y as can
be assumed by a properly qualified Englishman. One of the chief
manifestations of the characteristic national lack of the sentiment of
reverence is the disregard which the American masses entertain for the
opinions of their "leading" men, whether in public life or not. The
English people is accustomed, within certain limits, to repose
confidence in its leaders and to suffer them in truth to lead; so that a
small handful of men can within limits speak for the English people.
They can voice the public sentiments, or, when they speak, the people
will modify its sentiments to accord with their utterances. There is no
man or set of men who can similarly speak for the American people; and
no one is better aware of that fact than the American, however honoured
by his countrymen, when he gives expression in London to the cordiality
of his own feelings for Great Britain and expresses guardedly his
conviction that a recurrence of trouble between the peoples will never
again be possible. For one thing, public opinion is not centralised in
America as it is in England. If not _tot homines_, at least _tot
civitates_; and each State, each class and community, instinctively
objects to any one presuming to speak for it (a prejudice based
presumably on political tradition) except its own locally elected
representative, and even he must be specifically instructed _ad hoc_.

Only the good-humoured common-sense of British diplomacy prevented war
at the time of the Venezuelan incident; and it may be that the same
influence would be strong enough to prevent it again. But it is
desirable that Englishmen should understand that just as they were
astounded at the bitterness against them which manifested itself then,
so they might be no less astounded again. It is, of course, difficult
for Englishmen to believe. It must necessarily be hard to believe that
one is hated by a person whom one likes. It happens to be just as
difficult for the mass of Americans (again I should like to say the
lower mass) to believe that Englishmen as a whole really like them. In
1895, the American masses believed that England's attitude was the
result of cowardice, pure and simple. Knowing their own feeling towards
Great Britain, they neither could nor would believe that she was then
influenced by a sincere and almost brotherly good-will--that, without
one shadow of fear, Englishmen refused to consider war with the United
States as possible because it had never