Getting Together | Page 7

seldom fail to take with them, as part of their personal baggage, a trunk stuffed with surgical dressings, rare drugs, and the like. Again, do you know who presented to your nation St. Dunstan's, the great institution for blinded soldiers in Regent's Park, London? An American citizen. So you see, here we are, the American people, the greatest race of advertisers in the world, doing all this good work, and saying nothing whatever about it. Doesn't that strike you as significant?"
"It strikes me as magnificent," says the Briton.
"Well," rejoins the other, I don't allow that it is magnificent, but it is pretty good. We might do more--ten times more. For instance, all our contributions to Belgian relief don't amount to more than the merest fraction of what France and Great Britain, in the midst of all the agony and impoverishment of their own people, have contrived to give. Still, I think I have said enough to show you that we are doing something. You'll tell the folks at home, won't you? It hurts us badly to be regarded as cold blooded opportunists."
"Trust me; I'll tell them!" says the Briton warmly.
And the Get-Together ends.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Friends of France: The Field Service of the American Ambulance described by its members. (Houghton Mifflin Co., $2.00. Limited Edition, $10.00)
[2] Ambulance No. 10. By A. Buswell. (Houghton Mifflin Co., $1.00)
[3] Their Spirit: Some impressions of the English and French during the Summer of 1916. By Robert Grant. (Houghton Muffin Co., 50c.)
[4] Pentecost of Calamity. By Owen Wister (Macmillan Co., 50c.)
[5] The Evidence in the Case. By James M. Beck. (Putnam, $1.00).
CHAPTER FIVE
The only fact of importance which fails to emerge with sufficient clearness from the foregoing conversation is the fact--possibly the courteous American suppressed it from motives of delicacy--that America is by comparison more pro-Ally than pro-British. The fact is, the American is on the side of right and justice in this War, and earnestly desires to see the Allied cause prevail; but he has a sub-conscious aversion to seeing slow-witted, self-satisfied John Bull collect yet another scalp. American relations with France, too, have always been of the most cordial nature; while America's very existence as a separate nation to-day is the fruit of a quarrel with England.
In this regard it may be noted that American school history books are accustomed to paint the England of 1776 in unnecessarily lurid colours. The young Republic is depicted emerging, after a heroic struggle, from the clutches of a tyranny such as that wielded by the nobility of France in the pre-Revolution days. In sober fact, the secession of the American Colonies was brought about by a series of colossal blunders and impositions on the part of the most muddle-headed ministry that ever mismanaged the affairs of Great Britain--which is saying a good deal. It is probable that if the elder Pitt had lived a few years longer, the secession would never have occurred. It was only with the utmost reluctance that Washington appealed to a decision by battle. In any case the fact remains, that while in an American school-book the war of 1776 is given first place, correctly enough, as marking the establishment of American nationality, it figures in the English school-book, with equal correctness, as a single regrettable incident in England's long and variegated Colonial history. It is well to bear these two points of view in mind. Naturally all this makes for degrees of comparison in America's attitude toward the Allies. One might extend the comparison to Russia, and more especially to Japan; but that, mercifully, is outside the scope of our present inquiry.
To America, friendship with France is an historic tradition, as the Statue of Liberty attests, and rests upon the solid foundation of a common ideal--Republicanism. The tie between America and Great Britain is the tie of a common (but rapidly diminishing) blood-relationship; and, as every large family knows, blood-relationship carries with it the right to speak one's mind with refreshing freedom whenever differences of opinion arise within the family circle. But our idealists have persistently overlooked this handicap. They cling tenaciously to the notion that it is easier to be friendly with your relations than with your friends; and that in dealing with your own kin, tact may be economized. "Blood is thicker than water," we proclaim to one another across the sea; "and we can therefore afford to be as rude to one another as we please." This principle suits the Briton admirably, because he belongs to the elder and more thick-skinned branch of the clan. But it bears hardly upon a young, self-conscious, and adolescent nation, which has not yet "found" itself as a whole; and which, though its native genius and genuine promise carry it far, still experiences a certain youthful diffidence under the supercilious condescension of the Old