SENATOR LODGE'S REMINISCENCES.* Ma. H. Cl. LODGE, the well-known Senator
in the United States, has given us here only a fragment of the memories which must crowd the brain of one who has been in the thick of recent American politico. He suggests that at some future time he may write a book of political reminiscences; in this
• %arty Memories. By Henry Cabot Lodge. London: Constable and Co. I12a. Bd. net.]
book he has told us of his childhood and early manhood, and offers his recollections of some famous public men and men of letters of the last generation. Mr. Lodge was born a Bostonian, but might have become an Englishman if he had changed his Marne and accepted the property of a relation in England. He was too young to make a decision for himself when the opportunity offered, and his parents decided for him that he should remain an American and do without the English property. He has never regretted their action. He seems never to have lacked the means to travel and cultivate his tastes. It is a sign of his sterling character that when he was still a young man he made up his mind that a life of ease was not for him, and he devoted himself to the study of a very dry and difficult period of history—the early law of the Germanic tribes. There was no reason in the world why he should have chosen tide period ; he simply wanted to grit his mind on something serious, and to feel that he had mastered a subject which was not generally understood. For months he doubted whether his labour was leading him anywhere or accomplishing anything worth the doing, but he emerged from his doubts with a mind adapted to consistent thought and research. Thus the early law of the Germanic tribes was justified. He soon found that history, systematically pursued, was a joy to him, and he became a lecturer at Harvard, and the author of much historical writing held by his countrymen in high repute.
We wish that so grave a student of history could have found it possible to take a juster and more reasonable view of British dealings with the United States. We are sure that his opinions are perfectly sincere, but we regret all the same that he should harbour what seems to us a prejudice against Great Britain. We say "prejudice" because his own language justifies the word. At least we can only read into his words the meaning they obviously bear, and it is regrettable that, when the causes of misunderstanding between the United States and Great Britain are only too frequent as it is, a kind of general sentimental resentment for the past should be carried into the present by an historical writer. For example, Mr. Lodge says :— " Another of the intense feelings of the war time was tho hostility which I imbibed against England. I can recall well the impotent rage I used to feel when I read sentences from English newspapers or magazines like Blackwood's. I knew nothing of the details then. I know them all now, and my anger has long since been swallowed up in sheer marvel at the stupidity of the English Government and of the English governing classes, as well as at the utter lack of ability and capacity displayed by so many of those leaders whom the English always talk and writo about as if they were very great men. That England's treatment of the United States was inexcusable and that she was forced to make an apology for her conduct is the least part of in It is the exquisite stupidity of it all which is so amazing. And in pro- portion as I felt a boyish wrath against England, so was I grateful to the workmen of Lancashire, to Bright and Cobden, and to the few who stood by us, and when I knew more, to the Queen and Prince Albert, for their attitude, which helped us so much at a very dark hour. As a public man I have been called upon to deal much with our foreign relations, and I know not only that a war between this country and Great Britain would be a crime against civilization and something not to be thought of, but I also know that the closest and moat friendly relations between the two Powers are for the interest of peace and freedom, as lven as of both countries and of the world. I have done what little I could to promote such relations, and to carry out this policy honestly and thoroughly, but I have never thought it necessary to mako needless concessions in order to obtain this result, or to show any more courtesy to them than they have been ready to extend to us. Still less have I ever felt the slightest deference to English opinion, except for that of certain people, few in number, as in the war time, who are genuine friends to the United States. I lived through that war time, and I have never suffered the feelings then engendered to affect my action towards England or Englishmen in the slightest degree. I have always striven to treat both on their existing merits. Still, I cannot and do not forget, for I was taught a lesson in those early days by the attitude of England, and also by that of Prance, labouring then under the burden of the empire, which I could not unlearn if I would."
As Mr. Lodge was born in 1850, he was only a schoolboy at the time of the American Civil War, and he naturally regarded the British Government as the malignant enemy of his country. One understands and sympathizes with such blind but loyal anger, which is indeed wholly admirable in a boy. But it does not strike us as fair in the mature historian to link his later feelings on to that early indig- nation as though they were part of a coherent process. If the error of the British Government was that they were exquisitely stupid, there appears to be the less reason for accusing them, as we understand Mr. Lodge to do, of habitual want of courtesy and so forth. That the British Government and a portion of the British people, but by no means the majority, made a huge mistake at the beginning of the American Civil War is admitted by almost every Englishman to-day. The fact is that neither the Government nor the Press in the least understood the situation. They believed that the Southerners in fighting for their States Rights were sacrificing themselves for liberty. They thought of them as an oppressed people who deserved the sympathy which small nations struggling in the grip of a bully tradi- tionally received from Great Britain. It was not, after all, very long before opinion in England began to change as knowledge grew. The conviction that the cause of the North—the cause of union and anti-slavery—was one of justice and truth had been held from the beginning by a stout group of men of light and leading in England, among which group the Spectator, as we shall always be proud to remember, took its place. To-day Englishmen admire Lincoln as one of the greatest statesmen and greatest characters in history. In connexion with the fine and wise part taken by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, we may recall the fact that the despatch which led to the settlement of the ' Trent' affair was in the Queen's own hand- writing—a proof of the extensive editing to which she had subjected it before she was satisfied. In the 'Alabama' affair, again, the Queen did her best to redress the injury done to Federal shipping by the famous Confederate ship. The damages paid by Great Britain were paid gladly, although the law on the subject of armed ships built in neutral ports was, to say the least of it, very vague. Presumably Mr. Lodge knows that the British Government of the day had decided to give the Federals the benefit of the doubt, and were about to seize the Alabama' when she escaped from Liverpool.
When Mr. Lodge visited England just after the American Civil War he does not seem to have been any better impressed than before by the attitude of Englishmen towards his country. But readers of his book over here will be amused at his selecting the late General Sir E. B. Hamley as a pro- tagonist of English offensiveness. Hamley was angular and provocative in the expression of his views when he conquered his natural tendency to silence. Nevertheless, his manner masked a generosity and loyalty which were known to all his friends. His book on " Tactics" to which Mr. Lodge refers cavalierly was really called The Operations of War—a work of first-rate importance which was a Bible among British officers a generation ago, and must be known, we should think, to many American soldiers. Mr. Lodge also misquotes the name of Hamley's novel, Lady Lee's Widowhood.
We agree with Mr. Lodge that the United States was ill- used in the war of 1812, but that is scarcely a good reason for publishing the following passage within twelve months of the centenary celebrations of the Treaty of Ghent :—
"The objection lay not against Englishmen, but only against those of the Ramley type who seem, unfortunately, to have been for a century past, and until quite recently, a controlling influence in England so far as public opinion and public action were con- cerned. They apparently were able to inspire Canning with his unwise malevolence toward the United States in 1810, and Gladstone and Lord John Russell with their blundering hostility fifty years later. After the Revolution England's obvious policy was to re-establish good relations with the -United States, and detach them from France andNapoleon. It could have been easily done, but English ministers preferred to heap upon us every form of wrong, insult, and contempt which could be devised, and they secured as a reward the War of 1812. In that war they lost for ever all their pretensions to interfere with American commerce and American seamen. They also lost eleven frigate actions out of thirteen, and were beaten in two fleet actions on the Lakes, which did not add to their naval prestige. I have never been able to see in what way Canning's policy paid. It seems to me to have been unintelligent to the last degree, and the wounds left by the War of 1812 were kept open and smarting by the judicious efforts of English writers and travellers. Then came the Civil War, and again England had an opportunity to bind the United States to her by bonds of gratitude which could not have been broken. The policy she adopted was such that the North was left with a sense of bitter wrong and outrage, and the South with a conviction that they had been uselessly deceived and betrayed."
But let us leave that side of the book which, if not unfair, is at least inopportune, and say that the chief attraction of the reminiscences is Mr. Lodge's genuine love and knowledge of literature. We should like to quote many of the anecdotes of
men of letters, but must content ourselves with saying that they refer to Motley, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emerson, and Lowell, about every one of whom Englishmen are always glad to learn something new.
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