AMERICA AND ENGLAND. T HE British people will have to keep
their tempers for the next few months when they consider American affairs. By a rather odd series of circumstances it happens that the pivot of the next election will be the relation of the United States to England, and, of course, in the frenzy of the campaign very hard things will be said. To begin with, the silver section of the Democrats, which is the most numerous, if not the most powerful, 'section, is convinced with some reason that London is 'devoted to a gold standard, and suspects against reason that it is always paying money to bribe American advo- cates of that system. It is not recognised that London is absolutely disinclined to spend money in propagating any idea not religious or humanitarian, and, indeed, is so convinced of the correctness of the " gold bug " theory as not to perceive that any propagandism is required. A Lombard Street financier would as soon think of paving lecturers to argue for the " rule of three." Mr. Bryan and his supporters will, therefore, desire to discredit England, and they have this time a second arrow in their quiver. They hope to enlist the large party within the Union which dislikes the policy of Imperialism, and the still larger one which, without disliking it—for the Monroe doctrine is, in its essence, localised Imperialism pushed to an extreme limit—thinks that its application should be absolutely confined to the two Americas. They dislike the notion of holding transmarine dependencies of any kind, and when the dependencies are Asiatic they pro- test with a sort of fury. They would give up the Philip- pines if they could, and make of Puerto Rico an annexe of the Cuban Republic. There are men in America who posi- tively hate Rudyard Kipling for singing of the " white man's burden," and ask with a sneer whether their share of the burden was not taken up when they emancipated .their own negroes, and so made voting citizens of a million of unqualified men. England in their eyes is the personification of Imperialism, the one Power which has made it a success, and they feel a " political " as well as intellectual delight in abusing her as the tyrannical "grabber" of territory all over the world. The fact that every American missionary in India is a devotee of British expansion does not strike them as evidence that we govern well. Naturally they regard the war in South Africa as a war for gain, and though they are not particularly fond of Dutchmen, whom many of them confuse with Germans, they all consider themselves friends of the Boers, the free peoples who defy Britain and keep black men in their places. They will, there is no doubt, say savage things about England, and perhaps pass resolutions in the Democratic Convention calling upon the Executive Government to intervene strongly on behalf of Mr. Kruger, who, either by instinct or from craftiness, always appeals to them through the literature they know best,—the words of the Old Testament. We shall have a shower of hard words from their side, and it may be even a difficult and perplexed argument to maintain through Lord Pauncefote and the Foreign Office.
For we shall not be very strenuously defended by the Republicans. Mr. McKinley means, we believe, to adhere to Puerto Rico and the Philippines, if not to Cuba also, with a grasp of steel. He has not fought through a difficult war to gain nothing at the end of it ; he has not forgotten what Lord Salisbury did for him when the whole Continent was anxious to spring at his throat ; and he is not going to admit that Americans cannot govern subject peoples in the Far East as well as on the Pacific slope. He will persist in his policy and carry his party with him ; but still, he is an American candidate for the Presidency, and cannot bear, with his second term at stake, to lose a vote. He does not want to irritate the Irish, the Germans, who for some unknown reason are for the moment anti- English, or those among the Catholics who share the Continental impression that if England were weaker the Papacy would be indefinitely stronger,—an impression much more strongly operative in the politics of the hour than is as yet fully perceived. Mr. McKinley, therefore, and the Republican leaders will do nothing to show themselves friends of Great Britain, will utter no plain protests against the chorus of ignorant reproba- tion, and will view with dismay any appearance on this side of any hearty wish for Republican success. They will endeavour to be neutral, and may even indulge in criticisms which Englishmen, more sensitive to the opinion of America than to that of the Continent, may find some- what galling. We shall not like to be told that Washing. ton will see with regret the extinction of " little " and "free " Republics, which so far have proved themselves the most formidable enemies we have recently encountered, and are divided from us first of all by a conviction that black men ought never to be free. Nor shall we be pleased to hear that in refusing to arbitrate we are giving up the principle of arbitration, and so making peaceful negotiation more difficult in the future.
We must, however, possess our souls in patience, and receive American censure with the dogged stolidity with which we receive censure from the remainder of the world. The electoral campaign will come to an end, and with it most of the attacks upon Great Britain. The better opinion of the United States, including, we believe, a con- siderable majority of their population, is, upon the whole, friendly to us, aware that this war is at worst only one of the inevitable wars between clashing civilisations encamped on the same ground, and fully convinced that all the world over, and especially in Asia, British and American interests are the same. Neither nation desires anything except to trade in peace. There is no love for the Boers as Boers in America any more than there is on the Continent, and intervention, even if it occurs in any shape, will be con- fined to words. Americans have no interests in Africa, except that trade shall be free, and they are well aware that wherever the British flag flies all the world may enter in and make all the profit by trading that it can. We make no difference against Americans in London, and shall certainly make none in the Transvaal. As for the eloquence which will be poured out upon our heads, it will not hurt us, used as we are to outpourings of the Irish genius for invective ; and owing to a very curious difference in method which may some day be worth analysis, American carica- ture, though sometimes excessively clever, does not with Englishmen bite. It strikes them, we fancy, as their own election caricatures do, as weakened by a certain extrava- gance. Of one thing we may be sure,—Americans will not caricature the Queen. In the fiercest of electoral battles they will respect the aged lady who forty years ago was on their side in the Civil War, and who is now the only Monarch in Europe who watches their prosperity with ungrudging pleasure, and without the idea that their growth in wealth and influence is a menace to the world.
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