deductions, I could not but see a symptom of real significance. It was
partly a mere literary fashion, partly a result of personal and
accidental circumstances; but it also arose in no small degree from a
novel sense of kinship with the men, and participation in the ideals,
celebrated by the poet of British Imperialism.

The change, moreover, extended beyond the book-reading class, wide as
that is in America. It was to be noted even in the untravelled and
unlettered American, the man whose spiritual horizon is bounded by his
Sunday newspaper, the man in the street and on the farm. The events of
the past year had taught him--and he rubbed his eyes at the
realisation--that England was not an "effete monarchy," evilly-disposed
towards a Republic as such,[K] and dully resentful of bygone
humiliations by land and sea, but a brotherly-minded people, remembering
little (perhaps _too_ little) of those "old, unhappy, far-off things,"
willing to be as helpful as the rules of neutrality permitted, and eager
to applaud the achievements of American arms.

Millions of people who had hitherto felt no touch of racial sympathy,
and had been conscious only of a vague historic antipathy, learned with
surprise that England was in no sense their natural enemy, but rather,
among all the nations of Europe, their natural friend. Anglophobes, no
doubt, were still to be found in plenty; but they could no longer reckon
on the instant popular response which, a few years ago, would almost
certainly have attended any movement of hostility towards England. An
American publicist, who has perhaps unequalled opportunities for keeping
his finger on the pulse of national feeling, said to me, "It is only
three or four years since I heard a Federal judge express an earnest
desire for war with England, as a means of consolidating the North and
South in a great common enthusiasm. Of course this was pernicious talk