a decade ago.
All thinking Americans recognise this fact to the full; but whereas the
Englishman sees only the blunders that he has made and marvels at the
luck that pulled him through, the American generally ignores the luck
and is more likely to believe that whatever has been achieved is the
result of his peculiar virtues.

I never heard an American ascribe the success of any national
undertaking to the national luck. The Englishman on the other hand is
for ever speaking of the "luck of the British Army," and the "luck that
pulls England through."

And there is one point which I have never seen stated but which is worth
the consideration of Americans. It has already been said that it would
be of great benefit if the American people knew more of the British
Empire as a whole. They have had an advantage in appreciating the
magnitude of their own accomplishments in the fact that their work has
all to be done at home. They have had the outward signs of their
progress constantly before their eyes. It is true that the United States
is a large country; but it is continuous. No oceans intervene between
New York and Illinois, or between Illinois and Colorado; and the people
as a whole is kept well informed of what the people is doing.

The American comes to London and he sees things which he regards with
contemptuous amusement much as the Englishman might regard some peculiar
old-world institution in a sleepy Dutch community. The great work which
is always being done in London is not easy to see; there is so much of
Old London (not only in a material sense) that the new does not always
leap to the eye. The man who estimates the effective energy of the
British people by what he sees in London, makes an analogous mistake to
that of the Englishman who judges the sentiments of America by what is
told him by his charming friends in New York. The American who would get
any notion of British enterprise or British energy must go afield--to
the Upper Nile and Equatorial Africa, to divers parts of Asia and
Australia. He cannot see the Assouan dam, the Cape to Cairo Railway, the
Indian irrigation works, from the Carlton Hotel, any more than a
foreigner can measure the destiny of the American people by dining at
the Waldorf-Astoria.

This is a point which will bear insisting on. Not long ago an American
stood with me and gazed on the work which was being done in the Strand
Improvement undertaking, and he said that it was a big thing.