onal
view on your subject of 'The Ancient Grudge'...

"To begin with, I think that you start with a false idea of our
kinship--with the idea that America, because she speaks the language of
England, because our laws and customs are to a great extent of the same
origin, because much that is good among us came from there also, is
essentially of English character, bound up in some way with the success
or failure of England.

"Nothing, in my opinion, could be further from the truth. We are a
distinctive race--no more English, nationally, than the present King
George is German--as closely related and as alike as a celluloid comb
and a stick of dynamite.

"We are bound up in the success of America only. The English are
bound up in the success of England only. We are as friendly as rival
corporations. We can unite in a common cause, as we have, but, once that
is over, we will go our own way--which way, owing to the increase of
our shipping and foreign trade, is likely to become more and more
antagonistic to England's.

"England has been a commercially unscrupulous nation for generations
and it is idle to throw the blame for this or that act of a nation on an
individual. Such arguments might be kept up indefinitely as regards an
act of any country. A responsible nation must bear the praise or odium
that attaches to any national action. If England has experienced a
change of heart it has occurred since the days of the Boer Republic--as
wanton a steal as Belgium, with even less excuse, and attended with
sufficient brutality for all practical purposes....

"She has done us many an ill turn gratuitously and not a single good
turn that was not dictated by selfish policy or jealousy of others.
She has shown herself, up till yesterday at least, grasping and
unscrupulous. She is no worse than the others probably--possibly even
better--but it would be doing our country an ill turn to persuade its
citizens that England was anything less than an active, dangerous,
competitor, especially in the infancy of our foreign trade. When
a business rival gives you the glad hand and asks fondly after the
children, beware lest the ensuing emotions cost you money.

"No: our distrust for England has not its life and being in
pernicious textbooks. To really believe that would be an insult to our
intelligence--even grudges cannot live without real food. Should
England become helpless tomorrow, our animosity and distrust would die
to-morrow, becau