The twentieth century American; being a comparative study of the peoples of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations

Front matter

Being

A Comparative Study of the Peoples of

the Two Great Anglo-Saxon Nations

Chapter I Page

The Avoidance of Entangling Alliances — What the Injunction Meant — What it Cannot Mean To-day — The Interests of the United States, no less than those of England, Demand an Alliance — But Larger Interests than those of the Two Peoples are Involved — American Responsiveness to Ideals — The Greatest Ideal of All, Universal Peace : the Practicability of its Attainment — America's Responsibility — Misconceptions of the British Empire — Germany's Position — American Susceptibilities.

Chapter II

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.

Chapter III

Two Sides of the American Character . . GO

Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting

Power — The Americans as Sailors — The Nation's Greatviii Contents

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est Asset — Self-reliance of the People — The Making of a Doctor — And of a Surveyor — Society in the Rough — New York and the Country — An Anglo-Saxon Trait — America's Unpreparedness — American Consuls and Diplomats — A Homogeneous People — The Value of a Common Speech — America more Anglo-Saxon than Britain — Mr. Wells and the Future in America.

Chapter IV

America's Bigness — A New Atlantis — The Effect of Expansion on a People — A Family Estranged — Parsnips — An American Woman in England — An Englishman in America — International Caricatures — Shibboleths : dropped H's and a " twang " — Matthew Arnold's Clothes — The Honourable S B .

Chapter V

The American Attitude towards Women . Ill

The Isolation of the United States — American Ignorance of the World — Sensitiveness to Criticism — Exaggeration of their Own Virtues — The Myth of American Chivalrousness — Whence it Originated — The Climatic Myth — International Marriages — English Manners and American — The View of Womanhood in Youth — Co-education of the Sexes — Conjugal Morality — The Artistic Sense in American Women — Two Stenographers — An Incident of Camp-Life — " Molly-be-damned " — A Nice Way of Travelling — How do they do it? — Women in Public Life — The Conditions which Co-operate — The Anglo-Saxon Spirit again.

Chapter VI

American Insularity — A Conkling Story — English Humour and American Critics — American Literature and English Critics — The American Novel in England — And American Art — Wanted, an American Exhibition

Contents ix

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— The Revolution in the American Point of View — " Raining in London " — Domestic and Imported Goods.

Chapter VII

The Rhodes Scholarships — "Pullulating Colleges" — Are American Colleges Superior to Oxford or Cambridge ? — Other Educational Forces — The Postal Laws — Ten-cent Magazines and Cheap Books — Pigs in Chicago — The Press of England and America Compared — Mixed Society — Educated Women — Generals as Booksellers — And as Farmhands — The Value of War to a People.

Chapter VIII

The Advantage of Youth — Japanese Eclecticism and American — The Craving for the Best — Cyrano de Bergerac — Verestschagin — Culture by Paroxysms — Mr. Gladstone and the Japanese — Anglo-Saxon Crichtons — Americans as Linguists — England's Past and America's Future — Americanisms in Speech — Why They are Disappearing in America — And Appearing in England — The Press and the Copyright Laws — A Look into the Future.

Chapter IX

The " English- American " Vote — The Best People in Politics — What Politics Means in America — Where Corruption Creeps in — The Danger in England — A Presidential Nomination for Sale — Buying Legislation — Could it Occur in England? — A Delectable Alderman — Taxation while you Wait — Perils that England Escapes — The Morality of Congress — Political Corruption of the Irish — Democrat and Republican.

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Chapter X

The System of Parties — Interdependence of National and Local Organisations — The Federal Government and Sovereign States — The Boss of Warwickshire — The Unit System — Prime Minister Crooks — Lanark and the Nation — New York and Tammany Hall — America's Superior Opportunities for Wickedness — How England Is Catching up- Campaign Reminiscences — The ' ' Hell-box " — Politics in a Gravel-pit — Mr. Hearst and Mr. Bryan.

Chapter XI

Sovereign States and the Federal Government — California and the Senate — The Constitutional Powers of Congress and the President — Government by Interpretation — President Roosevelt as an Inspiration to the People — A New Conception of the Presidential Office — " Teddy " and the " fraid strap " — Mr. Roosevelt and the Corporations — As a Politician — His Imperiousness — The Negro Problem — The Americanism of the South.

Chapter XII

Are Americans more Honest than Englishmen? — An American Peerage — Senators and other Aristocrats — Trade and the British Upper Classes — Two Views of a Business Career — America's Wild Oats — The Packing House Scandals — " American Methods " in Business — A Countryman and Some Eggs — A New Dog — The Morals of British Peers — A Contract of Mutual Confidence — Embalmed Beef, Re-mounts, and War Stores — The Yellow Press and Mr. Hearst — American View of the House of Lords.

Contents xi

PACE

Chapter XIII

The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon — America's Resemblance to Japan — A German View — Can Americans Lie? — Honesty as the Best Policy — Religious Sentiment — Moral and Immoral Railway Managers — A Struggle for Self-preservation — Gentlemen in Business — Peculation among Railway Servants — How the Old Order Changes, Yielding Place to New — The Strain on British Machinery — Americans as Story-Tellers — The Incredibility of the Actual.

Chapter XIV

The Commercial Power of the United States — British Workmanship — Tin-tacks and Conservatism — A Prophetic Frenchman — Imperialism in Trade — The Anglo-Saxon Spirit — About Chaperons — " Insist upon Thyself" — English and American Banks — Dealing in Futures — Dog Eat Dog — Two Letters— Commercial Octopods — Trusts in America and England — The Standard Oil Company — And Solicitors — Legal Chaperons — The Sanctity of Stamped Paper — Conclusions — Do "Honest" Traders Exist?

Chapter XV

American Sport Twenty-five Years Ago — The Power of Golf — A Look Ahead — Britain, Mother of Sports- Buffalo in New York — And Pheasants on Clapham Common — Shooting Foxes and the "Sport" of Wild-fowling — The Amateur in American Sport — At Henley — And at Large — Teutonic Poppycock.

CHAPTER XVI A New Way of Making Friends — The Desirability of xii Contents

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an Alliance — For the Sake of Both Peoples — And of all the World — The Family Resemblance— Mutual Misunderstandings — American Conception of the British Character — English Misapprehension of Americans — Foreign Influences in the United States — Why Politicians Hesitate — An Appeal to the People — And to Caesar.

" If I can say anything to show that my name is really Makepeace, and to increase the source of love between tlie two countries, then please, God, I will." — W. M. Thackeray, in Letters to an American Family.

" Certainly there is nothing like England, and there never has been anything like England in the world. Her wonderful history, herwonderfid literature, her beautiful architecture, the historic and poetic associations which cluster about every street and river and mountain and valley, her vigorous life, the siveetness and beauty of her women, the superb manhood of her men, her Navy, her gracious hospitality, and her lofty pride — although some single race of men may have excelled her in some single partictdar — make up a combination never equalled in the world." — The late United States Senator Hoar, in An Autobiography of Seventy Years.

" Tlie result of the organisation of the American colonies into a state, and of the bringing together of the diverse communities contained in these colonies, was the creation not merely of a new nation, but of a new temperament. How far this temperament was to arise from a change of climate, and how far from a new political organisation, no one coidd then foresee, nor is its origin yet fully analysed ; but the fact itself is notv coming to be more and more recognised. It may be that Nature said at about that time : ' Thus far the English is my best race; but we have had Englishmen enough; now for another turning of the globe, and for a further novelty. We need something with a little more buoyancy than the Englishman; let us lighten the structure, even at some peril in the process. Put in one drop more of nervous fluid and make the American.'' With that drop, a new range of promise opened on the human race, and a lighter, finer, more highly organised type of mankind was born." — Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Monthly, 1886.

" Tlie foreign observer in America is at once struck by the fact that the average of intelligence, as that intelligence manifests itself in the spirit of inquiry, in the interest taken in a great variety of things, and in alertness of judgment, is much higher among the masses in the United States than anywhere else. This is certainly not owing to any superiority of the public school system in this country — or, if such superiority exists, not to that alone — but rather to the fact that in the United States the individual is constantly brought into interested contact with a greater variety of things and is admitted to active participation in the exercise of functions which in other countries are left to the care of a superior authority. I have frequently been struck by the remarkable expansion of the horizon effected by a few years of American life, in the minds of immigrants who had come from someivhat benighted regions, and by the mental enterprise and keen discernment with which they took hold of problems to which, in their comparatively torpid condition in their native countries, they had never given thought. It is true that in the large cities with congested population, self-government as an educator does not always bring the most desirable results, partly owing to the circumstance that government, in its various branches, is there further removed from the individual, so that he comes into contact with it and exercises his influence upon it only through various, and sometimes questionable, intermediary agencies which frequently exert a very demoralising influence." — Carl Schurz's Memoirs, II, 79.

"Anglo-Saxon Superiority! Although we do not all acknowledge it, we all have to bear it, and we all dread it ; the apprehension, the suspicion, and sometimes the hatred provoked by V Anglais proclaim the fact loudly enough. We cannot go one step in the world toithout coming across the Anglo-Saxon. . . . He rules America by Canada and the United States ; Africa by Egypt and the Cape ; Asia by India and Burmah ; Australasia by Australia and New Zealand ; Europe and the whole world, by his trade and industries and by his policy." — M. Edruond Demolins in Anglo-Saxon Superiority " A quoi tient la Superiority des Anglo-Saxons ? "

" It may be asking too much, but if statesmanship could kindly arrange it, I confess I should like to see, before I die, a war in lohich Britain and the United States in a just quarrel might tackle the world. After that we should have no more difficulty about America. For if the Americans never forget an injury, they ever remember a service." — The late G. W. Steevens in Tlie Land of the Dollar.

CHAPTER I An Anglo-American Alliance

The Avoidance of Entangling Alliances — What the Injunction Meant — What it Cannot Mean To-day — The Interests of the United States, no less than those of England, Demand an Alliance — But Larger Interests than those of the Two Peoples are Involved — American Responsiveness to Ideals — The Greatest Ideal of All, Universal Peace : the Practicability of its Attainment — America's Responsibility — Misconceptions of the British Empire — Germany's Position — American Susceptibilities.

The American nation, for all that it is young and lacks reverence, still worships the maxims and rules of conduct laid down by the Fathers of the Republic; and among those rules of conduct, there is none the wisdom of which is more generally accepted by the people than that which enjoins the avoidance of " entangling alliances " with foreign Powers. But not only has the United States changed much in late years, but the world in its political relations and sentiments has changed also and the place of the United States has changed in it. That sacred instrument, the Constitution itself, holds chiefly by virtue of what is new in it. "Whatever is unaltered, or is not interpreted in a sense quite other than the framers intended, is to-day comparatively unimportant. It must be so. It would be impossible that any code or constitution drawn up to meet the needs of the original States, in the phase of civilisation and amid the social conditions which then prevailed, could be suited to the national life of a Great Power in the twentieth century. In internal affairs, there is hardly a function of Government, scarcely a relation between the different branches of the Government itself, or between the Government and any of the several States, or between the Government and the people, which is not unlike what the framers of the Constitution intended or what they imagined that it would be.

But it is in external affairs that the nation must find, indeed has found, the old rules most inadequate. The policy of non-association which was desirable, even essential, to the young, weak state, whose only prospect of safety lay in a preservation of that isolation which her geographical position made possible to her, is and must be impracticable in a World-Power. Within the last decade, the United States has stepped out from her solitude to take the place which rightfully belongs to her among the great peoples. By the acquirement of her colonial dependencies, still more by the inevitable exigencies of her commerce, she has chosen (as she had no other choice) to make herself an interested party in the affairs of all parts of the world. All the conditions that made the old policy best for her have vanished.

A child is rightly forbidden by his nurse to make acquaintance with other children in the street; but this child has grown to manhood and gone out into the world to seek — and has found — his fortune. The old policy of isolation has been cast aside, till nothing remains of it but a few old formulae which have no virtue — not even significance — now that all the conditions to which they applied are gone. The United States has been compelled to make alliances (some, as when she co-operated with the other Powers in China, of the most " entangling " kind), and still the old phrase holds its spell on the popular mind.

The injunction was originally intended to prevent the young Kepublic from being drawn into the wars with which Europe at the time was rent, by taking sides with any one party against any other. It was levelled not against alliances, but against entanglements. It was framed, and wisely framed, to secure to the United States the peace and isolation necessary to her development. The isolation is no longer either possible or desirable, but peace remains both. The nation would in fact be living more closely up to the spirit of the injunction by entering into an alliance which would secure peace and make entanglements impossible, than she is when she leaves herself and the world exposed to the constant menace of war, merely for the sake of seeming to comply with the letter of a maxim which is now meaningless. If Washington were alive to-day, it does not seem to me possible to doubt that he would favour a new English treaty, even though he might have more difficulty in compelling Congress to accept his views than he had once before.

As the case stands, the United States may easily become involved in war with any one of the Great

Powers, no matter how pacific or benevolent her intentions may be. There are at least three Powers with which a trivial incident might precipitate a conflict at almost any time ; while the possibilities of friction which might develop into open hostilities with some one of the lesser states are almost innumerable. It is beside the question to say that the United States need have no fear of the result: indeed that very fact contributes largely to the danger. It is ever the man who can fight, and knows it, who gets into trouble. Every American who has lived much in the farther West knows that he who would keep clear of difficulties had best not carry a revolver. In its very self-confidence — a self -confide ace amply justified by its strength — the American people is, measured by the standards of other nations, an eminently bellicose people — much more bellicose than it supposes.

Great Britain's alliance with Japan has with reasonable certainty, so far as danger of conflict between any two of the Great Powers is concerned, secured the peace of Asia for some time to come. The understanding between Great Britain and France goes some way towards assuring the peace of Europe, of which the imminent rapprochement with Russia (which all thinking Englishmen desire ' ) will constitute a further guarantee. But an alliance between Great Britain and the United States would secure the peace of the world. There is but one European Power now which could embark on a war with either Great Britain or the United States with any shadow of justification for hopefulness as to the result; and no combination of

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

Powers could deceive itself into believing that it could make bead against the two combined or would dare to disturb the peace between themselves when the two allies bade them be still.

In the days of her youth, — which lasted up to the closing decade of the nineteenth century, — provided that she did not thrust herself needlessly into the quarrels of Europe, her mere geographical position sufficed to secure to America the peace which she required. The Atlantic Ocean, her own mountain chains and wildernesses, these were bulwarks enough. She has, by pressure of her own destiny, been compelled to come out from behind these safeguards to rub shoulders every day with all the world. If she still desires peace, she will be more likely to realise that desire by seeking other shields. Nor must any American reader misunderstand me, for I believe that I estimate the fighting power of the United States more highly than most native-born Americans. She needs no help in playing her part in the world ; but no amount of self-confidence, no ability to fight, if once the fight be on, will serve to protect her from having quarrels thrust upon her — not necessarily in wilfulness by any individual antagonist but by mere force of circumstance. Considered from the standpoint of her own expediency, an alliance with Great Britain would give to the United States an absolute guarantee that for as many years as she pleased she would be free to devote all her energies to the development of her own resources and the increase of her commerce.

But there are other considerations far larger than that of her own expediency. This is no question of io The Twentieth Century American

the selfish interests either of the United States or of Great Britain. There is no people more responsive than the American to high ideals. Englishmen often find it hard to believe that an American is not talking mere fustian when he gives honest expression to his sentiments ; but from the foundation of the Republic certain large ideas — Liberty, Freedom of Conscience, Equality — have somehow been made to seem very real things to the American mind. Whether the Englishman does not in his heart prize just as dearly as the American the things which these words signify, is another matter ; it is not the Englishman's habit to formulate them even to himself, much less to talk about them to others. Most Englishmen have large sympathy with Captain Gamble who, bewailing the unrest in Canada at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, complained that the Colonials talked too much about " that damned absurd word Liberty." '

It is rarely that an English political campaign is fought for a principle or for an abstract idea, and equally rarely that in America the watchword on one side or the other is not some such high-sounding phrase as Englishmen rather shrink from using. It is true that behind that phrase may be clustered a cowering crowd of petty individual interests ; the fact remains that it is the phrase itself — the large Idea — on which orators and party managers rely to secure their hold on the imaginations of the mass of the people. It does not necessarily imply any superior morality on the part of the Americans ; but is an accident of the different conditions prevailing in the two countries.

> Justin H. Smith, Our Struggle for the Fourteenth Colony, Putnams, 1907.

An Anelo-American Alliance n i &

British politics are infinitely more complex than American, and foreign affairs play a much larger part in public controversies. The people of the United States have been throughout their history able to confine their attention almost wholly to their home affairs, and in those home affairs, the mere vastness of the country, with the diverse and conflicting interests of the various parts, has made it as a rule impossible to frame any appeal to the minds of the voters as a whole except in terms of some abstract idea. An appeal to the self-interests of the people in the aggregate in any matter of domestic policy is almost unformulable, because the interest of each section conflicts with the interest of others ; whence it has necessarily followed that the American people has grown accustomed to be led by large phrases — disciplined to follow the flag of an ideal.

Not all the early colonists who emigrated, even to New England, went solely for conscience' sake. Under the cloak of the lofty principle for which the Revolutionary War was fought there were, again, concealed all manner of personal ambitions, sectional jealousies, and partisan intrigues. It was in truth (as more than one American historian has pointed out) a party strife and not a war of peoples. The precipitating cause of the Civil War was not the desire to abolish slavery, but the bitterness aroused by the political considerations of the advantage given to one party or the other by the establishment or nonestablishment of slavery in a new territory. The motive which impelled the United States to make war on Spain was not, as most Europeans believe, any desire for an extension of territory, any more than it was, as some Americans would say, a yearning to avenge the blowing up of the Maine ; it was the necessity of putting an end to the disturbed state of affairs in Cuba, which was a constant source of annoyance, as well as of trouble and expense, to the United States Government. If a neighbour makes a disturbance before your house and brings his family quarrels to your doorstep, you must after a time ask him to stop ; and when, after a sufficient number of askings, he fails to comply with your request, it is justifiable to use force to make him. That was America's justification — the real ground on which she went to war with Spain. But the thing which actually inflamed the mind of the American people was the belief that the Spanish treatment of Cuba was brutal and barbarous. It was an indignation no less fine than that which set England in a blaze in the days of the Bulgarian atrocities. The war may been a war of expediency on the part of the Government ; it was a Crusade in the eyes of the people. Thus it may be easy to show that at each crisis in its history there was something besides the nobility of a Cause or the grandeur of a Principle which impelled the American nation on the course which it took, but it has always been love of the Cause or devotion to the Principle which has swayed the masses of the people.

And this people now has it in its power to do an infinitely finer thing than ever it did when it established Liberty of Conscience, or founded a republic on broader foundations than had been laid before, or abolished slavery within its borders, or when it won Cuba's independence of what it believed to be an inhuman tyranny. I believe that it has it in its power to do no less a thing than to abolish war for ever — to give to the peoples of the earth the blessing of Perpetual Peace. The question for it to ask itself is whether it can, with any shadow of justification, refuse to take this step and withhold this boon from humanity.

If it does refuse and wars continue — if, within the coming decade, war should break out, whether actually involving the United States itself or not, more bloody and destructive than any that the world has seen — and if then the facts should be presented to posterity for judgment, — will the American people be held guiltless ? It is improbable that the case ever could be so presented, for there is none to put the United States on trial, none to draw an indictment, none to prosecute. The world has not turned to the United States to ask that it be saved ; no one has arisen to point at the United States and say, " Thou art the one to do this thing." The historians of another generation will have no depositions before them on which to base a verdict. But if the facts are as stated and the United States knows them to be so, does the lack of common knowledge of them make her responsibility any the less ? It remains that the nation has the power to do this, and it alone among nations.

The first idea of most Americans, when a hard and fast alliance with Great Britain is suggested to them, usually formulates itself in the statement that they have no wish to be made into a cat's-paw for pulling England's chestnuts out of the fire. America has no desire to be drawn into England's quarrels. Until less than ten years ago, there was justification for the point of view ; for while England seemed to be ever on the brink of war, the United States lived peacefully in her far-off Valley of Avilion. But the map of the world has changed, and while the United States has left her seclusion and come out to play her part in the world-politics, England has been buttressing herself with friendships, until it is at least arguable whether the United States is not the more exposed to danger of the two. But it is no question now of being dragged into other people's quarrels ; but of making all quarrelling impossible.

Again, the American will say that the United States needs no allies. She can hold her own ; let Great Britain do the same. And again I say that it is no question now of whether either Power can hold its own against the world or not. Great Britain, Americans should understand, has no more fear for herself than has the United States. England " does not seek alliances: she grants them." There is not only no single European Power, but there is no probable combination of European Powers, which England does not in her heart serenely believe herself quite competent to deal with. British pride has grown no less in the last three hundred years :

" Come the four corners of the World in arms And we shall shock them."

Americans should disabuse themselves finally of the idea that if England desires an alliance with the United States it is because she has any fear that she may need help against any other enemy. Englishmen are too well satisfied with themselves for that (with precisely the same kind of self-satisfaction as the United States suffers from), and much too confident that, in whatever may arise, it will be the other fellow who will need help. But if England has no misgiving as to her ability" to take care of herself when trouble comes, she is far from being ashamed to say that she would infinitely prefer that trouble should not come, either to her or to another, and she would join— oh, so gladly ! — with the United States (as for a partial attainment of the same end she has already joined with France on the one hand and with Japan on the other) to make sure that it should never come. Has the United States any right to refuse to enter into such an alliance — an alliance which would not be entangling, but which would make entanglements impossible?

At Christmas time in 1906, the following suggestion was made in the London correspondence of an American paper l :