represented to us of the rule of a George the Third or of an inimical
aristocracy. Three out of the five men who form the war cabinet of
an empire are of what would once have been termed an "humble origin."
One was, if I am not mistaken, born in Nova Scotia. General Smuts,
unofficially associated with this council, not many years ago was in arms
against Britain in South Africa, and the prime minister himself is the
son of a Welsh tailor. A situation that should mollify the most exacting
and implacable of our anti-British democrats!

I listened to many speeches and explanations of the prejudice that
existed in the mind of the dyed-in-the-wool American against England,
and the reason most frequently given was the "school-book" reason;
our histories kept the feeling alive. Now; there is no doubt that the
histories out of which we were taught made what psychologists would call
"action patterns," or "complexes," in our brains, just as the
school-books have made similar complexes in the brains of German children
and prepared them for this war. But, after all, there was a certain
animus behind the histories. Boiled down, the sentiment was one against
the rule of a hereditary aristocracy, and our forefathers had it long
before the separation took place. The Middle-Western farmer has no
prejudice against France, because France is a republic. The French are
lovable, and worthy of all the sympathy and affection we can give them.
But Britain is still nominally a monarchy; and our patriot thinks of its
people very much as the cowboy used to regard citizens of New York. They
all lived on Fifth Avenue. For the cowboy, the residents of the dreary
side streets simply did not exist. We have been wont to think of all the
British as aristocrats, while they have returned the compliment by
visualizing all Americans as plutocrats--despite the fact that one-tenth
of our population is said to own nine-tenths of all our wealth!