Part 7 (1/2)
”n.o.ble patriots like John Dillon and William O'Brien fight for them in the House of Commons, and they are good fighters everywhere, from the gla.s.s-covered room in Westminster Abbey (!) to the prize-ring, where a Sullivan, of pure Irish blood, forbids any man to stand three rounds before him.
”The English whipped the Irish at the battle of the Boyne--true.
But the English on that occasion had the good luck to be led by a Dutchman, and the Irish--sorra the day--had an English King for a leader. The English King was running fast while the Irish were still fighting the Dutchman.
”Wellington, of Irish blood, beat Napoleon; Sheridan, of Irish blood, fought here most delightfully.
”Here's to the Iris.h.!.+”
This spirited performance no doubt represents fairly enough the political philosophy of the thousands composing the league-long procession which filed stolidly up Fifth Avenue on the day of its appearance.
But even among unhyphenated Americans--Americans pure and simple--the tendency to regard England as a hereditary foe, though sensibly weakened by recent events, remains very strong. A good example of this frame of mind and habit of speech is afforded by the following pa.s.sage from an address delivered by Judge Van Wyck at the Democratic Club's Jefferson Dinner in New York on April 13 last. Referring to England, the speaker said:--
”Let us be influenced by the natural as well as the fixed policy of that nation toward us for a century and a half, rather than by their profuse expressions of friends.h.i.+p during the Spanish War.
England's policy has been one of sharp rivalry and compet.i.tion with America; it impelled the Revolution of 1776, fought for business as well as political independence; brought on the war of 1812, waged against the insolent claim of England for the right to search our s.h.i.+ps of commerce while riding the highways of the ocean; caused her to contest every inch of our northern boundary line from ocean to ocean; made her encourage our family troubles from 1860 to 1865, for which she was compelled to pay us millions and admit her wrong; and actuated her, in violation of the Monroe doctrine, to attempt an unwarrantable encroachment on the territory of Venezuela, until ordered by the American Government to halt.”
Apart from the obvious begging of the question with reference to Venezuela, there is nothing in this invective that has not some historical foundation. It is the studiously hostile turn of the phraseology that renders the speech significant. Everything--even the honourable amends made for the _Alabama_ blunder--is twisted to England's reproach. She is ”compelled” to do this, and ”ordered” to do that. There is here no hint of good feeling, no trace of international amenity, but sheer undisguised hatred and desire to make the worst of things. And this address, be it noted, was the speech of the evening at a huge and representative gathering of the dominant party in New York munic.i.p.al politics.
I need scarcely adduce further evidence of the fact that Anglophobia is still a power in the land, if not the power it once was. But active and aggressive Anglophobia is, I think, a less important factor in the situation than the sheer indifference to England, with a latent bias towards hostility, which is so widespread in America. To the English observer, this indifference is far more disconcerting than hatred. The average Briton, one may say with confidence, is not indifferent towards America. He may be very ignorant about it, very much prejudiced against certain American habits and inst.i.tutions, very thoughtless and tactless in expressing his prejudices; but the United States is not, to him, a foreign country like any other, on the same plane with France, Germany, or Russia. But that is precisely what England is to millions of Americans--a foreign country like any other. We see this even in many travelling Americans; much more is it to be noted in mult.i.tudes who stay at home. Many Americans seem curiously indifferent even to the comfort of being able to speak their own language in England; probably because they have less false shame than the average Englishman in adventuring among the pitfalls of a foreign tongue. They--this particular cla.s.s of travellers, I mean--land in England without emotion, visit its shrines without sentiment, and pa.s.s on to France and Italy with no other feeling than one of relief in escaping from the London fog. These travellers, however, are but single spies sent forth by vast battalions who never cross the ocean. To them England is a mere name, and the name, moreover, of their fathers' one enemy in war, their own chief rival in trade. They have no points of contact with England, such as almost every Englishman has with America. We make use every day of American inventions and American ”notions”: English inventions and ”notions,” if they make their way to America at all, are not recognised as English. There are few Britishers, high or low, that have not friends or relatives settled in America, or have not formed pleasant acquaintances.h.i.+ps with Americans on this side. But there are innumerable families in America who, even if they be of British descent, have lost all vital recollection of the fact; who (as the tide of emigration has not yet turned eastwards) have no friends or relatives settled in England; and who, in their American homes, are far more apt to come in contact with men of almost every other nationality than with Englishmen. ”But surely English literature,” it may be said, ”brings England home even to people of this cla.s.s, and differentiates her from France or Germany.” In a measure, doubtless; but I think it will be found that the lower strata of the reading public (not in America alone, of course) are strangely insensitive to local colour. To people of culture, the bond of literature is a very strong one; but the cla.s.s of which I am speaking is not composed of people of culture. They read, it is true, and often greedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caring whether a book is English or American, and at all events with no such clear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as could beget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England.
Let us make no mistake--in the broad ma.s.s of the American people no such affection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as I have said, a latent bias towards hostility.
Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled cla.s.ses, especially in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent, alive to the historical relations.h.i.+p between the two countries, valuing highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing, and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and clinging to a kins.h.i.+p of which, taking one thing with another, they have no reason to be ashamed. This cla.s.s is intellectually influential, but its direct weight in politics is small. It is, with s.h.i.+ning exceptions, a ”mugwump” cla.s.s. At the other end of the scale we have the hyphenated Americans, who have imported or inherited European rancours against England, and those unhyphenated Americans whose hatred of England is partly a mere plank in a political platform, designed to accommodate her hyphenated foe-men, partly a result of instinctive and traditional chauvinism, reinforced by a (in every sense) partial view of Anglo-American history. Finally, between these two extremes, we have the great ma.s.s of the American people, who neither love nor hate England, any more than they love or hate (say) Italy or j.a.pan, but whose indifference would, until recently, have been much more easily deflected on the side of hatred than of love. The effect of the Spanish War has been in some measure to alter this bias, and to differentiate England, to her advantage, from the other nations of Europe.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote L: A very distinguished American authority writes to me as follows with regard to this pa.s.sage: ”I hardly think you lay enough weight upon the fact that in two or three generations the great bulk of the descendants of the immigrants of non-English origin become absolutely indistinguishable from other Americans, and share their feelings. This is markedly so with the Scandinavians, and most of the Germans of the second, and all the Germans of the third, generation, who practically all, during 1898, felt toward Germany and England just exactly as other Americans did.... Twice recently I have addressed huge meetings of eight or ten thousand people, each drawn, as regards the enormous majority, from exactly that cla.s.s which you pointed out as standing between the two extremes. In each case the men who introduced me dwelt upon the increased good feeling between the English-speaking peoples, and every complimentary allusion to England was received with great applause.” At the same time my correspondent adds: ”Your division of the American sentiment into three cla.s.ses is exactly right; also your sense of the relative importance of these three cla.s.ses.”]
III
It is commonly alleged that the anti-English virulence of the ordinary school history of the United States is mainly responsible for this bias towards hostility in the mind of the average American. Mr. Goldwin Smith, a high authority, has contested this theory; and I must admit that, after a good deal of inquiry, I have been unable to find the American school historians guilty of any very serious injustices to England. Some quite modern histories which I have looked into (yet written before the Spanish War) seem to me excellently and most impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat cheap and bl.u.s.terous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a little too much inclined to make ”insolent” the inseparable epithet of the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases it was amply merited. I have not come across the history in which Mr.
G.W. Steevens discovered the following pa.s.sages:
”The eyes of the soldiers glared upon the people like hungry bloodhounds. The captain waved his sword. The red-coats pointed their guns at the crowd. In a moment the flash of their muskets lighted up the street, and eleven New England men fell bleeding upon the snow.... Blood was streaming upon the snow; and though that purple stain melted away in the next day's sun, it was never forgotten nor forgiven by the people.... A battle took place between a large force of Tories and Indians and a hastily organised force of patriotic Americans. The Americans were defeated with horrible slaughter, and many of those who were made prisoners were put to death by fiendish torture.... More than six thousand American sailors had been seized by British wars.h.i.+ps and pressed into the hated service of a hated nation.”
These pa.s.sages are certainly not judicial or even judicious in tone; but I fancy that the book or books from which Mr. Steevens culled them must be quite antiquated. In books at present on the educational market I find nothing so lurid. What I do find in some is a failure to distinguish between the king's share and the British people's share in the policy which brought about and carried on the Revolutionary War.
For instance, in Barnes's _Primary History of the United States_ (undated, but brought down to the end of the Spanish War) we read:
”_The English people_ after a time became jealous of the prosperity of the colonists, and began to devise plans by which to grasp for themselves a share of the wealth that was thus rolling in....
Indeed, _the English people_ acted from the first as if the colonies existed only for the purpose of helping them to make money.”
George III. and his Ministers are not so much as mentioned, and the impression conveyed to the ingenuous student is that the whole English nation was consciously and deliberately banded together for purposes of sheer brigandage. The same history is delightfully chauvinistic in its account of the Colonial Wars. The British officers are all bunglers and poltroons; if disasters are averted or victories won, it is entirely by the courage and conduct of the colonists:
”When Johnson reached the head of Lake George he met the French, and a fierce battle was fought. Success seemed at first to be altogether with the French; but after a while Johnson was slightly wounded, when General Lyman, a brave colonial officer, took command, and beat the French terribly.... Abercrombie's defeat was the last of the English disasters. The colonists now had arms enough, and were allowed to fight in their own way, and a series of brilliant victories followed.... By the energy, courage, and patriotism of her colonies, England had now acquired a splendid empire in the New World. And while she reaped all the glory of the war and its fruits, it was the hardy colonists who had throughout, borne the brunt of the conflict.”
The child who learns his history from Mr. Barnes may not hate England, but will certainly despise her.
Text-books of this type, however, are already obsolescent. A committee of the New England History Teachers' a.s.sociation published in the _Educational Review_ for December 1898 a careful survey of no fewer than nineteen school histories of the United States, and summed up the results as follows: