t having
convinced itself first of the justice of its cause, so the Americans
would have entertained an equally favourable presumption in respect of
the people of Great Britain. That this was not done is due to a cause
which is as significant as it is well ascertained. Making all
allowance for the prejudice against England inevitably aroused in the
minds of the less thoughtful members of a great democratic community,
by the fact that her opponent was both a weak state and a republic,
this very general refusal to accept the political morality of the
English people as a guarantee of the justice of their action in South
Africa suggests the presence of another and more specific influence.
The explanation given by Americans is that the English nation was
itself divided upon the question of the morality of the South African
War--or, at any rate, that the public utterances that reached the
United States were such as to convey this impression. That being so,
they ask, Can you blame us for hesitating to adopt what was at the
most, as we understood it, the opinion of a majority? In support of
this view they point to the public utterances, before and after the
war had broken out, of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. John Morley,
and Mr. Bryce. Of these, the former was the official head of the
Liberal Party, while the two latter were men whose literary
achievements had made their names and personalities both familiar and
respected in the United States. If the opinions of these public men
were on this occasion wholly unrepresentative, why, they ask, were
their speeches and articles unrefuted; or, at any rate, allowed to go
forth to the world uncondemned by any clear and authoritative
manifestation of the dissent and displeasure of their countrymen?

[Sidenote: Injurious declarations.]

That declarations such as these did in fact produce injurious effects
directly calculable in human lives, in money, and in the waste and
devastation of war, is a fact which will claim the attention of the
reader on a subsequent occasion. They came not merely from the mouths of
the Irish Nationalists, and of advanced Radicals such as Mr.
Lloyd-George and Mr. John Burns, but from men of wider repute. That
public opinion should have allowed responsible Englishmen in time of war
to "speak and write as though they belonged to the enemy,"--whether due
to an exaggerated regard for our traditional freedom of speech, or to a
failure to recognise that the alt