The present writer recalls how one of tle most warm-hearted
kindly, and courteous of Englishmen used to confess that he never drove up to a friend's door to stay or to dine or to lunch without feeling what he described as the chill of friendship." " The chill of friendship " is a piece of painful self-consciousness which has got to be put away for the present. One of the beat methods of putting it away would be to smother it in the enthusiasm which could not be restrained if an American brigade passed throu,gh England on its way to the front. Whatever international Americans or self-dubbed British experts in American opinion may say, we are not, if we can help it, going to allow our fellow-countrymen to be
manoeuvred into an exhibition of the aforesaid " chill of friendship."
We shall even dare to say that if we are threatened with " the Middle West," and told that the people of those parts will be annoyed at our showing any warm signs of cordiality with America, and will at once join the Pacificists, we shall persist in our wicked ways. Lot Englishmen be natural and not listen to the foolish and perverse guides who tell them that if they show any feeling for America it will be bitterly resented as " intolerable British side." Do let us both try, in Walt Whitman's pleasant phrase, to be " two natural and nonchalant people."
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