show the set of a certain current in American feeling. Let us beware of
lending added strength to this current by any appearance of
self-interested eagerness in our advances towards America.

One thing we cannot too clearly realise, and that is that the true
American clings above everything to his Americanism. The status of an
American citizen is to him the proudest on earth, and that although he
may clearly enough recognise the abuses of American political life, and
the dangers which the Republic has to encounter. The feeling (which is
not to be confounded with an ignorant chauvinism, though in some cases
it may take that form) is the fundamental feeling of the whole nation;
and no emotion which threatened to encroach upon it, or compete with it
in any way, would have the least chance of taking a permanent place in
the American mind. The feeling which, as one may reasonably hope, is now
growing up between the two nations must be based on the mutual admission
of absolute independence and equality. The relation is new to history,
and must beget a new emotion. Strong as is the bond of mutual interest,
it must have a large idealism to reinforce it--a sentiment (shall we
say?) of mutual admiration--if the English-speaking peoples are to play
the great part in the drama of the future which Destiny seems to be
urging upon them. In order to stand together in perfect freedom and
dignity, it is essential that each of the brother-nations should be
incontestably able to stand alone. If we want to cement the
Anglo-American understanding, the first thing we have to do is to cement
the British Empire.

There is no more typical and probably no more widely respected American
at the present moment than Governor Roosevelt, of New York. Even those
who dissent from his "strenuous" ideal and his expansionist opinions,
admit him to be a model of political integrity and public spirit. In an