It was in a very brief visit that Beecher managed to see England as she
was: a remarkable letter for its insight, and more remarkable still for
its moderation, when you consider that it was written in the midst of our
Civil War, while loyal Americans were not only enraged with England, but
wounded to the quick as well. When a man can do this--can have passionate
convictions in passionate times, and yet keep his judgment unclouded,
wise, and calm, he serves his country well.

I can remember the rage and the wound. In that atmosphere I began my
existence. My childhood was steeped in it. In our house the London Punch
was stopped, because of its hostile ridicule. I grew to boyhood hearing
from my elders how England had for years taunted us with our tolerance of
slavery while we boasted of being the Land of the Free--and then, when we
arose to abolish slavery, how she "jack-knived" and gave aid and comfort
to the slave power when it had its fingers upon our throat. Many of that
generation of my elders never wholly got over the rage and the wound.
They hated all England for the sake of less than half England. They
counted their enemies but never their friends. There's nothing unnatural
about this, nothing rare. On the contrary, it's the usual, natural,
unjust thing that human nature does in times of agony. It's the Henry
Ward Beechers that are rare. In times of agony the average man and woman
see nothing but their agony. When I look over some of the letters that I
received from England in 1915--letters from strangers evoked by a book
called The Pentecost of Calamity, wherein I had published my conviction
that the cause of England was righteous, the cause of Germany hideous,
and our own persistent neutrality unworthy--I'm glad I lost my temper
only once, and replied caustically only once. How dreadful (wrote one of
my correspondents) must it be to belong to a nation that was behaving
like mine! I retorted (I'm sorry for it now) that I could all the more