ival of
the United States upon the continent. Alaska was purchased from Russia;
but Russia has long ago been almost forgotten in the transaction while
it was with Great Britain that the troublesome question of the Alaskan
boundary arose. And through all the years there have been recurring at
intervals, not too far apart, various minor causes of friction between
the two peoples,--in the Newfoundland fisheries question on the east and
the seal fisheries on the west, with innumerable difficulties arising
out of the common frontier line on the north or out of British relations
(as in the case of Venezuela) with South American peoples.

If an Englishman were asked what had been the chief events in the
external affairs of England during the nineteenth century he would say:
the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the China,
Ashanti, Afghan, Zulu, Soudan, Burmese, and Boer wars, the occupation of
Egypt, the general expansion of the Empire in Africa--and what not else
besides. He would not mention the United States. To the American the
history of his country has chiefly to do with Great Britain.

Just as geographically British territory surrounds and abuts on the
United States on almost every side; just as commercially Great Britain
has always hemmed in, dominated, and overshadowed the United States, so,
historically, Great Britain has been the one and constant enemy, actual
or potential, and her power a continual menace. How is it possible that
the American should think of England as the Englishman thinks of the
United States?

There have, moreover, been constantly at work in America forces the
chief object of which has been to keep alive hostility to Great Britain.
Of native Americans who trace their family back to colonial days, there
are still some among the older generation in whom the old hatred of the
Revolutionary War yet burns so strongly that they would not, when at
work on the old family farm in, let us say, Vermont, be very seriously
surprised on some fine morning to see a party of red-coated Hessians
come round the angle of the hill. There are those living whose chief
pastime as boys was to fight imaginary battles with the loathed British
in and out among the old farm-buildings--buildings which yet bear upon
them, perhaps, the marks of real British bullets fired in the real
war.[57:1] And those boys, moving West as they came to manhood, carried
the same spirit, the same inherited dislike of the na