reading public (not in America alone, of course) are strangely
insensitive to local colour. To people of culture, the bond of
literature is a very strong one; but the class of which I am speaking is
not composed of people of culture. They read, it is true, and often
greedily; but generally, I think, without knowing or greatly caring
whether a book is English or American, and at all events with no such
clear perception of the distinctive qualities of English work as could
beget in them any imaginative realisation of, or affection for, England.
Let us make no mistake--in the broad mass of the American people no such
affection exists. They are simply indifferent to England, with, as I
have said, a latent bias towards hostility.

Thus the scale of American feeling towards England, while its gradations
are of course infinite, may be divided into three main sections. At one
end of the scale we have the cultured and travelled classes, especially
in the Eastern States, conscious for the most part of British descent,
alive to the historical relationship between the two countries, valuing
highly their birthright in the treasures of English literature, knowing,
and (not uncritically) understanding England and her people, and
clinging to a kinship of which, taking one thing with another, they have
no reason to be ashamed. This class is intellectually influential, but
its direct weight in politics is small. It is, with shining exceptions,
a "mugwump" class. At the other end of the scale we have the hyphenated
Americans, who have imported or inherited European rancours against
England, and those unhyphenated Americans whose hatred of England is
partly a mere plank in a political platform, designed to accommodate her
hyphenated foe-men, partly a result of instinctive and traditional
chauvinism, reinforced by a (in every sense) partial view of
Anglo-American history. Finally, between these two extremes, we have the
great mass of the American people, who neither love nor hate England,