.i.tude 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 att.i.tude 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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.