re
direct--to tell Benedick how Beatrice doted on him, and Beatrice how
Benedick was dying for her love. I have always had my doubts, however,
about the success of that alliance.

In the case of two peoples so much alike as the English and the
American, between whom friendship and alliance would be so entirely in
accord with eternal fitness, who are yet held apart by misunderstanding
on the part of each of the other's character, there seems no better way
than to face the misunderstandings frankly and to endeavour to make each
see how unjustly it undervalues the other's good qualities or
overestimates its faults. At present neither Americans nor Englishmen
understand what good fellows the others are. Least of all do they
understand how essentially they are the same kind of good fellows.

In summarising the contents of the foregoing pages, there is no need
here to rehearse, except in barest outline, the arguments in favour of
alliance between the countries. The fact that war between them is an
ever-present possibility ought in itself to suffice--war which could
hardly fail to be more sanguinary and destructive than any war that the
world has known. The danger of such a war is greater, perhaps, than the
people of either country recognises, certainly greater than most
Englishmen imagine. The people of England do not understand the
warlike--though so peace-loving--character of the American nation. It is
just as warlike as, though no less peace-loving than, the English,
without the restraint of that good-will which the English feel for the
United States; without, moreover, the check, to which every European
country is always subjected, of the fear of complications with other
Powers. The American people, as a whole, it cannot be too earnestly
impressed on Englishmen, have no such good-will towards Great Britain as
Englishmen feel for them; and not even English reluctance to draw the
sword, nor the protests of the better informed and the more well-to-do
people in the United States would be able to restrain what Mr. Cleveland
calls "the plain people of the land" if they once made up their mind to
fight.

Apart from the possibility of war between the two nations themselves,
there is the constant peril, to which both are exposed, of conflict
forced upon them by the aggressions of other Powers. That peril is
always present to both, to the United States now no less--perhaps even
more--than to Great Britain. The fact that neither