t, namely, the American
press, is, by reason of qualities peculiar to itself, not to be trusted
to correct the misapprehensions which exist. Finally, we have seen that
there exist in certain American minds some mistaken notions, not much
dissimilar in character to those which I am trying to point out are
present in the minds of Englishmen, about the character of a
considerable section of the people of Great Britain; and if Americans
can be thus mistaken about England, there is no inherent improbability
in the suggestion that Englishmen may be analogously mistaken about the
United States.

The English people has had abundant justification in the past for
arriving at the conclusion that in many of the qualities which go to
make a great and manly race it stands first among the peoples of the
earth. The belief of Englishmen in their own moral superiority as a
people is justified by the course of history, and is proven every day
afresh by the attitudes of other races,--especially by the behaviour in
their choice of friends, when compelled to choose as between England and
other European powers, of the peoples more or less unlike the
Anglo-Saxon in their civilisations in the remoter corners of the world.
It is to the eternal honour of England that in countless out-of-the-way
places, peoples more or less savage have learned to accept the word of a
British official or trader as a thing to be trusted, and have grown
quick to distinguish between him and his rivals of other European
nationalities. There has been abundant testimony to the respect which
the British character has won from the world,--from the frank admiration
of the Prince-Chancellor for the "Parole de Gentleman" to the unshakable
confidence of the far red Indian in the faith of a "King George Man";
from the trust of an Indian native in the word of a Sahib to the dying
injunction to his successor of one of the greatest of the Afghan Ameers:
"Trust the English. Do not fight them. They are good friends and bad
enemies."[349:1] And the most solemn oath, I believe, which an Arab can
take is to swear that what he says is as "true as the word of an
Englishman."

But, granting all that has happened in the past, and recognising that
British honour and the sacredness of the British word have stood above
those of any other peoples, the American nation of to-day is a new
factor in the situation. It did not exist at the time when the old
comparisons were made. I have suggested