A Straight Deal Part 9

They were. It was May, 1906.

"Your Government seems to be doing something about it. It's certainly scandalous. Such abuses should never have been possible in the first place. It oughtn't to require your Government to stop it. It shouldn't have started."

"I fancy the facts aren't quite so bad as that sensational novel about Chicago makes them out," said the American. "At least I have been told so."

"It all sounds characteristic to me," said the Sam Johnson. "It's quite the sort of thing one expects to hear from the States."

"It is characteristic," said the American. "In spite of all the years that the sea has separated us, we're still inveterately like you, a bullying, dishonest lot--though we've had nothing quite so bad yet as your opium trade with China."

The Sam Johnson said no more.

At a ranch in Wyoming were a number of Americans and one Englishman, a man of note, bearing a celebrated name. He was telling the company what one could do in the way of amus.e.m.e.nt in the evening in London.

"And if there's nothing at the theatres and everything else fails, you can always go to one of the restaurants and hear the Americans eat."

There you have them, my anecdotes. They are chosen from many. I hope and believe that, between them all, they cover the ground; that, taken together as I want you to take them after you have taken them singly, they make my several points clear. As I see it, they reveal the chief whys and wherefores of friction between English and Americans. It is also my hope that I have been equally disagreeable to everybody. If I am to be banished from both countries, I shall try not to pa.s.s my exile in Switzerland, which is indeed a lovely place, but just now too full of celebrated Germans.

Beyond my two early points, the right to privacy and the mother-tongue, what are the generalizations to be drawn from my data? I should like to dodge spelling them out, I should immensely prefer to leave it here.

Some readers know it already, knew it before I began; while for others, what has been said will be enough. These, if they have the will to friendship instead of the will to hate, will get rid of their anti-English complex, supposing that they had one, and understand better in future what has not been clear to them before. But I seem to feel that some readers there may be who will wish me to be more explicit.

First, then. England has a thousand years of greatness to her credit.

Who would not be proud of that? Arrogance is the seamy side of pride.

That is what has rubbed us Americans the wrong way. We are recent. Our thousand years of greatness are to come. Such is our pa.s.sionate belief.

Crudity is the seamy side of youth. Our crudity rubs the English the wrong way. Compare the American who said we were going to buy England for a summer resort with the Englishman who said that when all other entertainment in London failed, you could always listen to the Americans eat. Crudity, "freshness" on our side, arrogance, toploftiness on theirs: such is one generalization I would have you disengage from my anecdotes.

Second. The English are blunter than we. They talk to us as they would talk to themselves. The way we take it reveals that we are too often thin-skinned. Recent people are apt to be thin-skinned and self-conscious and self-a.s.sertive, while those with a thousand years of tradition would have thicker hides and would never feel it necessary to a.s.sert themselves. Give an Englishman as good as he gives you, and you are certain to win his respect, and probably his regard. In this connection see my anecdote about the Tommies and Yankees who physically fought it out, and compare it with the Salisbury, the van Squibber, and the opium trade anecdotes. "Treat 'em rough," when they treat you rough: they like it. Only, be sure you do it in the right way.

Third. We differ because we are alike. That American who stood in the theatre complaining about the sixpence he didn't have to pay at home is exactly like Englishmen I have seen complaining about the unexpected here. We share not only the same mother-tongue, we share every other fundamental thing upon which our welfare rests and our lives are carried on. We like the same things, we hate the same things. We have the same notions about justice, law, conduct; about what a man should be, about what a woman should be. It is like the mother-tongue we share, yet speak with a difference. Take the mother-tongue for a parable and symbol of all the rest. Just as the word "girl" is identical to our sight but not to our hearing, and means oh! quite the same thing throughout us all in all its meanings, so that ident.i.ty of nature which we share comes often to the surface in different guise. Our loquacity estranges the Englishman, his silence estranges us. Behind that silence beats the English heart, warm, constant, and true; none other like it on earth, except our own at its best, beating behind our loquacity.

Thus far my anecdotes carry me. May they help some reader to a better understanding of what he has misunderstood heretofore!

No anecdotes that I can find (though I am sure that they are to be found) will ill.u.s.trate one difference between the two peoples, very noticeable to-day. It is increasing. An Englishman not only sticks closer than a brother to his own rights, he respects the rights of his neighbor just as strictly. We Americans are losing our grip on this. It is the bottom of the whole thing. It is the moral keystone of democracy.

Howsoever we may talk about our own rights to-day, we pay less and less respect to those of our neighbors. The result is that to-day there is more liberty in England than here. Liberty consists and depends upon respecting your neighbor's rights every bit as fairly and squarely as your own.

On the other hand, I wonder if the English are as good losers as we are?

Hardly anything that they could do would rub us more the wrong way than to deny to us that fair play in sport which they accord each other. I shall not more than mention the match between our Benicia Boy and their Tom Sayers. Of this the English version is as defective as our school-book account of the Revolution. I shall also pa.s.s over various other international events that are somewhat well known, and I will ill.u.s.trate the point with an anecdote known to but a few.

Crossing the ocean were some young English and Americans, who got up an international tug-of-war. A friend of mine was anchor of our team. We happened to win. They didn't take it very well. One of them said to the anchor:

"Do you know why you pulled us over the line?"

"No."

"Because you had all the blackguards on your side of the line."

"Do you know why we had all the blackguards on our side of the line?"

inquired the American.

"No."

"Because we pulled you over the line."

In one of my anecdotes I used the term Sam Johnson to describe an Englishman of a certain type. Dr. Samuel Johnson was a very marked specimen of the type, and almost the only ill.u.s.trious Englishman of letters during our Revolutionary troubles who was not our friend. Right down through the years ever since, there have been Sam Johnsons writing and saying unfavorable things about us. The Tory must be eternal, as much as the Whig or Liberal; and both are always needed. There will probably always be Sam Johnsons in England, just like the one who was scandalized by our Chicago packing-house disclosures. No longer ago than June 1, 1919, a Sam Johnson, who was discussing the Peace Treaty, said in my hearing, in London:

"The Yankees shouldn't have been brought into any consultation. They aided and abetted Germany."

In Littell's Living Age of July 20, 1918, pages 151-160, you may read an interesting account of British writers on the United States. The bygone ones were pretty preposterous. They satirized the newness of a new country. It was like visiting the Esquimaux and complaining that they grew no pineapples and wore skins. In Littell you will find how few are the recent Sam Johnsons as compared with the recent friendly writers.

You will also be reminded that our anti-English complex was discerned generations ago by Washington Irving. He said in his Sketch Book that writers in this country were "instilling anger and resentment into the bosom of a youthful nation, to grow with its growth and to strengthen with its strength."

And he quotes from the English Quarterly Review, which in that early day already wrote of America and England:

"There is a sacred bond between us by blood and by language which no circ.u.mstances can break.... Nations are too ready to admit that they have natural enemies; why should they be less willing to believe that they have natural friends?"

It is we ourselves to-day, not England, that are pushing friendship away. It is our politicians, papers, and propagandists who are making the trouble and the noise. In England the will to friendship rules, has ruled for a long while. Does the will to hate rule with us? Do we prefer Germany? Do we prefer the independence of Ireland to the peace of the world?

Chapter XVI: An International Imposture

A part of the Irish is asking our voice and our gold to help independence for the whole of the Irish. Independence is not desired by the whole of the Irish. Irishmen of Ulster have plainly said so.

Everybody knows this. Roman Catholics themselves are not unanimous. Only some of them desire independence. These, known as Sinn Fein, appeal to us for deliverance from their conqueror and oppressor; they dwell upon the oppression of England beneath which Ireland is now crushed. They refer to England's brutal and unjustifiable conquest of the Irish nation seven hundred and forty-eight years ago.

What is the truth, what are the facts?

By his bull "Laudabiliter," in 1155, Pope Adrian the Fourth invited the King of England to take charge of Ireland. In 1172 Pope Alexander the Third confirmed this by several letters, at present preserved in the Black Book of the Exchequer. Accordingly, Henry the Second went to Ireland. All the archbishops and bishops of Ireland met him at Waterford, received him as king and lord of Ireland, vowing loyal obedience to him and his successors, and acknowledging fealty to them forever. These prelates were followed by the kings of Cork, Limerick, Ossory, Meath, and by Reginald of Waterford. Roderick O'Connor, King of Connaught, joined them in 1175. All these accepted Henry the Second of England as their Lord and King, swearing to be loyal to him and his successors forever.

Such was England's brutal and unjustifiable conquest of Ireland.

Ireland was not a nation, it was a tribal chaos. The Irish nation of that day is a legend, a myth, built by poetic imagination. During the centuries succeeding Henry the Second, were many eras of violence and bloodshed. In reading the story, it is hard to say which side committed the most crimes. During those same centuries, violence and bloodshed and oppression existed everywhere in Europe. Undoubtedly England was very oppressive to Ireland at times; but since the days of Gladstone she has steadily endeavored to relieve Ireland, with the result that today she is oppressing Ireland rather less than our Federal Government is oppressing Ma.s.sachusetts, or South Carolina, or any State. By the Wyndham Land Act of 1903, Ireland was placed in a position so advantageous, so utterly the reverse of oppression, that Dillon, the present leader, hastened to obstruct the operation of the Act, lest the Irish genius for grievance might perish from starvation. Examine the state of things for yourself, I cannot swell this book with the details; they are as accessible to you as the few facts about the conquest which I have just narrated. Examine the facts, but even without examining them, ask yourself this question: With Canada, Australia, and all those other colonies that I have named above, satisfied with England's rule, hastening to her a.s.sistance, and with only Ireland selling herself to Germany, is it not just possible that something is the matter with Ireland rather than with England? Sinn Fein will hear of no Home Rule.

Sinn Fein demands independence. Independence Sinn Fein will not get.

Not only because of the outrage to unconsenting Ulster, but also because Britain, having just got rid of one Heligoland to the East, will not permit another to start up on the West. As early as August 25th, 1914, mention in German papers was made of the presence in Berlin of Cas.e.m.e.nt and of his mission to invite Germany to step into Ireland when England was fighting Germany. The traffic went steadily on from that time, and broke out in the revolution and the crimes in Dublin in 1916. England discovered the plan of the revolution just in time to foil the landing in Ireland of Germany, whom Ireland had invited there. Were England seeking to break loose from Ireland, she could sue Ireland for a divorce and name the Kaiser as co-respondent. Any court would grant it.

The part of Ireland which does not desire independence, which desires it so little that it was ready to resist Home Rule by force in 1914, is the steady, thrifty, clean, coherent, prosperous part of Ireland. It is the other, the unstable part of Ireland, which has declared Ireland to be a Republic. For convenience I will designate this part as Green Ireland, and the thrifty, stable part as Orange Ireland. So when our politicians sympathize with an "Irish" Republic, they befriend merely Green Ireland; they offend Orange Ireland.

Americans are being told in these days that they owe a debt of support to Irish independence, because the "Irish" fought with us in our own struggle for Independence. Yes, the Irish did, and we do owe them a debt of support. But it was the Orange Irish who fought in our Revolution, not the Green Irish. Therefore in paying the debt to the Green Irish and clamoring for "Irish" independence, we are double crossing the Orange Irish.

"It is a curious fact that in the Revolutionary War the Germans and Catholic Irish should have furnished the bulk of the auxiliaries to the regular English soldiers;... The fiercest and most ardent Americans of all, however, were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their descendants." History of New York, p. 133, by Theodore Roosevelt.

Next, in what manner have the Green Irish incurred our thanks?

They made the ancient and honorable a.s.sociation of Tammany their own.

Once it was American. Now Tammany is Green Irish. I do not believe that I need pause to tell you much about Tammany. It defeated Mitchel, a loyal but honest Catholic, and the best Mayor of Near York in thirty years. It is a despotism built on corruption and fear.

During our Civil War, it was the Green Irish that resisted the draft in New York. They would not fight. You have heard of the draft riots in New York in 1862. They would not fight for the Confederacy either.

During the following decade, in Pennsylvania, an a.s.sociation, called the Molly Maguires, terrorized the coal regions until their reign of a.s.sa.s.sination was brought to an end by the detection, conviction, and execution of their ringleaders. These were Green Irish.