The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 2

_To his Daughter._

EL PASO, COLO., _Aug. 8, 1895_.

SWEETEST OF LIVING Pegs,--Your letter made glad my heart the day before yesterday, and I marveled to see what an improvement had come over your handwriting in the short s.p.a.ce of six weeks. "Orphly" and "ofly" are good ways to spell "awfully," too. I went up a high mountain yesterday and saw all the kingdoms of the world spread out before me, on the illimitable prairie which looked like a map. The sky glowed and made the earth look like a stained-gla.s.s window. The mountains are bright red.

All the flowers and plants are different from those at home. There is an immense mastiff in my house here. I think that even you would like him, he is so tender and gentle and mild, although fully as big as a calf.

His ears and face are black, his eyes are yellow, his paws are magnificent, his tail keeps wagging _all_ the time, and he makes on me the impression of an angel hid in a cloud. He longs to do good.

I must now go and hear two other men lecture. Many kisses, also to Tweedy, from your ever loving,

DAD.

On December 17, 1895, President Cleveland's Venezuela message startled the world and created a situation with which the next three letters are concerned. The boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana had been dragging along for years. The public had no reason to suppose that it was becoming acute, or that the United States was particularly interested in it, and had, in fact, not been giving the matter so much as a thought. All at once the President sent a message to Congress in which he announced that it was inc.u.mbent upon the United States to "take measures to determine ... the true" boundary line, and then to "resist by every means in its power as a willful aggression upon its rights and interests" any appropriation by Great Britain of territory not thus determined to be hers. In addition he sent to Congress, and thus published, the diplomatic despatches which had already pa.s.sed between Mr. Olney and Lord Salisbury. In these Mr. Olney had informed the representative of the Empire which was sovereign in British Guiana "that distance and three thousand miles of intervening ocean make any permanent political union between a European and an American state unnatural and inexpedient," and that "today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition." Lord Salisbury had squarely declined to concede that the United States could, of its own initiative, a.s.sume to settle the boundary dispute. It was difficult to see how either Great Britain or the United States could with dignity alter the position which its minister had a.s.sumed.

James was a warm admirer of the President, but this seemingly wanton provocation of a friendly nation horrified him. He considered that no blunder in statesmanship could be more dangerous than a premature appeal to a people's fighting pride, and that no perils inherent in the Venezuela boundary dispute were as grave as was the danger that popular explosions on one or both sides of the Atlantic would make it impossible for the two governments to proceed moderately. He was appalled at the outburst of Anglophobia and war-talk which followed the message. The war-cloud hung in the heavens for several weeks. Then, suddenly, a breeze from a strange quarter relieved the atmosphere. The Jameson raid occurred in Africa, and the Kaiser sent his famous message to President Kruger.[4] The English press turned its fire upon the Kaiser. The world's attention was diverted from Venezuela, and the boundary dispute was quietly and amicably disposed of.

_To E. L. G.o.dkin._

Cambridge, _Christmas Eve [1895]_.

DARLING OLD G.o.dKIN,--The only Christmas present I can send you is a word of thanks and a _bravo bravissimo_ for your glorious fight against the powers of darkness. I swear it brings back the days of '61 again, when the worst enemies of our country were in our own borders. But now that defervescence has set in, and the long, long campaign of discussion and education is about to begin, you will have to bear the leading part in it, and I beseech you to be as non-expletive and patiently explanatory as you can, for thus will you be the more effective. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do! The insincere propaganda of jingoism as a mere weapon of attack on the President was diabolic. But in the rally of the country to the President's message lay that instinct of obedience to leaders which is the prime condition of all effective greatness in a nation. And after all, when one thinks that the only England most Americans are taught to conceive of is the bugaboo coward-England, ready to invade the Globe wherever there is no danger, the rally does not necessarily show savagery, but only ignorance. We are all ready to be savage in _some_ cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Two things are, however, _desormais_ certain: Three days of fighting mob-hysteria at Washington can at any time undo peace habits of a hundred years; and the only permanent safeguard against irrational explosions of the fighting instinct is absence of armament and opportunity. Since this country has absolutely nothing to fear, or any other country anything to gain from its invasion, it seems to me that the party of civilization ought immediately, at any cost of discredit, to begin to agitate against any increase of either army, navy, or coast defense. That is the one form of protection against the internal enemy on which we can most rely. We live and learn: the labor of civilizing ourselves is for the next thirty years going to be complicated with this other abominable new issue of which the seed was sown last week. _You_ saw the new kind of danger, as you always do, before anyone else; but it grew gigantic much more suddenly than even you conceived to be possible.

Olney's Jefferson Brick style makes of our Foreign Office a laughing-stock, of course. But why, oh why, couldn't he and Cleveland and Congress between them have left out the infernal war-threat and simply asked for $100,000 for a judicial commission to enable us to see exactly to what effect we ought, in justice, to exert our influence.

That commission, if its decision were adverse, would have put England "in a hole," awakened allies for us in all countries, been a solemn step forward in the line of national righteousness, covered us with dignity, and all the rest. But no--_omnia ademit una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae!_--Still, the campaign of education may raise us out of it all yet.

Distrust of each other must not be suffered to go too far, for that way lies destruction.

Dear old G.o.dkin--I don't know whether you will have read more than the first page--I didn't expect to write more than one and a half, but the steam will work off. I haven't slept right for a week.

I have just given my Harry, now a freshman, your "Comments and Reflections," and have been renewing my youth in some of its admirable pages. But why the d.i.c.kens did you leave out some of the most delectable of the old sentences in the cottager and boarder essay?[5]

Don't curse G.o.d and die, dear old fellow. Live and be patient and fight for us a long time yet in this new war. Best regards to Mrs. G.o.dkin and to Lawrence, and a merry Christmas. Yours ever affectionately,

Wm. James.

_To F. W. H. Myers._

Cambridge, _Jan. 1, 1896_.

MY DEAR MYERS,--Here is a happy New Year to you with my presidential address for a gift.[6] _Valeat quantum._ The end could have been expanded, but probably this is enough to set the S. P. R. against a lofty _Kultur-historisch_ background; and where we have to do so much champing of the jaws on minute details of cases, that seems to me a good point in a president's address.

In the first half, it has just come over me that what I say of one line of fact being "strengthened in the flank" by another is an "uprush" from my subliminal memory of words of Gurney's--but that does no harm....

Well, our countries will soon be soaked in each other's gore. You will be disemboweling me, and Hodgson cleaving Lodge's skull. It will be a war of extermination when it comes, for neither side can tell when it is beaten, and the last man will bury the penultimate one, and then die himself. The French will then occupy England and the Spaniards America.

Both will unite against the Germans, and no one can foretell the end.

But seriously, all true patriots here have had a h.e.l.l of a time. It has been a most instructive thing for the dispa.s.sionate student of history to see how near the surface in all of us the old fighting instinct lies, and how slight an appeal will wake it up. Once _really_ waked, there is no retreat. So the whole wisdom of governors should be to avoid the direct appeals. This your European governments know; but we in our bottomless innocence and ignorance over here know nothing, and Cleveland in my opinion, by his explicit allusion to war, has committed the biggest political crime I have ever seen here. The secession of the southern states had more excuse. There was absolutely no need of it. A commission solemnly appointed to p.r.o.nounce justice in the Venezuela case would, if its decision were adverse to your country, have doubtless aroused the Liberal party in England to espouse the policy of arbitrating, and would have covered us with dignity, if no threat of war had been uttered. But as it is, who can see the way out?

Every one goes about now saying war is not to be. But with these volcanic forces who can tell? I suppose that the offices of Germany or Italy might in any case, however, save us from what would be the worst disaster to civilization that our time could bring forth.

The astounding thing is the latent Anglophobia now revealed. It is most of it directly traceable to the diabolic machinations of the party of protection for the past twenty years. They have lived by every sort of infamous sophistication, and hatred of England has been one of their most conspicuous notes....

I hope _you'll_ read my address--unless indeed Gladstone will consent!!

Ever thine--I hate to think of "embruing" my hands in (or with?) your blood.

W. J.

[S. P. R.] _Proceedings XXIX_ just in--hurrah for your 200-odd pages!

I have been ultra non-committal as to our evidence,--thinking it to be good presidential policy,--but I may have overdone the impartiality business.

_To F. W. H. Myers._

Cambridge, _Feb. 5, 1896_.

DEAR MYERS,--_Voici_ the proof! Pray _send me a revise_--Cattell wants to print it simultaneously _in extenso_ in "Science," which I judge to be a very good piece of luck for it. When will the next "Proceedings" be likely to appear?

I hope your rich tones were those that rolled off its periods, and that you didn't flinch, but rather raised your voice, when your own genius was mentioned. I read it both in New York and Boston to full houses, but heard no comments on the spot....

As for Venezuela, Ach! of that be silent! as Carlyle would have said. It is a sickening business, but some good may come out of it yet. Don't feel too badly about the Anglophobia here. It doesn't mean so much.

Remember by what words the country was roused: "Supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor."[7] If any other country's ruler had expressed himself with equal moral ponderosity wouldn't the population have gone twice as fighting-mad as ours? Of course it would; the wolf would have been aroused; and when the wolf once gets going, we know that there is no crime of which it doesn't sincerely begin to believe its oppressor, the lamb down-stream, to be guilty. The great proof that civilization _does_ move, however, is the magnificent conduct of the British press. Yours everlastingly,

W. J.

_To Henry Holt, Esq._

Cambridge, _Jan. 19, 1896_.