Europe's Undervaluation of America's Fighting Power--The
Americans as Sailors--The Nation's Greatest Asset--Self-reliance
of the People--The Making of a Doctor--And of a Surveyor--
Society in the Rough--New York and the Country--An Anglo-Saxon
Trait--America's Unpreparedness--American Consuls and
Diplomats--A Homogeneous People--The Value of a Common
Speech--America more Anglo-Saxon than Britain--Mr. Wells and
the Future in America.

One circumstance ought in itself to convince Americans that cowardice or
fear has no share in the greater outspokenness of England's good-will
during these later years, namely that when Great Britain showed her
sympathy with the United States at the time of the Spanish War,
Englishmen largely believed that they were giving that sympathy to the
weaker Power,[60:1]--weaker, that is as far as organised fighting
strength, immediately available, was concerned. It is a century or two
since Englishmen did Spain the compliment of being afraid of her. How
then, in 1895, could they have had any fear of the United States?

Few Europeans, indeed, have any conception of the fighting power of the
United States, for it is not large on paper. Nor is an Englishman likely
to make special allowance for the fighting efficiency of either the
ships or the men, for the reason that, in spite of experiences which
might have bred misgivings (English memory for such matters is short),
it remains to him unthinkable that, in the last resort, any men or still
less any ships will prove--man for man and gun for gun--better than his
own. He might be glad to concede that 25,000 American troops are the
equivalent of 50,000 Germans or 100,000 Cossacks, or that two American
men of war should be counted as the equivalent of three Italian. He
makes no such concession when it comes to a comparison with British
troops or British ships. What then can there be in the fighting strength
of the United States, for all the figures that she has to show, to breed
in him a suggestion of fear?

This is a statement which will irritate many a patriotic American, who
will say that it is the same old British superciliousness. But it should
not irritate; and if the American understood the Englishman better and
the spirit which inspires him, he would like it. The Englishman prefers
not to regard the American troops or ships as potentially hostile, and
Great Britain has sufficient to do in measuring th