themselves. This gave them a respect for their English cousins which they had never felt before.
Here is another tale, similar in moral. This occurred at Brest, in France. In the Y hut sat an English lady, one of the hostesses. To her came a young American marine with whom she already had some acquaintance.
This led him to ask for her advice. He said to her that as his permission was of only seventy-two hours, he wanted to be as economical of his time as he could and see everything best worth while for him to see during his leave. Would she, therefore, tell him what things in Paris were the most interesting and in what order he had best take them? She replied with another suggestion; why not, she said, ask for permission for England?
This would give him two weeks instead of seventy-two hours. At this he burst out violently that he would not set foot in England; that he never wanted to have anything to do with England or with the English: “Why, I am a marine!” he exclaimed, “and we marines would sooner knock down any English sailor than speak to him.”
The English lady, naturally, did not then tell him her nationality. She now realized that he had supposed her to be American, because she had frequently been in America and had talked to him as no stranger to the country could. She, of course, did not urge his going to England; she advised him what to see in France. He took his leave of seventy-two hours and when he returned was very grateful for the advice she had given him.
She saw him often after this, and he grew to rely very much upon her friendly counsel. Finally, when the time came for her to go away from Brest, she told him that she was English. And then she said something like this to him:
“Now, you told me you had never been in England and had never known an English person in your life, and yet you had all these ideas against us because somebody had taught you wrong. It is not at all your fault. You are only nineteen years old and you cannot read about us, because you have no chance; but at least you do know one English person now, and that English person begs you, when you do have a chance to read and inform yourself of the truth, to find out what England really has been, and what she has really done in this war.”
The end of the story is that the boy, who had become devoted to her, did as she suggested. To-day she receives letters from him which show that nothing is left of his anti-English complex. It is another instance of how clearly our native American mind, if only the facts are given it, thinks, judges, and concludes.
It is for those of my countrymen who will never have this chance, never meet some one who can guide them to the facts”, that I tell these things.
Let them “cut out the dope.” At this very moment that I write—November 24, 1919—the dope is being fed freely to all who are ready, whether through ignorance or through interested motives, to swallow it. The ancient grudge is being played up strong over the whole country in the interest of Irish independence.
Ian Hay in his two books so timely and so excellent, Getting Together and The Oppressed English, could not be as unreserved, naturally, as I can be about those traits in my own countrymen which have, in the past at any rate, retarded English cordiality towards Americans. Of these I shall speak as plainly as I know how. But also, being an American and therefore by birth more indiscreet than Ian Hay, I shall speak as plainly as I know how of those traits in the English which have helped to keep warm our ancient grudge. Thus I may render both countries forever uninhabitable to me, but shall at least take with me into exile a character for strict, if disastrous, impartiality.
I begin with an American who was traveling in an English train. It stopped somewhere, and out of the window he saw some buildings which interested him.
“Can you tell me what those are?” he asked an Englishman, a stranger, who sat in the other corner of the compartment.
“Better ask the guard,” said the Englishman.
Since that brief dialogue, this American does not think well of the English.
Now, two interpretations of the Englishman’s answer are possible. One is, that he didn’t himself know, and said so in his English way. English talk is often very short, much shorter than ours. That is because they all understand each other, are much closer knit than we are. Behind them are generations of “doing it” in the same established way, a way that their long experience of life has hammered out for their own convenience, and which they like. We’re not nearly so closely knit together here, save in certain spots, especially the old spots. In Boston they understand each other with very few words said. So they do in Charleston. But these spots of condensed and hoarded understanding lie far apart, are never confluent, and also differ in their details; while the whole of England is confluent, and the details have been slowly worked out through centuries of getting on together, and are accepted and observed exactly like the rules of a game.
In America, if the American didn’t know, he would have answered, “I don’t know. I think you’ll have to ask the conductor,” or at any rate, his reply would have been longer than the Englishman’s. But I am not going to accept the idea that the Englishman didn’t know and said so in his brief usual way. It’s equally possible that he did know. Then, you naturally ask, why in the name of common civility did he give such an answer to the American?
I believe that I can tell you. He didn’t know that my friend was an American, he thought he was an Englishman who had broken the rules of the game. We do have some rules here in America, only we have not nearly so many, they’re much more stretchable, and it’s not all of us who have learned them. But nevertheless a good many have.
Suppose you were traveling in a train here, and the man next you, whose face you had never seen before, and with whom you had not yet exchanged a syllable, said: “What’s your pet name for your wife?”
Wouldn’t your immediate inclination be to say, “What damned business is that of yours?” or words to that general effect?
But again, you most naturally object, there was nothing personal in my friend’s question about the buildings. No; but that is not it. At the bottom, both questions are an invasion of the same deep-seated thing—the right to privacy. In America, what with the newspaper reporters and this and that and the other, the territory of a man’s privacy has been lessened and lessened until very little of it remains; but most of us still do draw the line somewhere; we may not all draw it at the same place, but we do draw a line. The difference, then, between ourselves and the English in this respect is simply, that with them the territory of a man’s privacy covers more ground, and different ground as well. An Englishman doesn’t expect strangers to ask him questions of a guidebook sort. For all such questions his English system provides perfectly definite persons to answer. If you want to know where the ticket office is, or where to take your baggage, or what time the train goes, or what platform it starts from, or what towns it stops at, and what churches or other buildings of interest are to be seen in those towns, there are porters and guards and Bradshaws and guidebooks to tell you, and it’s they whom you are expected to consult, not any fellow-traveler who happens to be at hand. If you ask him, you break the rules. Had my friend said: “I am an American. Would you mind telling me what those buildings are?” all would have gone well. The Englishman would have recognized (not fifty years ago, but certainly to-day) that it wasn’t a question of rules between them, and would have at once explained—either that he didn’t know, or that the buildings were such and such.
Do not, I beg, suppose for a moment that I am holding up the English way as better than our own—or worse. I am not making comparisons; I am trying to show differences. Very likely there are many points wherein we think the English might do well to borrow from us; and it is quite as likely that the English think we might here and there take a leaf from their book to our advantage. But I am not theorizing, I am not seeking to show that we manage life better or that they manage life better; the only moral that I seek to draw from these anecdotes is, that we should each understand and hence make allowance for the other fellow’s way. You will admit, I am sure, be you American or English, that everybody has a right to his own way? The proverb “When in Rome you must do as Rome does”