Chapter XIX: Lion and Cub


My task is done. I have discussed with as much brevity as I could the
three foundations of our ancient grudge against England: our school
textbooks, our various controversies from the Revolution to the Alaskan
boundary dispute, and certain differences in customs and manners. Some of
our historians to whom I refer are themselves affected by the ancient
grudge. You will see this if you read them; you will find the facts,
which they give faithfully, and you will also find that they often (and I
think unconsciously) color such facts as are to England's discredit and
leave pale such as are to her credit, just as we remember the Alabama,
and forget the Lancashire cotton-spinners. You cannot fail to find,
unless your anti-English complex tilts your judgment incurably, that
England has been to us, on the whole, very much more friendly than
unfriendly--if not at the beginning, certainly at the end of each
controversy. What an anti-English complex can do in the face of 1914, is
hard to imagine: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, the Boers, all
Great Britain's colonies, coming across the world to pour their gold and
their blood out for her! She did not ask them; she could not force them;
of their own free will they did it. In the whole story of mankind such a
splendid tribute of confidence and loyalty has never before been paid to
any nation.

In this many-peopled world England is our nearest relation. From
Bonaparte to the Kaiser, never has she allowed any outsider to harm us.
We are her cub. She has often clawed us, and we have clawed her in
return. This will probably go on. Once earlier in these pages, I asked
the reader not to misinterpret me, and now at the end I make the same