and's
soldiers had suffered no invasion of their island. They had not the
stimulus of the knowledge that the frontier of their country had been
violated, their homes broken up, their families enslaved, or worse. And
then he added: 'I have sometimes wondered in my own mind, though I have
hardly dared confess the sentiment, whether the gallant troops of our
Allies would have fought with equal spirit and so long a time as they
did, had they been engaged in the Highlands of Scotland or on the
marches of the Welsh border.' Why express that wonder? Is there not here
an instance of that needless overlooking of the feelings of others, by
which, in times past, you have chilled those others? Look out for that."

And should an American say to me:

"I have the will to friendship. What can I personally do?" I should say:

"Play fair! Look over our history from that Treaty of Paris in 1783,
down through the Louisiana Purchase, the Monroe Doctrine, and Manila
Bay; look at the facts. You will see that no matter how acrimoniously
England has quarreled with us, these were always family scraps, in which
she held out for her own interests just as we did for ours. But whenever
the question lay between ourselves and Spain, or France, or Germany, or
any foreign power, England stood with us against them.

"And another thing. Not all Americans boast, but we have a reputation
for boasting. Our Secretary of the Navy gave our navy the whole credit
for transporting our soldiers to Europe when England did more than half
of it. At Annapolis there has been a poster, showing a big American
sailor with a doughboy on his back, and underneath the words, 'We put
them across.' A brigadier general has written a book entitled, How the
Marines Saved Paris. Beside the marines there were some engineers. And
how about M Company of the 23rd regiment of the 2nd Division? It lost
in one day at Chateau-Thierry all its men but seven. And did the general
forget the 3rd Division between Chateau-Thierry and Dormans? Don't be
like that brigadier general, and don't be like that American officer
returning on the Lapland who told the British at his table he was glad
to get home after cleaning up the mess which the British had made.
Resemble as little as possible our present Secretary of the Navy. Avoid
boasting. Our contribution to victory was quite enough without boasting.
The head-master of one of our great schools has put it thus to his
schoolboys who fought: Some peop