s, by the very accident of
common origin, by the mere circumstances of the joint occupation of the
continent, Great Britain alone has been constantly near enough to the
United States to impinge at times upon her sphere of development, to rub
against her, to stand in her way. Great Britain herself has hardly known
that this was so. But it has had the effect to make Great Britain in the
mind of the United States the one foreign Power most potentially
hostile.

In aloofness and silence, ignorant of the world, the American people
nursed its wrath and brooded over the causes of offence which have
seemed so large to it, though so trivial or so unintentional on the part
of England, till the minds of the majority of the people held nothing
but ill-feeling and contempt in response to England's good-will towards
them. And always the United States has had those at her elbow who were
willing--nay, for their own interests, eager--to play upon her wounded
feelings and to exaggerate every wrong and every slight, however small
or imaginary, placed upon her by Great Britain.

Thus the two peoples not only misunderstand each other but they
misunderstand each other in different ways. They look at each other from
widely sundered points of view and in diverse spirits. The people of the
United States dislike and distrust Great Britain. They cannot believe
that Great Britain's good-will for them is sincere. The expressions of
that good-will, neglected while the American people was comparatively
weak and finding expression now when it is strong, the majority of
Americans imagine to be no more than the voice of fear. That alone shows
their ignorance of England--their obliviousness of the kinship of the
peoples. The two are of one origin and each may take it for granted that
neither will ever be afraid of the other--or of any other earthly
Power. That is not one of the failings of the stock.

The American people has thus never attained to any right view of the
British Empire. By the accident of the war which gave the nation birth,
the name "British" became a name of reproach in American ears. They have
never since been able to look at Great Britain save through the
cross-lights of their own interests, which have distorted their vision,
while there have always been those at hand poisoning the national mind
against the English. So they think of the British Empire as a bloody and
brutal thing: of her rule of India in particular as a rule of barba