appearance daily in the morning press, thrusting their pessimisms
across our breakfast tables, beleaguering our faith with ill-natured
judgements and querulous warnings. One of our London Dailies, for
instance, specializes in annoying America; it works as effectively to
breed distrust as if its policy were dictated from Berlin.

I have just returned from a prolonged tour of America's activities in
France. Wherever I went I heard nothing but unstinted appreciation
of Great Britain's surpassing gallantry: "We never knew that you
Britishers were what you are; you never told us. We had to come over
here to find out." When that had been said I always waited, for I
guessed the qualifying statement that would follow: "There's only
one thing that makes us mad. Why the devil does your censor allow the
P---- to sneer at us every morning? Your army doesn't feel that way
towards us; at least, if it ever did, it doesn't now. Are there really
people in England who--?"

At this point I would cut my questioner short: "There are men so
short-sighted in every country that, to warm their hands, they would
burn the crown of thorns. You have them in America. Such men are not
representative."

The purpose of this book is to tell what America has done, is doing,
and, on the strength of her splendid and accomplished facts, to plead
for a closer friendship between my two countries. As an Englishman who
has lived in the States for ten years and is serving with the
Canadian Forces, I feel that I have a sympathetic understanding of
the affections and aloofnesses of both nations; as a member of both
families I claim the domestic right of indulging in a little plain
speaking to each in turn.