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ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY
ANGLO-SAXON
SOLIDARITY
BY
Herbert Adams Gibbons
THE CENTURY CO.
MDCCCCXXI
COPYRIGHT 1920 BY
THE CENTURY CO
REPRINTED FROM
THE CHRISTMAS Century 1920
ANGLO-SAXON SOLIDARITY
By Herbert Adams Gibbons
None denies that the world is askew. Ships of state are pilotless and rudderless, riding God knows where. In every country internal economic and social conditions are so upset that forecasts of the morrow seem futile. And yet international political relationships depend upon these internal conditions more intimately and more wholly than ever before in history. Statesmen may still be sitting at the diplomatic chessboard, making moves in accordance with the old rules of the game. But each realizes that shaping the foreign policy of his nation is no longer independent of or divorced from home policies and problems. Things have changed. The old order upon which one could count in directing foreign affairs has given place to new and uncertain values. Just what the changes are, whether for good or bad, whether permanent or temporary, and how we are to adjust ourselves to them and take advantage of them or combat them, as the case may be, on all this we read little that is constructive. Prophets are alarmists, and critics keep telling us what we know, that our statesmen are making a mess of things internationally and that we are badly off internally because legislators and executives are passive in the face of high prices and social unrest.
Dear me! do we need to be taught that our house is not in order by having it, figuratively at least, pulled down around our ears? Politicians and professors and publicists must call a halt on their flood of complaint and denunciation and warning. The rôle of Cassandra may have been necessary to get people to pay attention, but when the public begins to say, "Well, what of it?" tirades must be changed to programs, if the piercing through the armor-plate of indifference is to accomplish any good result. "You writers on political and economic affairs give me the willies," said a bluff business man to me the other day. "If I do not stop reading you, I'll get to thinking in circles."
Many who see the danger-signal try to heed it by shifting from fault-finding to rose-hued platitudes. We have seen this in the recent political campaign. When managers and orators felt that public opinion was growing restive under constant criticism and impatient of overdoses of "the world is going to the bow-wows," the strident notes gave way to a grand diapason of "All's well!" Everything had been and would again be lovely in these United States, once the disturbing element of the opposing political party was snowed under by the avalanche of voters saving the republic.
In a political campaign demagogic methods may be excusable. After all, the public has the votes, and must be handled with due regard for the laws of mob psychology. But when we see the same methods applied to the presentation of a question of permanent interest and importance, and applied by men who both know better and have not the defense of electoral anxiety and expediency, it is time to protest. As an Anglo-Saxon American, whose deepest interest is in the solidarity of the English-speaking world, I want to raise my voice against the tactless and platitudinous type of article and speech one reads and hears everywhere in connection with the Pilgrim tercentenary. In my childhood, when the kitchen happened to run out of cereals or milk, the cook used to give us a dish of bread or flour and water with a liberal sprinkling of sugar to disguise its origin. To make children take "pap," everything depends upon the sugar. The ingredients and their cooking do not enter in.
I would not do all tercentenary orators the injustice of imputing to them paucity of ideas. For the cleverest of writers and preachers are among the most platitudinous when they touch the subject of our relations with Great Britain. Why do they go no further than extolling Puritan stock and our inheritance from the mother country and declaring that no sinister influences disturb the complete understanding that exists between those to whom blood is thicker than water? Article after article, speech after speech, toast after toast, have I read or sat through, and failed to get any idea other than that it was reprehensible and "pro-German" to criticize Great Britain, that the Irish were akin to the Bolshevists, and that the bonds uniting the two great nations of the Anglo-Saxon world were imperishable. Our British hosts are assured that history text-books have been responsible for much of our misunderstanding of the British, and that when we have remedied the way the War of Independence and the War of 1812 and the British attitude in the Civil War were presented to American children, a desire to twist the lion's tail will remain in this country only among Germans and Irish. And we shall substitute "Over There" as our national anthem for "The Star-Spangled Banner," whose origin is, like the Fourth of July, extremely embarrassing for Anglo-American relations. And no matter what war may arise, together shall we stand, as we did in France. So on ad nauseam.
We must not be uncharitable in passing judgment on tercentenary orators. With British hosts in the audience and at the table, and considering the occasion, a graceful eulogy is the order of the day. Still, it is possible to combine constructive thinking with complimentary references to past and present, especially when we consider that tercentenary celebrations draw thoughtful, earnest people, who do not have to be treated like a movie audience or a campaign gathering. But so strongly are we under the influence of the propaganda of the recent war that our tongues cleave to the roof of the mouth when any thought comes into our head that, if uttered, might be interpreted as criticizing a British foreign or domestic policy or suggesting that Anglo-American relations need careful guiding and nursing. Still under the spell of the war, our tercentenary utterances are "pap," uninteresting, tiresome, and not contributing, as they ought to do, something new to the great problem of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.
We might dismiss the tercentenary disappointment with a simple expression of regret over the great opportunity missed, were it not for the strong feeling that the loving-cup and patting-ourselves-mutually-on-the-back performances are positively harmful to Anglo-Saxon solidarity. They have the effect of a soporific to American believers in Anglo-Saxon solidarity and of a stimulant to the enemies among Americans of friendship with Great Britain. The man who attends Pilgrim dinners and celebrations goes home with the comfortable feeling that Anglo-Saxon solidarity is stronger than ever. It is a physical reaction from the food and lights and flowers and music and women, not a mental reaction from the speakers. Satisfied and reassured, the tercentenary celebrant thinks he has done all that is necessary to maintain and strengthen the bonds of friendship and good understanding between the English-speaking nations. The sugar is to his taste. The German-American who reads the reports of the speeches and toasts in the newspapers finds his instinctive antipathy to Anglo-Saxon solidarity confirmed by the tercentenary orator's foolish and distorted conception of it. There is no sugar on the "pap" for him. As for the Irishman, he sees redder than ever when he reads of tercentenary orators lauding Puritans for exiling themselves and later fighting England for freedom's sake and denouncing the Irish for aspiring to freedom.
Yes, I know the American of Scotch or English descent is likely to say that this is an Anglo-Saxon country, and that the Germans and Irishmen and other Europeans did not have to come here. When they did come, it was up to them to forget old ties and become assimilated with us. We have the right to justify close ties with Great Britain on the ground of "blood is thicker than water," but they have not that right in regard to their countries of origin. In 1914 this contention was put squarely before Americans of European origin. We forget now that it was never admitted by them, and that the remarkable union of the American nation, after we went into the war, did not mean, among Americans of other than Anglo-Saxon origin, the abandonment of affection for, of pride in, their own ancestors. They refuse to accept the brand of hyphenate, arguing that, until the country of origin became the enemy of the United States, they had as much right to feel sympathetic toward it and even help its cause as did the Americans of Anglo-Saxon origin to sympathize with and help Great Britain. Now that the war is over, these non-Anglo-Saxons say to us, "If in your tercentenary celebrations you insist on blood relationship, do not speak for the United States. We resent that and deny your right. Speak only for your own element in the American population."
We Anglo-Saxons cannot expect to denounce Ireland and even Germany and affirm our affection for and championship of England on the ground of blood relationship, as is being done in almost every tercentenary celebration, and expect our right to speak for the United States not to be contested. Unfortunately, this is not "our country." The United States, from the beginning, contained elements without a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, and Germans, Irishmen, and Hollanders fought in the Revolutionary War. Throughout the nineteenth century the United States relied for her growth and expansion upon European immigration, and the large part of the Irish and German elements came to this country before the Civil War. The United States is not our (Anglo-Saxon) country either because of the great preponderance of people of our unmixed blood or because the Anglo-Saxon element founded it exclusively and made it what it is. The greatness of the United States in the third decade of the twentieth century is due to the combined aid of several different elements of her population, and it is certain that we could not have dispensed with either the German or the Irish element. And these elements are so numerous and so powerful in wealth and political influence that it is inexpedient—to use a mild word—to ignore or affront them in our tercentenary writing and speaking. It does not help the cause of Anglo-Saxon solidarity for a tercentenary orator to denounce the German-Americans and the Irish-Americans. Quite the contrary. Thoughtless speakers who indulge in such diatribes and enthusiastic listeners who beam approval are digging the grave and assisting at the interment of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.
On a Sunday morning in January, 1915, I went to service at an Anglican church in Cairo. After the prayers for the king and the royal family, the minister prayed for the President of the United States. I knew, of course, that this beautiful and graceful custom holds in many Anglican chapels on the Continent which American tourists attend, and I suppose it was introduced in Cairo for the same reason. But in wartime, when we were neutral and when there were no tourists in Cairo, the prayer touched me deeply. It was an evidence of the close relationship between my country and Great Britain, closer than between Great Britain and her allies. I sat through a dull sermon, thinking of what a privilege it was for an American to share in the advantages of the unique position of the British Empire. Travel where I would in the world, I could use my own language and attend my own church and hear my country remembered in prayer. Common language and common faith, common laws and customs and common ideals—does the untraveled American appreciate the wealth of his Anglo-Saxon heritage and the vast privileges it confers upon him?
But on another American correspondent who was not of Anglo-Saxon origin this incident made no impression, and he did not follow me in prizing the heritage. "Language is a lucky convenience," he admitted, "but the English are foreigners to me. I feel nothing in common with them, nothing at all." He went on to say that he regarded the British as a more dangerous enemy than the Germans, and that our next war would be with them. My friend was a high-minded and intelligent American who had been to school in England and also in France. In temperament he was more emotional than I; he loved music and architecture and handled carpets reverently. But his American blood—three or four generations—gave him no feeling of kinship with the English. I realized, when it came to the test of liking for a European country, that his sympathies were instinctively with Germany, while mine were as instinctively with England. Why? The difference in our blood and background of tradition. Later this correspondent rendered splendid service in the A. E.F. But he was fighting for the United States alone, and more than once told me that he would do everything in his power, after the war, to keep the United States from "falling in the orbit," as he put it, of the British Empire.
It will do us no good to discount the importance of our compatriots who are not of Anglo-Saxon blood. If we want to make Anglo-Saxon solidarity a national policy instead of a group cult, we shall have to find an appeal to the American public different from that of the orators and writers who speak in these days of our ancestors, our common blood, our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. Nor is the superiority of Anglo-Saxon culture an argument that impresses many outside of our group. It smacks too much of a discredited political system that sought to replace or dominate other cultures by the Kulture of the Uebermensch. Some of the tercentenary orators come dangerously near plagiarizing the ex-Kaiser.
Culture is a vague word. If it means traditions and customs and mental habits as embodied in our literature and preserved in our family life, we shall find many other American elements than the German unwilling to abandon for our culture what they brought here from the Old World. Thousands of flourishing communities exist in the United States, nurseries of splendid Americans, where the new generation is being brought up with traditions and customs and mental habits very different from those of Anglo-Saxons. From Scandinavians to Italians, elements of continental European origin are not giving up their culture for Anglo-Saxon culture. So strong are atavism, the home circle, and the church that our public-school system does not Anglo-Saxonize the children. I used to believe in this assimilation and to write that it was being accomplished. Experience, especially with officers and soldiers of the A.E.F., has taught me that I was wrong.
If millions upon millions of Americans are ignorant of or indignantly reject the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity lovingly dwelt upon by tercentenary orators and writers, what are we going to do about it? We cannot tell Hans Schmidt, Giuseppe Tommasi, Abram Einstein, Olaf Andersen, Robert Emmet O'Brien, and a dozen others that they are not good Americans because they do not cheerfully accept the supremacy of the Scotch and English among us and the superiority of Scotch and English ways. Nothing could be better fitted to arouse within them a fierce determination to resist assimilation and oppose the policy of Anglo-Saxon solidarity.
Here is our problem. We of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, whose ancestors came to America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have never been accused of hating ourselves and being oblivious to our origin. We have overloaded the Mayflower and over-populated Virginia and given William Penn a host of intimate friends. From the time of Washington Irving we have become more and more reconciled with our British cousins, and have learned to build our traditions from long before the Revolutionary War. We have become aware of our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. At the outbreak of the World War we celebrated a hundred years of peace with Great Britain. Then we entered the war, and fought with the British against a common enemy.
Now, after the victory, we come to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. We are more than ever glad of our blood and traditions. We are immensely proud of the British stock from which we sprang. How the deeds of the British on land and sea quickened our pulses as we read of them! A privileged few of us saw and shared in them. More important still, during the war, there were times when we realized that Anglo-Saxondom was threatened with an eclipse of glory and influence. A thing is never so precious as when you are faced with losing it. Will any reader of this article ever forget the awful sensation that came when he read the first bulletins of the Battle of Jutland? No Anglo-Saxon could be indifferent about the outcome of the war after that experience. The aftermath of the war has not dispelled, but rather confirmed, the instinct of danger felt during the war. We say to ourselves that the British Empire and the United States must face the future together. How are we going to create an irresistible public opinion in the United States in favor of a foreign policy that will embody as one of its cardinal principles the fostering of Anglo-Saxon solidarity? What are the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity?
I think I have proved that the elements of our population which are not Anglo-Saxon do not take much stock in Anglo-American community of blood and culture and history because they are not bases to them. Their blood is not ours, their culture is different, and American history gives them ground for antagonism to the British rather than sympathy with the British. The earlier English history they did not share. Other grounds must be sought to convince the American nation that it is a part of Anglo-Saxondom and should work for the union and prosperity of Anglo-Saxondom. The only cultural basis that has a wider appeal than simply to one of several American groups is the question of common language.
English is our national language. But this forms a strong bond only with Canada, where there is a constant intercourse among peoples and a constant exchange of books and periodicals. It is becoming a factor in our relations with Australia, also, because Australians read widely and with avidity popular American literature. But outside of a limited circle, which needs no conversion to Anglo-Saxon solidarity, few British and Americans come into personal contact, and the reciprocal purchase of books and magazines and newspapers is surprisingly small. Potentially, however, common language is a basis of solidarity. It is an asset in favor of those who are working to bring the English-speaking peoples together.
The practicable bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, which tercentenary orators could present with effect to all their compatriots, are common laws and spirit of administration of justice, similar development of democratic institutions, common ideals, and common interests. The first two are in a certain sense included in the third and fourth, and the fourth covers the first three. One appeals to the moral sense and to self-interest, and then, to clinch the argument, shows how idealism is in harmony with interest, as in the adage, "Honesty is the best policy."
In discussing the four bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, it must be remembered that the problem involves the direct relations between each two of the members of the English-speaking group of nations and between each English-speaking country and the colonies and possessions of the British Empire and the United States. The following table shows how wide a field Anglo-Saxon solidarity covers:
Great Britain and United States
Great Britain and Ireland
Ireland and United States
Great Britain and Canada
United States and Canada
Ireland and Canada
Great Britain and Australia
United States and Australia
Ireland and Australia
Canada and Australia
Great Britain and New Zealand
United States and New Zealand
Ireland and New Zealand
Canada and New Zealand
Australia and New Zealand
Great Britain and South Africa
United States and South Africa
Ireland and South Africa
Canada and South Africa
Australia and South Africa
New Zealand and South Africa
Great Britain and India and other possessions
United States and British possessions
Ireland and British possessions
Canada and British possessions
Australia and British possessions
New Zealand and British possessions
South Africa and British possessions
United States and her possessions
Great Britain and American possessions
Ireland and American possessions
Canada and American possessions
Australia and American possessions
New Zealand and American possessions
South Africa and American possessions
British possessions and American possessions
Thirty-six separate headings may seem on first glance useless repetition. But I ask my readers simply to take each heading, think for a minute, and there will arise in your mind some problem of Anglo-Saxon solidarity involving primarily the two parties coupled in each of the thirty-six headings. In fact, it is not difficult to find several sources of friction calling for adjustment under a single head. I have not space to enumerate. Nor have I increased the list by adding the new headings that might be justified by the new responsibilities of the British Empire through the acquisition—in complicated form because of division with self-governing dominions and the as yet unsettled limitations of mandates—of the former German colonies.
The years immediately ahead are years of great peril for Anglo-Saxon solidarity. The problems we must face and solve go so far beyond the matters dealt with by tercentenary orators that one feels the crying need of light and more light in considering the quadrangular character of relations between the different parts of Anglo-Saxondom—Great Britain, self-governing dominions, the United States, and the possessions and protectorates British and American. Japan? The Pacific? Tariffs and shipping? Sea-power? Status of the Near East and the German colonies? Panama Canal? Monroe Doctrine? League of Nations? Ireland? We cannot treat these matters only as questions between London and Washington affecting Anglo-American relations. Nor can Great Britain treat them that way. Both London and Washington are forced to take into consideration the self-governing dominions of the British Empire whose sentiments and interests give them a distinct point of view and program of their own. With the exception of South Africa, the self-governing dominions are, like the United States, the outgrowth of transplanted Anglo-Saxon civilization. It is natural that in mentality, and frequently in interests, they should be nearer us than the mother country. Canada and South Africa have important Caucasian elements that have not been under the influence of, and are antipathetic to, Anglo-Saxon culture. Australia's Irish rival ours in singing the hymn of hate against England.
The first basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is to create throughout Anglo-Saxondom the consciousness of unity in our conception of law and in the spirit of our administration of law. Just laws justly administered are the foundation of civilized society. Those who live under them prize them more highly than any other possession. No alien, whatever his origin, who comes to live under our dispensation fails to acknowledge the blessings of Anglo-Saxon law. Our laws and our courts are the outgrowth of centuries of English history and experience. They offer the greatest protection to the individual man and the widest possibility of individual freedom the world has ever known. Within recent years, if America meant to the immigrant "the home of the free," it was because of the scrupulous administration of justice according to the laws handed down to us by our Anglo-Saxon forebears. Similarly, the immigrant of continental European origin who went to a British colony was sure of a "square deal." Before the law he was the equal of any other man. Entering our society, he shared immediately the benefits of our most sacred heritage—free speech, free assembly, the habeas corpus act, and the principles of Anglo-Saxon law assured to Americans not only by custom and our system of jurisprudence, but by the first amendments to the Constitution. As far as laws and the administration of justice are concerned, the English-speaking countries have had a similar development, and have not severed this powerful link binding them to England more closely than common language.
If we can impress upon our fellow-citizens in the United States and Canada and South Africa and Ireland who are not of Anglo-Saxon origin or who have grown away from Anglo-Saxondom that throughout the English-speaking world we are maintaining the reign of English law and guarding jealously the constitutional liberties handed down to us from England, this precious basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity will appeal to them, and they will help us to strengthen it. But there never has been a time in this country when the enemies of our Anglo-Saxon liberties have been so strong and so persistent. The cause of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is menaced by assaults from within. Public officials of the mentality of Attorney-General Palmer despise the Anglo-Saxon system of law and repudiate the traditions and customs of centuries.
Political institutions and jurisprudence go together. Although the American commonwealth has developed its political institutions with less strict adherence to English standards than in the case of jurisprudence, our modifications do not affect the spirit of what we have received, and the changes are only in detail. Representative government we received from England. When we fought the mother country it was to preserve our rights as Englishmen, which we did not believe had been forfeited by transplantation. The American War of Independence was a struggle to establish a principle that has been vital in the development of English-speaking countries. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa owe to us the possession of Anglo-Saxon liberties in new worlds without having had to fight for them. During the recent war British propagandists in the United States made much of the argument that the British Empire was fighting to secure the triumph of Anglo-Saxon polity against a different system that was both reactionary and aggressive, that Americans were as much interested as British in defending Anglo-Saxon polity, and that therefore the British Empire was fighting our battle. The argument was sound. It appealed to thoughtful men in the United States, and I believe history will show that our slogan when we did enter the war, "To make the world safe for democracy," was not a vain one.
The continental European who emigrates to white men's countries under the Anglo-Saxon form of government becomes, after naturalization, an equal partner with every other citizen. He votes. He is eligible for office. No argument is necessary to convince him of the advantages of living under Anglo-Saxon political institutions. If these institutions are properly administered, he appreciates them as highly as he appreciates Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. A basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity that we can urge upon Americans who are deaf to the call of blood and culture is Anglo-Saxon polity. Every inhabitant of Anglo-Saxondom is interested in the maintenance and defense of the jurisprudence and polity under which he lives. Point out to him that English-speaking countries cannot afford to risk these precious possessions by being enemies and by pursuing antagonistic policies in this electrically charged post bellum world, and he will begin to see the common sense of a policy of rapprochement between Great Britain, her dominions, and ourselves.
The most powerful appeal to the heart of the United States is the moral appeal. This is true of every other Anglo-Saxon country. If we needed proof, the recent war gave it. Great Britain was hardly less slow than the United States in getting her soul into the war. Whatever German polemicists may have said in their hymns of hate, there was no English conspiracy against their commerce, and Great Britain did not enter the war—I am speaking of the national consciousness of her people—to crush a trade rival. Without the invasion of Belgium, the cabinet would have had difficulty in getting Parliament to declare war. Without the constant effort to arouse and maintain the people in a state of moral indignation, which was never relaxed during the four years of fighting, the people of the British Empire would not have furnished millions of soldiers. We Anglo-Saxons are instinctively anti-militaristic, and we loathe war. We accept the burden of war only as a last resort, when we are driven to it. In a certain sense the United States was kicked into the war. We could not stand Germany pulling our nose and slapping our face any longer. But after we entered, the remarkable effort in manpower and money made by this nation was due not to spontaneous combustion, but to the clever propaganda of various official and unofficial organizations, ably assisted by a large element of the press.
If the call of blood and culture, as some tercentenary orators claim, enlisted us in the war, why were we deaf to it for three years? I am afraid that our passivity from 1914 to 1917 flatly contradicts the eloquent assertions made over loving-cups at Pilgrim banquets. The United States as a whole does not possess an Anglo-Saxon racial or cultural consciousness. But, despite our mixture of blood and cultural background, successive generations of development under Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and polity have given us an idealism that is distinctively Anglo-Saxon. It was slow to awaken, but when it did awake, the people of this country, irrespective of origin, went into the war for the triumph of the ideals embodied by President Wilson in his war speeches. We believe that these were the ideals of our allies, for their statesmen had been telling us the principles for which the Entente was fighting ever since August 1, 1914.
But when the statesmen of the peace conference refused to abide by the principles proclaimed during the war, and upon the basis of which the armistice was concluded, they made impossible America's participation in the treaties. At Manchester, in December, 1918, President Wilson declared that the United States would never enter into any league that was not an association of all nations for the common good. How could it be otherwise? A formidable number of millions of Americans who fought Germany without hesitation because Germany stood for militarism and autocracy and imperialism do not believe they are called upon to sanction and enforce a sordid materialistic peace that makes some races masters of others. For the sake of idealism and for the United States they fought against kith and kin, or alongside of those they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the oppressors of their race. But can we expect our compatriots of German or Irish or Slavic origin to support a European and world order based upon the permanent inferiority and subjection of the races from which they sprang?
Some unthinking Americans hotly answer in the affirmative, and revive the epithet of hyphenate. But in doing so, they reveal themselves to be very poor Anglo-Saxons. A sense of justice and an ability to put oneself in the other man's place are the Anglo-Saxon qualities par excellence. Being of pure British blood myself, I cannot help looking with contempt upon parvenus who are plus royalistes que le roi. The American of German or Irish origin who speaks and works for Anglo-Saxon race supremacy is a strange creature. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem" is sacred to the decent-minded man. The pride I have in my ancestry and the sense of partnership I feel in the history of my race enable me to respect others for thinking of Germany and Ireland as I think of England. Insisting that they foul their own nests is a poor test for recruits to Anglo-Saxon solidarity. Americans who maintain that it is our duty as good citizens of the United States to work for, or at least not to speak against, the material advancement of Great Britain because of kinship are appealing to a racial group and are as guilty of hyphenism as the propagandists of any other racial group. The reader interrupts me with the protest, "But you cannot put our comrade in arms, Great Britain, whose language and civilization we share, in the same position toward American citizens as Germany, our recent enemy!" Precisely so. I agree. But why? The blood argument I accept, but nearly fifty million Americans reject it. We must make the distinction one of ideals.
Our third basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is, then, harmony of ideals among the nations of the English-speaking world. Great Britain is drawn to us, the self-governing dominions are drawn to us, and we are drawn to Great Britain and the self-governing dominions because we have common ideals. And there will be no rapprochement unless this is so. Consequently, if we are honestly working for Anglo-Saxon solidarity and not simply setting forth sugared "pap" for public consumption, we shall on both sides tackle courageously shortcomings in following ideals not because we love to criticize, but because this is the only way we can remove sources of friction that threaten to disrupt Anglo-Saxon solidarity. In regard to Germany, Great Britain has acted admirably, and is living up to her ideals of fair play and of not kicking the other fellow when he is down. In regard to Ireland, on the other hand, we have a question that must be settled before genuine good feeling is established among the Anglo-Saxon states. Speaking for Ireland and not against her is the highest wisdom for the Anglo-Saxon propagandist in the United States. It proves that he himself believes in the Anglo-Saxon heritage of which he boasts, and that he is anxious to remove one of the greatest obstacles to Anglo-American friendship.
We are not going to get anywhere in our propaganda for Anglo-Saxon solidarity unless we emphasize the common idealism and strive to make the association of Anglo-Saxon nations a committee for giving Anglo-Saxon liberties to the whole world. This thought came to me with peculiar force when I stood on the spot in the Moses Taylor Pyne estate where are buried those who fell in the Battle of Princeton. On a bronze tablet are inscribed the words of Alfred Noyes:
Here freedom stood by slaughtered friend and foe,
And, ere the wrath paled, or that sunset died,
Looked through the ages, then, with eyes aglow,
Laid them to wait that future, side by side.
The "future, side by side" of English-speaking countries can mean only working for the spread of freedom. We shall not help each other to deny freedom to others, and if we did join in an Anglo-Saxon freebooting expedition across the world, we should quickly follow the law of pirates and be at each other's throats.
A poet might have ended his plea for Anglo-Saxon solidarity here. An orator certainly would. But, as I am in earnest and want my argument to remain with the reader, I must not leave it incomplete. Among the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, as in any human association, interest is the cornerstone. Men coöperate in no undertaking in which the element of mutual advantage does not play the preponderant rôle. Other factors are present, of course, and mutual interest may not be the exciting cause of entering into a common undertaking. But interest is the cement as well as the foundation of human society. If I were strictly logical, the three bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity already suggested ought to be made sub-divisions of the basis I call common interests.
What are these interests? Are they numerous and important enough to justify a close union among English-speaking countries? What particular interests would have to be sacrificed in order to further the common interests? Are the sacrifices possible? Is it worth while to make them? The World War and its aftermath make inevitable raising these questions. But those who, like myself, believe that the political and economic rapprochement of Anglo-Saxon countries is a possibility that ought to be carefully considered, will fail of appreciable results unless we are willing to discuss moot questions frankly and with detachment in good old Anglo-Saxon fashion and unless we realize the composite racial and cultural character of the American nation.
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