BRITAIN, AMERICA, AND MISCHIEF-MAKERS.
IT is a strange fact, though it has its encouraging side, 1 that the plainest and soundest advice as to the attitude that Englishmen should adopt if they want to be under- stood in America comes voluntarily from Americans themselves. We would refer our readers to letters which we print this week expressing the surprise and even the disgust which Americans feel when Englishmen visit America in the firm belief that the right way to promote good feeling between the two countries is to confess to an unlimited catalogue of British faults and crimes. No doubt the Awful Example is a familiar psychological phenomenon here. At revivalist meetings it has been found that no speaker makes a more poignant appeal to the audience than the man who is ready to blacken his own character, as it used to be before his conversion, in order to emphasize by contrast the state of bliss into which he has entered. We must conclude, however, from the letters we have received from Americans and from the comments of the American newspapers which stand for real and not for hyphenated Americanism, that the British Awful Example is not appreciated.
Americans are disposed by temperament and training to appraise themselves accurately. They look upon what we should call modesty—when we deliberately underrate any virtues we possess in order that it may not be thought that we want to swagger—as an affectation or a form of modesty gone wrong. But though a good many Americans make allowances for what they know to be our national foible, they are, nevertheless, disposed to think that there must be something in it when we tell them that we are idiots and criminals. Of all the disastrous kinds of missions from Britain to America that ever were invented, the most disastrous is that of the lecturer or publicist who tells Americans in effect that though the Sinn Fein murderers in Ireland are criminals, the soldiers and the police are worse. It is a grotesque delusion to suppose that we shall create favour for ourselves in America by such methods. We have not space for all the letters we have received from Americans on this subject, but we may quote a few words from the letter of a well-known American which is among those we are unable to publish. " I suppose," he says, " that the Spectator has acquainted itself with the substance of Sir Philip Gibbs' article in rf se," the March Harper's. What perverse fate can it be that has turned that gentleman's gushing pen loose in America at the wrong moment ? If it were possible for him to know as much about the United States as he thinks he knows, or even if he knows but half as much, he should have been aware that his article at this time is wholly mischievous and can only serve to confuse and dishearten." We confess that our American correspondents express themselves more strongly than we should have done— or, let us say, than we think we should have done—had we been in their place. But that makes their reproof of the habits of some Englishmen all the more striking. The truth is that no people in the world are so well situated as the Americans to understand the peculiar difficulties of Great Britain in dealing with Ireland, because they have- the same trouble themselves. Americans—by that we mean genuine Americans who have but a single allegiance —remember only too well how their civic politics have been corrupted by the Irish. They remember only too well how the Molly Maguires in the anthracite coal districts resorted to a system of bloody assassination, apparently for the mere sake of assassination. The murderers were living in a free and democratic country with no manner of grievance against the country of their adoption. Ameri- cans, again, remember only too well the riots promoted by the Irish during the Civil War. It was not only in the North that the Irish tried to put their spoke in the wheel. In the South also the Irish made trouble when required to fight against Americans of the North, just as the Irishmen of the North had made trouble over being required to fight against Americans of the South. Whatever was done by authority was wrong ; the only people who were right were the Irishmen themselves. Such was the gospel of the Irish at that time, and such it is always and every- where.
We said that we should have expressed ourselves less strongly than our correspondents have done. Our par- ticular reason for saying so is that in criticizing the policy of the Government in Ireland we have been, as our readers know, distressed at the indulgence which has been shown by the Government towards unofficial reprisals. Though we hold that by far the greater part of the blame should be placed upon the originators of murder, and though we have never been in the least surprised that policemen and soldiers—who have been subjected to every kind of provo- cation, and have been menaced day and night with violent death that leaps out upon them from secret and unexpected places—should have taken matters into their own hands, we have, nevertheless, considered that the Government committed a cardinal fault in not laying it down from the very beginning that the function of punishment or reprisal must be kept strictly in the hands of authority and not surrendered to unlicensed persons. But the remarkable fact is that such reflections as these make no appeal what- ever to the Americans who have written to us. They are simply conscious that mischief is being made, and they have no sympathy with Englishmen who make this mis- chief, whether in the name of duty or in that of a better- international understanding. The genuine American likes to call himself a " hundred-per-cent. American," and similarly likes an Englishman when he visits America to be nothing but an Englishman.
The feelings of " hundred-per-cent." Americans about Ireland, are, of course, reproduced in their feelings about all those alien races which have been absorbed by the United States. They say to an American of German birth, "Be an American altogether or else remain a German. We have no use for divided allegiance." They say the same thing to Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Serbs, Poles, Russians, and the rest. America is far too much worried over her relations with the diverse elements of her vast community to trouble about the attitude of the British Government towards the one disaffected element within the United Kingdom. Of course pro-Irish resolutions which are anti-British in form are frequently passed in American constituencies. and even in Congress, but these things are done for electioneering reasons. The belief, so often expressed here, that friendship between America and Britain depends upon the settlement of the Irish question is a myth ; and a vast amount of harm is done when this myth is repeated by Englishmen as gospel truth. Statements to this effect are instantly seized upon and used in America as propaganda. They are quoted as evidence against us and proof of the virtue of all our Irish maligners.
We greatly regret that Lord Robert Cecil, for all his earnest desire to help on a lasting friendship between Britain and America, should have contrived to defeat his own ends, as in our opinion he did, by his speech at the American Luncheon Club on Friday, March 18th. He drew a very gloomy picture of the gradual drifting apart of the two countries. He believed that we were being separated by such subjects of dispute as oil and cables and shipbuilding. We cannot believe anything of the sort. We believe, on the centrary, that if such an estrangement is ever brought, about it will, be because misguided people on both sides of the Atlantic talk about hostility while all the time there is nothing but friendship except on the part of fanatics and specially interested persons. We are as. sure as we can be of anything that all the, soundest and best men in America—and these are the men, who will ultimately direct policy—never felt more friendly. towards Britain than they do now. A. very good, example of a demonstration of " hu4drea. per-cent. ' Americanism was that which took place in New York on Friday, March 18th, as- a. counterblast to the recent efforts of Sinn Fein and German Americans. " Deutschland Go Bragh," as the Times correspondent tells us, is the nickname imposed upon the Irish and German combination ; and critical' satire could not have made a happier effort. The meeting was•- organized by the American Legion and was addressed by General Pershing and others. " The hall," says the correspondent, " was crowded with 14,000 hundred-per-cent.' Ameri- cans, while outside far bigger crowds made protests against German Irish propaganda." We take some sentences of General Pershing 's speech from a Reuter telegram :- " Americans have no quarrel with foreign-born citizens be- cause of their birth, but they do object to the foreign-born. attempting to decide an American question for a foreign reason, whether he be German, Irish, Italian, Hungarian, or Russian.
. . . I bitterly resent any abuse of American citizenship or residence for the purpose of political or warlike propaganda in foreign countries. . . . In America there can be no place for those who, whilst claiming equal citizenship, continue their allegiance to another country. There can be no dual citizenship here. Under no guise can, this country be made a breeding-place for intrigue."
President Harding, we are glad to notice, is not the kind of ruler who encourages insubordination by compromising, or uttering some soothing but ambiguous form of words, when he sees that a principle is at stake. The day before the meeting of the American Legion—that is to say, on St. Patrick's Day—Sinn Feiners at Boston attempted to outdo all their previous achievements in demonstrations. They invited the military and naval commanders in the district to turn out troops and sailors to take part in the parade. But General Buckman and Admiral Dunn both refused because the flag of the Irish Republic was to be displayed. The Washington correspondent of the Morning Post tells us that the Sinn Feiners then telegraphed to the Secretary for War and the Secretary for the Navy, and asked them to overrule the local commanders. Both the Heads of Departments refused to interfere. The Sinn Feiners then telegraphed to the President himself. They asked whether General Buckman and Admiral Dunn were " American officials or the satellites of foreign Govern- ments." " Are they autocrats, or is this a democracy ? " Finally they demanded—not even requesting—that Mr. Harding should overrule the officers. Mr. Harding at once sent the right answer through his Secretary. The Navy and Military Forces of the nation can have no part in any demonstration which may be construed as influencing the foreign relations of the Republic." We respectfully congratulate the President.
If Englishmen understood the real American—the only American that counts—a little better they would not aid the Sinn Fein propaganda in America. As we have shown, their efforts are accepted in aid, however they may intend them. There is no doubt about it. And perhaps the public here does not know even now the full extent, malice, and untruthfulness of that propaganda. We have before us a paper called The Sinn Feiner, which is published in New York. In the issue dated•; February 5th, 1921, it is stated in huge black letters that on January 20th, " Irish sea craft operating over the spot where Archbishop Mannix was seized last year destroyed the British submarine K 5." ' IC 5' was the vessel which was accidentally sunk during exercises. The paper glories in the deed to which it makes so dishonest a claim. " How this victory was accomplished," it says, " it is not permissible to tell at this time other than to say that a new weapon somewhat in the nature of an electrically controlled projectile recently invented by an Irish. engineer made it. possible."
Previous page
