Saxondom was threatened with an eclipse of glory and influence. A thing is never so precious as when you are faced with losing it. Will any reader of this article ever forget the awful sensation that came when he read the first bulletins of the Battle of Jutland? No Anglo-Saxon could be indifferent about the outcome of the war after that experience. The aftermath of the war has not dispelled, but rather confirmed, the instinct of danger felt during the war. We say to ourselves that the British Empire and the United States must face the future together. How are we going to create an irresistible public opinion in the United States in favor of a foreign policy that will embody as one of its cardinal principles the fostering of Anglo-Saxon solidarity? What are the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity? I think I have proved that the elements of our population which are not Anglo-Saxon do not take much stock in Anglo-American community of blood and culture and history because they are not bases to them. Their blood is not ours, their culture is different, and American history gives them ground for antagonism to the British rather than sympathy with the British. The earlier English history they did not share. Other grounds must be sought to convince the American nation that it is a part of Anglo-Saxondom and should work for the union and prosperity of Anglo-Saxondom. The only cultural basis that has a wider appeal than simply to one of several American groups is the question of common language. English is our national language. But this forms a strong bond only with Canada, where there is a constant intercourse among peoples and a constant exchange of books and periodicals. It is becoming a factor in our relations with Australia, also, because Australians read widely and with avidity popular American literature. But outside of a limited circle, which needs no conversion to Anglo-Saxon solidarity, few British and Americans come into personal contact, and the reciprocal purchase of books and magazines and newspapers is surprisingly small. Potentially, however, common language is a basis of solidarity. It is an asset in favor of those who are working to bring the English-speaking peoples together. The practicable bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, which tercentenary orators could present with effect to all their compatriots, are common laws and spirit of administration of justice, similar development of democratic institutions, common ideals, and common interests. The first two are in a certain sense included in the third and fourth, and the fourth covers the first three. One appeals to the moral sense and to self-interest, and then, to clinch the argument, shows how idealism is in harmony with interest, as in the adage, "Honesty is the best policy." In discussing the four bases of AngloSaxon solidarity, it must be remembered that the problem involves the direct relations between each two of the members of the English-speaking group of nations and between each Englishspeaking country and the colonies and possessions of the British Empire and the United States. The following table shows how wide a field Anglo-Saxon solidarity covers: Great Britain and United States Great Britain and Australia Great Britain and New Zealand Canada and South Africa Australia and South Africa possessions United States and British possessions Ireland and British possessions Canada and British possessions Australia and British possessions New Zealand and British possessions Thirty-six separate headings may seem on first glance useless repetition. But I ask my readers simply to take each heading, think for a minute, and there will arise in your mind some problem of Anglo-Saxon solidarity involving primarily the two parties coupled in each of the thirty-six headings. In fact, it is not difficult to find several sources of friction calling for adjustment under a single head. I have not space to enumerate. Nor have I increased the list by adding the new headings that might be justified by the new responsibilities of the British Empire through the acquisition in complicated form because of division with selfgoverning dominions and the as yet unsettled limitations of mandates-of the former German colonies. The years immediately ahead are years of great peril for Anglo-Saxon solidarity. The problems we must face and solve go so far beyond the matters dealt with by tercentenary orators that one feels the crying need of light and more light in considering the quadrangular character of relations between the different parts of Anglo-SaxondomGreat Britain, self-governing dominions, the United States, and the possessions and protectorates British and American. Japan? The Pacific? Tariffs and shipping? Sea-power? Status of the Near East and the German colonies? Panama Canal? Monroe Doctrine? League of Nations? Ireland? We cannot treat these matters only as questions between London and Washington affecting Anglo-American relations. Nor can Great Britain treat them that way. Both London and Washington are forced to take into consideration the self-governing dominions of the British. Empire whose sentiments and interests give them a distinct point of view and program of their own. With the exception of South Africa, the self-governing dominions are, like the United States, the outgrowth of transplanted AngloSaxon civilization. It is natural that in mentality, and frequently in interests, they should be nearer us than the mother country. Canada and South Africa have important Caucasian elements that have not been under the influence of, and are antipathetic to, Anglo-Saxon culture. Australia's Irish rival ours in singing the hymn of hate against England. The first basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is to create throughout AngloSaxondom the consciousness of unity in our conception of law and in the spirit of our administration of law. Just laws justly administered are the foundation of civilized society. Those who live under them prize them more highly than any other possession. No alien, whatever his origin, who comes to live under our dispensation fails to acknowledge the blessings of Anglo-Saxon law. Our laws and our courts are the outgrowth of centuries of English history and experience. They offer the greatest protection to the individual man and the widest possibility of individual freedom the world has ever known. Within recent years, if America meant to the immigrant "the home of the free," it was because of the scrupulous administration of justice according to the laws handed down to us by our AngloSaxon forebears. Similarly, the immigrant of continental European origin who went to a British colony was sure of a "square deal." of a "square deal." Before the law he was the equal of any other man. Entering our society, he shared immediately the benefits of our most sacred heritage -free speech, free assembly, the habeas corpus act, and the principles of Anglo-Saxon law assured to Americans not only by custom and our system of jurisprudence, but by the first amendments to the Constitution. As far as laws and the administration of justice are concerned, the English-speaking countries have had a similar development, and have not severed this powerful link binding them to England more closely than common language. If we can impress upon our fellowcitizens in the United States and Canada and South Africa and Ireland who are not of Anglo-Saxon origin or who have grown away from Anglo-Saxondom that throughout the English-speaking world we are maintaining the reign of English law and guarding jealously the constitutional liberties handed down to us from England, this precious basis of AngloSaxon solidarity will appeal to them, and they will help us to strengthen it. But there never has been a time in this country when the enemies of our AngloSaxon liberties have been so strong and so persistent. The cause of AngloSaxon solidarity is menaced by assaults from within. Public officials of the mentality of Attorney-General Palmer despise the Anglo-Saxon system of law and repudiate the traditions and customs of centuries. Political institutions and jurisprudence go together. Although the American commonwealth has developed its political institutions with less strict adherence to English standards than in the case of jurisprudence, our modifications do not affect the spirit of what we have received, and the changes are only in detail. Representative government we received from England. When we fought the mother country it was to preserve our rights as Englishmen, which we did not believe had been forfeited by transplantation. The American War of Independence was a struggle to establish a principle that has been vital in the development of Englishspeaking countries. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa owe to us the possession of Anglo-Saxon liberties in new worlds without having had to fight for them. During the recent war British propagandists in the United States made much of the argument that the British Empire was fighting to secure the triumph of Anglo-Saxon polity against a different system that was both reactionary and aggressive, that Americans were as much interested as British in defending AngloSaxon polity, and that therefore the British Empire was fighting our battle. The argument was sound. It appealed to thoughtful men in the United States, and I believe history will show that our slogan when we did enter the war, "To make the world safe for democracy," was not a vain one. The continental European who emigrates to white men's countries under the Anglo-Saxon form of government becomes, after naturalization, an equal partner with every other citizen. He votes. He is eligible for office. No argument is necessary to convince him of the advantages of living under AngloSaxon political institutions. If these institutions are properly administered, he appreciates them as highly as he appreciates Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. A basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity that we can urge upon Americans who are deaf to the call of blood and culture is Anglo-Saxon polity. Every inhabitant of Anglo-Saxondom is interested in the maintenance and defense of the jurisprudence and polity under which he lives. Point out to him that Englishspeaking countries cannot afford to risk these precious possessions by being enemies and by pursuing antagonistic policies in this electrically charged post bellum world, and he will begin to see the common sense of a policy of rapprochement between Great Britain, her dominions, and ourselves. The most powerful appeal to the heart of the United States is the moral appeal. This is true of every other Anglo-Saxon country. If we needed proof, the recent war gave it. Great Britain was hardly less slow than the United States in getting her soul into the war. Whatever German polemicists may have said in their hymns of hate, there was no English conspiracy against their commerce, and Great Britain did not enter the war-I am speaking of the national consciousness of her people to crush a trade rival. Without the invasion of Belgium, the cabinet would have had difficulty in getting Parliament to declare war. Without the constant effort to arouse and maintain the people in a state of moral indignation, which was never relaxed during the four years of fighting, the people of the British Empire would not have furnished millions of soldiers. We Anglo-Saxons are instinctively antimilitaristic, and we loathe war. We accept the burden of war only as a last resort, when we are driven to it. In a certain sense the United States was kicked into the war. We could not stand Germany pulling our nose and slapping our face any longer. But after we entered, the remarkable effort in man power and money made by this nation was due not to spontaneous combustion, but to the clever propaganda of various official and unofficial organizations, ably assisted by a large element of the press. If the call of blood and culture, as some tercentenary orators claim, enlisted us in the war, why were we deaf to it for three years? I am afraid that our passivity from 1914 to 1917 flatly contradicts the eloquent assertions made over loving-cups at Pilgrim banquets. The United States as a whole does not possess an Anglo-Saxon racial or cultural consciousness. But, despite our mixture of blood and cultural background, successive generations of development under Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and polity have given us an idealism that is distinctively Anglo-Saxon. It was slow to awaken, but when it did awake, the people of this country, irrespective of origin, went into the war for the triumph of the ideals embodied by President Wilson in his war speeches. We believed that these were the ideals of our allies, for their statesmen had been telling us the principles for which the Entente was fighting ever since August 1, 1914. the But when the statesmen of the peace conference refused to abide by the principles proclaimed during the war, and upon the basis of which the armistice was concluded, they made impossible America's participation in the treaties. At Manchester, in December, 1918, President Wilson declared that United States would never enter into any league that was not an association of all nations for the common good. How could it be otherwise? A formidable number of millions of Americans who fought Germany without hesitation because Germany stood for militarism and autocracy and imperialism do not believe they are called upon to sanction and enforce a sordid materialistic peace that makes some races masters of others. For the sake of idealism But and for the United States they fought against kith and kin, or alongside of those they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be the oppressors of their race. can we expect our compatriots of German or Irish or Slavic origin to support a European and world order based upon the permanent inferiority and subjection of the races from which they sprang? Some unthinking Americans hotly answer in the affirmative, and revive the epithet of hyphenate. But in doing so, they reveal themselves to be very poor Anglo-Saxons. A sense of justice and an ability to put oneself in the other man's place are the AngloSaxon qualities par excellence. Being of pure British blood myself, I cannot help looking with contempt upon parvenus who are plus royalistes que le roi. The American of German or Irish origin who speaks and works for Anglo-Saxon race supremacy is a strange creature. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem" is sacred to the decent-minded man. The pride I have in my ancestry and the sense of partnership I feel in the history of my race enable me to respect others for thinking of Germany and Ireland as I think of England. Insisting that they foul their own nests is a poor test for recruits to Anglo-Saxon solidarity. Americans who maintain that it is our duty as good citizens of the United States to work for, or at least not to speak against, the material advancement of Great Britain because of kinship are appealing to a racial group and are as guilty of hyphenism as the propagandists of any other racial group. The reader interrupts me with the protest, "But you cannot put our comrade in arms, Great Britain, whose language and civilization we share, in the same position toward American citizens as Germany, our recent enemy!" Precisely so. I agree. But why? The blood argument I accept, but nearly fifty million Americans reject it. We must make the distinction one of ideals. Our third basis of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is, then, harmony of ideals among the nations of the English-speaking world. Great Britain is drawn to us, the self-governing dominions are drawn to us, and we are drawn to Great Britain and the self-governing domin ions because we have common ideals. And there will be no rapprochement unless this is so. Consequently, if we are honestly working for Anglo-Saxon solidarity and not simply setting forth sugared "pap" for public consumption, we shall on both sides tackle courageously shortcomings in following ideals not because we love to criticize, but because this is the only way we can remove sources of friction that threaten to disrupt Anglo-Saxon solidarity. In regard to Germany, Great Britain has acted admirably, and is living up to her ideals of fair play and of not kicking the other fellow when he is down. In regard to Ireland, on the other hand, we have a question that must be settled before genuine good feeling is established among the Anglo-Saxon states. Speaking for Ireland and not against her is the highest wisdom for the AngloSaxon propagandist in the United States. It proves that he himself believes in the Anglo-Saxon heritage of which he boasts, and that he is anxious to remove one of the greatest obstacles to Anglo-American friendship. We are not going to get anywhere in our propaganda for Anglo-Saxon solidarity unless we emphasize the common idealism and strive to make the association of Anglo-Saxon nations a committee for giving Anglo-Saxon liberties to the whole world. This thought came to me with peculiar force when I stood on the spot in the Moses Taylor Pyne estate where those who fell in the Battle of Princeton are buried. On a bronze tablet are inscribed the words of Alfred Noyes: Here freedom stood by slaughtered friend and foe, And, ere the wrath paled, or that sunset died, Looked through the ages, then, with eyes aglow, Laid them to wait that future, side by side. The "future, side by side" of Englishspeaking countries can mean only working for the spread of freedom. We shall not help each other to deny freedom to others, and if we did join in an AngloSaxon freebooting expedition across the world, we should quickly follow the law of pirates and be at each other's throats. A poet might have ended his plea for Anglo-Saxon solidarity here. An orator certainly would. But, as I am in earnest and want my argument to remain with the reader, I must not leave it incomplete. Among the bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity, as in any human association, interest is the cornerstone. Men coöperate in no undertaking in which the element of mutual advantage does not play the preponderant rôle. Other factors are present, of course, and mutual interest may not be the exciting cause of entering into a common undertaking. But interest is the cement as well as the foundation of human society. If I were strictly logical, the three bases of Anglo-Saxon solidarity already suggested ought to be made sub-divisions of the basis I call common interests. What are these interests? Are they numerous and important enough to justify a close union among Englishspeaking countries? What particular interests would have to be sacrificed in order to further the common interests? Are the sacrifices possible? Is it worth while to make them? The World War and its aftermath make inevitable raising these questions. But those who, like myself, believe that the political and economic rapprochement of AngloSaxon countries is a possibility that ought to be carefully considered, will fail of appreciable results unless we are willing to discuss moot questions frankly and with detachment in good old AngloSaxon fashion and unless we realize the composite racial and cultural character of the American nation. |
