Getting Together | Page 7

and individual. At one end of the
scale you find a scheme for raising a hundred million dollars to
maintain and educate Belgian and French orphans. At the other, I could
show you a poor woman in Boston who is living on a mere pittance,
because she gives every cent that she can possibly spare to Allied
Relief. I know many American business men who cross the Atlantic
several times a year: on these occasions they 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