so long will the
obstacles to such a transfer remain. As soon as war was put outside the
range of possibilities, commercial principles would begin to operate and
those territories, however much or little they might be worth, would be
acquired by the United States. The same thing would happen in all parts
of the world. Possessions, instead of being held by those who could hold
them, would tend to pass to those who needed them or to whom they
logically belonged by geographical relation, and neither Germany's
legitimate aspirations nor those of any other country would need to go
unsatisfied.

CHAPTER II

THE DIFFERENCE IN POINT OF VIEW

The Anglo-Saxon Family Likeness--How Frenchmen and Germans
View it--Englishmen, Americans, and "Foreigners"--An Echo of
the War of 1812--An Anglo-American Conflict Unthinkable--
American Feeling for England--The Venezuelan Incident--The
Pilgrims and Some Secret History--Why Americans still Hate
England--Great Britain's Nearness to the United States
Geographically--Commercially--Historically--England's Foreign
Ill-wishers in America.

The one thing chiefly needed to make both Englishmen and Americans
desire an alliance is that they should come to know each other better.
They would then be astonished to find not only how much they liked each
other, but how closely each was already in sympathy with the other's
ways of life and thought and how inconsiderable were the differences
between them. Some one (I thought it was Mr. Freeman, but I cannot find
the passage in his writings) has said that it would be a good way of
judging an Englishman's knowledge of the world to notice whether, on
first visiting America, he was most struck by the differences between
the two peoples or by their resemblances. When an intelligent American
has travelled for any time on the Continent of Europe, in contact with
peoples who are truly "foreign" to him, he feels on arriving in London
almost as if he were at home again. The more an Englishman moves among
other peoples, the more he is impressed, on reaching the United States,
with his kinship to those among whom he finds himself. Nor is it in
either case wholly, or even chiefly, a matter of a common speech.

"Jonathan," says Max O'Rell, "is but John Bull expanded--John Bull with
plenty of elbow room." And the same thing is said again and again in
different phraseology by various Continental writers. It is said most